“Organize” has always been the “vote” of the left.
Organize how? With whom?
People avoid these questions because they can be divisive.
One thing people should consider doing if they have been out of a job is finding somewhere to agitate for forming a union. My local DSA has been working to set up these “roots” or “salts” at a large corporation in the area.
People avoid these questions because they can be divisive.
No, it’s because organising requires a set of more specific questions that need to be asked if you want meaningful answers, and contexts in which someone might encourage you to “organise” in general are not the same as specific questions about what to do in a specific area or at a specific time.
What’s actually happening is people are incapable of understanding the difference between general encouragement and specific conversations and debates. Now it looks like people want to have the same insufferable pushback against “read theory” but against encouragement to organise, which will be weeks of unbearable discussions and bad faith arguments built around strawmen so people can dismiss those who generally encourage learning and action.
I mean, it’s a bit of both, I think. There are plenty of people who will say “you gotta organize” and are unable or unwilling to follow up with specific examples of what they mean by that.
But you’re also right, in the way that a lot of the time people are saying a general “voting isn’t enough, you also have to organize in your community” as a general catch-all that includes a wide range of activities from mutual aid to education to direct action.
And we come online to make shitposts and jokes about it. Online, where these types of discussions can be pretty tough to get into detail about, like you mentioned.
