I’ve got some liberal friends, and i’ve got a few more leftist friends who are kind of naive about the value of electoral politics, and are in a place where extreme action is still not appropriate
i’m not trying to fedpost here, and i don’t think you should either… but like, how do y’all talk about this?
People who have grown up in the late empire and find themselves suddenly waking up to the fact they’re in a fascist state; because it’s finally turned the guns inward in a serious way. But it feels like most are in denial and not willing to confront that it’s here, and that things will not be getting better without intervention.
The idea that maybe October needs to happen is such a hard sell, but it feels urgent to realign how people are thinking about what’s happening, because this is fucking serious. I just simply do not believe protests and votes can remotely amount to anything, because those things have never worked without the power behind them being organized and otherwise a credible threat to the status quo. A march on Washington that doesn’t have a movement behind it with actual mobilizing and action-taking power will never get a damn thing done, and we’re at an urgent point where we at least need to realign the people who are horrified at this situation to a more productive way of seeing these things, and going from there.
Spare me any argument that nothing can be done. I see that coming, and the thing is, I think we have to try. “We” - anybody who can’t accept what the US is lurching towards right now - Whether it’ll work or not, i think it’s urgent we try. Right now the left is so far behind in the US that finding effective ways to talk about a change of tactics/strategy to our wayward lib and socdem friends and family seems prudent. That mindset shift needs precede any other action, and I’m struggling to connect to people on this matter.
On some level you need people who have nothing to gain and a lot to lose, still intervening when an ICE officer tries to kidnap somebody. That conversation needs to happen, and it needs to be effective, right?
Start with a locally focused mutual aid project.
This puts your group in a situation where the local community can regularly interact with you in a more neutral situation. They get to ask questions about what you’re doing and why and you get to practice your casual “just be normal about it” elevator pitch.
If things go well, more people will join the group. Newbies to replace those members that fall out due to attrition and (hopefully) extra people to increase the ranks of the group. Reassess your group’s resources and abilities.
Discus projects around public safety/community defense/self defense. Start small, for example, in a place where ICE may be operating regularly learn what “rules” ICE arrests tend to follow and make sure the community at large knows about them, set up observation and early warning communication lines when it looks like ICE (or some self deputized ICE wannabe’s) might be around. If you’re community mutual aid project is still running (food bank, soup kitchen, checking in the unhoused, etc) you’ll use that situation to push out the information and strategies regarding ICE arrests.
If things go well, this will better integrate your group within local community, hopefully leading to more people joining the group outright and people sympathetic to the group willing to offer their time and specialties in the group’s projects. Reassess your group’s resources and abilities.
As your group gets larger and more integrated within a community, it will be easier to have conversations about community defense in general and armed defense specifically.
And as always, there should be some effort to teach, learn, and discuss theory. Tie it in with current events. Skills training is also important, physical fitness training if possible, first aid/combat lifesaver/street medic is essential and should be easy to get people interested in learning, how to handle yourself in a protest, how to deal with being arrested and its consequences, and as time goes on physical self defense (hand to hand stuff) and firearms.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, especially when we’re seeing these huge protests and rallies. These are people who agree that what’s happening is bad, and (importantly) are actually doing something about it. How do we reach those people, and start getting them involved in effective resistance?
My hypothesis is that it will take many small ideological steps, and that it will not happen in one conversation. It’s why I’m optimistic about Bernie’s rallies and think that we need to start small, by addressing people’s immediate needs.
I don’t think we build a mass movement by expecting people to hop from their current beliefs directly to ours. I think we need to get people taking small actions in the right (left?) direction to start developing and exercising collective power. That might start as small as a community garden, but that group of people is organizing and working together for their collective good, and I think that’s the muscle that the left needs to build.
Being embedded in those communities also allows you to provide answers to the questions that they’re having, and to steer them towards useful solutions.
I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I have some “voted Trump the first time, but not the second” relatives that have a lot of the same ideals as me without the knowledge or level of class consciousness. I have no answers but look forward to reading the responses.
