rain wrote on January 23, 2025 at 12:54 AM

Reply to comment by twovests in If you STILL aren't organizing, then you're part of the problem. by cowloom

Further, throwing away hobbies is not option [..] continuing to make art is an essential part of this

A hundred times this…

If you said, "Look up your local tenants union" or "Get a pistol permit" or "Take a first aid class" or "Put money toward mutual aid rather than toward video games", then that might be something.

…and this

(Though I’m going to interject that while giving money for mutual aid is awesome, spending your time in mutual aid is even cooler)

Not everyone is a front line fighter shock troop, and that’s ok - because other roles are needed too.

I'm also doing some things which aren't exactly illegal but I sure won't be talking about here.

Right?

Though in fairness OP did specify this wasn’t aimed at those who are already “doing what you need to do”. Still, keep your security zones siloed. Don’t break operational security, even for relatively minor things.

twovests wrote on January 23, 2025 at 1:23 AM

Though I’m going to interject that while giving money for mutual aid is awesome, spending your time in mutual aid is even cooler

Agreed 100%. The only exception would be rather contrived, e.g. someone in the enviable position of making a lot of money, and as a direct output of their labor. (I.e. Not salaried). But "hourly and makes bank" is pretty rare, and those people are usually hustle culture capitalists lol.

cowloom OP wrote on January 25, 2025 at 6:33 PM (edited on January 25, 2025 at 6:37 PM)

I addressed some of these points in my reply to twovests, but I wanted to address mutual aid here. I don't know what kind of mutual aid work you're doing, so if it's not what I'm about to describe, feel free to ignore this comment. But a lot of "mutual aid" that I've seen is usually something like giving out free groceries/supplies to hungry people, along with zines. And while it's a good thing to give hungry people food, ultimately it's just charity work, not a genuinely revolutionary activity. There's a really good video that talks about the difference between "red charity" work and organizing. My organization was stuck in the red charity trap for a while, and I tried talking to them about how we weren't actually building towards anything (including showing them the above video), but it took them a while to understand. Once they pivoted to tenant organizing, then they saw the difference between treating the symptoms of capitalism and attacking the disease itself, and they wrote a self criticism of their previous "mutual aid" work.