While "don't panic, organize!" is a catchy phrase, what does organizing mean and how does it help us succeed?

As I hopefully answer that question in this post, we need to keep a few things in mind:

1. none of this works without an intersectional politic; we must have solidarity, trust and a willingness to engage with difficult topics
2. there are many ways to do this work; but make sure to also use proven methods for successful organizing
3. organizing is for everyone; accessibility, inclusivity, and thinking beyond our own circles are paramount for the movement
4. it's going to require effort; building resilient structures of friends, partners, and community members takes work!
5. sometimes it feels like everything sucks but do not be discouraged for very long; acknowledge moral injury and grief, know your support systems, and rejoin the fight when you're ready

Inspired from my previous posts on organizing and unions 101, I created this short and condensed guide of my understanding of organizing and how to do it!

Organizing is about connecting people to effectively make change and/or cultivate community and resources for the community.

I'm using organizing in a much broader context than some people do.

Not constrained to labor unions, organizing is how we can: build trust in our communities; wield power as the working class; form our found-families; forge a sense of solidarity and an educated squeaky-wheel confidence; and actively participate in creating the world we wanna see.

The work of organizing can seem overwhelming, but it's really just a bunch of small steps:

1. one on one conversations with people: listen to their concerns and help them get plugged into areas that matter to them
2. start with small asks to show up at community events, sign petitions, etc. We need to interact with the systems in front of us in order to have wins. Complaining about the existence of capitalism is ofc something we do all the time, but it can't be the main focus. Make people your focus.
3. use Signal group chats which allows people to mobilize fast, keep up-to-date on current happenings, and allows for asynchronous conversations. Start new chats and invite people to them. Get your inner circle into a chat.
4. educate ourselves and others with reading books, articles, attending talks and keynotes, and sharing your knowledge
5. always be organizing: know your bandwidth, prioritize based off your assessments and reflections, and keep chipping away at it

What we are aiming to be

Qualities of a good organizer from labor notes

• Effective organizers are good at their jobs and respected by the people theywork with
• They have the trust of their co-workers. Their opinions carry weight. When theyoffer advice, people listen.
• The best organizers are motivated by a strong sense of justice and clear principles.
• They’re responsible, honest, and compassionate.
• They’re confident, even courageous.
• Organizers must be good listeners. They know you don’t have to be the most vocal tohave the biggest impact.
• They bring people together, welcoming new co-workers on the job and looking forways to involve every member.
• Organizers move people to collective action. They don’t just solve problemsalone—they equip their co-workers to solve problems together.
• They put the interests of the group first, ahead of their individual concerns.
• They don’t operate as lone rangers. They respect group decisions.
• Good organizers are knowledgeable about their contract, but not afraid toadmit when they don’t know the answer.
• They can stay cool under pressure and handle stress and conflict.
• They’re willing to stand up to management—and they can inspire others to standup for themselves as well.

Don't freak out if you don't have all of these right now (I still have work to do on many of these).

This is our "platonic form" of an organizer: if we want to organize people, we need to aim to become these people.

Even if we are far away from this right now or feel overwhelmed, that's okay; start where you are!

"but Raven, im not a leader!" or "there is no way i could be those things" are phrases one could say, but lemme tell you something,,,,

the secret to organizing is that we all have these abilities inside of us.

We are all potential leaders.

No one is coming to save us.

We save us.

if you wanna change the world, this is how we do it.

organizing as a heuristic and guiding principle

our friends, partners, polycules, and queer spaces can be places we create trusted circles.

I want deep systems of care and community to be at the forefront of our thinking with this; we can make incredible connections, change, and life-long relationships with folks that inspire us, empower us, help us, and with people who love us.

socialize to mobilize

be an active voice in chats, ask people to hang out, and create new groups based on interests.

Example time. You could host a weekly queer movie night and invite a few folks over, maybe cook for them or maybe it's potluck style; and you automatically have a social event and an organizing event:

• people in the room talk and make connections
• various larger political and philosophical conversations can be had
• bonding and social cohesion can occur

as time goes on and relationships deepen, you now have an active group of folks who you are socially involved with---your friends and comrades---who can then: support each other with mutual aid, discuss or share information with each other, and build something full of joy, care, and compassion with each other.

you might be thinking: what? this is organizing?

yes!

Not all actions have to be big and flashy nor do they have to involve direct political action on the streets.

Getting involved in protest and direct action is only one facet of organizing and I hope you feel encouraged that you can start organizing community and structures of care right now.

However, I want to caution against complacency here and say that being plugged into larger structures like DSA is imperative at the same time.

