I’ve shat on my local organizing group enough on here but I feel like I’m pretty safe to keep continuing to do so. They want to use GroupMe for communication and signal for “on the ground, confidential communication at protests.” I’m sort of the only one pushing back but I’m not a leader, so I have no power whatsoever. Sounds absolutely disastrous
Unfortunately I probably sound very paranoid to most in this group because lot of people do this to make themselves feel better (which you can’t really argue against).
But yeah there is nothing that resembles an organized left in 2025 and I’m starting to feel like there will never be. I’m afraid what I’m describing is happening all over the country, and how could it not be? A lot of people in my (duct-taped) org are holding out for the democrats’ hard shift left. It’s just depressing at this point
holding out for the democrats’ hard shift left
what is there to even say at this point? another lucy and charlie brown emoji hardly seems to capture how out of touch that seems. like a firefighter who believes in phlogiston theory. but hey I would love to be proven wrong by waking up to a story about Hakeem Jeffries personally leading revolutionary cadres and calling for class war against the rich
Who are the leaders and what kind of leading do they do? Are they elected or just de-facto? Could you take over leadership?
I think it’s just a matter of them being in the right place at the right time/taking up leadership because no one else offered. I guess I could calmly express my concerns to them and try for a role myself which I might do
I think that’s a great idea. Maybe they just lack leadership from someone who knows proper opsec and organizing procedures.
I’ve had more success being consistently That Guy spouting Leftist Nonsense consistently, then letting people cook. People need to become disillusioned with their own stances before they stop defending them, and getting constantly let down or harmed is often the quickest path.
Right now Democrats are practically doing my work for me by proving me right, but I had to spend years being so-called “wrong” in peoples’ eyes before I became “right”
My suggestion is to stick to your theoretical guns and be the Muad’Dib that can see the future (through correct analysis of material conditions), and then let that future come to pass. My second suggestion is to not let this or that loss get to you. We’re going to lose again and again until we don’t.
Let the liberal disillusionment flow :unlimited-power:
Unfortunately it’s looking like I will be dead by the time we win
Its nice to not be the most paranoid member of a group I gotta say. I’m not super bullish on organizing in the western left but the most valuable thing an org like that can give you IMO is connections. if and when it fails you’ll still have those social connections and can use them to build something better in its ashes. Assuming they’re not being dumb and engaging in stuff that will get you all doxxed and arrested while also being this lax on security, anyhow.
GroupMe is pretty rough but Signal isn’t exactly bulletproof either, humans are usually the weakest link
Yeahhh theyve already been doxxed multiple times:/ but I didn’t think about taking advantage of connections in the org, that’s a really great idea
yiiiiikes that seems pretty bad, even for a group with no radical aspirations, sounds like you live in a fairly hostile local environment…
I guess smaller towns its probably harder to be anonymous but still.
And yeah I do think that there are a lot of depressing-ass orgs out there but hopefully you will find or slowly convert some people if you air your disagreements enough and engage with people personally. Or maybe shit hitting the fan will radicalize them for you. It’s better to be prepared ahead of time but you can’t win em all
What does your org do? Is it just going to protests and having meetings or is there anything productive going on? If there isn’t, hit the bricks. That’s not an organization it’s a group of people who like meetings. I feel like a lot of the times what passes for organizing around here could be beaten materially by like 6 people pooling some money together to make big batches of soup.to hand out. You gotta start with just focusing on helping people however possible, I’d say locally my gripe is that it stops there and any effort to politicize the people we’re helping is too authoritarian or something.
Soup.to sadly does not link to delish Tongan soup recipes.
And it’d cost even more to buy and fix than hexbear dot net.
paranoia is warranted when the country you live in is becoming increasingly hostile and dangerous to your existence. the kind of leftist organizing we need doesn’t exist, you’re right. but that doesn’t matter. we can make it exist. leftist anger is growing and that is helping attract disillusioned democrats who are actually more left than their elected officials. we can form something new and real and legitimate. don’t know how but… it feels like it’ll happen sooner rather than later. tensions have skyrocketed and voices are collecting.
This is what I believe too. I think we need to be very cautious about how we organize ourselves, long gone are the days of being paranoid about everyone being a fed when we have tech oligarchs in the White House who can realistically push out scripts to crawl the web for any anti-American sentiment (red scare but emulate it this time) and ruin people’s lives because of it
