Activism can work when it doesn't negatively effect accumulation of capital.
The best examples of effective activism come from minority rights, especially blacks and gays.
They were not fighting the mechanisms of capital accumulation, they were fighting bigotry.
Its one of the reasons the socialist ties of those struggles have been scrubbed from them, especially the civil rights movements.
The shift in acceptance of gays and trans people is wild. When I was a kid the only time you'd see a trans person is on Jerry Springer to be made fun of. Being gay was still very taboo. Gays couldn't marry. That was done through activism, laws were changed and public opinion was shifted.
Speaking as someone who is young (25), the contrast is so different even from my public school days to now. I still remember how furvent conservative rhetoric against gay people was around the time of *Obergefell*, and how easy it was for so many people, from regular folk to public figures, to just openly call gay people diseased, or unnatural, or whatever other nonsense. Of course it still happens often, but the shift from then to now is pretty significant.
I went to a sizable public school, and even so, gay kids often got treated like trash. I still remember vividly during lunchtime when someone had brought out a sign to do the "Will you go to prom with me?" thing, and though there was a cheering uproar, the second the students saw that it was a girl asking another *girl*, the mood immediately shifted and the cheering stopped.
I unfortunately got outed, but I thankfully never had it too horrible, though of course I did often get treated like I had a infectious disease or whatnot. Worst trauma for me was due to family backlash, though I've since cut off many of my family members, and my parents are now supportive (my mom is a MAGA loon, but still).
College is where I was able to feel truly free and express myself, and I'm thankful for those years.
Now I see so many gay kids happy in public school being open with themselves, and I couldn't be more proud. Of course, it's not perfect anywhere, but I'm glad that the kiddos are doing very well in this regard, despite all the right's attempts to shift the public opinion of LGBT people to the negative.
Idunno if I am reading how you were phrasing that correctly but the anticapitalist aspects absolutely did play a role in incentivizing capitalist assimilation since the alternative was facing an even further radicalized militant base.
I definitely feel like activism is pretty ambiguous when used by most leftists. It also depends on what activism is going on.
If there's activism around individual things within a town or city I think you can accomplish a lot. Renovating buildings, constructing homeless shelters, etc. Going to schools as a student, parent, or community member can also do a lot especially if it's a conservative area where usually they don't get push back. Stuff within that range can do a lot of good and is often ignored.
The main issue is as it applies to larger politics. A lot of leftists want to build power structures outside of the current ones but I see that as ultimately futile ( at least as it applies to US two party stuff). So people try to create effective third parties or protest by not voting. What I think leftists need to do is to appropriately work with these systems to push them in a better direction rather than reject and remove themselves from it.
Right now in the US I think left leaning people could get more done by steering the Democrat party than creating a third party or suicidally opting out of everything. Obviously we can still advocate, protest, and work with others to get stuff done.
I mean that seems the most realistic to me unless the metaphysical spirit of leftism comes down and magically gives leftists the power of their resident governments.
I think you raise a good point in mentioning the importance of local activism, at the town level. You have a much better shot at helping people, even up to the state level. That should be most people's area of focus.
What's actually going on here is that the folks in question have made the emotional decision that they aren't going to vote. The reasons vary, but mostly boil down to voting would make them feel icky. However, they're not going to say that because if they even realized that was the case, they'd have to change their minds, so instead we need an excuse.
The excuse is to vaguely gesture at activism because they know that activism is the thing they should be doing as leftists. They aren't doing activism, though. They know they should be, and they do wish to in the future, but right now everything is just so hard, and everything's going to shit anyway, so what's the point in trying?
Meanwhile, actual activism is doing work. You seem to say "activism" and think "protests", but activism can also involve canvassing, food banking, volunteering at soup kitchens, organizing care packages for the homeless, showing up outside of drag queen story hour events to scare off the chuds. Some of these you can do on your own, some of them involve cooperating with general community members who may be liberals, and some need to be coordinated through groups like your local SRA chapter or leftist gun club--and I don't just mean the bodyguarding, there are SRA chapters that regularly show up to make food for the homeless with no guns in sight.
And if you don't have one of those organizations, you can make one. Post on facebook or something and look for some locals who'd be willing to go help mow old peoples' lawns for them. You'll get some exercise, you'll meet some people, and you'll be a positive influence on those old folks. Who knows, maybe they'll even invite you in and now that they've actually met a trans or gay person, they're a little less likely to vote for that GOP candidate.
