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chapotraphouse @hexbear.net
WithoutFurtherBelay @hexbear.net

What’s stopping you from organizing and/or developing a community in your local area?

I do not mean this as a rhetorical question: I mean it literally. Tell us what’s stopping you! I don’t want to invalidate you, but the opposite. I’m sure people here would love to help if it’s possible. Post away!

Personally, I think Covid and the general amount of work everyone does are the two biggest obstacles to community building. Not just for me, but everybody I know. It’s nearly impossible to build a community when nobody has the energy to even play a video game together, and actually meeting up in person can literally kill you. There are definitely solutions, but we need to realize them as problems first to find them. If you have suggestions, please share them! Same goes for the issues everyone else shares (if they’re ok with help, of course).

56 comments

  • Being tired and sad all the time and having no time or energy.

    Most millennials and younger had/have severe burnout before they even finish their teens

    I also don't really have social media, and that's how everyone communicates these days. How am I going to organize people? To do what, exactly? Immediately get infiltrated by the fash or arrested for a lukewarm protest?

    I'm not a leader, I need an already good group to follow, I can't do anything right myself.

    It frustrates me because I feel like that's the plan of our oligarchs, tire us out, make us sad, too numb to do anything but be herded through the system.

    Obviously, I will always refuse to give up, I'm looking for a new group right now actually, but man, it's hard.

    • I feel you on the social media front.

      At some point I'm going to need an account or two that I log into for 15 minutes maybe a few times a week. But I'd want it to not have my name on it, and for my radical identity to be separate from my official/personal/"professional" (lol) identity. It might be easier if I got a few "scrub your main profile" workshops going, but that takes even more time and effort and willpower.

      Have you dived very deep into executive functions, and their classification and disorders?

    • Agitation is low commitment and it is an important job. We don't all have to be a leader to help organize. "From each according to their ability..." Trash talking capitalism and hyping yer boy Marx is something you are proly great at even if finding the right time might be hard.

      • This is why I created a Facebook account after deleting one decades ago. It has zero PII on it, which isnt too hard to do. I use it to agitate on my towns most popular page.

        Tools I used:

        • Firefox Relay for the email.
        • Firefox Facebook Container Tab.
        • VPN.
        • SMSPool for verification codes (funded from some old satashis I had kicking around).
        • A photo of a relative who doesn't use Facebook.

        The last two you only need if you are accused of not being a "real person".

  • My province, PEI, is a former Liberal now PC stronghold in the nation, and usually has zero representation for any other party besides those two. I've been trying to organize but people won't even vote for the NDP or Greens (outside of one riding).

    The thing that's stopping me is the people. They just will not fucking bite out here. They're 1000% grillpilled the fuck out and basically all Red Tories and Liberals largely just along Protestant/Catholic lines. The PCs and Liberals are basically indistinguishable here and people are extremely checked out on politics.

  • I'm taking a break after working hard on a project I won't mention for opsec reasons. It left me a bit burned out and I've been taking time to work on myself and my relationships.

    That personal work has been very productive and I'm slowly making my way back into a presence with my local org.

  • I live in a small-ish university town with a max of 2 degrees of separation for any random person. I put my unfortunately distinctive name and face on an attempt to start a DSA chapter here a little over 6 years ago, then burned out because I had undiagnosed autism and ADHD and couldn't get a good grasp on group dynamics.

    There's a lot that went wrong, and it contributed to a social life spiral - I tried to go back to hanging out with my old townie friends, people who weren't even DSA-level leftists, and it was hard to like them anymore or have much compassion for them, because I know how they feel about the societal stuff. They don't give much of a fuck about anyone who isn't them.

    Then COVID happened, and seeing that even that didn't inspire any extra care in any of them - they were having parties as soon as it wasn't illegal to do so, and I bet they were probably doing them before and just not posting about it. My husband and I both have immunocompromised parents with lung issues, and seeing how little of a fuck our "friends" gave about us or our parents was a disappointing shock. We got them to Skype us once the entire time. We tried to move past it once we got vaccinated, but the shine was off. We are not friends with any of those people anymore.

