Activism is not cold-calling.

Activism is not cold-calling, and this is critically important to understand.

I'm seeing a lot of posts on here about 'building bridges' and 'finding community,' and then (extremely valid) response posts saying "BUT HOW??" And I'm going to explain something that can be very counter-intuitive: there is strategy involved in community.

As a longtime volunteer labour organizer, I’ve taken and taught many trainings on the strategy of talking. Something that surprises a lot of people is the very first thing you do in a union campaign. You sit down with your organizing committee, take out pen and paper, and literally map it out. You draw a physical map of the workplace: where are the entrances, exits, break rooms, supervisor offices. Essentially, ‘where is it safe to have a union conversation.’ Then you draw another physical chart of your coworkers. You sort out who is union-friendly, openly hostile to unions, or somewhere in the middle, and then you plan out very deliberately and carefully who talks to whom and in what order.

Consider: If Vocally Leftist Jane walks up to Conservative David and says "hey what do you think about unions," David is going to shut down immediately. He's not inclined to listen to Jane. But if Jane talks to Moderate Jason and brings him into the fold, then Jason is a far more effective strategic choice to talk to David, and David may actually hear him out without an instant reaction.

IMPORTANT CAVEAT: If Conservative David turns out to be Alt-Right David, and could be dangerous to follow organizers, we write him off. We are not trying to reach Alt-Right David. We are trying to reach Conservative David, who may actually be persuaded to find solidarity with other employees as fellow workers. Jason is a safe scout to find out which one he is. It does no one any good if Leftist Jane (or even Moderate Jane who is a visible minority) talks to Alt-Right David and puts herself on his radar. Not only has she done nothing to convince Alt-Right David to join a union - she's probably actively turned him against the idea - but now she's also in danger and the entire campaign is at risk. NOBODY WANTS THIS. Jane was NOT a hero for doing this. The organizing committee was foolish and enacted a terrible strategy to everyone's detriment.

Where you can make a difference is with people who will listen to you. You having a conversation with your well-meaning but clueless Centrist Democrat Auntie, and maybe gently helping her understand some things the media has been glossing over, is way more strategically useful than you marching up to MAGA Neighbour You've Met Once and trying to "build community" or "understand" them. They don't care. They're impervious, dangerous, and cruel. But maybe your beloved auntie will think about what you said, and then talk to her friend Anna who IDs as "fiscally conservative" but didn't vote because she can't bring herself to get on board with Trump. Then perhaps Anna talks to her brother Nic who has MAGA leanings but isn't all the way there yet. Proto-MAGA Nic would not have listened to you, nor would he have listened to Centrist Democrat Auntie, but he might absorb some of what his sister is saying.

This is not a cop-out or an echo chamber. This is you spending your time and energy strategically and safely. You are not a useful activist to anyone if you’re dead. Anyone who is telling you to hurl yourself directly at MAGA assholes like cannon fodder has no understanding of the strategy behind community building, and you should feel comfortable writing them off.

Last point: If you are tired, emotionally devastated, and/or in danger: take a break. This post is for people who would feel better jumping into action, not for people who are too overwhelmed to even think about it right now. You are worth so much even if you’re not actively Doing Activism, and your rest is worth more than “a break period so you can recharge and Do More Activism.” We all deserve the individual dignity of being worthy of comfort, rest & safety just on the basis of being human, outside of whatever we're doing for others' benefit. To deny ourselves that dignity is to devalue ourselves, and that’s the absolute last thing any of us should be doing right now.

tacking this screenshot to every single cannibalism dog metaphor pomegranate poetry/purple prose post i see on here

were so back ‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

Taza de café y cigarrillo, 1950.

JOHN GUTMANN

swimming with sharks

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

If your response to the information "an alarming number of people simply cannot read well enough to function in the society that was built around them" is "wow I'm so much better than them" i think you need to kill yourself

It's not like education will fix every problem but it is almost certainly one of the most important things to push if we want an improvement in material conditions for everybody. Writing off your auntie because she gets overwhelmed trying to decipher densely packed text and "professional" language is not going to build a better future for anyone.

“male loneliness epidemic” and “friendzoning” are similar concepts to me in that the conditions they describe are literally experienced by everyone at some point in their lives but when its men its some sort of profound injustice that needs to be rectified by checks notes giving them unfettered access to the public good that is Women

also the former "epidemic" being taken up in pop discourse explicitly or implicitly as a pathological consequence of feminism having "gone too far" instead of actually doing the work to connect social isolation to existing material conditions....no no don't worry about it just default to blaming women for men's sadness and dissatisfaction bc otherwise you'd have to confront capitalism and misogyny and white supremacy etc. etc. and nobody wants to do that so. its somehow very aggravating and boring at the same time. whenever i see think-pieces that follow this script i instantly fall into a furious slumber

and you just know that half the incel ass boys & men complaining about friendzoning and loneliness have either written off/mistreated "undesirable" girls & women who have shown interest in them in the past, or they have just grown so incapable of seeing girls & women as real human people that they go around treating them like brainless gumball machines whose sole purpose is to dispense sex but only if you press the right conversational buttons. or both. anyway i know where the buttons are and i can reveal them to you for the low price of $90/month. please subscribe bro i promise im not a grifter

on this day in history | the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald (10 November 1975).

Official Post of Massachusetts

tbh i think acting like being a feminist w any spine and not coddling men is somehow transmisogynistic IS transmisogynistic . trans women are my sisters and the patriarchy and male sexual violence and misogyny effect them just as much as they do me if not more so. you are literally just calling trans women men in a roundabout way.

SEVIKA and JINX in

beauty through photobooths

Josina Manu Maltzman for Feygelech for a Free Palestine, L'Chaim Intifada, 2003