Mx. Luna Corbden 🐸Mar 25

It may be time for the Left to look at liberals (especially regular voters) as a caucus that we can lead. We don't need to be on the back foot all the time letting all the various sides run the world without us while we helplessly wring our hands and cite Marx and feel smarmy and right and holier than thou. This is the way of the passive doomer.

I'm going to word this poorly and my thoughts are incomplete because I need to save my writer spoons for paid work today. I at least wanted to put the seed out there.

With No Kings coming up, this debate is rising yet again about how useless and late to the party liberals are. Rather than the usual complaining (which is valid), with "don't split" being the best answer... why don't we give all that energy some leadership? Like yes, here you all are at last. Good to see you awake and ready to do something. Now let's go hard in THIS DIRECTION.

#USPol #NoKings

Show threadDavid Fleetwood - RG AdminMar 25
@corbden The issue is liberals constant efforts to force the left to water down their messaging and demands. I'm happy with converts, I am a convert, but I can't have them insisting we be nicer, policing our reactions to fascism or insisting we compromise with those trying to kill us.
Show threadMx. Luna Corbden 🐸Mar 25

@reflex Taking on leadership neither does nor encourages any of those things.

I do understand the issues we have with liberals, but our current attitude towards those issues seems rather fatalist or impractical. It comes down to whether we really do want change and think of some workable strategies for that, or if we just want to be the most correct people in the room and lord it over people to make ourselves feel better. Throughout my long, winding political journey, I've never seen much point in the latter. People who do the former are those who end up in charge of the world, and they tend to be the least principled.

Show threadDavid Fleetwood - RG AdminMar 25

@corbden My opinion is that we do the long hard work of convincing them, something many leftists refuse to believe we need to do. I do not believe they are looking to us for leadership, or are willing to accept it if we did. Spent too long as a Dem party leader to believe in that anymore.

We need to build functioning communities via organizing, take over orgs, and do the hard work of repetitively explaining what and why we are doing what we are doing. It's not glamorous.

Show threadMx. Luna Corbden 🐸

@reflex I think there are a lot of light-woke liberals going Full Woke at this moment in time. But don't really know what to do with that. That's what I mean by leadership. It doesn't have to be via the Dems. Lots of ways that could happen. My talents don't lean towards organizing, or Id' have something more specific to say about how that might look. But American politics has completely flipped on its head before my lifetime, where the established orders fall apart and something new happens.

Thing is, even liberals, when polled, want progressive or even socialist/communist policies, or even want the whole system rebooted. Dems are not providing what they want. That's what I mean by leadership. If that's a conversion effort to "The Left" or a new party or just influencers giving people the messaging we talk about on here all the time about mutual aid, etc. Rather than dismissing them, "Oh liberals are the problem." Most liberals don't even have the context to know what that means, and I don't see why they can't be given that context.

I do agree that a focus on communities is where it's at. Local is always where it starts. And this is where I'm a hypocrite. It's something I'm not very good at, especially given my disabilities. I have shown up at a few local things, and made contact with the human rights taskforce, etc. I do what I can.

Mar 26 at 12:13amWeb
Show threadMx. Luna Corbden 🐸6d ago
@reflex Or a shorter way to say it, using my cult-researcher language: the destabilization is already happening due to disconfirming events that many people can no longer ignore and that the messaging machines is failing to explain. Their old worldview, across the spectrum, is failing to explain what's happening. We need to be there to explain it. It will be easier now than ever.
Show threadMisuse Case6d ago

@corbden @reflex I find these “what do we do about the liberals” discussions kind of funny these days because it’s really not up to you. They are getting organized and doing things themselves, or they have already found IRL leftists they can work with.

Local anti-ICE action groups include people whose views range from “immigration enforcement should be based on due process” to “abolish all police including ICE” and they are not worried about the liberal vs. leftist divide right now

Show threadMx. Luna Corbden 🐸6d ago
@MisuseCase @reflex I get it. They can lead themselves. And maybe that's the way. And that it happens locally and organically. But influencing and leading people with intention is also organic. Saying hey, let's direct this energy to permanent long term positive change that seals up all the cracks people fall through, so that when Trump is out of power, these new activists don't all just go home, content to vote for moderate Dems for the rest of their lives. So we're still going somewhere when the worst of this is over. I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to do that.
Show threadMisuse Case6d ago

@corbden @reflex >> these new activists don't all just go home, content to vote for moderate Dems for the rest of their lives

I can’t speak for everyone everywhere but from my experience people who get into activism for one reason or another tend to develop a habit that outlasts the initial crisis or issue or whatever.

Or they have been locally active for a long time but were doing different things.

1/2

Show threadMisuse Case6d ago

@corbden @reflex Do you actually know what people you describe as “liberals” are doing in your area? What groups they are working with? Who the core organizers are?

It doesn’t sound like it. See if your local immigrants’ rights group or Working Families Party org has meetings or webinars in your area. Then you will find these people and see what they’re actually doing.

2/2

Show threadMx. Luna Corbden 🐸6d ago

@MisuseCase @reflex No, I kind of do. For starters, I'm in rural Idaho. I've been to the boundary county human rights taskforce meeting, get their emails and have interacted several times with the president, am on lists for orgs in the county south of here which is larger and more active. I've researched and written on here at length about the decades-long activities in this region to kick out the Aryans and KKK and the various ongoing contentions with active white supremacists here. I've also tried to reach out to the local Kootenai Tribe, and I've been reading up about their struggle. Plus lifestyle changes and trying to rewild my sister's yard.

As I mentioned elsewhere in these comments, I can't do as much as I'd like. Otherwise I'd be out there instead of posting here. I'm using up my spoons on mastodon threads today instead of working (I will still work and then I'll have PEM, which isn't any of y'all's fault, but I'm just hoping to show how thin my margins are).

So my failings aren't about my lack of knowledge or desire. I can't show up at my own town councils (I did try once, over zoom), and overextending makes me sicker. I'm not happy about that.

So I try to do what little I can, which sadly is to be a social media warrior and put my fleeting thoughts on here when I can.

Show threadDavid Fleetwood - RG Admin6d ago

@corbden I don't think you need to personally be able to do the organizing to make the point. Also, at least in the USA, white 'communities' are anything but and we lost the concept over generations. It's a problem that we need to solve that makes larger scale organizing difficult.

In reality we need to learn to be led, but good luck getting white people to do anything other than try to assume leadership, even on the left.

Show threadMx. Luna Corbden 🐸6d ago

@reflex I guess that's me projecting my helplessness and guilt. 🤭

I do seem to see more white people fully getting it now. And talking to other white people the way we need to be talked to. I've started doing it. I'm seeing people on YouTube doing it. Here (which is the weirdest echo chamber, I know, but when I see it mirrored elsewhere I know it's slightly indicative) I'm no longer seeing these long drawn-out platform-wide dramafests of white people punching down because they're hearing about the basics for the first time and they can't handle it. (It definitely still happens, but it seems like randos now instead of huge platform-wide arguments and dogpiles.)

Because what really needs to happen is we whites need to take responsibility for ourselves and change our lives, help those lagging see the need to change theirs. That's what we've been asked to do. It's not POC's job to woke us and then decide what our new improved identity should be. We've got to do that work, and it feels like it's time for that, too. We shouldn't be led by POC on that sort of thing because that sort of leadership is not rewarding — it's exhausting emotional labor. It's our job.

It's still a minority of white people overall who are in this phase, but it feels like a tipping point. Like that minority has graduated, internalized, processed, and are now putting what we've learning to use, and teaching our fellows.

In the end, it's really difficult to gauge such things. But I do try to get a sense of things.