    I found a local Food Not Bombs chapter in autumn '22, but then my mom got super sick, so I left because I didn't have time to do anything with them anymore. I was having a hard time feeling like I fit in, too, and trying to cram in organizing with people I suspect don't like me wasn't a high priority when I thought my mom was dying.

    So now I've got no friends, a bad reputation with the local leftists, and idk where to go from here. Doing the DSA thing introduced me to another local chapter of a big org - ISO maybe? they split off the national org a while back - and while one of them definitely hated me, there were a couple that seemed to actually kinda like me, and I've thought about reaching out to them to see if they're doing anything I could help with.

    I'm in a weird place though personally, struggling with content warning feelings while coming to terms with AuDHD I didn't know about for 40 years, and I definitely need a therapist before I put myself out there that much again. I made an Open Path account a couple weeks ago and reached out to a therapist but haven't heard back yet. I didn't want to pester hard though, because it's the holidays and not an emergency.

    So yeah, that's where I am, feel free to make suggestions if you have them or ask questions if it will help inform your suggestions or satisfy your curiosity.

  • One is that I've been dragging my feet on getting (back) on a platform that most people use for organizing.

    Another is that people very easily end up at each other's throats. Some of it is fallout from a schism that blew up 2 years ago, but a lot of it is just people being vindictive.

    That said, there is quite a lot that I'm involved in. Honestly the rate of how much things are going on here makes me want to invite people to come here.

  • it's covid, I did a lot more social activity before the pandemic. but now most of the people in those groups don't care about getting themselves a d w everyone else sick so I have like 5 people I can trust won't bring me a potentially disabling virus when I hang out with them

  • +18 R district. Most of the "lefties" here are

    that turn fascist the moment they are scratched. The closest org I have is over a 30 minute drive away and my "availability" is incompatible with it, not to mention the gas costs and the time sinks. For what pissing off the
    cops to get beaten, jailed, and fired from my job? What would that accomplish? I'm better off giving to things like a Doctors Without Borders, St. Jude, or the local HIV AIDS prevention org that gives out free Narcan. At least that's some material good. Educate my coworkers and turning CHUD family members off from this culture wars bullshit. It's educating in a way spreads, and minimizes risk.

    Wacky shift schedules that make regular meeting times not regular and totally off-wack for traditional schedules. Risk to job and potential hyper targeting. Extreme introvert INFJ.

    I sacrificed myself for Bernie's 2016 campaign. First interaction as a gentleman

    from Bechtel. It was brutal on my body, mind, soul. Until people are done being tricked into D and R are your only options, it's a
    and not worth any more of efforts, time, money, or sanity. I tried. I went all out. Saw the potential, and it was there. And then he squandered it for Her Ego

    And the movement choked itself out. Like Obama's massive organization before it.

    The Squad were were supposed to be the movement's representatives to try to change the course just turned around and capitulated along with
    . #FrauDSquAd and screw the DSA and their bending over for the Does Not Care Corporation while
    scolding those who saw no future in the DNC. That writing was on the wall for a long time.

    I give a bit to Stein for the amusement factor of being a thorn on the establishment's side. I'll friggin do it again too.

    It's just watching the
    world burn and the empire sink now. Tired of trying to educate idiots who refuse to learn from even recent history. It's beyond time for education. I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's not happening in my lifetime. There is no path forward. The dominoes are already falling, and unless there is serious hard intervention, nothing is going to stop the inevitable rest of the domino chain from falling as a natural order of events. You don't need to be a psychic or genius to see where it ends or where it is going.

    It's like a drunk addicted relative - until they (the country /

    ) is willing to admit they have a serious problem and needs help, it's just watching a painful slow moving trainwreck. It no longer shocks you. The just keep doing it. After a while the specticle of it all wears off, and you get tired and bored for waiting for the lesson to be learned the hard long way. BLUEBERRIES!

