It’s important to find good orgs and not just put up with shitty libs ruining your opportunities for praxis. You can go from being a stay-at-home big brain to an infighting-and-pointless-electoralism lib if you’re not cognizant of your org and its weaknesses.
Step 1 is to join an org and begin doing work, including gaining organizing skills.
Step 2 is to either begin launching new campaigns yourself because you got lucky with your first choice of org or to instead join a better org so you can do better work.
Don’t underestimate just how toxic or useless some orgs can get! You might be surprised at how little headway you will make in some spaces where you do the leadership things (organizing, planning, logistics, socializing, chairing, hooking people up, teaching, etc) and can’t get anyone to move on key things like, “maybe don’t put all of your effort into failing to get some random person elected that is already 6 months late into declaring their candidacy” or “maybe you don’t need to put out a message condemning Hamas and both sides” or “maybe don’t be pro-cop”. I’ve seen or heard of all these things from very good organizers who moved on to better organizations. The issues above occurring in self-proclaimed socialist spaces, including some communist ones.
Consider also that step 1 may be hampered by a toxic or incompetent org. You may pick up bad habits or become complacent with failure or simply not be around anyone that can teach you good methods. You might even be in an org that actively quashes attempts to practice good methods because the folks around you think very highly of their own methods that never get results and believe it’s their goal in life to tell you what to do, lol. I’ve also seen this.
So my rec is to try the two steps I listed but know when to bail on a step 1 org that you’re not growing in.
This is great advice, I don’t actually disagree at all. You have to be smart, and there is a balance. Don’t walk away the first time someone doesn’t agree with you, but also know when to walk away if it’s gonna be hopeless.
It’s important to find good orgs and not just put up with shitty libs ruining your opportunities for praxis. You can go from being a stay-at-home big brain to an infighting-and-pointless-electoralism lib if you’re not cognizant of your org and its weaknesses.
Step 1 is to join an org and begin doing work, including gaining organizing skills.
Step 2 is to either begin launching new campaigns yourself because you got lucky with your first choice of org or to instead join a better org so you can do better work.
Don’t underestimate just how toxic or useless some orgs can get! You might be surprised at how little headway you will make in some spaces where you do the leadership things (organizing, planning, logistics, socializing, chairing, hooking people up, teaching, etc) and can’t get anyone to move on key things like, “maybe don’t put all of your effort into failing to get some random person elected that is already 6 months late into declaring their candidacy” or “maybe you don’t need to put out a message condemning Hamas and both sides” or “maybe don’t be pro-cop”. I’ve seen or heard of all these things from very good organizers who moved on to better organizations. The issues above occurring in self-proclaimed socialist spaces, including some communist ones.
Consider also that step 1 may be hampered by a toxic or incompetent org. You may pick up bad habits or become complacent with failure or simply not be around anyone that can teach you good methods. You might even be in an org that actively quashes attempts to practice good methods because the folks around you think very highly of their own methods that never get results and believe it’s their goal in life to tell you what to do, lol. I’ve also seen this.
So my rec is to try the two steps I listed but know when to bail on a step 1 org that you’re not growing in.
This is great advice, I don’t actually disagree at all. You have to be smart, and there is a balance. Don’t walk away the first time someone doesn’t agree with you, but also know when to walk away if it’s gonna be hopeless.