chat

SW Washington is close to Olympia and Portland, both of which have active socialist organizations. I recommend dipping your toes into an organization to help you get the local lay of the land, as you are likely also beginning a political education journey at the same time and you'll want to have some flexibility in where you end up. Some indicators of a good org are that they will be Marxist, not Trotskyist, will have active local campaigns strategically embedded in communities, will find balance between political education and praxis, and are not weirdly controlling of your life. Many orgs can have bad national takes but good local organizing or dramatic variation between chapters, so it is difficult to reliably recommend just one partu or org. Maybe check out FRSO or PSL. Or even DSA, keeping in mind that the org, overall, is pretty liberal so you will need to be patient with naive chauvinists and protect yourself from adopting their silly ideas.

Dollars to dimes the "best" org for your area will be something homegrown that I don't know about. It's okay if it is the third or fourth org you join rather than the first. It's better to join a worse org and develop and embed than to hold out for the perfect fit. Just don't let any org stymy your development. Don't be surprised when an org doesn't read or reads from a restricted and counter-productive canon. Just don't copy them! Keep reading and do your best to reject only reading summaries and editorialized takes on, e.g., Marx. There is currently a reading group going through Capital here. You can catch up!