yes this more this please yes
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 9:25 AM on July 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

This is everything.
posted by baptismal at 10:20 AM on July 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

If anyone reading this is near south-eastern Virginia and would like to help, please reach out to TITA (Tidewater Immigrant Transit Assistance) on facebook!!
posted by FirstMateKate at 11:44 AM on July 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

so i don¡¯t want to reveal my undisclosed location (and tbh am not as connected to activism right now as i¡¯d like to be) but it would be super sweet if people would follow firstmatekate¡¯s lead and post info on groups helping out in their neck of the woods.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 2:11 PM on July 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

Seattle/Western Washington state area: ReWA aka Refugee Women's Alliance.
posted by FallibleHuman at 4:59 PM on July 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

Hits post, immediately regrets not linking to the ReWA Volunteer Opportunities page instead.
posted by FallibleHuman at 5:01 PM on July 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

Mutual aid in the DSA

Free food program

Break light clinic

Medical debt clinic
posted by The Whelk at 5:24 PM on July 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

Bay Area Immigration Bond Fund
posted by rdc at 6:11 PM on July 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

Hell yeah. When I read Black Against Empire's chapters on the Black Panther party's focus on mutual aid / anti-eviction / anti-hunger programs, and then learned about the Young Lords' first major action in Spanish Harlem was the Garbage Offensive, I really had a lightbulb moment about what grassroots politics can encompass.
posted by spamandkimchi at 6:18 PM on July 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

Also just noticed that the video is posted by Dean Spade who is so very excellent.
posted by spamandkimchi at 6:20 PM on July 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

(Kropotkin).
posted by doctornemo at 6:38 AM on July 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

Dean Spade is great and this is great and as always, I suggest getting involved with your local prison book project, because they're awesome. I just made a longer comment about why in the political action MeTa, but here's the link to the list of local programs.
posted by karayel at 9:35 AM on July 24, 2019

How you do actually change things?
posted by The Whelk at 9:52 PM on August 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

Not a fan of this line from that "How do you actually change things?" link: "If you¡¯re strategically minded, plot how we can win." I've heard way too much from armchair strategists, usually men, who are brilliant at criticizing but they can't be bothered to put their brilliant ideas into action and test them on the front lines.

Jane McAlevey, in this interview by Season of the Bitch, puts it concretely:

34:50 "As an organizer, in the past the way I get around leftist debate is 'Shut up or put up. You go take that strategy & put it into practice. I want to see you put it in practice, & I want to see it work. If the strategies that you're arguing about in this meeting, if you stop arguing & go do them, if you show me that you can get your 100% at workers strike using the strategy & method of the perfect principles that you're reading somewhere & spitting out to me, if you can turn that shit into effective strategy, then I'll be interested in having a conversation about it. But if all u want to do is sit in a room & write & read, & debate something u wrote & read, & u can't yourself figure out how do you actualize that strategy, how does it go into a series of wall charts in a room where you're engaging thousands of workers, if you can't translate your strategy into direct action that's winning, then u need to pipe down & listen to other people.'
55:30 organizing teachers = how strong is the structure we're building in this school? Stage 2: Parents, do we have a structure in this school that's so tight that we can get 1000 signatures on this petition in 1 day? 2 days? 4 days? etc. Can we get to 95% agreement & is our structure great enough to maximize that agreement right away? Phase 2: Workplace structure is tight. Do we have a system in place to communicate effectively with students (ie their parents)? How do we know? Have we run a straight-up parent petition for parents to say We're standing in solidarity w teachers' demands? How do we build the parent organization? CAN'T just put out a petition for parents to sign.
58:00 so, How will this parent petition be a structure test about the capacity of the parents, school by school? Cuz the parents won't know how to do this (just like the teachers) unless we teach them. How do we build structure, how test it, how have the right people in position to hit ground running? Just like being a coach. Coach is not ON the winning team. They help get players in the best position --- help people understand how to be effective in their fight. Yes, even when we launch the parent petition to support the change & funding formula, our job is to also teach the parents & community around us how to build a powerful structure to build more power. 5K signatures on petition is just laying the framework to win the school based election that comes up next, cuz NOW u understand which parent can get shit done TOO (like u)."
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 1:21 AM on August 14, 2019 [1 favorite]