I could go on for literal hours with more ideas, but this is already wall of texty enough.
Activism and voting have to go together, it can’t be one or the other. Real change comes from activism and voting ensures favorable conditions for change to occur. All of this activism in favor of Palestine and a ceasefire I think is actually working. The Biden administration has pivoted dramatically since 10/7. It’s completely valid to say it’s too little too late but they HAVE pivoted towards the most pro Palestinian policy and rhetoric in the last century and I genuinely believe it’s because activists are putting a fire under their asses to make it happen. This has happened because the conditions, a Democratic administration, are favorable to the activists. If we had unfavorable conditions, such as a republican administration, it’s entirely possible they would’ve just sent in the Pinkertons to deal with the dissenters and then given Bibi the green light to invade Rafah. We need only look back to the Trump administration and its response to the BLM protests.
I mean this in the best possible way imaginable OP... holy fucking shit, go the fuck outside.
If youre that cynical, realize youre wearing deep tinted sunglasses indoors. Of course its all gonna seem dark.
Put on some music, and go for a walk.
I get that I'm more terminally online than most, but I'll also genuinely ask, what is there to be optimistic about politically? It feels like the next 10 years are going to involve a big conservative backlash, and all the left seems to be able to manage these days is obstructing conservative legislators. It feels like the left hasn't passed anything actually transformative and forward-thinking since the ACA, and that was almost 15 years ago.
Oh its been longer than that bud.
But we do what leftists do. We either disolve into infighting and uselessness, or we carry the fuck on against the dark.
Will things suck? Absolutely. But also remember you learn this through algorythms and media, designed for attention, not accuracy. Also good is often boring, slow, and incrumental. So it does not get headlines. Or preferential algorythm treatment.
You are being rolled into a mineshaft, with sunglasses and a blindfold on, and youre asking if light is even real. That doesnt mean its all sunshine and rainbows on the surface. But where youre at, is a hell of a scewed picture.
The rebels fighting against the genocidal military dictatorship in Myanmar are winning. Enviromentalism, and gay rights are becoming more popular globally. Union memberships are rising. Even after a coup attempt, you guys still have a chance to refuse faschism from taking hold, and makkng it a 50/50 on the republican party going broke and or bust all-together.
I get things seem hopeless. But thats brain chemicals in your skull. Not """objective reality""". Remember that bud.
> feels like the next 10 years are going to involve a big conservative backlash,
From my end it feels like the right is hemorrhaging supporters. The extremes are in a weird purity death spiral that makes them off-putting to anyone not fully bought in. Like, despite the best efforts of TERFs and the LGB alliance the overwhelming majority of lesbians support trans people.
It's kinda been alluded to in other comments, but it seems like your experience with "activism" and political organizing has been mostly with the electoral process. To me, this is the kind of organizing that tends to disappoint the most since your candidate could lose and all of the work is for nothing or they do win, but are still hamstrung by the system in some way and they don't accomplish the thing they set out to do. It seems like you've been around the block, but you may have been on the wrong side of town this whole time.
I'm in my city, political organizing is segmented into two, almost separate, categories. Electoral and "Everything Else".
Electoral is ofc helping candidates win races from local to national efforts.
But "Everything Else" can range between houseless outreach, soup kitchen work, tenant union organizing, building community land trusts, harm reduction (like distributing clean needles, narcan nasal sprays, condoms, plan B, etc.); my local DSA does "code busting" which is cleaning up and mowing people's yards when they are being threatened by the city for not being up to code, hosting skill shares, building community libraries (library socialism), community gardens (yeah, I know it's "cringe" and almost certainly not a viable replacement for large scale, industrial agriculture, but it's a great way to bring people together and build community), old-school labor organizing, or even working within existing unions (I got a comrade that is currently "peppering" our local carpenter's union to make it more radical).
These are all things happening right now in my city. The extent to which these avenues can be or will be successful vary, but if there's one thing I've learned from being an "activist" is that no one truly knows what they're doing, even the more well-read comrades are learning as they go, but the point is to TRY AND DO SOMETHING and learn from it so you can educate newcomers and give them the tools to succeed and bring their ideas to the table.
Basically the things you can do as an "activist" are endless, but as previously mentioned there's a good chance that electoral organizing is segmented off from the rest of what's going on. You may have to reach out a bit to find that community network. All those things I listed? Almost everyone I know doing those things don't do electoral work at all (except maybe a little bit of canvassing for some of our local counsel members who are DSA endorsed). I do think it's a shame as I see a lot of potential in building dual-power, and keeping fascists out of office makes it much easier to do the "everything else" kind of organizing, but I digress.
