Social Activism in the Age of Trump: What To Do and What We Are Doing

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A Box of __________ Shipped to Your House Each Month

Everyone already commodifies activism, these people just try to make that work for black women especially. Go fuck yourself.

Why the fuck are you so angry at activist black women getting paid? What's wrong with you?

"for black women especially" -- by which they mean two black women in particular and nobody else.

i'm not angry this is funny to me actually

Guys, again, if you haven't, watch Shaun King's video about the boycott. It addresses some of your concerns. It's intentionally nebulous at this point because they only want to drop the where/how/when specifics of the boycotts just before they happen.

s.clover, why are you lying about it?

Can I please please please ask that we keep the squabbling to a minimum itt? I don't do much thread policing but I would personally prefer that this thread remain a repository for information and ideas and anecdotes and that we can avoid seeing this pop up in the clusterfuck summary thread. Thank you, sincerely.

i don't want to be armchair activism critic but the injustice boycott's self-comparisons to montgomery are imo confused or even disingenuous. that was a local, narrowly targeted, almost total, and extremely visible boycott, reinforced every night at mass meetings, supported by movement-organized alternative transportation, which was required because for many what was being boycotted was a necessity. w respect to the truth that the internet has since complicated the idea of "local" and the idea of a "meeting" i don't think you can expect anything like the results of the montgomery boycott from something this diffuse and general.

in fact i think comparing a virtuous change in one's consumption to getting up in the dark every morning to walk to work in deep winter while hoping nobody kills you for it is missing something. not just because They Endured More -- those sorts of comparisons not partic useful -- but because when there are that many actual bodies in the actual streets actually demonstrating their lack of dependence on their rulers i start to suspect some form of power is being exercised beyond the neatly economic. on the other hand, capitalism has assured me there's no better way to change the world than to buy a different soda.

don't mean to reject people's energy and action tho, by all means do this, do everything. and maybe when the secret plans are revealed i will feel differently. idk what those secret plans are gonna be tho besides some company names.

i support the woke of the month club as long as fred becomes a platinum member.

I tend to think the most important "activism" right now is actually rebuilding local and state democratic parties (or third parties like Working Families that will still support democrats when necessary). The only check on Trump's power will come from congress and from state governments.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive)

you're right that rebuilding local and state political organizations to defend human rights is one of the, if not the, most important thing people in general can do.

i think everybody has different skill sets, though, and not everybody can assist in every area. when i look at how the political system is run right now, you know, it's almost entirely populist. the local democratic party simply would not benefit from the support of a woefully uncharismatic wonk like me, because it already has the "benefit" of far too many of those. the best way to help the democratic party right now, for most of us, is to find the most charismatic person you know and persuade them to join up with the local party.

dlh, I would agree, but Shaun King wrote a bit about how much the boycott of North Carolina following the bathroom bill, and that does complicate the picture. This can of course work both ways - see: GamerGate - but a pointed, organized boycott could work if it was broad enough, and the news stories bad enough. We still don't have any particulars about the Injustice Boycott, which is bad in and of itself.

Old Lunch, I agree, and I've already asked s.clover to step away from the thread to self-copulate. I posted the tweet exactly for informational purposes, an example of social activism I find problematic as well, and a response that is nonetheless beyond the pale awful. Don't do this, and def don't do that.

xpost I walk by our local dem party office every day, and kinda feel like my personal skill set should be employed in making that place look like less of a depressive's nightmare. And maybe volunteer to park my ass behind the desk so that it doesn't perpetually look like they've given up completely.

I posted the tweet exactly for informational purposes, an example of social activism I find problematic as well, and a response that is nonetheless beyond the pale awful. Don't do this, and def don't do that.

this isn't "informational" it's prescriptive

One small thing I thought to do this weekend: I've been having a hell of a time finding information on formal and informal local government events (e.g. an upcoming meet and greet with the candidates being held at a church down the street and which, as far as I can tell, is only listed on the church's website), so I think I'm going to try to figure out who organizes this stuff so that I can keep in touch with them and maintain (or, if one exists already, help raise the profile of) a government-specific community calendar.

wins, this is a thread about activism. The idea that people might act on information is kinda baked into the premise...

One small thing I thought to do this weekend: I've been having a hell of a time finding information on formal and informal local government events (e.g. an upcoming meet and greet with the candidates being held at a church down the street and which, as far as I can tell, is only listed on the church's website), so I think I'm going to try to figure out who organizes this stuff so that I can keep in touch with them and maintain (or, if one exists already, help raise the profile of) a government-specific community calendar.

― i need microsoft installed on my desktop, can you help (Old Lunch), Monday, December 5, 2016 6:27 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This may not be the same thing but from experience I can tell you that the NYC City Council does stuff like this all the time--hold poorly publicized "public comment"-type meetings DURING THE WORK DAY when no one can come except other people who also work in politics/advocacy. If you suggest that they should hold them at night and advertise widely they look at you like you're crazy. I mean SURE, start going to things and see if you find them useful? You can learn a lot about different parties' agendas from sitting in a few strategic procedural mtgs.

I mean even if they're just theater, what you can tell is that the actual work is getting done somewhere else and that it benefits someone to have the theater continue, which gives you new avenues to explore.

