Where are all the free childcare programs? The American left does nothing but throw protests
Where are all the free childcare programs? The American left does nothing but throw protests
The Panthers did free before school breakfast and after school babysitting and all sorts of actual community building like that. The PSL does protests and craft events and that's it. I guess providing consistent services is an order of magnitude more difficult than organizing marches but it just doesn't seem like the marches are getting us anywhere.
Both of those are very active projects that require an embedding in community, particularly a community that is going to be around for a while.
Most left groups in the US make no attempt whatsoever to build within and among a community. Many of the seeming exceptions get rerouted into a charity pipeline. They might call it mutual aid but it tends to be structured as charity with the money and labor coming from outside the community to simply provide a service for the most destitute inside the community, plus other little telltale signs. There is little work done to radicalize, incorporate, learn from the community itself, including the whole community, not just those deemed worthy of charity.
The other challenge is that communities are in transition. You try to set up shop somewhere and maybe 10 years later it's an entirely new set of people due to increased property values + increased cost of living + stagnant paychecks. To me this means you can't half-ass it, as you're going to need to create a resilient network that can move and connect across the new places people need to live and work.
But to me the main issue is that groups don't even really try in the first place. Sometimes this is even for ideological reasons.
I can affirm this with experience. My own personal hope is that because the American communist movement is just being resparked that it's simply smouldering in the kindling right now before really catching fire. which unlike a nice campfire, can take months to years to actually see results.
That said, like you've mentioned, having kindling catching fire - growing a connection to your community - is something I do notice is the biggest shortfall of the many communist parties in the United States. I also say that with the caveat that I'm aware that a lot of the actual groundwork of building connections tends to be more clandestine, interpersonal, and quite dull, so it usually goes unnoticed and unrecognized, so outside of my direct circles of knowledge and into the whispering void, I do know that this is occuring at a crawling pace in the U.S. So it'd be best to probably get used to seeing what we're seeing now for a decent while, or not seeing in this case.
Quite frankly I'm of the opinion we need more nose-to-the-grindstone communists, something I try to strive to be myself and help others I know work towards as well.
Quite frankly I'm of the opinion we need more nose-to-the-grindstone communists, something I try to strive to be myself and help others I know work towards as well.
Could you explain this a bit more? I've met enough comrades that got burnt out because their effort was not met with success. (This is a well-meaning question, I feel like it does not read that way, sorry)
“Mutual aid” is not transformative and so will not “get us anywhere.” Huey P. Newton called the Panthers’ stuff like that “survival programs,” which were meant to keep the poor alive/healthy until the coming revolution.
This is one of those radicalizing things I came across as a teen. I remember it went something like this:
"Charities are a good thing.."
"Why don't charities ever seem to solve problems?"
"Why do charities need to exist? Don't we pay taxes for this kind of thing?"
"Ohhhhh! They're pocketing the bulk of the money, and using the clout to get courtside seats at basketball games under the guise of 'awareness'?"
Even the most well meaning charity or mutual aid is still a band aid. Don't get me wrong, feeding, clothing and sheltering people is never bad. Grifting the families of cancer patients is. Looking at you, Susan Komen foundation
I think where things are in the US theres an arguemment for specifically survival programs and community building more generally whike perhaps not transformative, are probably the necessary step to "get us anywhere." Atomization is so extreme in the US that i think strategies like that might be the best to focus on for building a foundation that can built on
So what is the strategy to build a vanguard? The mutual aid is just a way to attract people to the movement, sure, but it's the best method of attraction there is.
Protests are good for agitation but the christofascists have so many well established, well funded churches any revolution would immediately be taken over.
The problem is a lot of the groups who do mutual aid in the US are also ideologically opposed to forming centralized vanguard parties.
Yep, the survival programs were explicitly for "survival pending revolution." They were never the ends themselves but merely a means to an end.
It's non-trivial now. There's a lot of regulation of facilities, lot of licensing, lot of shit. People don't trust anyone with their kids bc of decades of media propaganda. The alienation and destruction of community we all experience extends to people with kids. Folks don't know their neighbors, they don't live in the same neighborhood very long.
All the conditions that make things shit right now make community child care very difficult. Not just caring for kids, but even getting the idea that people could be trusted to care for your kids off the ground. And people still do it.
they don't live in the same neighborhood very long.
Yeah this is a big thing, the American working class is far more transient now, people change jobs and houses far more frequently. The Bolsheviks were walking into villages that were 100s of years old, my neighbors seem to change every six months.
