I’ve seen a lot of US lemmynauts being clueless about what to do to improve things and fight against the political situation. I understand that it doesn’t come naturally if it’s not in your culture so I’ve written the following. Feel free to suggest better ideas, alternatives and so on:
Here’s what I’d do:
Join a union
Join a political party or an organization that is not one of the sellouts
Join any canal you can find that informs about protests, strikes and other actions
Educate yourself on the actual methods of protesting, what works or doesn’t work, what you should do or not
Organize these infos if needed and share them around
Equip yourself, take a dumb phone, take liquid eye cleaners droplets (no idea how it’s called in english), take something to cover your nose and mouth against tear gas, take some kind of eye protection
Learn your rights, what to do and learn a specific lawyer phone number (by heart) in case of arrest
Relay those links, organizations and everything around yourself
If it’s available to you and in line with your ethics, arm yourself before they confiscate weapons to politically awake citizens - and of course, start training yourself
This above is the easy part you can do from your couch. Then:
Follow and participate to your union/party/organization events/meet-ups/flyer distribution/cybermilitantism/…, try to help them in the ways you can. You have a car? Offer to bring food to the meet-ups. You’re following the news 24/7? Offer to set up a RSS feed or some kind of news aggregator with what’s important in your area and all the shit that’s happening. You’re good with computers? Help those that want it to install a linux distro instead of spyware OS…
It is very important to find or create networks of people around you that are decided to help improve the situation, as they can help you in case you need it. It doesn’t even mean that you have to join dangerous action (you define what’s dangerous for you), but even just signalling to the people that will act that they are not alone by being one more person in the group is already a boost for everyone, especially if you help them in some ways.
Then, as much as you can, participate in the group’s actions, and evangelize the group’s existence around you.
What if there’s no action? Try to push for it in the meet-ups. Start with something easy. Tracts distribution, door-to-door to offer help and support around your neighborhood and make the group known, sentry in your communities to signal ICE/dangerous individuals raids and presence, offer to be a contact or to help people that might be targeted next, create workshops to rewrite the constitution in a way that would make it better for everyone, organize debates where people of different opinions actually listen to each others…
The group needs to build confidence by actively doing something useful together. And it can stop here if people in the group have cold feet for more - it’s already great. Once the group is created and solid, it will be able to change direction if needed by the political climate.
Next steps if people are motivated: actual political activism. Protests, sit-ins, happenings, guerrilla urbanism, petitions, blocking highways, or going to talk to people in power… The research you’ve done in the first steps should give you ideas of what you can do, and how to do it.
Advice from a french protester: keep things joyful. Our protests are always a happy moment (up until the cops come and hit us), we’re singing, we’re dancing, we’re having fun. It shouldn’t be a chore to be there, and if possible the action should make people want to join you. It helps grow the movement, it helps grow the links between people, it gives a good image of the movement.
And what if there is no group like that around you? (Well I can’t believe there is no union, but ok.) Then build one! Start small, with people in your community, with people that work at the food bank, with people you’ve met at the No Kings protests or something.
You cannot succeed as individuals. This is political, and political is the action of the many. Join the many, help increase the many, create the many if needed. The more numerous you are, the stronger you will be.
The US labor movement has been so thoroughly crushed, this is a reality for many many people. It is heavily region and job dependent though, but many states have union membership around 2-3% they just don’t exist there.
Otherwise, you’re 1000% right. The hardest part is taking the first step.
It’s a real shame for unions then… but also, it means that they exist still. If you have nothing in your state you can still contact one in another state. They’ll have contacts of people in your area, or at least they can help you set something up.
And being in a union doesn’t mean that you have to actually show it and fight inside your own company (at least I hope it’s not like that in the US). You can help the union and participate in other actions not targeted at your company and noone will be the wiser about it.
And if by some weird bureaucratic US-only reason you have to disclose it, you can still contact them, offer support and participate in stuff without officially joining anything.
I’ve seen a lot of US lemmynauts being clueless about what to do to improve things and fight against the political situation. I understand that it doesn’t come naturally if it’s not in your culture so I’ve written the following. Feel free to suggest better ideas, alternatives and so on:
Here’s what I’d do:
This above is the easy part you can do from your couch. Then:
It is very important to find or create networks of people around you that are decided to help improve the situation, as they can help you in case you need it. It doesn’t even mean that you have to join dangerous action (you define what’s dangerous for you), but even just signalling to the people that will act that they are not alone by being one more person in the group is already a boost for everyone, especially if you help them in some ways.
Then, as much as you can, participate in the group’s actions, and evangelize the group’s existence around you.
What if there’s no action? Try to push for it in the meet-ups. Start with something easy. Tracts distribution, door-to-door to offer help and support around your neighborhood and make the group known, sentry in your communities to signal ICE/dangerous individuals raids and presence, offer to be a contact or to help people that might be targeted next, create workshops to rewrite the constitution in a way that would make it better for everyone, organize debates where people of different opinions actually listen to each others… The group needs to build confidence by actively doing something useful together. And it can stop here if people in the group have cold feet for more - it’s already great. Once the group is created and solid, it will be able to change direction if needed by the political climate.
Next steps if people are motivated: actual political activism. Protests, sit-ins, happenings, guerrilla urbanism, petitions, blocking highways, or going to talk to people in power… The research you’ve done in the first steps should give you ideas of what you can do, and how to do it. Advice from a french protester: keep things joyful. Our protests are always a happy moment (up until the cops come and hit us), we’re singing, we’re dancing, we’re having fun. It shouldn’t be a chore to be there, and if possible the action should make people want to join you. It helps grow the movement, it helps grow the links between people, it gives a good image of the movement.
And what if there is no group like that around you? (Well I can’t believe there is no union, but ok.) Then build one! Start small, with people in your community, with people that work at the food bank, with people you’ve met at the No Kings protests or something.
You cannot succeed as individuals. This is political, and political is the action of the many. Join the many, help increase the many, create the many if needed. The more numerous you are, the stronger you will be.
The US labor movement has been so thoroughly crushed, this is a reality for many many people. It is heavily region and job dependent though, but many states have union membership around 2-3% they just don’t exist there.
Otherwise, you’re 1000% right. The hardest part is taking the first step.
It’s a real shame for unions then… but also, it means that they exist still. If you have nothing in your state you can still contact one in another state. They’ll have contacts of people in your area, or at least they can help you set something up.
And being in a union doesn’t mean that you have to actually show it and fight inside your own company (at least I hope it’s not like that in the US). You can help the union and participate in other actions not targeted at your company and noone will be the wiser about it.
And if by some weird bureaucratic US-only reason you have to disclose it, you can still contact them, offer support and participate in stuff without officially joining anything.