seriously. it’s not that big a deal. if people in gaza are still standing up to their oppressors every day then you likely have zero excuse for not doing more IRL shit (political reading and writing at home are good, but don’t mean anything if you’re not applying that theory as practice and then assessing the results and adjusting your practice accordingly).
Someone please spell it out for me: what does anyone mean by joining an org?
An org is just a group of people that do work together and have a name. It might be a political party, it might be a group focused on a specific thing that approaches it from a socialist perspective, it might just be four people trying to figure out what they want to do but they know it should be socialist.
You join one by talking to people and asking them if you can join.
Figure out the communist and communist-aligned groups in your area, get on their mailing lists, turn out to do the things they ask of you sometimes. Try to make a compromise between good politics, successfully doing things in the real world, and being a larger org. Find out which orgs meet those criteria by going to their things. Once you’re sure which org(s) are good, ask them how you can get more involved.
Let’s get this one out of the way: what are peoples hot takes on these orgs off the top of my head?
Joining a political organization that fights for better rights. In this context, a socialist org/party working towards building a socialist nation
An example would be joining the IWW. You pay dues, show up to meeting, talk about politics with people, and try to organize your workplace or help other people organize theirs.
A bunch of other orgs are basically like that, except instead of workplace organizing it might be electioneering or selling newspapers.
Hmm interesting. So IWW is a union, and I can join it, and potentially get its support if my workplace decides to unionize?
I’m in education, but not an educator, and so not in a union. Its a small dept, and I doubt it’ll ever unionize, the wage and benefits are probably the best in the state. I’ve never understood why the tech/office people in edu (in my state anyway) are always out of the union loop.
Yeah, that’s the general idea. The IWW has quite a few education workers, maybe you could find some common ground there.
This definitely sounds more productive then the DSA.
Not really something that is going to fly these days, you’ll just look like a Jehova Witness. Especially in Poland, for some reason the amount of them has skyrocketed in my city. Since we are living in the internet age, organizations should definitely learn how to use it to their benefit. Adapting to the times and all that.
That doesn’t stop orgs in my area! There’s even a few IWW papers, but they’re more directed towards wobs and other’s that already share our ideological leaning. But yeah, distributing newspapers isn’t very effective.