I’ve been dabbling in the past year and a half with getting into orgs, which haven’t been that hard since I live in a big city, but I still had trouble staying consistent with it or feeling like I have any actual impact.
I went through orgs dealing with asylum seekers, unions for part-time workers, food security, fun local events that raise money for the aforementioned food security project, and now I landed in an org dealing with helping low-wage workers getting benefits that their employers stole from them. Most of them are refugees, some are Palestinians, which does feel somewhat impactful, but it’s still a minority.
These were all great orgs with moral people, but the catch is that I can’t be passive with it like in my work. There aren’t really any managers that are responsible for finding me work at these orgs, because they’re busy with their own work. There are no Bullshit Jobs there. I need to ask around and find work myself.
This is exhausting, especially while juggling a 9-5 and a couple of hobbies, and while I’m fully aware of the capitalistic scam of keeping us busy working instead of organizing, I’m yet still frustrated with it. Anyone feeling the same? I hope it’ll get more impactful as my life gets more stable, and I have an overall optimistic feeling about this, but non the less the helplessness I feel right now is real :(
Similar situation here. For me instead of a 9-5 keeping me busy, it’s my state of health being a constant obstacle in daily life. Most organizations have no set way for new members to get familiar, making it even harder for me to find my bearings. Let alone physically ever attending meetings etc.
Online I tried to get in touch to help with leftist media, but I was politely rejected after being upfront about my physical limitations.
Praxis for me now is just talking to friends who are left leaning, and continuing to educate myself. I just have little energy to do anything else, and it is frustrating.
Most organizations have no set way for new members to get familiar
This is such a pain point. How come my current employer, which has 0 positive (and negative) impact on the world, has enough resources to have a proper onboarding process while my other orgs don’t? Guys I think something is rotten with the current economical structure
Praxis for me now is just talking to friends who are left leaning, and continuing to educate myself. I just have little energy to do anything else, and it is frustrating.
You know, I think talking shit online is nothing to scoff at. We have a whole org here called Mahazkim which is dedicated to spamming social media with pro-palestinian stances (ignore words like “progressive” and “liberal” on their site; they carry a different meaning here). If it sounds interesting to you, I can try finding something similar for you in your area. I have a friend that works in this org so I can launch a message and she’ll prolly figure something out.
My Party’s Central Committee just practically expelled the entire communist youth after expelling any dissidence from itself
They expelled 80% of the national committee of the communist youth, and in at least two states (mine included) dissolved the communist youth state committees and declared anyone calling for a new party congress expelled
Fun times
The good thing is since they never helped us with shit nothing’s changed for the youth except they stole our shit (not funds tho afaik) https://ujc.org.br/nota-politica-da-cnujc-contra-a-intervencao-do-comite-central-na-juventude-em-defesa-do-xvii-congresso-extraordinario-e-da-reconstrucao-revolucionaria-do-pcb/
We’re way better off without them, they kept every kind of abuse going in the party
Cringe reactionaries being cringe reactionaries
Pretty good. We keep growing in the polls (though it’s not our main goal, of course). I’m still busy with setting up the local Youth group for our party. We have to plan a cafe tour for our party leader and the party’s state rep. We’re busy finding locations, dates and young people to visit us. So far so good. It is summer holiday period so the rest of the organizing is a bit slower in the past few weeks. I expect it to be more active after august, with elections and some campaigns coming up.
I work at the Union, which is daily praxis basically. I also volunteer at our energy bills consult at one of our free healthcare clinics. I try to help people with payments or switching contracts or legal issues, and to get them to sign out petition to lower energy prices.
Well done, I’m glad to hear things are going well and sounds like you do huge things. Proud of you, stranger
Leafleting is harder than I thought. It seems to come to other members naturally, I have some social aversion and it seems to manifest most in situations with strangers.
I’m working on some IT stuff and hoping to improve the organization of the group. I’m waiting for it to be in a state where it is presentable as it’s lacklustre currently. As well, I’m trying to line up projects that are closer to my expertise to provide novel improvements. One example is slowly downloading a corpus of Marxist works and training a QA ML model on it to serve as a chatbot. Last time I touched AI stuff was years ago and things have changed substantially. The resources are there but I’m a bit wary of committing too many resources so I’m only working on it bit by bit while I do more in person stuff I can be confident will be of some help.
I went through orgs dealing with asylum seekers, unions for part-time workers, food security, fun local events that raise money for the aforementioned food security project, and now I landed in an org dealing with helping low-wage workers getting benefits that their employers stole from them.
Any tips on finding organizations? I feel like there’s not much around me, but I might not be looking well.
To be frank I got lucky here. Palestine-Israel is a tiny country and the based leftist orgs are concentrated in the three biggest cities: Jerusalem, Haifa, and Tel Aviv. Most people live around one of these three cities, with Tel Aviv notoriously being the most left leaning, and I live in its metropolitan area for work so life is good.
Now with this info in mind, I found these organizations through social media. The food security project is called Culture of Solidarity and they’ve made an ingenious decision of putting a strong emphasis on their Instagram presence. The women who founded this org (who I personally admire) have immense people skills and they leveraged the Corona crisis to create this network of food security.
The org I most recently got into is one that my psychologist recommended on, though :)
deleted by creator
Pretty bad. My studies are frankly overwhelming, to the point in which I can picture my membership inside an organization as consisting of my name being written in an archive and nothing else. I am waiting to be done with university first, and in the meanwhile I try to become as educated in theory as I can.
I feel you, couldn’t complete my degree because I hate it to the bone and it was too draining. Whatcha learning?
Medicine. Don’t get me wrong: I love it (even if it does not love me back) and I would rather commit seppuku before dropping out, especially due to how hard it was for me to get in. However, one needs to be realistic in this matter and be aware that before being able to help others, one must first take care of themselves.
So far I haven’t done any praxis whatsoever
