#1
Occupied Aztlan
Post rating: +
what the fuck are you supposed to do? lots of people genuinely want to help out, but are faced with either driving two hours to the closest organiztion or starting a new one from ground zero. thats doable, and much easier with a comrade or two, but building an organization is a separate task the day to day business holding events. Maybe you're just one person, you dont have a car, you're living in a swamp or orange county suburbia, youre a fulltime worker, student. how can you help?

id like this thread to talk about ways we can help out people who are doing work we want to support in our communities, workplaces, and schools. maybe you can contact an immigrant rights organization, offer to assist them with making flyers. maybe you have a hookup on a location your local communist party can hold events or even just small, regular meetings at. maybe you know a lot of people in your community, and can get a group of people who youre trying to get involved in doing stuff to go to the city for a big event. maybe youd like to write some articles or know how to mix a video.
#2
mt.real
Post rating: +
i just occasionally go out on the street and say WHOSE STREETS OUR STREETS (ME BECAUSE THERE IS ONLY ONE OF ME HELLO) over and over until i get tired and then i go home and post on a forum. i think i've raised a lot of awareness
#3
mt.real
Post rating: +
one time i went to the park and said NO JUSTICE NO PEACE at the squirrels for a couple of hours. i didn't see any justice or peace so i think i taught the squirrels a lesson
#4
mt.real
Post rating: +
i'm pretty sure those are all the things a person can do. i've been organized for over a decade. hope that helps op
#5
[account deactivated]
#6
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +

I must say that the tasks of the youth in general, and of the Young Communist Leagues and all other organisations in particular, might be summed up in a single word: learn.

Of course, this is only a "single word". It does not reply to the principal and most essential questions: what to learn, and how to learn? And the whole point here is that, with the transformation of the old, capitalist society, the upbringing, training and education of the new generations that will create the communist society cannot be conducted on the old lines. The teaching, training and education of the youth must proceed from the material that has been left to us by the old society. We can build communism only on the basis of the totality of knowledge, organisations and institutions, only by using the stock of human forces and means that have been left to us by the old society. Only by radically remoulding the teaching, organisation and training of the youth shall we be able to ensure that the efforts of the younger generation will result in the creation of a society that will be unlike the old society, i.e., in the creation of a communist society. That is why we must deal in detail with the question of what we should teach the youth and how the youth should learn if it really wants to justify the name of communist youth, and how it should be trained so as to be able to complete and consummate what we have started.

I must say that the first and most natural reply would seem to be that the Youth League, and the youth in general, who want to advance to communism, should learn communism.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/oct/02.htm

#7
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
In basically every community there are liberal bourgeois forces or small union movements or progressive NGOs that operate publicly which you can hook up with and learn a lot from and do some modest good. I mean compared to what you probably do for your day job in an isolated situation like that anyway. Otherwise there are situations which are implicitly political but not openly so, especially in situations where the prevailing attitude is deeply conservative, like small women's health clinics at colleges or whatever. It can be jarring to do that but it's less so than a lot of other options. When I was trying to get out of the house more last spring I would just spend a few hours a week at a Member of Parliament's office and do brainless volunteer work just because it gave me an opportunity to talk to professional political people while I did it, which helped as a mental stepping stone to going back to school full-time.