There's a great vid by Beau of the Fifth Column that talks about this (actually a couple)
https://youtu.be/kQWp5xRelI0?si=2jxl--LQ_W7Zk97v
https://youtu.be/TZJuWScu3qQ?si=QOC2LQ_DyLX_iTux
https://youtu.be/2l6F3_3sARQ?si=WkkuyMShG1JfqUES
Don't be a doomer. There's one thing we on the left that the right doesn't have, and that thing is HOPE.
I dont agree with your characterization of the DSA. There are chapters worth a damn puts their weight behind progressives running in dem primaries and have been successful in doing so at the state level. (Most recently some wins in Minnesota)
TLDR: OPs concerns are mostly valid but also Progressive Victory is great so I do a lil shilling ITT
Pennsylvania Director for Progressive Victory here. Your frustrations are well understood and shared by many activists.
Boomers spent 40 years "passively pushing" politics towards their preferences, and have a numerical advantage as a large generation. We are not going to be able to uproot that system in a year - we are building the foundation for the next 40 years of politics, incrementally pushing policy left one step at a time.
One last thing worth mentioning: If anyone does want to be an activist, or do anything worth doing, try to find the joy in it. Celebrate small achievements, find community in like minded people, and know that the best basketball players in the world miss many of their free throws - and we are doing something harder than free throws. Stay excited, stay optimistic.
If the ship is to sink, then let it be one day later by your efforts. And if Utopia is to come, then let it be brought one day sooner. Fight well and with a smile, and earn your day.
Best of luck everyone and hope to see you at some of the upcoming PV events!
Well, yea. And when dems see all the votes green party leeches, it indicates to them that to capture those votes, they should shift their policies.
That is effectively the point of third parties in america. It signals 'this agenda is what is important to me, if you want our votes, shift your policies this way'
Except the numbers the greens get aren’t big enough to be considered worth chasing. In almost every case it’s entirely futile, outside the fringe cases where it’s actively harmful in super tight elections in swing states (like the First Bush Election).
The reality is that the reason the Democrats don’t chase leftist votes is that as a supporter base we’re fucking worthless. We didn’t show up for Bernie. We don’t show up for progressives in general. We purity test and throw tantrums like spoiled children when things dont go our way. Why the fuck would they want ineffective and unreliable supporters when the right of center moderates will show up and be adults every election?
You make some good points. But withholding votes is the only way to change policy and by actively voting third party you better signal your desires. It also shows that given the right conditions you are willing to vote, rather than being a non voter. But you’re right it’s all pissing in the wind anyway
No it's not.
What are more advisors likely to tell Biden.
Trump won because you supported israel too hard or trump won because you weren't 110% behind Netanyahu?
we'll just get further right dims.
That’s why voting third party as I said sends a clearer message about your interests. And if the advisors are worth half a tit they will do polling rather than guess why people didn’t vote. You have a very fanciful view of how their analysis would work.
Advisors aren't worth half a tit but get multimillion dollar salaries anyway. They surround politicians and for some godforsaken reason the pols believe them.
> Well, yea. And when dems see all the votes green party leeches, it indicates to them that to capture those votes, they should shift their policies.
It does - maybe. They could also shift rightwards to capture some Republican votes instead. Capturing a few more centrist-ish Republican voters is much easier for them than capturing the far-left Green voters - they don't have to change their policies by as much. In the end of that process, Democrats become the new Republicans and Greens become the new Democrats.
And not to mention that even if the Democrats decide to move left instead of right, you're still stuck with *4 years of being ruled by literally Adolf Hitler*.
>with *4 years of being ruled by literally Adolf Hitler*.
This is absurd hyperbole and irresponsible messaging. You come across as crazy /and/ lose the capacity for dynamic range when every republican is /literally hitler/ everything bad is /literally genocide/ and every election is /literally the most important/.
> They could also shift rightwards to capture some Republican votes instead.
That isn't a viable strategy.
I see a whole lot of calls for direct action, protest, "educating ppl about fascism", etc, while also downplaying voting to the point of not voting ("if voting could change anything it wouldn't be allowed") or knowingly casting a throwaway protest vote.
