While there are plenty of spaces for debate, news commentary, “political internet culture”, memes, and so on, I still haven’t found a single community dedicated to any form of collective action, either IRL or in digital spaces. There are some communities dedicated to unions, but it seems mostly news commentary and very little action, educational material, events, or projects to plug yourself into.
I understand that the core user base of lemmy might not be the most prone to collective action, but I’m still surprised there’s nothing even on the most political communities.
Any suggestion?
There should be, i should make one
Genuinely, it makes more sense to join an org local to you than it does to organize over social media.
I’m part of many local orgs and I’m not talking about “organizing over social media”, but rather to discuss the topics surrounding the practice and theory of organization building with other people interested in the topic and practicing it.
Copying my other answer to your other response:
Oh, well there’s a decent deal of that, mostly on Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml. I even made an intro Marxist reading list and linked it on my profile, and share it frequently. There are several communities dedicated to learning and sharing.
I love giving advice on organizing, but I tend to agree with the other person that social media is a poor format for building long term collective action. The best place to share this stuff is with a union. I learned everything I know about organizing from my union CWA, including the classes needed to learn how to organize (they’re free and offered every weekend).
I’m fighting an unjust firing, and went to my union. When we had a violation of status quo, we turned to our union. When we’re unsure how to organize, our union forms a committee to figure it out. When we need more people, we recruit among coworkers. When we have an idea for political action, we talk to our local president to get it proposed during membership meetings. When we have questions we can’t answer, we talk to our executive board.
There is space for a community like what you’re proposing and I’d participate in it, but I don’t know how much active interest there would be.
Why would you go to Lemmy for that? I’m politically active in several local organisations and if I have anything to discuss about that I discuss it with them, not with random people on social media. This is just not the platform for that.
I think you’re right but I just keep chuckling at the irony behind your username and then your comment haha
? What irony? I don’t think the username of communism implies you’re… organising on Lemmy lol
You don’t see the irony there? In your username being communism@lemmy.ml and your comment being
I’m politically active in several local organisations and if I have anything to discuss about that I discuss it with them, not with random people on social media. This is just not the platform for that.
It just tickles my humor. Its not a dig at you or anything. Local organization is most effective.
Which part is ironic?
“This is not the platform to discuss organizing,” communism@lemmy.ml said.
Obviously there is more to their comment, and they are totally right. But it’s ironic because it subverts your expectation of what a user called communism@lemmy.ml would say
I think it’s perfectly in line, Communists more than anyone know that “organizing” on Lemmy isn’t practical in any way, discussing theory and the news sure, but not organizing.
it could be interesting for discussing the practice of oeganization, not for actually organizing through lemmy. Like there are forums for discussing self-hosting online services and so on.
Yep, there are good spots for that on Lemmy.
because the techniques, practices, assets, learning material and so on should circulate and the format of social bookmarking platforms like lemmy is good for that.
I have several telegram groups, discords, facebook groups, and slacks, together with traditional forums hat collect people from all over the world interested in organization building, facilitation, strategy development, tooling, and so on and so forth. On lemmy though, there’s very little and it’s a pity.
I guess my experience with open social media is that there are far too many radlibs who insert themselves into communist discussion spaces. On platforms like Twitter the effect is less bad as you can select who to follow and your followers will select themselves too. But the maximum extent of discussing organising strategies etc I do with online people I don’t organise with, is discussing things with a private Matrix group of some online friends who all have solid politics and are good organisers in their local scene (we mostly live in different countries). I think a lemmy community around organising would probably attract a lot of low-quality discussion, based on what I’ve seen of organising talk on public social media.
And I just don’t see the necessity of going beyond your orgs to discuss strategy. People do write articles about strategy you can share and discuss with your org, but we’ve never discussed social media posts about strategy. You can discuss union strategy with your union; unions should provide organising training to its members. Unless unions are practically nonexistent where you are and you’re starting from scratch, but at least here you can join the union for your trade and you’ll be trained on how to organise by union organisers. For non-union orgs, if it’s self-sufficient and large enough you can get plenty of fruitful discussion among your comrades, and it will be tailored to your specific context and organisation. I don’t even know what country you live in; how am I supposed to give you the most effective advice as an internet stranger?
I guess my experience with open social media is that there are far too many radlibs who insert themselves into communist discussion spaces.
I wonder if the easy win for this situation is to redirect any radlibs to designated communism101 communities with learning resources to avoid them derailing discussion among communists. That way, they’re not simply rejected and banned (that is, alienated and possibly offended) for their arrogance, they have an opportunity to learn without the community either getting annoyed or wasting time in arguments.
Exactly. Lemmy can be a cool place to discuss theory and check up on the news with likeminded comrades, but that’s close to the extent that it can handle with political organization. Actual org work is handled in orgs.
Actual org work is handled in orgs.
I fundamentally disagree. This mindset is why so many leftist orgs still operate through processes, governance structures, and methodologies invented when the horse was the main vector to transfer information. There are plenty of spaces to become better at organizing, and digital spaces to exchange expertise and grow are important.
You can use digital communication to organize large-scale orgs, I never disputed that. My point is that an open forum based social media platform is not going to be the vanguard of the revolution, or even a good union platform. Security and privacy are far too important for organizing, and social media is far too easy to attack from bad actors.
I’m not talking about organizing on social media platforms. I’m talking about learning, sharing expertise, and interesting material on how to build organizations.
Oh, well there’s a decent deal of that, mostly on Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml. I even made an intro Marxist reading list and linked it on my profile, and share it frequently. There are several communities dedicated to learning and sharing.
