Choose your words

The way we talk to each other right now matters

Today I want to talk about how we talk to each other. Defeating fascism will take a lot of us. It’ll take a broad left, it’ll take people who are essentially not political (over 100 million people didn’t vote in this election, a number exceeding the vote total of either candidate), and it’ll take liberals. I will be upfront, again, that I think this moment requires radicality of us, and therefore requires liberals and people who have largely abstained from politics to move left. That’s not because of some grand ideological vision of mine, but because the harsh fact is that corporations and billionaires have wholly bought our political system, and meaningfully opposing them means embracing an approach that uplifts the power of the masses and pushes hard against capitalist power. This is the simple reality that led the first workers to unionize and resist the cruel exploitation of oligarchs — self-interest and self-preservation. The fact that this has been branded a radical left approach says more about who’s done the branding than anything else.

If you disagree with my analysis here, that’s okay. I hope to persuade you, not berate you. And that’s the first chunk of what I want to say today. As the blame game appears to be the number one priority of large swaths of the media and the Democratic Party apparatus, I would mostly prefer to avoid it, or at least to avoid picking out groups of people to blame. That approach feeds a little too neatly into what the fascists are trying to do for my comfort. What people do when they believe they have two bad choices is not an accurate summary of who they are. There’s a whole lot of people who don’t want fascism, they just want something to change. Polling for the number of people who want a viable third party reliably hovers around 60%, and two-thirds of people believe the United States is broadly on the wrong track.

And they’re right. That’s something we all know, or at the very least feel viscerally. This country is on the wrong track, and has of course now been set on an even worse one. As you might already know, I think one of our crucial jobs is to present a clear alternative to the far-right and the center-right, because as long as people view those as their only two political options they’ll either choose one or abstain — no one can join a political movement they aren’t aware of. And that’s where how we speak to each other comes in.

Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash

If we want to win we have to persuade, we have to be kind, we have to be thoughtful. I know that isn’t everyone’s first instinct right now, and that’s fair. But I see a frightening number of people focused on who they can tell to eat shit, when we urgently need to focus on bringing millions of people into a coalition that can beat fascism and ultimately build something infinitely better. I myself don’t just want to be right, I don’t just want to fleetingly feel better, or better than. I want to win. And winning requires bringing people with us.

I think fairly often about a conversation I had with a Black grandma at a church in my neighborhood. There was a large mutual aid fair happening in the basement auditorium, and I was at a table representing an abolitionist neighborhood group. As people walked around we’d have conversations, and folks would ask what our group was about. I never led with the fact that we were abolitionists. Do I want people, such as yourself, to have that belief and practice? Of course. But I don’t assume anyone is already there, and this grandma certainly was not. With her, as with most people, I tried to get a sense of how they felt about the police first. Then, eventually, I got around to the defund question. Because the term’s been in the news so much most people have heard of it, and a lot of people, including this woman, didn’t love it. She, like so many of us, wanted a safe neighborhood. And for her that meant police, because that’s the one option we’ve all been presented with by the state throughout our lives. But, she’d also experienced the negative side of what cops do to people. Before long she was telling me about a time a cop harassed her a decade or two prior. And I was saying that’s exactly why we have to take their money and put it into social work and schools. In the end, we agreed that we were each half right. When she walked away she had shifted her stance, even if she hadn’t become an abolitionist in 20 minutes.

I don’t need to tell most of you how far a cry that is from a lot of the conversations we see, particularly online. I’m not saying this one conversation is some perfect example, and there’s certainly a whole lot of organizers who have moved a whole lot more people than me. But we need to remember that most Americans aren’t reading political theory or going about their lives with deeply thought-out political convictions and theories of change. A lot of people have a much more vague sense of their political priorities, and are more motivated by the same things that animate most of us: the desire to have a decent life, be safe, care for their families and retire comfortably. It’s up to us to show how the left has what it takes to meet these basic needs and desires — and the good news is, we do.