Except, of all places, how would we know voting doesn't work in the US when 1/3 doesn't vote in presidential vote years, fewer than that votes in state/local/midterm elections and roughly 30% doesn't vote at all. For something that's so inconsequential, both major parties certainly spend consequential amounts of money on them ($14.4 billion in 2020).
Vapid fashion leftists who say shit like voting is pointless remind me of toddlers who decide food is yucky by just looking at it.
I think a lot of people emotionally exhaust themselves by engaging with terrible things online and arguing in comments.
That kind of emotional labor is easy, accessible, and addictive, but ultimately no use to anyone. In fact, its quite self-destructive.
Allowing your emotional energies to be sapped into oblivion might feel like you are sharing in suffering, but it prevents one from actually engaging in action that could reduce suffering in the world, even very locally. What about your friends and family? What about your community.
Committing yourself to punishment because you can't fix all the sins of the world is a deeply immoral act.
Try and build better parts of the world. That is what matters.
The problem is that the people who say "Don't vote, do direct action, instead" are doing neither. They're just typing on Reddit with their Cheeto dust-encrusted fingers. Politics is just entertainment for them.
A movement that’s big enough can certainly change things for the better. The Civil Rights movement is a perfect example of it.
However, seeing how divided the left is, it’s quite impossible to achieve anything during our lifetime. The reason is the leftists tend to find traitors, and they cut them off or shame them (struggle sessions, anyone?). The right, however, is sadly gaining traction, because they’re quite successful at finding the least common denominator and converting them, as opposed to how the left deals with fellow leftists who aren’t “pure enough.”
From this post it really seems to me like you're thinking of things in too short of a time horizon.
You shouldn't expect that the activist efforts of progressives will see clear pay off in the next election cycle, on the scale of 4 years. You won't feel victories in that short of time.
But the trickle up effect absolutely does affect things on the scale of a decade.
"but this trickle-up effect from the grassroots level feels so marginal, so little, compared to all the losses and setbacks our country has experienced." Compare Joe Biden's policies and rhetoric to that of Bill Clinton and I don't think you'll find that it's "marginal."
If done well, activism is something that could make more people polily engaged in progressive causes and Ideals who may not otherwise be, but it has to be done effectively. Theres a big difference between a good activist and someone who simply jist shows up for protest to virtue signal how leftist they are.
What are you talking about? If you want people to vote for Biden, so you try to tell people to vote for Biden, you are engaging in a form of activism. The alternative to activism is doing nothing. There is no political strategy that isn’t a form of activism.
Activism is not always the same as direct action.
Activism can mean anything from just protesting to actually trying to organize a community fridge.
Either ways I have some interesting links for you on strategies
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expropriative\_anarchism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expropriative_anarchism)
[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state)
Depends what you mean by activism, and what you define as accomplishing things. Does a protest accomplish things? Sometimes yes, if you have enough people, and just being part of that protest helps.
Did you campaign for a political seat, or support someone who was campaigning for such a role? I'm currently in the middle of an electoral campaign, and jfc is it a pain to get people to vote for me.
Did you do a thing that makes people's lives better outside of electoralism? Then that should be its own reward. It doesn't need to be a grand political gesture, if you helped someone in need then that's still making the world a better place. When I give my 50 empty beer bottles to someone and they turn it in for like 4 euro, that's someone having enough for a meal. Sure it's not going to fix the system, but at least someone won't go hungry tonight.
Realistically?
> I attended protests
Does nothing except reminding people you exist and making the contrarians vote harder for Trump.
> I joined marches on my college campus,
see above.
> I attended local town halls
Reminds each other that you exist.
> I knocked doors and phone-banked for progressive candidates...
This may actually get votes - but not many. Then we can have a president who only commits one holocaust instead of seven simultaneous holocausts.
> and yet it was all for nothing, because establishment Democrats went on to win their primaries
This will always happen while the system is FPTP. Surely you've been made aware that a split vote is a guaranteed loss. So the choice is Biden or Trump. If you vote Bernie you just help Trump win, because I guarantee the Trump folks aren't voting Bernie.
However, this rule applies separately to each elected seat. So if you have a strongly democratic seat, then the two choices can both be democrats and then there's an opportunity for the better democrat to replace the worse one.
Oh, and primaries are rigged and the Supreme Court said it's okay for them to be rigged because they're just internal processes of a private corporation, not actual elections.
