I do not mean this as a rhetorical question: I mean it literally. Tell us what’s stopping you! I don’t want to invalidate you, but the opposite. I’m sure people here would love to help if it’s possible. Post away!
Personally, I think Covid and the general amount of work everyone does are the two biggest obstacles to community building. Not just for me, but everybody I know. It’s nearly impossible to build a community when nobody has the energy to even play a video game together, and actually meeting up in person can literally kill you. There are definitely solutions, but we need to realize them as problems first to find them. If you have suggestions, please share them! Same goes for the issues everyone else shares (if they’re ok with help, of course).
Being tired and sad all the time and having no time or energy.
Most millennials and younger had/have severe burnout before they even finish their teens
I also don’t really have social media, and that’s how everyone communicates these days. How am I going to organize people? To do what, exactly? Immediately get infiltrated by the fash or arrested for a lukewarm protest?
I’m not a leader, I need an already good group to follow, I can’t do anything right myself.
It frustrates me because I feel like that’s the plan of our oligarchs, tire us out, make us sad, too numb to do anything but be herded through the system.
Obviously, I will always refuse to give up, I’m looking for a new group right now actually, but man, it’s hard.
I feel you on the social media front.
At some point I’m going to need an account or two that I log into for 15 minutes maybe a few times a week. But I’d want it to not have my name on it, and for my radical identity to be separate from my official/personal/“professional” (lol) identity. It might be easier if I got a few “scrub your main profile” workshops going, but that takes even more time and effort and willpower.
Have you dived very deep into executive functions, and their classification and disorders?
I have ADHD if that’s what you mean about disorders, makes my attention span all over the place and I wear out fast
Agitation is low commitment and it is an important job. We don’t all have to be a leader to help organize. “From each according to their ability…” Trash talking capitalism and hyping yer boy Marx is something you are proly great at even if finding the right time might be hard.
This is why I created a Facebook account after deleting one decades ago. It has zero PII on it, which isnt too hard to do. I use it to agitate on my towns most popular page.
Tools I used:
- Firefox Relay for the email.
- Firefox Facebook Container Tab.
- VPN.
- SMSPool for verification codes (funded from some old satashis I had kicking around).
- A photo of a relative who doesn’t use Facebook.
The last two you only need if you are accused of not being a “real person”.
what vpn do you use that doesn’t make facebook immediately disable the account?
I use Nord but they did disable my account lol. That’s why I needed the last two points in the list. I don’t know that it’s VPN related. But I used SMSPool to get a one-time-use phone number to get their Auth code. The used a photo of a relative for the “selfie” check.
Actually reads the full thing after the first initial comment.
“I think Covid and the general amount of work everyone does are the two biggest obstacles to community building”
Having been organizing for a while now, this definitely did it and still does for a lot of people. I would also argue mental health does as well and burnout too!
I don’t want to ruin someone else’s day by forcing them to interact with me. 🙂
You’re a very good human being.
You have a lot to give and a lot to be given so don’t sell yourself short.
Me too
(But also, pls don’t be so hard on yourself)
imagine not feeling blessed by a Dirt_Owl encounter
I could never
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social anxiety and taking 5 more credit hours than i realistically should each school semester
I feel that life was so tiresome until this point (OCD, depression, undiagnosed autism, the poorly implementated lockdowns, uni etc) that I just want to relax (obviously I will still work) with my gf as long as my material conditions allow it. Im short, I am a tired coward.
Also, social interactions with most people stress me out and I can’t do them very correctly so that’s an extra hurdle as well.
Besides, I haven’t managed to read a lot of theory, so I won’t be able to apply my useful attributes (over-analyzing / attention to detail) to help somehow.
All the people surrounding me are deeply reactionary senior citizens
My province, PEI, is a former Liberal now PC stronghold in the nation, and usually has zero representation for any other party besides those two. I’ve been trying to organize but people won’t even vote for the NDP or Greens (outside of one riding).
The thing that’s stopping me is the people. They just will not fucking bite out here. They’re 1000% grillpilled the fuck out and basically all Red Tories and Liberals largely just along Protestant/Catholic lines. The PCs and Liberals are basically indistinguishable here and people are extremely checked out on politics.
Nuffin’
That’s what I’m doing!
Same we protect us
Hell yeah!
I was talking to a comrade of mine recently and they mentioned that the ‘American dream’ of being locked into a mortgage was designed to crush the union movement, so i’d say that probably does a lot to fuck up community organising
I feel this, all my mental labor is just caught up working or home repairs or “recovering” from other mental stress. I’m just trying to get rid of the mortgage ASAP and hopefully use the financial freedom to then have stability which I can use to support my community.
I’m a coward, although I do get along with my coworkers so maybe that’s something.
Getting along with your co-workers is half the battle. Now you just have to figure out how to get them to work together on something that isn’t work.