Photo by Manny Becerra on Unsplash

Unions and community organizations and tenant unions have ideologies, but they are fundamentally about meeting people’s needs. They’re about transforming society in the long run, but the day-to-day looks like a lot of fighting for better conditions at work and in our homes and in our neighborhoods. When we fight and win those struggles it helps recruit people to our side. But that recruitment, and the process of making new people interested, helping them feel welcome, and giving folks the training they need is all full of interpersonal dialogue. We have to set aside egos, set aside the desire to be superior, lay down our assumptions and meet people where they’re at with humility. If you think a liberal should be a leftist, that’s fine. But if you’re berating instead of compassionately asking questions and inviting someone to a political education group you’re pushing that person away, not building a movement. If you think someone who has avoided politics is being selfish, you might be right. But that message will not reach a single person who needs to hear it. An invite to a movie night or a barbecue hosted by a community organizing collective just might get through.

If my tone here sounds like I’m now the one talking down to you, I apologize. Truly, I don’t want to speak from some hilltop that I shouldn’t be standing on. But I am gripped by a feeling of urgency, mixed with some alarm at seeing the viciousness of the blame game playing out right now. I know I’m getting that largely from the worst corners of the internet, but I’m also seeing it from near the top of the Democratic Party. It’s toxic and we need a healthy dose of compassion right now, both because a whole lot of people are struggling and because people go where it’s warm. We all go where we feel welcomed, and those of us on the left need to be welcoming a whole lot of people in right now. NYC-DSA, for example, has moved their next 101 onboarding to a bigger space because of the sheer number of people signing up.

There’s a lot more to say, and I’ll be trying to up my output and provide resources. But today I’ll start to wrap this up by saying that these imperatives don’t end when the organizing begins. Our organizations and the conversations within them must be warm as well. We can be militant to the opposition and kind to one another; in fact we'll be better able to militantly oppose fascism if we know and trust and care for one another. The far-right thrives on division and we have both the opportunity and the need to build a broad coalition that unites all those who reject hate and scapegoating and inequality and more. To do that we need sustained institutions where we treat each other with compassion and break down the culture where some people have knives out, ready to pounce on mistakes made by people with whom they are 95% aligned. Comradery and solidarity must prevail in our organizations and in the way we act with one another. We can and must model the world we seek to build with each other.

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Speaking of organizations, I want to add something a little different at the end today. I want to include both a few groups that I think are very worth checking out in this moment, and a few books that I think are worth reading right now. We need to find political homes, and we need to both educate ourselves and one another to develop to strategy and ideology that can win against fascism.

First, some organizations:

Dream Defenders: https://www.dreamdefenders.org/

DSA, check out your local chapter specifically: https://www.dsausa.org/

Dissenters, young people against militarism: https://wearedissenters.org/

Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, a place to contribute and volunteer to help build the union movement: https://workerorganizing.org/

For The People, a leftist project to defend libraries: https://www.librariesforthepeople.org/

The IWW, another place to consider if you want to join the labor movement and don’t know how: https://www.iww.org/

There are also immigration orgs, Palestine solidarity organizing, abolitionist orgs, abortion funds, and a massive range of great local groups. Find a political home near you, and get involved however you can.

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And here are some books that have helped me, and which I hope can help you:

Jackson Rising, to me this lays out one of the most comprehensive approaches to building what we need: https://cooperationjackson.org/announcementsblog/2017/9/21/new-book-jackson-rising-the-struggle-for-economic-democracy-and-black-self-determination-in-jackson-mississippi

Class Struggle Unionism: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1767-class-struggle-unionism

No Shortcuts, also on building the union movement we need: https://janemcalevey.com/book/no-shortcuts-organizing-for-power-in-the-new-gilded-age/ 

Let This Radicalize You, comprehensive and crucial to anyone new to organizing: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1922-let-this-radicalize-you

Abolish Rent, amazing tenant organizing 101: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2443-abolish-rent

Mutual Aid: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2722-mutual-aid

I’ll try to share more organizations and books regularly. And suggestions are always welcome. Thank you for reading, as always, and if you’re able to support this newsletter I am extremely grateful. I’m planning to consistently provide writing and resources that are helpful in this difficult moment where we need to gear up to resist. I hope it helps, and solidarity - JP