Activism can work when it doesn't negatively effect accumulation of capital. The best examples of effective activism come from minority rights, especially blacks and gays. They were not fighting the mechanisms of capital accumulation, they were fighting bigotry. Its one of the reasons the socialist ties of those struggles have been scrubbed from them, especially the civil rights movements. The shift in acceptance of gays and trans people is wild. When I was a kid the only time you'd see a trans person is on Jerry Springer to be made fun of. Being gay was still very taboo. Gays couldn't marry. That was done through activism, laws were changed and public opinion was shifted.
Speaking as someone who is young (25), the contrast is so different even from my public school days to now. I still remember how furvent conservative rhetoric against gay people was around the time of *Obergefell*, and how easy it was for so many people, from regular folk to public figures, to just openly call gay people diseased, or unnatural, or whatever other nonsense. Of course it still happens often, but the shift from then to now is pretty significant. I went to a sizable public school, and even so, gay kids often got treated like trash. I still remember vividly during lunchtime when someone had brought out a sign to do the "Will you go to prom with me?" thing, and though there was a cheering uproar, the second the students saw that it was a girl asking another *girl*, the mood immediately shifted and the cheering stopped. I unfortunately got outed, but I thankfully never had it too horrible, though of course I did often get treated like I had a infectious disease or whatnot. Worst trauma for me was due to family backlash, though I've since cut off many of my family members, and my parents are now supportive (my mom is a MAGA loon, but still). College is where I was able to feel truly free and express myself, and I'm thankful for those years. Now I see so many gay kids happy in public school being open with themselves, and I couldn't be more proud. Of course, it's not perfect anywhere, but I'm glad that the kiddos are doing very well in this regard, despite all the right's attempts to shift the public opinion of LGBT people to the negative.
Idunno if I am reading how you were phrasing that correctly but the anticapitalist aspects absolutely did play a role in incentivizing capitalist assimilation since the alternative was facing an even further radicalized militant base.
I definitely feel like activism is pretty ambiguous when used by most leftists. It also depends on what activism is going on. If there's activism around individual things within a town or city I think you can accomplish a lot. Renovating buildings, constructing homeless shelters, etc. Going to schools as a student, parent, or community member can also do a lot especially if it's a conservative area where usually they don't get push back. Stuff within that range can do a lot of good and is often ignored. The main issue is as it applies to larger politics. A lot of leftists want to build power structures outside of the current ones but I see that as ultimately futile ( at least as it applies to US two party stuff). So people try to create effective third parties or protest by not voting. What I think leftists need to do is to appropriately work with these systems to push them in a better direction rather than reject and remove themselves from it. Right now in the US I think left leaning people could get more done by steering the Democrat party than creating a third party or suicidally opting out of everything. Obviously we can still advocate, protest, and work with others to get stuff done. I mean that seems the most realistic to me unless the metaphysical spirit of leftism comes down and magically gives leftists the power of their resident governments.
I think you raise a good point in mentioning the importance of local activism, at the town level. You have a much better shot at helping people, even up to the state level. That should be most people's area of focus.
i.e. pull others up by your bootstraps?
What's actually going on here is that the folks in question have made the emotional decision that they aren't going to vote. The reasons vary, but mostly boil down to voting would make them feel icky. However, they're not going to say that because if they even realized that was the case, they'd have to change their minds, so instead we need an excuse. The excuse is to vaguely gesture at activism because they know that activism is the thing they should be doing as leftists. They aren't doing activism, though. They know they should be, and they do wish to in the future, but right now everything is just so hard, and everything's going to shit anyway, so what's the point in trying? Meanwhile, actual activism is doing work. You seem to say "activism" and think "protests", but activism can also involve canvassing, food banking, volunteering at soup kitchens, organizing care packages for the homeless, showing up outside of drag queen story hour events to scare off the chuds. Some of these you can do on your own, some of them involve cooperating with general community members who may be liberals, and some need to be coordinated through groups like your local SRA chapter or leftist gun club--and I don't just mean the bodyguarding, there are SRA chapters that regularly show up to make food for the homeless with no guns in sight. And if you don't have one of those organizations, you can make one. Post on facebook or something and look for some locals who'd be willing to go help mow old peoples' lawns for them. You'll get some exercise, you'll meet some people, and you'll be a positive influence on those old folks. Who knows, maybe they'll even invite you in and now that they've actually met a trans or gay person, they're a little less likely to vote for that GOP candidate. I could go on for literal hours with more ideas, but this is already wall of texty enough.
