Terrarium

Dimmer06 gave you great advice. I'll just add some things on top of that.

The thing that stands out to me most is that you feel like you haven't talked to a lot of people. I cannot stress enough that the most powerful tool you have as people independently forming a union is the one-on-one conversation. You can accomplish this efficiently by:

• Having a core set of reliable allies (like your organizing committee) all take on lists of people to talk to.

• developing a script intended to meet specific goals (e.g. promote a yes vote).

• Practicing ways that conversations might go and how you will respond.

• Doing a round of conversations and sharing your results. Promote sharing of what did not go well and provide constructive feedback for how one might navigate that situation in the future. Some can't be navigated, just commiserate about those.

• Repeating that last step until you have spoken to everyone and, at minimum, labelled your list using their propensity to vote yes. For example: a strong commitment to vote yes, unsure but leaning yes, they aren't leaning either way, they are leaning no, and hard nos (this is just a Likert Scale). Make sure to track when they were contacted and whether they requested to no longer be contacted.

• Develop your script with the above in mind. It should start with a friendly introduction, include a short spiel that emphasizes how important it is to vote yes, and then usually end with them telling you how they are leaning. The conversion may continue in various ways. If they are a hard ues, you can ask them to join your effort. If they are a soft yes, maybe, or soft jo, ask them what concerns they have and use this chance to do friendly debunking. One someone provides a hard no, move on.

• After you have spoken to everyone, develop a follow-up plan. For example, you'll want to get all of your hard yeses to vote ASAP. Help them do so whenever this becomes an option. I don't know what exact procedure you have to follow for your situation, but a good practice is to track whether they say they voted or not. Keep revisiting those who haven't with friendly one on one reminders. Turn the soft yeses into hard yeses by addressing their concerns or innoculating. Repeat for the maybes, etc etc.

• Use this experience to define topics and innocuations for the larger meetings.

I've seen this basic approach work many times. It is usually a lot of work, especially in these final weeks, but then there is a big payoff.

Regarding the anti-union disruptive dweebs, I would just point out that their questions have already been addressed and out of respect for everyone's time we need to move on. Keep artifacts of previous explanations (notes) so that anyone curious can address their concerns afterwards. Offer to have one on one conversations with them later to address their concerns. This is a valuable skill to develop in general, basically handling unreasonable critics and disruption. And move on from individuals asking more than one question, say you need to give others the opportunity to speak or that you need to move on.

If these people act like babies, ask them to leave and don't invite them back. The crowd will understand, doubly so if you are patient and calm.

Anyways, you've got this! You've already made so much progress. You just neex to dunk on management for two weeks by out-organizing them.

Just gotta invent the Molotov EMP

In the conditions under which the CPC made these strides, the proletariat was much smaller than the peasantry. In a typical ML analysis, the peasantry have a petty bourgeois character, or at least adopt one once liberated from landlordism. This was one of the major contributions of Mao's CPC to ML theory, as even though the Russian Empire had a similar dynamic, it was not as extreme as China's. In the Russian Empire there had been kulakizatiom to bring more petty bourgeois character to the peasantry and undermine the landlords and the proletariat was larger. China's peasantry were often basically serfs.

This is my way of saying that basically every country has enough proletarians (we can quibble about how prole they are) compared to past successful revolutions. What we run up against most often is a deeply propagandized population that has some kind of dependency on financialization and imperialism, where they receive an "artificial" experience of their class, one heightened. Not quite a labor aristocracy, but one that fails to develop even vulgar class consciousness because nothing happens to them that can break through the propaganda. The coworkers that think unions are for lazy people and just accept being fired as a fact of life, as they are sure they will be employed again very soon, their industry being "in demand", propped up by imperialist technological advantage or some insurance grift. The PMC technocrat that, at least for now, believes they can help solve climate change for a decent wage if they just make good enough slide decks (while their paycheck actually comes from capitalist lobbyists). The retail worker that knows conditions are bad but just puts up with it because they are young and believe the line that it's a practice job and they'll naturally get paid enough and work in better conditions as they get older. It's a house of cards that I believe will crumble when imperialism becomes less effective and the expectations of these workers get a reality check. This is what I would usually call proletarianizatiom of the imperial core, it's making proles prevented from developing class consciousness by confidence in future rewards become instead more directly aware of the bum deal, of seeing their exploitation.

