Apologies in advance for this being part rant.
I have a group of people who, in theory, are pumped up to go out and fight ICE. My local org is full of people who claim they want to do things, but what they actually do is endlessly bicker about theory minutae, criticism of other orgs or politicians, but rarely showing up.
I mean the org has turned out for some things but the most activity was one anti-ICE protest and then tagging along to a bunch of PSL events.
So we had a minor win with our immigration campaign the other day and were trying to pick a next action. I suggested several low-lift activities like canvassing local Hispanic businesses, handing out whistles and getting to know our community, or showing up to yell at Lib candidates to do better on fighting ICE. Doing more advocacy at local city council meetings. Going door-to-door in a local Hispanic neighborhood and getting to know people… and instead I get people saying we need a “mission statement” and wanting to plan out something perfect.
I feel like my local org doesn’t know how to do anything! They mean well but I’m tired of sitting around waiting for buy in to do things I thought we should have been doing for six months now. Every little event is a huge ordeal and feels like pulling teeth!
IDK what to do. Am I personally being a poor organizer? Is there something I can do to convince people to start doing things and stop just talking about them? I could go out alone but I’d rather build a group that will go out together vs. my awkward ass walking into some Panderias.
Is there a manual for how to do this that actually works? I believe we had a reading group for No Shortcuts a year ago, but I guess that either didn’t apply or people didn’t learn anything from it.
When I was in the DSA this was pretty common. I realized by the end of my time there that you kinda just need to force things through yourself and nine times out of ten all the detractors will just follow you anyways. If they have complaints about something set a deadline for them to fix it themselves otherwise it isn’t changing. You should be helpful and friendly to your comrades especially if they’re actually going to participate but that doesn’t mean they should hold you back if you have vision. It’s like Lenin’s analogy about the soldiers marching through the swamp from What is to be Done.
Edit: more specifically, pick an action, set a time and a place, and then solve the details. Without deadlines you’ll never get anything done.
Edit 2: the reason the right wing of the DSA is so effective is because as individual or in their small groups they’re competent enough to get the ball rolling on the things they want and then the great mass of the rest of the org just falls in line. Meanwhile the “left” of the org is constantly bickering over every little detail while actually contributing very little to enacting a program. Be like the rightists in carrying out work.
Food, good food
I’m not joking, people will show up for it and the rest will follow
Ya’ll are awesome as usual!
I think I’m gonna push forward with the hispanic outreach plan. I’m just gonna set a date and make it new business. Let’s go and talk to people who are being targeted the most by ICE, hand out materials, and ask people on the ground how we can best help. Then wrap-up the afternoon at a Taqueria for some yummy food and comradery. Should be an easy ask for people
Does your org have the vibe of a friend group hanging out or the vibe of a church volunteer group?
Not that it was ultimately particularly successful but my last org I hosted monthly dinners at my place. People enjoyed my vegan cooking and we just hung out and broke bread together. Board games are a decent option if you’re all past 30 and so inclined. Anything to get people to spend time with you IRL. Absent close shared circumstances like coworkers I think you really have to manufacture bonds beyond being mad at the same stuff you read online. You don’t have to be best friends or anything but if someone is going to an action they should think “here is an opportunity to hang out with my buddies” instead of just “here is an opportunity to manifest my stated values IRL”
bumping this angle of approach, i was on a revleftradio zoom call, and they spoke on this, any good org will also have some kind of activity where people build rapport with each other, they gave an example of a bbq cookout, or a soccer game they have.
this is a concept many people have spoken about, pokepreet on tiktok spoke of how important it was to the filipino maoist in the jungle to have festivals/marriage celebrations while waging a peoples war.
proles of the roundtable had a conversation with deathnography about this topic as well, the concept being that even house cleaners/maids who were deeply exploited under the british ran colony of Hong Kong (old episode) would take measures to have fun at each meeting so people would actually show up, which of course they would do work after as well
I could be convinced to help your revolutionary group in exchange for headpats
A different kind of polycule than usual, but OK
Have one on ones with like everybody. Do you have people you work well with? Enlist their help, start holding weekly meetings for something tangible, other than internal organizing. Start building campaigns. Organizational myopia crops up everywhere, there something about this work that engages a lot of bureaucratic thinking and approaches. And that needs to be combatted. People often want to formalize something that doesn’t have a concrete basis. We like abstract things. Then it causes burn out when the a priori structures that were formalized have problems and gaps.
Plan an education event, a mobilization event, and a follow up. Use the education event to get people to mobilize, then use the mobilization to organize and gather contacts for another education event. Have lots of side conversations, recruit people to lead educations and mobilizations. Take names, build contacts, follow up.
Do not waste time trying to get people to do something. Give people something to do. Campaigns create the basis for organizing, and party structures emerge out of campaign work. When orgs start organizing themselves, they produce bourgeois leadership structures and give way to opportunism. Struggle for internal democracy and keep making shit happen. Ideas only exist in practice, what they build won’t exist, and what you build will, and the difference is political. So get your group of 1-2 other people and start meeting regularly. Just make sure you center work on politics and not pragmatism.
Removed by mod
I struggle to take something seriously that’s all “men this” and “men that” about basic human capacities (“virtues”). Based on the first article, I disagree with wokisme about the description being toxic if we strip out the weird affectation of it having literally anything in it that is particular to men, but I think that only makes it a little less bad.
this is a fair assessment, i understand that reinforcing social norms is not something we should replicate mindlessly, but i dunno it was not something i thought about deeply, the basic human capacity of virtues don’t come naturally to me (and i presume others may have similar issues) - i did not think of this as a net negative, it was simply a resource to me
Honestly even the Ancient Roman authors they are doing a poor job of paraphrasing generally don’t have this kind of social backwardness writing from 2000 years ago. I think the bigger issue is encouraging people to think in gender-essentialist ways, but on top of that the author just comes off as so pathetically gross keeping up this affectation about “manliness,” to use the site name, to nurse the wounded egos of men who feel emasculated and want some balm to let them feel like Real Men^tm, because that’s a quicker buck than telling them that what is hurting them is fundamentally thinking in terms of those norms and standards as though they are sub-standard exemplars of some perfect form of “manliness” that exists in the aether rather than as human beings that exist for their own sakes. You aren’t a shadow of “manhood” cast on the cave wall that should be judged against an arbitrary model, you’re just a person.
This is just the standard self-help trope of giving extremely generic positive advice but mixing it with some shitty, pseudo-intellectual ideology, I guess.
that description of resilience sounds toxic as fuck
i mean i suppose under the backdrop of existing under capitalism where your labor value is stolen from you, and any extra effort into work is just going to a capitalist so they get richer - yeah i suppose it does.
i would push it depends on the context, but this is still a quality that is applicable to many fields in life. But you know, tap out if you must - only you know you.
it wasn’t even roll with the punches, it’s act like the punches didn’t happen at all, let alone hurt.
That’s overwhelmingly not what this shitty, backward, pseudo-intellectual article was saying outside of like one poorly-formed sentence.
