Thread by @maddogpac

Do you really think that you’re going to have one day of action and undo 45 years of right wing incremental plodding along? No. That’s what really got us here, people like you who are too lazy to show up for more than 1 day ever. Organize your community.

https://twitter.com/richardwhitem16/status/1540972833802801153?s=12&t=39Ow1WPeJ55oOeQkijV9RA

We don’t just need you to vote to #UnfuckAmerica .
We don’t just need you to march.
We don’t just need you to donate.
We need you to show up and help organize for the boring races, in the off years too, and attend the meetings. Call your reps regularly. From now on.

IOW you need to PARTICIPATE REGULARLY in the unsexy non presidential year races. You need to call reps. You need to attend candidate forums. If you’re seriously about a better world you need to show up for the grunt work too. You don’t go in and immediately get put in charge.

You don’t go in as a new activist and immediately start telling them how much you think they’ve been sucking at this job. Because you haven’t shown up before to know any context. You won’t be paid because Dems aren’t GOP and don’t have that crooked big $ budget.

Oh are we losing you here? You don’t want to show up to put signs out or canvas door to door or phone bank for the state insurance commissioner race? Have you stopped to consider what a state insurance commissioner can do to protect people? Are you looking at the bigger picture?

But wahwahwah we hear you complaining that you need faster action! Sometimes this is a valid concern. Sometimes you are frankly expecting a magic wand. It all gets done faster if YOU show up and participate. But it won’t change sh!t if you only march for 1 day.

The labor protections for people in places like Europe are far stronger than we have here which makes a general strike a cruel joke for a lot of people in “right to work” red states. Do those people deserve to be consigned to be abandoned? Hell no.

It also doesn’t help long term to get your brains bashed in by cops at a protest and/or locked away under draconian anti protester sentences. What does a lot more is to organize precincts and take over local governments, bottom up. You start with the dog catcher and move upwards.

This isn’t sexy work. It’s boring and guaranteed to feel thankless most of the time. It isn’t instagrammable quite like the shots of people holding witty signs. Protesting does have its place for short term action but it is ONE TOOL not the entire toolkit!

Protests don’t get the statutes changed. Sometimes you have to do that hard research and if necessary write the new statute your damn self and lobby for it with more than just your assigned reps. You have to be creative and never give up even after 100 no’s.

Sometimes it’s up to you to go find the person to run so the asshole Republican who’s been running unopposed for 20 years has to at least actually sing for his supper. Sometimes it’s YOU who needs to run for that office and make that personal sacrifice to serve your community.

90% of life, and of politics, is SHOWING UP. Not once every 4 years to vote for President. Not only for the big marches so you can plaster protest porn on your profile to make yourself look like the martyr you aren’t, but for unsexy thankless boring races in off-years.

State legislatures. Secretary of State races. Secretary of Agriculture too. THESE RACES HAVE REAL MEANINGFUL IMPACTS ON YOUR LIFE WHETHER YOU REALIZE IT OR NOT.

The right wing didn’t suddenly swoop in and do this overnight. We’ve seen these assholes at every poll line working faithfully to peddle their BS for DECADES NOW. We’ve seen them seeding their manufactured consent in deceptive ad campaigns for 40 years.

But wah wah wah I want it all now or else I am going to go home and pout in my privilege about the hopeless doom timeline we’re stuck in. Because that’s a great excuse to remove our own personal agency from affecting change.

Every last one of you out there bemoaning this shit need to remember how many people like Shay Moss are out there putting their time and sometimes their safety on the line to keep this democracy going.

We won’t disclose her name, but one very strong black woman activist we knew who passed away a few years ago, faced down KKK intimidation in Jesse Helms’ hometown. She never stopped trying even when she was dying of cancer, working the polls for Hillary Clinton.

The point is, we all have our reasons to stay home. To let it get us down, to give up, give in. Fuck that shit. None of the freedoms we’ve ever enjoyed were won to begin with by giving up and giving in and accepting the horrors of the status quo.

Get your asses up, dry your tears, and get out there and help the down ticket campaigns with all your heart and soul this year. We ain’t hugging anyone. We got work to do to save our future, and salvage our present!

Also, a word to established local party leaders: you’ll be flooded w new volunteers soon. Don’t be the asshole alienating new blood by trying to draw them into your old pre-existing petty fiefdom ego grudge matches you may have w other leaders. Now ain’t the time for yer BS.

We’re calling your asses out today too because we’ve seen a lot of people who could have been life long assets to the Democratic Party get alienated and leave altogether because they got disgusted with local leaders re-enacting Heathers.

The point here today, is, we have to get it together and put all the bullshit aside and recognize: women are on the real verge of losing citizenship rights altogether. Privacy rights being eviscerated for one class = privacy rights are gone for the rest too.

Women did not have the guaranteed right to own property solely in their own names until the 1970s. Have a bank account by yourself as a woman, or a credit card.

If you can’t make decisions about your own body what makes you think Republicans aren’t salivating at the thought of financial conservatorships for all women? Maybe that’s not such a wild consideration. Jamie Spears set a lucrative example.

Extrapolate that concept to all marginalized of society: queer people, people of non-Christian faiths, immigrants, people of color, Indigenous tribes… the fascist offensive is coming to make serfs of us all, and they would make themselves our unaccountable royal lords.

If you don’t fit a marginalized circle in the You’re Fukkked Venn diagram don’t worry they will triangulate you in eventually. So we need you to help #UnFuckAmerica too.