#effective action

[baelpenrose]

Alright, action plan for the Left

I keep telling anti-Voting advocates "okay so what's your plan" and they keep asking me, "okay but what's yours" Alright, bet. It exists in three parts.

Phase 1: Apotheosis Denied. Republicans have spent the last 40 years playing a very long game in order to weaken institutions in ways that only benefit them - jerrymandering, weakening institutions at state and local levels, and seizing supreme court, in order to make something like Project 2025 a reality, but it has also led to a critical fracturing of their party. At this point, they are making one desperate gambit to seize power, and if it fails, they will have a critical fracture in their party as the authoritarian wing, now a cult of personality around trump, attempts a second violent coup and is met with the violence of the state and is curbstomped into the dirt. The resulting republican realignment will be frantic, and leave them in a much weaker position - no less fascist, but weaker. Our first step, right now, because we are so far behind, has to be to deny them the apotheosis of their 40 year long game. Phase 2: Parallel Systems. There are multiple components to this one and this is where the government is going to get a little more concerned. This can start NOW, and should start NOW, but continue in tandem with phase 3. Phase 2.1: United Labor - Join the IWW. Join a union. Look into unionizing your workplace. Regardless of how small a difference you think it makes, increasing the power of labor decreases corporate power, full stop.

Phase 2.2: Mutual Aid: Set aside a certain percentage of your income each month - doesn’t have to be a lot, but just a certain amount, that you can budget for each month for helping your community. Make helping other people part of the budget. Creating this simple system, if enough people do it, will limit the reliance on corporate and state control. Do not exceed this - you will expend your resources and wind up needing to rely on others and then overdraw. Keep it to within what you can give.  Further, budget a certain amount of TIME each week to doing something that serves your community (see below as well) and getting to know them. 

Phase 2.3: Community Networking: Engage with your community in real life, outside. Set aside a certain amount of time each week to do this. If it’s working with underprivileged kids or providing childcare, taking care of the elderly, etc. You can go to a sewing circle and start talking to the people there and bring salvaged clothing that you repair and donate and talk them into doing something similar. Work your hobbies into it! Can you sew? Knit? Scarves and ponchos are never a bad thing, and you can show people how to do it - or swap labor for something you need.. Can you do carpentry? Repair furniture for people who need it, and odds are you can give lessons to people for free and put on a workshop - or swap labor for things you need. Start building these networks in your community. Also, anyone who has a yard? Start looking towards native food-bearing plants. If you’re rural, look into ethical hunting and community cookouts. Kill feral pigs, especially. There’s a shit ton of them, they’re invasive, and they’re tasty, and a cookout of them will bring people together. 

Phase 2.4: Community Accountability/Mentoring. Do you have problems in the community with crime? Kids being assholes? Have you considered, rather than calling the cops, giving the kids something to do so they aren’t shitheels? Hooking them up with mentors who can give them skills or help them explore their passions? Providing programs with volunteering? Get involved at your school as well, or form a parent group for it, this will help reduce how many of your kids wind up in the school to prison pipeline. 

Phase 2.5: Community Defense: Arm. Odds are you have at least a few disaffected veterans in the community who know the government screwed them and their families who are willing to train you to defend yourselves and who will be happy to be asked to do so - and easy enough to radicalize if they spend time with other people the state is fucking over. It doesn’t have to be everyone in the community, but realistically, you should have at least a few able-bodied people with guns from every community who are practicing with firearms and tactics to protect their community from the fascists as things escalate. This will allow considerably better protection in the event of a shooting or similar.  Phase 2.6: Community Assets: Every community should develop a battery of people who can provide at least some degree of help in a variety of situations. Become trained in first aid, CPR, etc. You won't be as good as a doctor, but you can still help. Have a community garden or three. Develop a neighborhood mechanic. Develop a neighborhood seamstress or carpenter if you know one. Trade services. Watch each other's kids.

Phase 3: Electoral Counterstroke This phase exists in two parts: Phase 3.1: Divide and Conquer: Further hasten the crumbling of the republican party. While it realigns, it will do so into a number of factions, the one most likely to win is the authoritarian, christian, culture war, racist wing. You have the ability, if you approach gun nuts and "small government" conservatives (which still exist in many areas of the country) to discuss with them their options. They will NEVER vote democrat or green or left - and they will never be leftists. BUT. They will be easy to convince to splinter from fascism and join a right-wing Libertarian party. They won't be on our side, but their defection from the fascists serves us still in that it splits a right wing further and makes a divided left much less of a gamble.

Phase 3.2: Left Surge Okay, so flat out? This year, Jasmine Sherman is not a viable candidate. They should be, by all rights, but they are not. This is partially due to ballot access tampering, but also partially because far-left candidates have a bad habit of starting their homework five minutes before class starts and then wondering why they don't get a good grade. We have four years to figure out how to get them ballot access in all 50 states, and we need to accomplish that goal, and ensure that they actually are on the ballot in all 50 states in 2028. A vote for them in 2024 is wasted, a vote for them in 2028 should not be unless we've all fucked up to a ridiculous degree. (Yes, I know they have it in 48 states. One of the two where they DON'T because both the democrats and the green party bent over backwards to stop them is CALIFORNIA. You know, the state that no left-wing candidate can win without because of our whopping 55 electoral votes. I mean it when I say they need it in all 50. We can get them there by 2028 if we aren't stupid.)