The small group is the linchpin, the large group is the wheel, and the vehicle itself is the global leftist/progressive/socialist etc. movement

Things you can do to be a more well-rounded organizer

• if you are in the US, consider joining and attending DSA meetings
• read "Secrets of a Successful Organizer" from labornotes
• have basic medical training in first aid, CPR, AED, and tourniquet use: this gives you valuable skills, practice, connections, and communication specific things like closed-loop communication and SBAR
• find a picket line and stand out there with them to show our solidarity with each other, and best of all, make a friend!
• watch Deviant's talk on preparedness and building resilient systems
• start a book club focusing on books that talk about community, communication, relationships, labor, bias, political philosophy, etc.
• workout - don't underestimate the power of exercise (perhaps do this with a comrade!)
• watch politics streams or clips from leftists
• get on or start posting more to social media (fedi has cool ppl, come join us!) - creativity is important for this work
• take a break when u need it
• see a therapist
• work on creating better habits and don't forget about pesky time-management!
• acknowledge and understand moral injury
• learn basic mindfulness techniques
• practice your solutions with your team (ie do a mock drill of someone in an emergency and how you can show up for them)
• if you have a union, get involved with it!
• wear a respirator mask when in indoor crowded spaces

Questions I have received related or semi-related

This whole post was born out a signal group chat where there was a lot of discussion on how we do this work. Here are some questions from that group and my answers to them.

"how to do we fight misinformation, disinformation, and LLM's on public forums while maintaining privacy?"

If this is your passion, I highly recommend reading and particpating with groups like eff.org, wikipedia.org, and fightforthefuture.org.

Also, moving the people in your life largely off mainstream social media for things like Mastodon and Signal. Notice I didn't say entirely off of mainstream media, as a lot of groups still unfortunately organize on Instagram, so we should have a type of presence on those platforms, but they can be secondary or checked occasionally instead of driving societal behavior.

This should go without saying, but don't use ai chat bots and create a culture of calling-in people on their use.

how do you find communities that engage in real political change?

Look at what is successful.

Does the community or org have a good history of effecting political change? What is happening in your city or state that you can do? What are things that interest you and how can you use that interest to organize? Does the org or community you're apart of make you feel included and welcome? A lot of research is needed to find this. Personally, I recommend and like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and my chapter in #pdx has done amazing things. But really, we have to do research, lurking, showing up to events to see if these spaces will work for us.

"how does solidarity lead to change? why would the elite do anything different, regardless if we're holding hands or not?"

people alone weak. people together strong.

history is full of examples of amazing people, banding together to fix or improve their job environments, their cities, their countries, and the world.

selfish people like the "elites" have no power to enact their will if we stand together.

"how does gathering all my friends in a signal chat fight the elite?"

on it's own, it doesn't.

the people in the chat fight the elite

Signal is a really good tool for our movement, but it does not replace the work of building relationships.

"when does the effective action start? who makes that choice? how bad does it got to be before people make that choice?"

effective actions are actions that are objectively effective after the event

we can use debriefing to establish what went well and what could go better in the future

we make that choice, hopefully in a democratic or even consensus-based fashion

people are making these choices everyday

"How do we connect people to these decentralized spaces BESIDES going in person and meeting someone?"

for accessibility, there are lots of orgs that do hybrid meetings, but we def need to prioritize this more across the board

#union #organizing #labor #leftist #dsa

For the love of everything, please DO NOT make a social media platform the primary (or ONLY) way you organize or can be contacted.

As someone who left Meta/X quite some time ago, it's really frustrating to try to find opportunities and being constantly told "oh, it's on Facebook".

#organizing #SocialMedia

Good live session later this week with @rootschange: https://luma.com/idi3b4sg?ref=rootschangemedia.com

As social media & news platforms are taken over and bent to the will of the ultra wealthy, anyone doing comms & outreach needs to get creative and move differently... Sam's work in this area is essential, practical, and inspiring

#Communications #Outreach #Organizing #SocialImpact

So what do we do? It's clear now that either we take down the system, or we all end up dead. How can we work towards the general strike that's the only hope of survival for ourselves and our children?

Does anyone know how general strikes in the past were started?

Do we print up signs and put them on telephone polls?

Start local groups to support each other when things start?

Seriously, what do we do?

#GeneralStrike #Politics #Organizing #Fascism

Several of the LLMs have produced inaccuracies which have been uncritically communicated to our customers by CrowdStrikers who failed to exhibit due diligence. Those errors were caught by said customers, and they were embarrassing to us all.
...
Now we have an engineer, if you can call him that, working on a project that will introduce more than 30k lines of AI generated code into our codebase, without a single unit test. It will be impossible to do a proper code review on this much code and it will become a maintenance nightmare and possibly a security hazard. I don't need to tell you how much management is cheering on that.

A ticking timebomb in the making. It's especially galling that CrowdStrike is doing this, given their epic fail just last year.

A while back I wrote in a post here:

under Taylorism the workers who actually do the work and know it best no longer have a say (opinion) in how that work gets done. Pseudo-scientific principles (scientific management, the astrology of MBAs) dictates all. Computers, from the very first, were intended and designed for this purpose.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #AgenticAI #tech #dev #computation #ComputerScience #labor #organizing