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?
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.