Further, your local elections should be contested. That public defender who tries to keep juvenile offenders out of jail? Push him to run as a judge and rally as much support as possible. Push left wing retired teachers to run for school board and help them run their campaigns. Push librarians who have lost their libraries to right wing culture war nonsense to run for school board. Politics is local and controlling local power controls most of the governing.

In the senate races, the party machines in almost every state have a lock, so what you're going to do is vote the farthest left democrat you can, consistently, and force the dems to move towards us. This will damage the republican obstruction capacity and begin hijacking the democratic party and make us a block the dems MUST appease.

In the House, you vote radicals, and try to encourage other radicals to run. Where possible, vote green or left-wing third party, where not, repeat the strategy in the Senate.

For state legislature, there's more play for independents - check your state races, these vary a lot more, and to be honest I am much, much more aware of my own state's political machinery than I am aware of anyone else's to the point that any advice I gave on this point would really only be relevant to CA.

There you go, actionable, intelligent planning for the next decade of how the left can effectively sieze power and specific things YOU can do to make the situation better.

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Being able to move and do something to protect oneself is a critical factor in determining whether or not a horrible experience will leave long-lasting scars.

"The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, brain and body in the transformation of trauma" - Bessel van der Kolk

[rotationalsymmetry]

There’s this really weird thing about the Main Vibe on tumblr where people assume that the highest barrier to positive change is that idk other people don’t understand that the change is important, as opposed to literally any other barrier that might come up. And that the way to correct that is to yell into the void (and/or harass specific people.)

For instance: it’s actually a lot easier to find posts yelling about how if someone asks you to tag something you should do it, than posts about how things should be tagged or especially what things should be tagged in absence of a specific follower contacting you and making a specific request.

For instance: the weird voting discourse that assumes that people who have said they aren’t going to vote, will change their mind if other people are mad enough. (I mean: you could argue that more realistically it’s aimed at people who haven’t decided yet or is getting people who have decided not to vote and aren’t incredibly thick skinned to shut up about it. Still not sure that was especially productive though. And again: I am in favor of voting.)

There were a few posts that were like “here’s things to watch out for if you mail in your ballot” and “here’s a good place to start with your research” but not nearly as many as I would have expected.

For instance: a million ace discourse posts and ace positivity posts, and I have yet to see one (1) single post that’s like, “ok, if you’re running your school’s GSA, here’s how to make it welcoming for ace people” or “hey, if you’re on your workplace’s inclusivity team or whatever, here’s what ace people want” or even, “hey, if you have a tumblr blog, here’s some ways you can explicitly make ace people feel welcome.”

“Reblog this if your blog is safe for trans people” without any discussion of what safe for trans people means. (Because it’s not like people ever reinforce cissexist assumptions out of ignorance, only malice?)

What I’d like to see more of on here: explanations of how to make posts more disability accessible. (I’ve seen some good posts on how to write image descriptions, so that’s an exception; I’d like to see some sort of explanation of the ADHD bold thing and again info on making posts friendly to people with triggers that don’t rely on someone who’s been triggered reaching out, explanations of screen reader issues other than not being able to read pictures.) (I’ve seen some info posts on how to avoid whitewashing when making fan art, so that’s another exception.) Suggestions on queer inclusivity: what to include, what to avoid. More talk about how to be inclusive offline. More talk about making communities inclusive offline rather than just focusing on individuals. More blogs like Writing With Color. More blogs like Real Social Skills. More “here’s how to go on a date with someone in chronic pain who uses a cane” type posts. More “things to think about while doing things that many tumblr users actually do like write fan fiction” posts.

Either writing it out in tumblr, or linking to articles that talk about this stuff.

I get that tumblr users skew young and powerless, and that that’s going to affect what sorts of posts get seen as important.

And I’m not saying people shouldn’t *ever* post rants. Just that, it might be worth paying attention to the rant/constructive suggestions ratio, especially in situations where you’re an ally and not directly affected by the problem. Justified pushback against tone policing against oppressed people (which is imo a widely misunderstood concept) is not a license for allies to get as angry as they want at other privileged people. At some point you’ve gotta figure out the nuts and bolts, and not just the “this is important” stuff. No nuts and bolts, no change.

And yeah I know “be the change you want to see” and all. It’s a lot harder to make that kind of post than to just let off steam, and this is a letting off steam place for a lot of people, I do that too. But you can’t have it both ways. Either it’s a letting off steam place and we can’t really expect anything people do here to affect the world much one way or another. (In which case...) Or this space is partially a vector for social change, in which case it’s worth using this space intentionally.

