I'm really grateful that I spent time in an organization that taught me real difficult messy inspiring beautiful tiring exciting grassroots organizing. I wish everyone on our side had that chance.
I came out of college organizing thinking that what we all needed to do was read Marx and fanon and shit and come up with the best and most revolutionary ideas, then find a coalition of people that thought those same lefty ideas and work with them exclusively. (Slight hyperbole)
What I found out is that college gave me an unrealistic idea of what actual change and organizing is. All the systems that you had convinced yourself you had dismantled in your own politics still exist in our base, and most haven't had the luxury of exclusive thinking about it.
The world is fucked and people are working 3 jobs and watching primetime television. The politics embedded therein are not necessarily conducive to what you might think is right or whatever
And this isn't disparaging folks at all. It is literally just an acknowledgement of privilege. You had opportunities to develop politically in ways that others havent - not because they don't want to, but because capitalism hasn't allowed them space to.
I worked with (no snitchin) black folks that blamed Mexicans for economic problems, people who thought gays we're destroying the family and the world, people who kicked out children for doing drugs... imperfect folks who are swimming in all the shit of the world.
My job was literally to organize these people. And help do political education. There wasn't an option of just saying "where are my Marxists?!?" and rocking with those people. We were organizing from a standpoint of building the base.
Part of that analysis conceded the fact that some folks who are in our base may have not had the political education that would be ideally desired. And that means they need to be worked with.
Honestly, that shit is humbling. You don't have all the answers. AND! You can't win by yourself or with your lil band of currently like minded individuals. No matter what you think about what needs to happen, you probably must concede we need more people on our side.
It also stops from fetishising or falsely identifying attributes of our base. I learned all of the terms I toss around are NOT universal! Workers, it turns out, believe a whole host of things that were imposed upon them by our shitty system!
"People of color" believe a whole host of things imposed upon them by our shitty system! Certain categories are more likely to agree with you or be organizable, but it certainly isn't ubiquitous. My god the number of stories in this lesson are infinite.
BUT! It's totally understandable that ppl who haven't done that work (and are possibly politically great still) would not fully get that. It's shocking (and depressing) to hear a victim of capitalism spouting back at you the most capitalist talking points about why you're wrong.
Id say that contradiction and complication is important.
We need ideas for sure! We need people thinking about what a 21st century socialism is! We need people thinking about policy solutions for the fucking myriad of problems we face. We need professors and phds and thought leaders
But what we really need is people! And if that means doing more organizing and political education of our people and moving towards a critical mass, that's what I want to devote my life to.
So in summary, please spend time if you can in organizing people who are actually in a base who wouldn't just organically come out to your meeting. We need more people bringing more folks in. And have some patience and nuance for the world we're trying to build.
And if you can't spend that time, ensure you're actually taking leadership from people who are. There are some cool folks doing the damn thing!
I don't believe in many things. I don't trust many people. But I believe we can build a new world. I trust all of us to figure it out. I know someday we'll all be free.
I'm increasingly convinced I won't be hear to see that. But, again, I'm devoting my life to setting us up for us to win in the future.
❤️