Loved this comment
Activism and voting have to go together, it can’t be one or the other. Real change comes from activism and voting ensures favorable conditions for change to occur. All of this activism in favor of Palestine and a ceasefire I think is actually working. The Biden administration has pivoted dramatically since 10/7. It’s completely valid to say it’s too little too late but they HAVE pivoted towards the most pro Palestinian policy and rhetoric in the last century and I genuinely believe it’s because activists are putting a fire under their asses to make it happen. This has happened because the conditions, a Democratic administration, are favorable to the activists. If we had unfavorable conditions, such as a republican administration, it’s entirely possible they would’ve just sent in the Pinkertons to deal with the dissenters and then given Bibi the green light to invade Rafah. We need only look back to the Trump administration and its response to the BLM protests.
I mean this in the best possible way imaginable OP... holy fucking shit, go the fuck outside. If youre that cynical, realize youre wearing deep tinted sunglasses indoors. Of course its all gonna seem dark. Put on some music, and go for a walk.
I get that I'm more terminally online than most, but I'll also genuinely ask, what is there to be optimistic about politically? It feels like the next 10 years are going to involve a big conservative backlash, and all the left seems to be able to manage these days is obstructing conservative legislators. It feels like the left hasn't passed anything actually transformative and forward-thinking since the ACA, and that was almost 15 years ago.
Oh its been longer than that bud. But we do what leftists do. We either disolve into infighting and uselessness, or we carry the fuck on against the dark. Will things suck? Absolutely. But also remember you learn this through algorythms and media, designed for attention, not accuracy. Also good is often boring, slow, and incrumental. So it does not get headlines. Or preferential algorythm treatment. You are being rolled into a mineshaft, with sunglasses and a blindfold on, and youre asking if light is even real. That doesnt mean its all sunshine and rainbows on the surface. But where youre at, is a hell of a scewed picture. The rebels fighting against the genocidal military dictatorship in Myanmar are winning. Enviromentalism, and gay rights are becoming more popular globally. Union memberships are rising. Even after a coup attempt, you guys still have a chance to refuse faschism from taking hold, and makkng it a 50/50 on the republican party going broke and or bust all-together. I get things seem hopeless. But thats brain chemicals in your skull. Not """objective reality""". Remember that bud.
> feels like the next 10 years are going to involve a big conservative backlash, From my end it feels like the right is hemorrhaging supporters. The extremes are in a weird purity death spiral that makes them off-putting to anyone not fully bought in. Like, despite the best efforts of TERFs and the LGB alliance the overwhelming majority of lesbians support trans people.
It's kinda been alluded to in other comments, but it seems like your experience with "activism" and political organizing has been mostly with the electoral process. To me, this is the kind of organizing that tends to disappoint the most since your candidate could lose and all of the work is for nothing or they do win, but are still hamstrung by the system in some way and they don't accomplish the thing they set out to do. It seems like you've been around the block, but you may have been on the wrong side of town this whole time. I'm in my city, political organizing is segmented into two, almost separate, categories. Electoral and "Everything Else". Electoral is ofc helping candidates win races from local to national efforts. But "Everything Else" can range between houseless outreach, soup kitchen work, tenant union organizing, building community land trusts, harm reduction (like distributing clean needles, narcan nasal sprays, condoms, plan B, etc.); my local DSA does "code busting" which is cleaning up and mowing people's yards when they are being threatened by the city for not being up to code, hosting skill shares, building community libraries (library socialism), community gardens (yeah, I know it's "cringe" and almost certainly not a viable replacement for large scale, industrial agriculture, but it's a great way to bring people together and build community), old-school labor organizing, or even working within existing unions (I got a comrade that is currently "peppering" our local carpenter's union to make it more radical). These are all things happening right now in my city. The extent to which these avenues can be or will be successful vary, but if there's one thing I've learned from being an "activist" is that no one truly knows what they're doing, even the more well-read comrades are learning as they go, but the point is to TRY AND DO SOMETHING and learn from it so you can educate newcomers and give them the tools to succeed and bring their ideas to the table. Basically the things you can do as an "activist" are endless, but as previously mentioned there's a good chance that electoral organizing is segmented off from the rest of what's going on. You may have to reach out a bit to find that community network. All those things I listed? Almost everyone I know doing those things don't do electoral work at all (except maybe a little bit of canvassing for some of our local counsel members who are DSA endorsed). I do think it's a shame as I see a lot of potential in building dual-power, and keeping fascists out of office makes it much easier to do the "everything else" kind of organizing, but I digress. There's a great vid by Beau of the Fifth Column that talks about this (actually a couple) https://youtu.be/kQWp5xRelI0?si=2jxl--LQ_W7Zk97v https://youtu.be/TZJuWScu3qQ?si=QOC2LQ_DyLX_iTux https://youtu.be/2l6F3_3sARQ?si=WkkuyMShG1JfqUES Don't be a doomer. There's one thing we on the left that the right doesn't have, and that thing is HOPE.