The real challenge is how we will contend against modern fashy reactions to what will probably be seriously incompetent first stabs at real mass left organizing.

Anyways sorry for the really long response. I hope it is relevant and makes sense.

No. I practice good InfoSec and recommend you do the same.

And the situations where we do not, by default, require attendees to wear masks are fully outdoor spaces where we do not expect tight crowds and do expect a green safety level.

I am involved in COVID-based organizing, one group in my city who has managed to maintain through collective bargaining mandatory masking at a single small community center, and we are a huge, huge minority in any other capacity and do not accomplish much more than mutual aid. This is not an explicitly communist organization at all. I know of none that are, and this is not a small city.

I have been involved in work that spans entire regions. Cities vary wildly in how active they are and what tendencies they are populated by (e.g. mostly Trot city vs. mostly DSA libs vs. almost nothing, and so on). I'm sure there are enough reasonably large cities with very little work on this topic that you could be in one.

Extremely jealous that you are somehow involved with three other (!) supposedly communist orgs

I didn't say they were communist.

orgs who mandate masking all immediately accessible to you

I guess they are accessible. They are orgs my org works with or otherwise has collaborated witb.

(“contradiction of access” means this is not the case for everyone, “objectively”)

Does it? It sounds like pseudoleft jargon and "primary contradiction of access" is nowhere on a Google search. "contradiction of access" appears as a critique of Latino representation in academia. It seems odd to expect anyone to know what you are referring to and I am still unclear on your meaning. Particularly given that your previous comment would be the one wearing the broad brushing hat in this scenario.

and this miraculous (American?) city you live in that actually listens to you or any disabled people for that matter about policy.

For infosec reasons I am not describing the level of government at which tangible results were achieved. But it is not miraculous to organize and achieve tangible results, even on this topic. What would be miraculous would be an internet screed leading to such policy impacts.

Can you tell me what communist orgs you are involved with

No and for InfoSec reasons that is not an appropriate question to ask on this kind of forum. Please do not ask that of others.

or know of that still mandate masking policies to participate

Same answer because this would give away my region of the world and possibly my org by association.

And again, why do you keep bringing up communist orgs? I haven't said anything about communism or communists.

or support remote organization for members with limited accessibility or work requirements?

While I won't name them for the same reasons, there are even more orgs that will do this than who require proper masking and similar COVID prioritization. Orgs I actively dislike and have not yet mentioned will regularly have remote meetings to accomodate exactly that - particularly those with work schedules that disallow in-person meetings. I have helped them mediate conflicts and worked in coalitions with them in the past.

Because I don’t believe you.

You are free to not believe me if you'd like, but that wouod not be a reasonabke conclusion.

Hello friend, how many of these organizations of yours that exist will accommodate me by masking?

My org masks in all indoor spaces and most outdoor ones. If an outdoor event is very well-ventilated and we don't initially plan on requiring masks, we will still require masks if anyone requests it and this can be done anonymously.

I’ll give you a hint, because I have actually barked up this tree, assuredly unlike you: it’s zero.

You are objectively incorrect. My org isn't even the only one in my area with this attitude towards masks, there are 3 that for sure do the same kind of thing.

Your words are just as hollow as your criticism, I have heard it all before. Come back when you have something actually materially substantial to offer.

I did offer something substantial, which is that essays into the void are counterproductive, they provide a false catharsis, and our projects require actually organizing other people, something that was notably neglected in the article posted. The two are related: the essay into the void distracts the person making it and provides a catharsis that tends to displace doing the aforementioned organizing. The 3 or so orgs in my area that regularly mask? We met with one another to coordinate this and make it easier to work in coalition. We have, accordingly, done irl work to agitate otg for policy change in governmental and non-governmental capacities as well as direct action to ensure materials are available for people to keep themselves safe and to connect capitalism to COVID neglect in a way that builda orgs and ongojng projects.

Like did you actually read any of this shit? That’s your call to action. Wear a mask! Distribute masks to your workers, and among your org! Filter the air! Accomodate those who can’t call off to attend events or risk showing up in person by holding virtual meetings, something we did for years that was very much possible and then just stopped!