  • I'm working on creating digital and sorta technological infrastructure. I was part of a local org. I did not disagree with them with regards to theory in anyway, and they were all much more well read and knowledgeable in ML than I was (and am).

    They did not know very much about contemporary technology and the potential uses it could have. Fine. They did not want to use social media (in the broadest sense of the term, even for an internal intranet). Fine. However, I've been wracking my brain around and I can't for the life of me get how they could not conceive, if they were to look at it dialectically, that there are things that they don't know and that they don't know that they don't know.

    I guess I'd like to do the plumbing and logistics of stuff. I was never given an opportunity. I asked, I was not allowed to do it in my free time. I was not listened to. And then some comrades were kinda mean to me too. I didn't like that very much. I also did not like that comrades spoke for members of other marginzised groups (e.g. women). The executives (student group FYI) knew I had issues with anxiety and mental health.

    In the mean time I want to improve my technical prowess and memorize more marxist and classical (e.g. Aristotle's Organon, al-Farabi's islamic neoplatonism, darwin, Malthus, Roseau, Hayek) so that I can talk like I know theory too without practical consideration. I have a sense that if I quote the right people and don't focus on empirical stuff ALL the time as I felt comrades in the org did, I'd establish enough good will for them to listen to the immediately material things I';d suggest and am confident enough now to admit that I know of (not 'know' just know of).

  • The reason why younger liberals are more enthusiastic about organizing is because they know gaining power is realistic. So they campaign, canvas, pester, etc.

    I suspect most young socialists know that the US will kill entire families before letting a “democratically elected” (within the bourgeois system) socialist win anything substantial. So they just treat it as a social club, which is fair, a good political organization is not about politics 100% of the time.

    Still, this results in a lot of time being wasted doing performative stuff. I still think that performative action is still important even if the results are localized to the media fear mongering. It’s just that without any tangible results, people will burn out. Leadership needs to be aware that book clubs and movie nights and protesting can only carry you so long before people start thinking “why can’t I just post epic tweets at home denouncing imperialism or donate money instead of protesting?” So many people, including POC and those oppressed by the west and capitalists in general, fall into the trap of jadedness, powerlessness, and assimilation. “Yeah it sucks. What can you do?”

    With that being said, ultimately, I don’t believe that any agitation will be effective until industry is brought back to the US from overseas and people began to experience the feeling of being overworked in every aspect because nothing would be cheap anymore. Right now people are just “meh, I’m miserable but I don’t mind chugging along a little longer.” Until then, it’s just universal capitalist realism.

    I don’t support acceleration, but it seems like the only time people start to question our current system is when everything begins to fall apart. Acceleration will be decided by those whose net worth is 5000x mine, so it doesn’t really matter whether I want it or not. I guess it’s just a matter of being more prepared than liberals and fascists when the time comes.

    • Yeah you're getting it. The average American still has too much hope. They're still sold on the idea that it's possible to get that house in the suburbs and the car if they hold on just a little longer. Pay off the credit card, get that promotion, finish the second degree, and eventually something will come along to secure the dream. Absolute cult of optimism that permeates too many brains.

      I really believe the true death of leftist organizing in the US was the Reagan administration's loosening of housing regulation. Once housing became a commodity for the average person, an investment rather than a necessary place to live, it's like a button got flicked in people's minds. The "temporarily embarrassed capitalist" button. People think of their houses as a little business they're running. Eventually it'll get sold and they'll buy another, nicer house. Maybe they'll even rent a room or buy a second house to rent. Everyone got real estate and landlord brained over the 80s.

      And how are you supposed to sell a person like that on socialist organizing? "Hey I know you've been working on this mortgage for the past 10 years specifically out of a pipedream to make $200k in profit but do you wanna help advance the interests of the global proletariat?"