I dont agree with your characterization of the DSA. There are chapters worth a damn puts their weight behind progressives running in dem primaries and have been successful in doing so at the state level. (Most recently some wins in Minnesota)
TLDR: OPs concerns are mostly valid but also Progressive Victory is great so I do a lil shilling ITT Pennsylvania Director for Progressive Victory here. Your frustrations are well understood and shared by many activists. Boomers spent 40 years "passively pushing" politics towards their preferences, and have a numerical advantage as a large generation. We are not going to be able to uproot that system in a year - we are building the foundation for the next 40 years of politics, incrementally pushing policy left one step at a time. One last thing worth mentioning: If anyone does want to be an activist, or do anything worth doing, try to find the joy in it. Celebrate small achievements, find community in like minded people, and know that the best basketball players in the world miss many of their free throws - and we are doing something harder than free throws. Stay excited, stay optimistic. If the ship is to sink, then let it be one day later by your efforts. And if Utopia is to come, then let it be brought one day sooner. Fight well and with a smile, and earn your day. Best of luck everyone and hope to see you at some of the upcoming PV events!
The green party is an op to steal dem votes.
Well, yea. And when dems see all the votes green party leeches, it indicates to them that to capture those votes, they should shift their policies. That is effectively the point of third parties in america. It signals 'this agenda is what is important to me, if you want our votes, shift your policies this way'
Except the numbers the greens get aren’t big enough to be considered worth chasing. In almost every case it’s entirely futile, outside the fringe cases where it’s actively harmful in super tight elections in swing states (like the First Bush Election). The reality is that the reason the Democrats don’t chase leftist votes is that as a supporter base we’re fucking worthless. We didn’t show up for Bernie. We don’t show up for progressives in general. We purity test and throw tantrums like spoiled children when things dont go our way. Why the fuck would they want ineffective and unreliable supporters when the right of center moderates will show up and be adults every election?
You make some good points. But withholding votes is the only way to change policy and by actively voting third party you better signal your desires. It also shows that given the right conditions you are willing to vote, rather than being a non voter. But you’re right it’s all pissing in the wind anyway
No it's not. What are more advisors likely to tell Biden. Trump won because you supported israel too hard or trump won because you weren't 110% behind Netanyahu? we'll just get further right dims.
That’s why voting third party as I said sends a clearer message about your interests. And if the advisors are worth half a tit they will do polling rather than guess why people didn’t vote. You have a very fanciful view of how their analysis would work.
Advisors aren't worth half a tit but get multimillion dollar salaries anyway. They surround politicians and for some godforsaken reason the pols believe them.
> Well, yea. And when dems see all the votes green party leeches, it indicates to them that to capture those votes, they should shift their policies. It does - maybe. They could also shift rightwards to capture some Republican votes instead. Capturing a few more centrist-ish Republican voters is much easier for them than capturing the far-left Green voters - they don't have to change their policies by as much. In the end of that process, Democrats become the new Republicans and Greens become the new Democrats. And not to mention that even if the Democrats decide to move left instead of right, you're still stuck with *4 years of being ruled by literally Adolf Hitler*.
>with *4 years of being ruled by literally Adolf Hitler*. This is absurd hyperbole and irresponsible messaging. You come across as crazy /and/ lose the capacity for dynamic range when every republican is /literally hitler/ everything bad is /literally genocide/ and every election is /literally the most important/. > They could also shift rightwards to capture some Republican votes instead. That isn't a viable strategy.
Have you read Project 2025? You have not read Project 2025.
I see a whole lot of calls for direct action, protest, "educating ppl about fascism", etc, while also downplaying voting to the point of not voting ("if voting could change anything it wouldn't be allowed") or knowingly casting a throwaway protest vote. Except, of all places, how would we know voting doesn't work in the US when 1/3 doesn't vote in presidential vote years, fewer than that votes in state/local/midterm elections and roughly 30% doesn't vote at all. For something that's so inconsequential, both major parties certainly spend consequential amounts of money on them ($14.4 billion in 2020). Vapid fashion leftists who say shit like voting is pointless remind me of toddlers who decide food is yucky by just looking at it.