Those are calls to individualistic action you could pull from any liberal pro-masker. This is not organizing and not a way to actually build power and achieve our shared goals. It may seem like I am splitting hairs, but I assumed it would be understood that calls to action means things like drawing people in to an organizing space, building lists, or even just raising funds for a left org so that their organized efforrts have cash. When you make agitprop for organizing, you generally use it for a strategic purpose that builds an org, an event, capacity for action, and so on. I did not even think of a call to action that is pure individualism.

With that said, neither the quoted passage nor the article actually call on anyone to do these things. There is not actually a call to action there. The closest it gets is at the very end where there is the typical "what must happen is..." statement that includes mask mandates. Which is not a call to action but a policy plank attached to no vehicle. This is another tendency of anemic Western leftist approaches. It does not make you or the author a bad person or anything, but it is counterproductive to give it any real value. It is not actually going to do anything positive but it will lead people to feel it is important work, and so they start doing the same and doing it over and over again thinking that spinning those wheels is getting somewhere.

All things very, very doable at an organizational and institutional level — strange how none of you who speak like this will do it or work to enact any policy to help accomplish any of it!

I have done that, actually. I don't want to doxx myself as I am not sure how common the policy outcomes were elsewhere, but I will say that we used a coalition to get tangible, material results.

Want to plug a group? None of them do any fucking action worth plugging in this context.

If you know what action is worth plugging and know how to organize with like-minded people, you could of course create an organization and plug that. I am not being snippy, I just want to repeat what our ability to effect change looks like. It is to get people together to learn and take action, with a panoply of tools at our disposal all based on mass (per various definitions) action. One example of using agitprop to actually do something is to plug an org so that those who are agitated by what is written can become personally engaged, join actions, and otherwise build power with us.

The closest is city mask blocs, and guess what? That’s also mentioned in the article, and it is a poor substitute to concrete institutional efforts, which, wow, is also mentioned within the piece!

Mentioning things is not plugging them for people to get involved. "Concrete institutional efforts" does not provide any onramp for someone that agrees with the author. They can think, "yeah that sounds nice" and then maybe Google a little to see if there is already a web presence for that in their area or something, but most people will just keep reading because there was no specific ask. These are the core tools of organizing, of getting people to actually do the things you believe need to be done. Requests must be directly, repeatedly, and strategically.

DSA, PSL, any of these big organizations in the US are not even at this level, which is the barest of bare minimums for addressing the primary contradiction of access in a world where COVID is still very much a threat. That is the point of the essay.

The DSA is a dysfunctional, liberal organization that has no rudder whatsoever and is dominated by chauvinists and constant grievances between members. I still sometimes point people to it because you can gain organizing skills there if you are picky about what you work on and because just being part of the wider community overcomes the greatest barrier to being a lifelong organizer. PSL has a silly line on masking under the pretense that it makes it difficult to connect with everyday people. Maybe if you were going after chuds it would, but we should not try to coddle chuds to agitate. So in that sense I agree. But what has my agreement accomplished? I already had that opinion. Most people don't even know what the DSA is, let alone PSL. Who is the audience and what are they supposed to do as a result of reading this?

Re: primary contradiction of access, I have no idea what that means. What dialectic is posited? What are the other contradictions of access to consider?

Currently, the exact same thing is happening at the institutional levels (from all sides) and the individual and organizational levels: nothing!

If we consider institutional levels to be liberal institutions, then yes, of course. Capitalists want normalization of the pandemic for various reasons. If you include left spaces, it is a mix where most are ableist and following liberals' lead while some do a pretty decent job, all things considered.

And instead of actually listening to these “calls to action”, you do this shit all of you love to do: you respond with a patronizing screed at me to get my boots on the ground and do something

It feels like you are implying that you are the author, as that is who I addressed. You may want to keep your hexbear account and the identity of the article's author distinct, even if the author's name is a pseudonym. InfoSec is undervalued. I will edit and delete this part of my comment if this is the case and you would like to similarly delete this portion of your comment for InfoSec reasons.

Anyways, I don't think your comment applies to me. Aside from therr not being calls to action in this essay, I do actually do irl work on this topic.

to “plug a name” of a nonexistent political organization

I did not tell you or anyone to do that.

speaking past all of us who are doing exactly this to deaf ears.