  • Something that stops organizing around where I live is that no one actually lives here. I don't mean it's underpopulated or rural. I'll be open and say I live in Houston with 7 million people. It's a populated place with plenty of marginalized communities, a whole bunch of queer people, and a very working class character. You'd think it's ripe for organizing, and there are good people who've done good stuff (shout-out to the local IWW and the Starbucks union campaign), but getting anything big off the ground is like pulling teeth.

    When I say no one lives here I mean no one stays here. It's a community by happenstance, everyone is here just long enough to move along to somewhere nicer. It's not a place to grind your feet into and refuse to back down, it's a place where you're already worn down and you're scraping up enough to move to a house in the suburbs just leave Texas in general. Not to mention the physical separation of people here. The whole city is a bunch of highways and HEBs masquerading as a society. Everything's so far apart and people are so scattered it's hard to coordinate anything, especially because these are poor, stressed, working class folk who already have a bunch on their plate. Everyone's tired and no one wants to be here.

    Me personally I'm impacted by all of that. I dream about leaving, so it's sometimes hard to get too involved with organizing because it would chain me here. I do work around here the best I can, but a lot has to get done. I think a major thing would be getting more Latino people involved. I mean this as constructive, but the socialist orgs around here really do fit the nerdy white guy in college stereotype. That's not necessarily bad but it does mean outreach is a problem.

    Non-white folk around here, if they have leftist tendencies, tend to filter into orgs with more focus on fighting racism rather than explicitly advancing socialism. Like there's a Brown Berets chapter here and some César Chávez folk. There are some really cool indigenous people's groups as well. I wish all the orgs here would coordinate more, that would really be a good first step. Most of the time when I see multiple orgs at the same thing it's more by happenstance and shared interests than coordination. Everyone tends to get along like comrades at events, but communication is poor and coherency is worse.

    It's not all bad and there's a lot of room to improve. I'm hopeful and I'm gonna keep helping out where I can.

    • I think your point about the alienation of life in Houston is a good one. Most people haven’t been there that many generations, and especially not in the same neighborhood etc. which is really essential to having a city with a sense of place and a sense of community, which is where solidarity and organizing can spring from most easily.

      Housing got really big really recently so i think it will take another couple of generations before people start to cohere into a real identity as a city and neighborhoods etc. Of course there are some communities there like that already, like the black community and probably some Latino areas. But in general it’s a lot of new-ish people without a lot of deep ties to each other.

      America is hell.

      • i just try to stay hopeful. It's not all bad and I do believe in people, even people here where things seem impossible. You can't fool people forever, and there's a limit to how much people will take before something breaks. I try to think back to the sudden burst of energy in the summer of 2020 and how hopeful it felt. I try to think that soon enough we'll see more of that, more sustained and more focused, because most of those people who marched or broke a cop's windows are still around. Good moments will come, we just gotta be ready and we can't be mired down in defeatist fog. We can't miss our moments

  • I live in an area that, on paper, should be pretty fruitful but nobody's really applied a correct line. We have lots of groups but they're all anarchists, and when I tried to steer a group that I was foundational to towards a more practical and less idealistic line it exploded due to completely worthless social infighting.

    Seriously, watch out, if you're not careful you CAN get taken advantage of and be left with nothing if malicious actors get in on the ground. And they're not malicious actors because they're innately wrong or evil or backed by the FBI or something, just hurt people who don't do the work for themselves to stop hurting others. I lost a lot from it, and it was humiliating to lose everything after so much work; so don't feel bad for practicing prudence with who you work with.

    I think I'm still salving myself after that as selfish as that is

  • A lot of people are just plain busy. I'm not really an exception, in addition to regular person stuff I also hold national positions in a certain org with a good number of people. I have been getting significantly more involved locally in the past year though.

    Something I see a lot is people joining up and becoming a member, but for one reason or another not participating. Y'all, please show up to a meeting. I'm begging you.

56 comments