It's not that people aren't interested. They are. We just don't have the capacity. We need to be 2 decades ahead in our organizing capacity, but we have to deal with the hand we've got. We lose until we win. That's how it always has been for our sorts. But giving up only serves the fascists.
Capacity? We have plenty of capacity. We are the wealthiest population on earth. We have no will. Nobody wants to sacrifice anything. Until people are willing to lose their jobs and homes (which will be taken from under a fascist dictatorship anyway) then they won’t do what is necessary.
It is not on others to spontaneously organize or come around to our style of thinking. You must be willing to engage them and adapt to where they are at. It is never a failure on the people we're trying to organize, but on us as organizers.
Also, you are *individualizing the problem* instead of understanding this to be an issue of ideology. We must build consciousness. The worst response is doomerism. Maintain revolutionary optimism or spite, otherwise you're just complying in advance.
You keep saying these empty aphorisms. They are comforting lies. You say this so you will never have to change. So you can do the same convenient protests that accomplish nothing. And you will keep saying it until the fascists put a noose on you or someone else does your fighting.
Giving up, siding with the despair the reactionaries want us to have instead of organizing people does nothing. And refusing to take advantage of opportunities does nothing for us, comrade. Yes, more work is involved than just token resistance. I agree. Your doomerism gets us nothing.
If every single leftist/ liberal just didn’t show up for work next week; we could cripple this fascist takeover in a couple of months. It isn’t happening not because we lack organization. But because people think they have too much to lose. That’s the fucking truth and you know it.
Like I put out a call for a *meeting facilitator*. 0 risk. I couldn't get people engaged on that. You have to get buy in. You are not entitled to people's support, even if what you're wanting is the right thing to do. You have to win them over.
If I can't even get people to show up to a union meeting, why would I ever think they'd join a general strike that someone they didn't personally know called on? It's a matter of shifting people. That's organizing work. If you're not doing the work, then don't be surprised by the results.
What does your attitude bring you? Does it make you more capable of fighting? Does it empower you? If not, you must reject it. I literally was suicidal yesterday. I felt powerless. Hopeless. But I rejected despair. The fight is not over until we're dead.
More aphorisms. I don’t don’t your heart. I doubt your understanding of what’s working. You’re blinded by sentiment and emotions. Marches and protests feel good. But they do not work in America anymore. Our geography and population distribution and economy just don’t work that way.
And the fact you keep making these excuses why we can’t strike or do national boycotts or anything with teeth tells me all I need. I’m just waiting for the rest of you to catch up. That’s all I can do. But I’m not going to lie to myself anymore. You can. I will not.
You are lying to yourself. I know, very intimately, that despair can also be a barrier to change. Because if it's all on *them* and not on you, then you don't have to change. You can mope. Real hope demands action, because to get to the stage we're talking about requires work
Haha. What action? There is no action. You mean the same pointless performative gestures the left has been doing for thirty years that does nothing. Flowery talk. I say strike. And you just say why we can’t! You’re the one stuck in a loop of “can’t.”
Like what f***ing work are you doing, right now, to get to a general strike beyond getting in your feels and scapegoating? I haven't heard ONE actionable thing that *YOU* can do in our whole discourse? It's all on other people. Like I have action items: Organize unions. Connect unions. Agit prop.
Haha. Now you’re personalizing this. One person cannot make a strike. Until people understand they have nothing to lose but false comfort or someone who has a leadership role in large political organization — like Sanders, Warren, Harris, Obama, AOC … me and you are relatively helpless.
No. I'm saying there's other work you have to do first. I'm saying you're jumping the gun, which feeds your own doomerism and ends up a self-fulfilling prophecy.
My goodness, man, these are base assessments of the field. What does it take to do a national strike? Do you think it's as simple as a couple of people saying "I want to go on strike?" What does the coordination look like? How do you make certain people are unified in action? Be practical.
If you and everyone you know posts “strike.” If AOC posted “strike.” If Sanders posted “strike.” If every union posted “strike.” If everyone you know and everyone they know etc didn’t show up for work. It absolutely IS that simple. You not seeing that is the problem.
Like you've misunderstood the role of people like Bernie and AOC if you think they can make a general strike happen without the parts and pieces in play. They're not the shot callers. They never were. If you're waiting for them to act, you've put the cart before the horse.
Like organizing people has a hierarchy, and there's a method to it. One on one, face to face is the best way to do things, because you're far more likely to *influence people that way*. You can triage it down to what you're capable of from there. And ideally it's a person that knows *a person*.
EG, not Bernie Sanders but, say a union steward talking to their department/shift to get them on board.
It is absolutely not that simple, because that's not how organizing works. It's not how people work. You'll get a fraction of a fraction engaged that way *for simple actions* with *no risk*.
I'll give you that if Bernie and AOC call for a general strike *it'll mobilize organizers*, and that sort of thing IS necessary, but it won't lead to a general strike without other factors being in place.
I never claimed they did. I'm saying you're a fool to not show up where people, willing to take part in an action, are. To map people out and to get people engaged in greater action. You're thumbing your nose at possibility because it doesn't pass your litmus test and falling for liberalism trap.
Are you dense? Capacity here means organizational capacity. It means, people comfortable with and actively doing the work of organizing others. We've been under a decades long repression of that kind of work. It takes a lot to muster people to a meeting, let alone a strike.
This is simply nonsense. Entire nations have organized strikes in mere weeks w/o the benefit of internet technology. And in two years when it STILL hasn’t happened you will be making the same empty excuses. You don’t want to because you might lose status and sacrifice. Just admit it.
I have literally lost jobs for doing the right thing, fought to build unions, etc. I just ran for office in order to do propaganda, running on a blatantly socialist platform with the idea that I might get shot and that I'd lose job opportunities. Ask yourself WHY it is that *I* can't be genuine?
I don’t doubt you believe this nonsense. But you’re not going to accomplish anything waiting for some perfect moment. Your tactics don’t work anymore. Your ideas are born of a past that is dead. And until you wake up to where we really are, it’s going to get worse.
If my tactics do not work then please by all means prove me wrong. Get a general strike going. No one is stopping you. But if you fail, then maybe re-assess your approach and consider my words.
I've literally organized a union. You're operating in fuzzy "All it takes is *someone else doing the work* and we'll get a general strike." I literally have dedicated my life to getting us to a point where we can pull off a general strike
It isn't about technology. It is about organizational muscle memory. It is about connections and points of contact. It is about comfort with acting in these roles. The internet does not help with that, even as it helps connect people. In some ways, it acts against it.