I don't understand what this means. The author is not doing the things I mentioned, the absense of which is my critique! I am not speaking past them and do not presume to even be talking to them, though the critiqur criticizes their approach. The actual audience of what I am saying is whoever happena to come across this ppst. This is the first time I have replied in this comment section. How could I be speaking past anyone? And why do you falsely assume I don't do any of this kind of work? This is not a productive way to engage with comrades. It is purely wasted energy in the defense of another waste of energy. Think of what else we could be doing.

Things I have done, we have done, that you and the rest of your cadre ignore to continue the outdated tactics of dead unions and political messaging from a hundred years ago or more.

Me and the rest of my cadre? What? You don't know anything about me, let alone what work I have done in this context. Please be more comradely in your responses.

Not a very dialectical approach!

What would be a dialectical approach? I have not set that bar up anywhere in this conversation, so I wonder at what you think it means.

What do you think you accomplish posting something like this, then, aside from making yourself look like a fool?

My goal would be to agitate people away from the false catharsis that dominates anemic and often counterproductive Western leftist patterns of thought.

IDF can't even pull off the "MIA" grift.

Depending on how you define the left in the West, it never prioritized COVID in the first place. The vast majority of self-described leftists abandoned masks the moment Biden gave permission to not care just like the other libs. And there were basically zero sustained pushes against COVID normalization or COVID conditions. The height of Western leftists prioritizing COVID was to require masks at their own indoor meetings and many couldn't even do that when it was normal to mask, let alone now.

The left is small and poorly defined in The West. We could be much larger if we were better at organizing and at fighting liberal attitudes, but most Western leftists have no idea how to do either of those things and gravitate to opportunism and slacktivism, convincing themselves that the left is larger than it is because a statement got a lot of likes on Instagram. Comrade, 97% of those likes were from people who just frustratee they aren't petty bourgeois enough and harbor the same racist and xenophobic views as the standard chauvinist. Under no circumstances are they going to actually show up to the event in your next post. Your comrades are the 50 people from 4 orgs that do show up.

PS people writing articles like these are firmly in the slacktivist category. They are not even propagandists for an org. They are just imagining that the greatest way to make a contribution to the movement is a hackneyed essay. They spend a good chunk of the essay talking about DSA's disability working group. That group is routinely ignored by the entire organization and its leadership. The working group therefore functions as a place to commiserate, not a functional organizing space, as they cannot even achieve buy-in from their dysfunctional org, let alone have substantive impact or organizing outside of it. Being of the DSA and its weird liberal-ultra mileu, they have learned that merely writing essays with left language is how you achieve change.

In short, the main intervention required is also ignored by the essay, both in content and by its nature as an artifact in the void that will never be followed up on. The intervention is actually organizing, taking concrete actions, and to attach a message to them strategically. What are the demands? What is the escalation plan? These are the natural thoughts of an organizer because theu are focused on achieving aimd through gettinh people together. So why are they absent here? There isn't even a single call to action or plugged group.

I'm sure the author is a fine person, but they are hamstrung, as are many in the Western "left", by not being embedded in the necessary tradition of organizing.

That's why Marx invented concealed carry

Exactly! That's a great spirit to have. Wanting to do something about injustice is the core motivation shared by all good socialist organizers!

If you pair that with a good theoretical and local understanding, you will then get a handle on what to do, if that makes sensr. One neighborhood might be best reached through mutual aid and political education while another might respond most to direct action against a prison while another might respond most to a (principled) socialist electoralist campaign like public housing or immigrant initiatives. All of these can be threatened by liberal cooption but that's just the job, you know?

Please feel free to ask any and all questions you might have! And I'm glad you'll be joining us on the streets and the meeting rooms!

It will mean that sellers might as well warehouse stateside. So either there will be a bunch of new warehousing middlemen nonsense or it will all get folded into Amazon and Walmart with faster shipping times and 20-50% highet prices.

Many Chinese brands already do this. If you buy directly from their website they will ship it to you from a warehouse in Colorado or something and the price is better than Amazon.

I would also not be surprised if they just start using loopholes or trying to hide packages' value.

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!