It feels like in reality we do a lot of fantasizing about the left, and never actually go do the right.
Go meet your neighbors. Get linked in with your local ice watch, or food not bombs, or project to prevent cop training facilities or detention centers from being built
People with this platform’s more technical background would be really valuable to some of those projects. Go get involved in something :)
Edit, more ideas: get involved with a community garden, see if you have a local tool library you can contribute to or volunteer with, start or get involved with a local repair cafe or meetup group (in my area they dont have a fixed location, so its more like a meetup)
I also feel the problem is the lack of those things and getting them started.
I tried looking in my area and nothing exists in this rural nowhere town in the Gulf South. This area is filled with people advocating for more police training, they support ICE.
I just really don’t know how to build a community here with my community being so heavily conservative. The isolation is real in places.
I can’t claim to be a model leftist, I am newer to identifying with the label explicitly and still figuring out what it means to me and how I can find ways to participate and try to make my community better, but I do wish we talked a bit more about praxis and ways to get out and actually do shit about our political ideology
Meeting your neighbors is a great start :) I only know a few of mine but I’m happy to know them, there are some really lovely folks among them. Though one of them is a cop if I’m not mistaken 😅
I heard a leftist youtuber online I really like say he feels like most leftists online aren’t leftists, theyre fans of leftists, and I thought that was an interesting way to describe the lack of praxis and focus on rhetoric, internet clapbacks, and slacktivism
Even rhetoric is fine. Its not as important as oth organizing and infrastructure, but working stuff out, theory and PR do kind of matter.
I think ‘fans’ is accurate, but in a different way.
I have met people who are like deadheads for getting tear gassed, and believe in fucking nothing. Its just like a social thing. Like sports teams. They say some right surface stuff but theres no thought no critique no literacy. I guess id rather they be anarchism fans than raiders fans or milwal fans, but its alienating.
It feels like in reality we do a lot of fantasizing about the left, and never actually go do the right.
Go meet your neighbors. Get linked in with your local ice watch, or food not bombs, or project to prevent cop training facilities or detention centers from being built
People with this platform’s more technical background would be really valuable to some of those projects. Go get involved in something :)
Edit, more ideas: get involved with a community garden, see if you have a local tool library you can contribute to or volunteer with, start or get involved with a local repair cafe or meetup group (in my area they dont have a fixed location, so its more like a meetup)
I also feel the problem is the lack of those things and getting them started.
I tried looking in my area and nothing exists in this rural nowhere town in the Gulf South. This area is filled with people advocating for more police training, they support ICE.
I just really don’t know how to build a community here with my community being so heavily conservative. The isolation is real in places.
The amount of people who claim to be leftists and yet don’t know any of their neighbors’ names is staggering
I can’t claim to be a model leftist, I am newer to identifying with the label explicitly and still figuring out what it means to me and how I can find ways to participate and try to make my community better, but I do wish we talked a bit more about praxis and ways to get out and actually do shit about our political ideology
Meeting your neighbors is a great start :) I only know a few of mine but I’m happy to know them, there are some really lovely folks among them. Though one of them is a cop if I’m not mistaken 😅
Its mostly an aesthetic. Nobody really believes in anything except appeasing the in-group
I heard a leftist youtuber online I really like say he feels like most leftists online aren’t leftists, theyre fans of leftists, and I thought that was an interesting way to describe the lack of praxis and focus on rhetoric, internet clapbacks, and slacktivism
FD signifier on yt is rad, highly recommend :)
Even rhetoric is fine. Its not as important as oth organizing and infrastructure, but working stuff out, theory and PR do kind of matter.
I think ‘fans’ is accurate, but in a different way. I have met people who are like deadheads for getting tear gassed, and believe in fucking nothing. Its just like a social thing. Like sports teams. They say some right surface stuff but theres no thought no critique no literacy. I guess id rather they be anarchism fans than raiders fans or milwal fans, but its alienating.