Oh yeah and in relation to the electoral politics thread's mention of the Moral Mondays movement in NC, if you belong to a faith community, try to advance the idea of sponsoring a family or non-profit. Either with time, if it's service oriented like a food pantry or soup kitchen, or with member tithing/donations? In terms of reaching the people who can be swayed by red-state kinda BS, I figure totally righteous churches and faith-based groups that muscle up for justice can really move a lot of ppl with the presumed legitimacy of the church (or the Church, as it may be).

In the part of Brooklyn where I work a lot of churches do have food pantries or community closets for donated clothes, but afaict they don't publicize widely. Plus you have to go into a church to access the resource and a lot of the incoming community members are from other faiths so they just never find out that the pantries exist or are available to them. It's bullshit. Don't participate in bullshit.

Thinking about the Defund DAPL thing linked from the Injustice Boycott email. Honestly don't think I have the guts to pull all my savings out of JP Morgan Chase and find some other local bank that's not on the huge list of... well every major bank... but it seems like a good idea

I recommend local credit unions. recently (okay a couple years ago) got all our money out of the major banking system (including our home mortgage), which has been great.

I recommend local credit unions. recently (okay a couple years ago) got all our money out of the major banking system (including our home mortgage), which has been great.

― Οὖτις

yeah definitely recommend credit unions. honestly if all individuals pulled their money out of the banks they would do just fine because banks are really there for corporations, not for individuals, but that just reinforces the point that individuals should just go with credit unions.

http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/09/social-justice-activism-ableist/

every single one of those legitimate grievances would have been avoided if people weren't inconsiderate dicks. if you cut through the jargon it is really just a matter of narcissists excluding others. the way around this is surely to culturally stigmatise all narcissism? (increased visibility of disabled ppl would probably help too) [/ljsplaining]

I agree with louis. Framing all of this in terms of systemic oppression makes ordinary kindness suddenly tendentious and it's a dumb move

I have a hunch we will be witnessing a great many dumb moves in the activist department over the next couple of years

also, point 5 is sitting really badly with me :/

I'm assuming this is the thread that prompted the attempted online lynching of Fred B?

imago please explain why you have a problem with point 5? No sarcasm I want to know.

well obviously if people (esp non-hegemonic people) were being called out as 'oppressors' for innocently misusing terms then that's obviously horrific and dickish, but surely saying that academic language is the preserve of the privileged is in itself a form of othering? idk it just strikes me that so long as terms are explained, unpacked and respected then nobody's going to be left behind. this isn't the culture war that ought to be fought imo

Also lacking facility with this sort of obfuscating jargon is hardly a "disability."

yeah apologies to the author but it's hard to look at a sentence like Yet still it took me several years of intensive study to feel I had begun to master the nuances of concepts like cisheteropatriarchy. and not, like, roll your eyes a bit (not least because the concepts behind that word would take about three minutes to explain to an ordinary child)

guys the whole article is bad

I'm assuming this is the thread that prompted the attempted online lynching of Fred B?

― The Doug Walters of Crime (Tom D.), 6. december 2016 02:25 (thirty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think that was mostly caused by something being severely wrong with darragh.

That's a pretty ableist thing to say

HA!

I don't think that's funny.

Guy created a whole thread dedicated to calling me a c**t and saying I should be banned, with no reason given at all. There's something severely wrong with that, even if it's just that he's evil and hateful, and I'm not going to laugh about being treated like that. It's not ok, it's not funny.

I wasn't laughing at you Frederik, I know nothing of this ongoing beef, I just thought the article I posted was a little overbearing and enjoyed the usage of ableist.

xp

LOL maybe if you stopped being such a hostile dick to people at the drop of a hat, but at this rate I hope you hit 51 soon

seriously, go fuck yourself, stop posting, K3vin K OTM

you deserve to be mocked

(removes bookmark from thread)

It's not a 'beef' it's bullying.

Calling people c**t and f****t is not 'mocking'. Do you think I deserve that sleeve?

Ok darragh never said the latter.

I am not going to tell you not to be mad at deems but I don't think you really get where he is coming from. He was certainly mean to you but he's not a bigot

No, and I didn't say that. But I've been called that, and sleeve said I deserved what I'm getting. Do you think what darragh did was ok, treesh?

keep this act up and eventually everybody is going to agree with him

you're officially into the "paranoia is a self-fulfilling prophecy" part of the game

Do you agree with him, El T? Do you think it's okay that he called me a c**t?

Seriously, do anyone here have the guts to either a) say that what darragh did was unacceptable or b) that what he did was acceptable. There's no middle ground. Either it's ok to create a new thread to call me a c**t, or it isn't. I am PISSED that it happened, and that it's apparently probably something I just have to deal with going forward because a poster don't like what I writes, and this cowardice in saying if people are ok with it or not is pissing me off as well.

as far as I can tell a lot of those limitations are because they are enforcing *civil* infractions with these sweeps, which places significant restraints on what level of force/tactics they are allowed to use

did some canvassing for jessica cisneros again (progressive house candidate running against conservative dem henry cuellar) and her stafffer told me today that their polls show a tied race, so here's hoping she pulls off the upset

So - admitting I'm far too much of a coward to throw myself in front of bullets - what can be done to fight the inherent dead-ender shitstorm that's coming this week?