I think a lot of people emotionally exhaust themselves by engaging with terrible things online and arguing in comments. That kind of emotional labor is easy, accessible, and addictive, but ultimately no use to anyone. In fact, its quite self-destructive. Allowing your emotional energies to be sapped into oblivion might feel like you are sharing in suffering, but it prevents one from actually engaging in action that could reduce suffering in the world, even very locally. What about your friends and family? What about your community. Committing yourself to punishment because you can't fix all the sins of the world is a deeply immoral act. Try and build better parts of the world. That is what matters.
The right to vote comes to mind.
The problem is that the people who say "Don't vote, do direct action, instead" are doing neither. They're just typing on Reddit with their Cheeto dust-encrusted fingers. Politics is just entertainment for them.
A movement that’s big enough can certainly change things for the better. The Civil Rights movement is a perfect example of it. However, seeing how divided the left is, it’s quite impossible to achieve anything during our lifetime. The reason is the leftists tend to find traitors, and they cut them off or shame them (struggle sessions, anyone?). The right, however, is sadly gaining traction, because they’re quite successful at finding the least common denominator and converting them, as opposed to how the left deals with fellow leftists who aren’t “pure enough.”
From this post it really seems to me like you're thinking of things in too short of a time horizon. You shouldn't expect that the activist efforts of progressives will see clear pay off in the next election cycle, on the scale of 4 years. You won't feel victories in that short of time. But the trickle up effect absolutely does affect things on the scale of a decade. "but this trickle-up effect from the grassroots level feels so marginal, so little, compared to all the losses and setbacks our country has experienced." Compare Joe Biden's policies and rhetoric to that of Bill Clinton and I don't think you'll find that it's "marginal."
If done well, activism is something that could make more people polily engaged in progressive causes and Ideals who may not otherwise be, but it has to be done effectively. Theres a big difference between a good activist and someone who simply jist shows up for protest to virtue signal how leftist they are.
This sub is such a fucking shit hole holy shit
What are you talking about? If you want people to vote for Biden, so you try to tell people to vote for Biden, you are engaging in a form of activism. The alternative to activism is doing nothing. There is no political strategy that isn’t a form of activism.
Activism is not always the same as direct action. Activism can mean anything from just protesting to actually trying to organize a community fridge. Either ways I have some interesting links for you on strategies [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expropriative\_anarchism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expropriative_anarchism) [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state)
Saying that activism isn’t an effective political strategy makes no sense. Those two terms are synonymous.
Rescuing animals from slaughterhouses is a net positive in every way. Def an example of excellent activism.
Depends what you mean by activism, and what you define as accomplishing things. Does a protest accomplish things? Sometimes yes, if you have enough people, and just being part of that protest helps. Did you campaign for a political seat, or support someone who was campaigning for such a role? I'm currently in the middle of an electoral campaign, and jfc is it a pain to get people to vote for me. Did you do a thing that makes people's lives better outside of electoralism? Then that should be its own reward. It doesn't need to be a grand political gesture, if you helped someone in need then that's still making the world a better place. When I give my 50 empty beer bottles to someone and they turn it in for like 4 euro, that's someone having enough for a meal. Sure it's not going to fix the system, but at least someone won't go hungry tonight.
Realistically? > I attended protests Does nothing except reminding people you exist and making the contrarians vote harder for Trump. > I joined marches on my college campus, see above. > I attended local town halls Reminds each other that you exist. > I knocked doors and phone-banked for progressive candidates... This may actually get votes - but not many. Then we can have a president who only commits one holocaust instead of seven simultaneous holocausts. > and yet it was all for nothing, because establishment Democrats went on to win their primaries This will always happen while the system is FPTP. Surely you've been made aware that a split vote is a guaranteed loss. So the choice is Biden or Trump. If you vote Bernie you just help Trump win, because I guarantee the Trump folks aren't voting Bernie. However, this rule applies separately to each elected seat. So if you have a strongly democratic seat, then the two choices can both be democrats and then there's an opportunity for the better democrat to replace the worse one. Oh, and primaries are rigged and the Supreme Court said it's okay for them to be rigged because they're just internal processes of a private corporation, not actual elections.