As long as you remember that it's a long haul and you're not like a super-hero on a quest to liberate the world then putting in small work over a long time is still very useful. Which is especially true in terms of gendered stuff. Like maybe there isn't an openly left org in your area, but there are probably a few semi-formal projects of people who have almost no resources or capacity to self-organize, and if you do simple things like say here's a few dollars to help with bus fare to get people to the meeting, or promise to bring some food, or mind children at the event, it can mean the difference between an organization forming or not. Even in my small town there are a few people with enormous experience working on poverty issues because you never know where people end up, sometimes people retire to small communities but are sort of available to people as a resource.
#8
Online
Post rating: +++++
If you join an org the FBI will put your name on their list of known communists, and then when the revolution comes you'll be preemptively arrested and jailed so you can't assist in the struggle. It's best to just sit at home and post on the Internet until the crucial time arrives.
#9
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
Yeah. I mean we've all seen Terminator 2, so a rag-tag group of rebels really can make a difference after training on video games most of their lives. But the point of that prophetic film was that everyone dismissed Sarah Connor as crazy. If Sarah Connor had been leader of the Anti-Robot Resistance League and like running candidates in Los Angeles for congress on a platform of not building SkyNet then like her and her son would have died really quickly.
#10
Post rating: ~
I used to commute to educational classes and protests. It was like 5 (minimum) hours roundtrip and ended up being less and less doable. Haven't read any posts yet but thanks for the thread in advance
#11
Post rating: +++++

ilmdge posted:

If you join an org the FBI will put your name on their list of known communists, and then when the revolution comes you'll be preemptively arrested and jailed so you can't assist in the struggle. It's best to just sit at home and post on the Internet until the crucial time arrives.


Agreed. The best way to avoid being on any lists is to make regular posts to a small communist online bulletin board over a period of many years.

#12
Post rating: ~
join the fbi, continue posting, get self taken off of watchlist, or

join the fbi, continue posting, stay on watchlist so that the fbi are being compelled to watch themselves

you've just added one more column to your local four-column field office, and those motherfuckers go over the moon for good architecture
#13
Post rating: +
I'm not sure CIA agents can join the FBI but I guess there's only one way to find out.
#14
Post rating: +
if you can't advance communism through direct action you can always use your particular skillset to try to soften the effects of capitalism on others

i have spent time on and off teaching uneducated and/or homeless adults basic mathematics and reading comprehension skills to get their high school equivalent diploma or something similar. while it won't tilt the scale against capitalism en masse, if you can assist in getting someone off of the street or to help them get a leg up from the bottom rung of the ladder then i think it's good marxist praxis

humanism and all that
#15
Post rating: ~

Petrol posted:

I'm not sure CIA agents can join the FBI but I guess there's only one way to find out.



we'll be expecting reports of your progress

#16
Post rating: ~

insta_gramsci posted:

if you can't advance communism through direct action you can always use your particular skillset to try to soften the effects of capitalism on others

i have spent time on and off teaching uneducated and/or homeless adults basic mathematics and reading comprehension skills to get their high school equivalent diploma or something similar. while it won't tilt the scale against capitalism en masse, if you can assist in getting someone off of the street or to help them get a leg up from the bottom rung of the ladder then i think it's good marxist praxis

humanism and all that


The state thanks you for relieving them of this burden free of charge

#17
bb bourgeoisie
Post rating: ~
during this nadir of collectivism you can mostly just help people
#18
mt.real
Post rating: ~

camera_obscura posted:

during this nadir of collectivism you can mostly just help people


how does that compare in effectiveness to just complaining about the lack of collectivism on the internet

#19
Post rating: ~

getfiscal posted:

In basically every community there are liberal bourgeois forces or small union movements or progressive NGOs that operate publicly which you can hook up with and learn a lot from and do some modest good. I mean compared to what you probably do for your day job in an isolated situation like that anyway. Otherwise there are situations which are implicitly political but not openly so, especially in situations where the prevailing attitude is deeply conservative, like small women's health clinics at colleges or whatever. It can be jarring to do that but it's less so than a lot of other options. When I was trying to get out of the house more last spring I would just spend a few hours a week at a Member of Parliament's office and do brainless volunteer work just because it gave me an opportunity to talk to professional political people while I did it, which helped as a mental stepping stone to going back to school full-time.



Yea, I'm working at a nonprofit this summer and even though its mostly typical liberal NGO stuff, I've made more connections with people who might have potential to get organied and I've learned a lot about planning and outreach. I thought I was hot shit when it came to organizing until I was tasked with trying to get a big turnout of really busy, vulnerable people