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chapotraphouse @hexbear.net cleoburymortimer [none/use name] @hexbear.net

you actually have to "go outside" and "build some communism" to learn how to be a communist. not all knowledge comes from books and articles, and you can learn a lot from IRL organising

seriously. it's not that big a deal. if people in gaza are still standing up to their oppressors every day then you likely have zero excuse for not doing more IRL shit (political reading and writing at home are good, but don't mean anything if you're not applying that theory as practice and then assessing the results and adjusting your practice accordingly).

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  • Someone please spell it out for me: what does anyone mean by joining an org?

    • Figure out the communist and communist-aligned groups in your area, get on their mailing lists, turn out to do the things they ask of you sometimes. Try to make a compromise between good politics, successfully doing things in the real world, and being a larger org. Find out which orgs meet those criteria by going to their things. Once you're sure which org(s) are good, ask them how you can get more involved.

    • An org is just a group of people that do work together and have a name. It might be a political party, it might be a group focused on a specific thing that approaches it from a socialist perspective, it might just be four people trying to figure out what they want to do but they know it should be socialist.

      You join one by talking to people and asking them if you can join.

      • What if it's a group of people that do work together but don't have a name?

        • That counts as organizing but I'm not sure if it's an organization unless you can name it somehow. Seems like a necessary thing to me, eventually you've gotta call it something.

          • Sometimes we end up doing projects and those specific projects have names but the continuous nexus behind it does not have any recognized name.

    • You know, finding an organization and becoming a member of it. Attending meetings. Paying dues. That sort of thing.

    • Joining a political organization that fights for better rights. In this context, a socialist org/party working towards building a socialist nation

    • An example would be joining the IWW. You pay dues, show up to meeting, talk about politics with people, and try to organize your workplace or help other people organize theirs.

      A bunch of other orgs are basically like that, except instead of workplace organizing it might be electioneering or selling newspapers.

      • selling newspapers

        Not really something that is going to fly these days, you'll just look like a Jehova Witness. Especially in Poland, for some reason the amount of them has skyrocketed in my city. Since we are living in the internet age, organizations should definitely learn how to use it to their benefit. Adapting to the times and all that.

        • That doesn't stop orgs in my area! There's even a few IWW papers, but they're more directed towards wobs and other's that already share our ideological leaning. But yeah, distributing newspapers isn't very effective.

      • I joined the IWW and seeing the state of my branch i'm ashamed to ask anyone else to join. it's not particularly bad, it's just been dysfunctional ever since it was (re)established

        • SF Bay Area GMB seems to be doing a lot of good work. Honestly, most of the organizing at my branch is dual-carders working with a different union, but that's not really that bad.

          • our previous one blew up because it was centered around a sex pest and his friends who all worked at the same co op grocery and they decided to withhold dues lmao. the current members are with a few exceptions disaffected young people and grad students with very little experience in politics or labor organizing, myself included. i don't want to make it sound like i'm trashing my fellow workers, this is just as much my responsibility as anyone else's there. Oh also everything is done on Discord. Infuriating.

            • Yeah, the reliance on zoom and Discord is annoying. WISREA is a lot more on the ball in terms of tech stuff, with SSO, chat, jitsi, and hosting interwob. We could probably be doing better, but that whole RWU ordeal happened.

      • Hmm interesting. So IWW is a union, and I can join it, and potentially get its support if my workplace decides to unionize?

        I'm in education, but not an educator, and so not in a union. Its a small dept, and I doubt it'll ever unionize, the wage and benefits are probably the best in the state. I've never understood why the tech/office people in edu (in my state anyway) are always out of the union loop.

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