[rotationalsymmetry]

If you are actually wondering what your history classes didn’t cover, “Lies My Teacher Told Me” (which is a bit of a misnomer, it’s actually a criticism of textbooks, not teachers) and Howard Zinn’s “A People’s HIstory of the United States” are places to start. “Lies My Teacher Told Me” is fairly short and is more about the general pattern of race and a few other things not being handled well in history textbooks and why that is. It’s making a point, and it uses a small number of concrete examples to do that. Because of what it is, there’s going to be a lot it doesn’t cover. “A People’s History of the United States” is much more comprehensive. There’s undoubtably some things it misses too (history is big, and people have their biases) but there’s also going to be a lot you either didn’t hear about at all or didn’t hear about the way “A People’s History” talks about it. If you want something more specific, like queer history, you should get a book on that topic. I’ve got And The Band Played On, about the AIDS crisis, on my reading list, but don’t necessarily have a huge stack of recommendations. (I’ve read most of Out of the Closet but am not super thrilled by it, for instance it uses male pronouns to talk about We’wah, a Zuni lhamana, even though people at the time used female pronouns.) However, there are places you can ask: on quora, an appropriate subreddit or fb group, ask someone on here who seems to know what they’re talking about, etc. You can also ask a librarian, they tend to be good for that kind of thing (if they don’t know they’ll get back to you.) Or you can contact a university professor of an appropriate department -- even if you don’t go there, they’ll probably be willing to answer a quick email in the name of spreading knowledge. But what if you’re thinking, OK that covers me, but shouldn’t people actually be learning this in, you know, school? You’re right, and groups of people getting together and showing up to school board meetings etc can and do make a big difference in terms of who gets hired to teach, what textbooks are used, and to what degree POC history, queer history, etc gets addressed in schools at all levels. When I was in school: we had a Muslim come into my class and talk about being Muslim and what jihad means and what the headscarves are about, presumably because someone pushed for that. We got a substantial unit on Japanese internment camps during WWII, presumably because someone pushed for that. We had a gay man and a lesbian come into I think a sex ed class and talk about being gay -- someone pushed for that, and if someone had pushed hard enough for a trans person to come in we might have gotten that too. My elementary school had a number of children’s books centering non-white characters, and I know that didn’t happen by accident.

[rotationalsymmetry]

There’s two types of people in the social justice movement (and really any other movement aiming for the greater good, whether I think they’re actually doing good or not): the people who pick some kind of boring or difficult and thankless task that needs doing and just do it, and people who go out of their way to make other people miserable in the name of the Cause.

Effective action is at most 10% yelling at people. And even there you need to be pretty selective about who you yell at and under what circumstances.

[rotationalsymmetry]

It’s important to make distinctions. Obama passed the ACA; whoever was running against him (huh, I don’t even remember right now) would not have. Hilary Clinton most likely would not have been talking about a “Chinese virus” and I’m guessing would actually be requiring businesses to make more ventilators and doing a national distribution of PPE rather than leaving it up to the states. At any rate, those are “normal” things that it is reasonable and realistic to expect a President to do in a time of crisis. And she definitely wouldn’t be sabotaging our international alliances the way Trump has. She also wouldn’t have given us free higher education, a $15 minimum wage, or universal health care or a universal basic income, and that matters too. She probably would have been pretty shitty about incarceration, because Democrats have been embracing “tough on crime” for a while. And she probably would have been in favor of neoliberal “free trade” agreements, and not exactly a dove. And that matters too. It all matters.

I’m not saying that we have to be all “Blue Team Good, Red Team Bad”. But there *are* differences between different politicians and we should see those differences.

An analogy: I’m sick AF. Chronically ill. I want to be 100% healthy. I am not 100% healthy and may never be anywhere close to that ever again. I am, let’s say, 40% healthy: can’t work even part time, can’t go grocery shopping, cooking is hit or miss, would be leaving the apartment more days than not if there wasn’t a pandemic going on. Can shower every day.

For a while, I couldn’t shower every day, or rather could only shower by sitting on the edge of the tub, soaping up while seated, standing up to rinse off, and sitting down again for a while before putting on clothes.

If I couldn’t see the difference between sitting-to-shower sick and standing-to-shower sick, just because they’re both Not 100% Healthy, I wouldn’t have been able to get to consistent standing-to-shower sick. (Plus, I’d be a lot less happy in my day to day life.) Yeah, it’s not where I want to be. It’s not even half way to where I want to be. But it’s still better than where I was.

We’re at the same point with politics. If you’re a progressive, let’s say for the sake of argument we’re at 40% of where we want to be. Libraries? Good. Roads? Good. Free public education K-12? Good. We don’t have slavery *or* Jim Crow any more and it’s not socially acceptable to say the n-word? Good. Etc. And, pay-to-play politics, bad, huge ass military that we use to enhance corporate wealth, bad, mass incarceration, bad, widespread police brutality and children in cages, bad. Etc. We don’t get there by getting everything we want tomorrow. (We definitely don’t get there by concluding that “there” isn’t possible and every place that isn’t “there” is equally bad so why do anything.) We get there, or at least closer to there, by walking one step closer at a time, and by trying not to take steps in the wrong direction.

And that can only happen if you see the steps.

[worldnotobaccoday]

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