I’m taking a break after working hard on a project I won’t mention for opsec reasons. It left me a bit burned out and I’ve been taking time to work on myself and my relationships.
That personal work has been very productive and I’m slowly making my way back into a presence with my local org.
Organise to do what? I joined a socialist party but all they do is give out their party newspaper that absolutely no one reads and ask for donations. Seems like a complete waste of time tbh.
I’ve been thinking about going to work in a soup kitchen a couple days a week. But even then I feel like it would be better for me to just work overtime at my actual job and donate the money to the soup kitchen.
Also seems to be the same where I am, and they are trots.
Organise to do what?
Try to form connections with the exploited and oppressed people in your locality via whatever means you can. Listen attentively to them and their problems whenever you get the opportunity, understand them and use the theory you know to analyse what you have heard and seen. Take the results of that analysis and try to apply them; even if it’s just trying to agitate more effectively, keep thinking about how to adapt your line and practice to the circumstances you find yourself in. Always be on the lookout for other communists/anyone else who seems like they would be down to help organise the working class. If you find anyone like that, talk to them and work with them. Some of the folks in your local party branch may feel the same as you about the tactics being ineffective and would welcome some fresh ideas about how to organise.
Basically, do what a communist does. It takes practice and if you’re new to it, it’s gonna feel a little stilted at first, but this is how communists organise and lead.
I live in a small-ish university town with a max of 2 degrees of separation for any random person. I put my unfortunately distinctive name and face on an attempt to start a DSA chapter here a little over 6 years ago, then burned out because I had undiagnosed autism and ADHD and couldn’t get a good grasp on group dynamics.
There’s a lot that went wrong, and it contributed to a social life spiral - I tried to go back to hanging out with my old townie friends, people who weren’t even DSA-level leftists, and it was hard to like them anymore or have much compassion for them, because I know how they feel about the societal stuff. They don’t give much of a fuck about anyone who isn’t them.
Then COVID happened, and seeing that even that didn’t inspire any extra care in any of them - they were having parties as soon as it wasn’t illegal to do so, and I bet they were probably doing them before and just not posting about it. My husband and I both have immunocompromised parents with lung issues, and seeing how little of a fuck our “friends” gave about us or our parents was a disappointing shock. We got them to Skype us once the entire time. We tried to move past it once we got vaccinated, but the shine was off. We are not friends with any of those people anymore.
I found a local Food Not Bombs chapter in autumn '22, but then my mom got super sick, so I left because I didn’t have time to do anything with them anymore. I was having a hard time feeling like I fit in, too, and trying to cram in organizing with people I suspect don’t like me wasn’t a high priority when I thought my mom was dying.
So now I’ve got no friends, a bad reputation with the local leftists, and idk where to go from here. Doing the DSA thing introduced me to another local chapter of a big org - ISO maybe? they split off the national org a while back - and while one of them definitely hated me, there were a couple that seemed to actually kinda like me, and I’ve thought about reaching out to them to see if they’re doing anything I could help with.
I’m in a weird place though personally, struggling with content warning feelings while coming to terms with AuDHD I didn’t know about for 40 years, and I definitely need a therapist before I put myself out there that much again. I made an Open Path account a couple weeks ago and reached out to a therapist but haven’t heard back yet. I didn’t want to pester hard though, because it’s the holidays and not an emergency.
So yeah, that’s where I am, feel free to make suggestions if you have them or ask questions if it will help inform your suggestions or satisfy your curiosity.
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Since you are trying to leave, don’t work too hard on organizing. Definitely show up, meet people, but it’s worth saving your energy until that move is over.
yeah tbh this is sort of the conclusion I’ve come to. It’s tough though since I’ve been here for much longer than I meant to. It’s pretty much been permanent the last few years, except it’s hard for me to think of it as permanent since I’m still trying to leave. Hopefully I’ll finally be moving out soon thanks to recent changes that have allowed me more stability.
I’m in a pretty good org, but I haven’t been active in over six months. I’ve had a lot of mental health problems, anxiety, depression, probably ADHD, which for some reason have been holding me back a lot more recently than they used to. I wanted to take a break from being involved in the org and sort out my mental health first, but now I’m thinking that being active, learning, putting myself out there, taking in responsibility is how I’m going to sort myself out. I’ve been really anxious about being perceived as someone disagreeable and have always been very averse to confrontation, so I think I need to face down these fears. So when I get back after the holidays, I want to be active again
Good luck, you can do it! There’s nothing wrong with being a stubborn, disagreeable motherfucker if you’re doing it on behalf of the poor and oppressed and you’re driven by a love for the people. I was very shy and conflict-averse when I started organising but the more I’ve done and seen, and the more I’ve become aware of how terribly my friends and neighbours are treated by capitalism, the less I’ve had time for compromise and being “reasonable” with the exploiting class and their lackeys.
