Thread by @hradzka

This is a good thread full of very fair points.

I am fairly one of the anxiety-inducers, but in my defense a few years back I made a whole essay about manageable things people can do (for folks who haven’t seen it, check my pinned tweet).

Nobody wants to do it, bc it’s boring.

https://twitter.com/MorlockP/status/1296162894590226433

Like the man says: "Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder, but don't nobody wanna lift those heavy-ass weights"

Organizing is like anything else: you have to decide what you want, and then work backwards.

Example: what would an effective organized right that actually responds to the desires of the Righty base look like? What could it do?

No, no, not like this

Ask yourself: what is something SPECIFIC it could do

If you want to be a bodybuilder, you cannot march out on stage at Mr. Olympia next week.

I'm not trying to be a downer stating this! It's a fact!

You cannot go from
1) You right now
2) You the bodybuilder

You need more steps. So think about what they are.

Professor Ronnie Coleman points out an obvious intermediate step:

* Lift heavy-ass weights

But before you can lift heavy-ass weights, you have to

* lift medium-ass weights

And even

* lift light-ass weights

So let's talk about where and how to lift light-ass weights.

Get a notebook and a pen.

(I'm serious. Get a notebook and a pen.)

First page: write down your name and your address. Yes, your real name and your real physical address. You're not doxxing yourself, wackos; you're never going to show this to anyone, least of all me.

Do it like you're a little kid: street, part of town if it has a name you know (ie: Brooklyn or East End or something like that), County, State, Country, the World, the Universe.

Circle your town name.

Then write your town name on another line in big letters.

Draw a line underneath it, and write your political districts under that. If you don't know, you can probably look them up online at your county registrar's office.

City council, precinct, water board. Boring stuff.

Depending on where you are, this may take a page or two. That's okay. It will be intensely boring. That's okay, too.

Because this boring task is to weed out the lazy.

Turn the page and give yourself a nice double-page spread.

Now you're going to write about you.

Left-hand page: write your name at the top.

Then do two columns.

One is INTERESTS.
The other is SKILLS.

Under INTERESTS, put stuff you're interested in and stuff that matters to you. Maybe you like MMA, or science fiction, or motorcycles. Maybe you like movies or novels or gardening. Put it down.

Under SKILLS, list things you can do: professional and personal.

You should also include on this page the really deep personal stuff important to how you see yourself. Try for three things. Put them by your name.

Does your religious faith matter deeply to you? List it.

Are you patriotic as hell? List it.

Unfailingly kind to cats? Put it up.

When you're done, stop for a moment. Look at your list. Think about what it says.

You are now going to ask yourself two questions.
1) "How can I use my interests to meet people?"
2) "How can I use my skills in cooperation with other people to shape the world?"

If you have friends who are already like-minded? Guess what: you're ahead of the game.

You are now a group!

Get them to grab a notebook and a pen and do this stuff, too.

Remember how I said you should think about specific things an organized right that actually listens to the normal righty base could do?

Turn the page and write them down. These are 10,000 foot goals. You want to work up toward them.

Then turn back to your interests and skills.

What are some things you see that could even in a tiny way get the world one smidgen closer to the 10,000 foot goal than where you are?

Oh, yeah, almost forgot: on the page next to your 10,000 foot goals, write "ASSETS."

Assets are material things you have that you can use for material benefit for yourself and others.

Maybe you've got a space you can use for meetings. Maybe you've got money. Maybe you don't just know about radios -- you've actually got a bunch of portable radios!

Okay, let's do a hypothetical:

Say you're a conservative lawyer. You wish there were a big well-funded right-wing legal apparatus that sued the living bejesus out of Hard Lefty operators and infrastructure!

You do not have time, or money, or power for this.

Well, what do you have? You have yourself. You have your legal knowledge in whatever area you train in. You probably have some connections in your local area and know a bunch of lawyers.

You cannot make a well-heeled nationwide organization. You can make a local one.

You don't have the resources or the time or the backup to sue Hard Lefty folks who are better connected than you into next week.

What can you do?

You can raise money.
You can gather information.
You can teach people about their rights.

I have an online friend of a couple decades' worth who is a lefty organizer and I broke his brain by explaining to him that there was no such thing as a right-of-center legal observer organization

Local legal observer training? Is something a couple of local lawyers can do!

It is not, alas, a well-heeled outlet suing Hard Lefties and their enablers into oblivion.

But is it one tiny step closer to that 10,000 foot goal than it was before? Yes it is!

But odds are, you're not a lawyer. That's okay; the world needs honest people, too.

Look at what you do, and what skills you have.

Maybe you've got a lot of time and you like research.

The essential first step in a lot of organizing is what's called "power mapping" -- figuring out who all the players in a situation are and their relationships with each other.

The mapping part can be literal; union organizers physically map the workplace and who works where.

But there are a bajillion hard lefty groups! Too many to keep track of! And they're scary and and --

Relax. Turn to your first page. Look at the word you circled.

You're going hyperlocal. Just focus on your town.

Here's what you want to know: what groups are there in your town? How big are they? What kind of stuff do they do? Look at the big groups active on social media, see what else the people liking their posts are into.

A community is less intimidating when you understand it.

You don't have to do anything big or public. Maybe you'll come across an interesting story you can pass to a friendly journo, but mostly you'll just learn stuff the press doesn't report about what people are actually doing in your town!

Your main goal, though, should be meeting people. Because the big problem with Righties is *we kind of suck at building community.* We build a purpose & maybe a community grows out of that, sorta, by accident.

If you like politics, here is a quick simple way to build community:

In case you haven't noticed, there is an election season going.

Political parties are kind of hyped up during election season, and they are looking for people.

So here's what you do:

Remember when you wrote your address out? And then did all that boring stuff with your political districts?

Go back to that page. Then look up the contact page for the political party you're registered with. Drop them an email.

"Hi, I'm [NAME]. I live in precinct XXXX."

"Specifically, my address is YYYY. I'd like to help turn out the vote this season and be part of any precinct work that is happening. Could I get a copy of my walk sheet? I'm happy to walk other neighborhoods, too."

Why this works: A volunteer who knows his or her precinct is a rara avis and will catch their attention.

A walk sheet is a list of people in your neighborhood (you will mostly get one for your own party or for the independents).

If you're a Republican in a heavy Dem area, you will be SURPRISED how many there are.

Most people aren't hugely engaged. Many don't even remember their political party registration. (Seriously.)

But you might make a couple of friends who want to start a notebook, too.

tl;dr:

It's good to have a 10,000 foot goal.

It's impossible to conquer your 10,000 foot goal in a day. Or a year.

So have a bunch of little goals. And if you pile them up, they stack.

The zeroth step is to learn to build communities again.

When you have a bunch of communities, the next step is connecting them with each other.

I am sorry you cannot go RAAAAGGGGHHHH and Hulk out and become Mr. Universe today.

So find a small thing you can do, and make some friends while you're at it.

/fin