Pretty sure because the government has made it illegal or really expensive to do those things. You will go to jail if you try and feed the hungry without the right permits. Not to ensure that all involves parties are safe or being safe, but because the State has decided only it can decide who can feed the hungry.
But then what is the plan just do protests and book clubs until we magically build a dual power structure?
Same thing applies to childcare. There are a lot of rules and regs that make it very expensive to establish and run a child care operation. Idk if the penalties for doing it "wrong" are civil or criminal, probably varies by jurisdication.
My mom is a preschool teacher, she's done everything from an aide to even owning a daycare for a few years before giving up due to the insane laws, especially the ones passed in the wake of the Satanic Panic.
It is a very hard industry to be in because of how hard it is to take care of other people's kids and that you can easily be persecuted for the lightest mistakes and the business you work for shuttered.
Now, leftist could get away with in home daycare. Essentially the parent waives a lot of protections because the kids are being babysat by a "friend" but it gets more and more grey the more kids are involvedm
I was thinking about this today in the sense that there are so many leftist podcasts, but you can't name a single leftist leader who comes from that sphere, and is organizing on a big scale. The best ones that I'm aware of are the Trillbillies. They at least walk the walk with community outreach. They even took time off from the show during that big flood to help people out.
The rest of them do what? Come up with an hour and a half of glib reactions to the news every week?
Here are people that a lot of us on the left have parasocial relationships with. The least they could do is some sort of Jon Stewart lib ass rally for sanity. Instead most of them sell expensive tickets to bougie ass venues so we can listen to them fart into a microphone
Tune in next week where I interview some random twitter book author about exploitation where we end the podcast with a call to “organize”
Maybe if we're lucky, they'll link the bail fund for the protestors at cop city
Podcasts are entertainment and news. Propaganda. Education. You shouldn't be looking to podcast celebrities for neighborhood and city level organization.
Why not? That's exactly how people with a literal microphone obfuscate their involvement in any movement.
"The country is fucked and here's why, but really at the end of the day, we are just some silly bros who have the ear of an entire base, what clout could we possibly have?"
Bad message. Just like on here when people suggest we use this as a platform to spread information and organize them a bunch of people come out and say "nah, this is where we shit post"
There will never be organization on any scale if everyone with a presence hands it off to a nebulous call to "organize".
I live in a town of less than 400 people. They're all right wing. Ive even tried starting the conversation, and got destroyed. How exactly should I "organize" when I'm getting my ass kicked by capitalism, have to work a job with a bazillion hours and still manage to get my own shit done?
Why do the chapo boys who have to be millionaires with basically unlimited free time and a platform get to skate in the duty?
The Revolutionary Blackout folks all do organizing as well, they feed people, give out clothes and other necessities, and are even building a community library. They're expressly following the example of Fred Hampton and the Panthers. So there's another podcast/YouTube channel that walks the walk.
I am unfamiliar. I'll give them a listen!
Thanks for reminding me of that one. I enjoyed a few episodes before the Youtube algorithm buried it.
I guess providing consistent services is an order of magnitude more difficult
I mean if you know why the Panthers did provide school breakfasts, you're probably aware that it's more than a matter of simple organisation. The American state has nearly a century of practice crushing leftist movements, so just going out and doing something to make the world a better place will paint a target on your back.
On top of that, mainstream media doesn't report it. Even when things do get off the ground, they're either incredibly local and won't turn up in national news, or will be explicitly ignored by the media because of their leftist roots. Protests are big and disruptive enough - and involve specific press releases about the event - that they usually have to be reported on, even if it's negatively, so you hear about them in a way you'll never hear about mutual aid programs.
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DSA and IWW did work to get universal preschool passed in Multnomah county (Portland OR)
this is very illustrative: in Fred Hampton's time does anyone think it was very well known and publicised that the Panthers were doing that? i'd wager 90% of Panthers coverage was about brandishing guns, arrests, & clashes with police.
Everything is spectacle. Those are the conditions. Leftism is a fandom. Things will have to significantly change for a lot of people for anything to happen.
You have to get out there and do stuff. It's hard because people have jobs. There was a surge in mutual aid organizing during the pandemic, in large part because a lot of people had more free time. I would say that if you have the time and people for a regular book club, start doing some community outreach. Find a need in your area, and help with it in some way. Call it mutual aid, call it charity, call it helping your neighbors. It's a way to interact/build positive relationships with people we need to develop class consciousness within. Don't beat them over the head with ideology, but don't hide it either.
The only active 'left' group I see in public in my area are part of some well funded Trotsky communist group. They will have a table telling people to join a communist political party but they charge money for even a tiny sticker, it just gives a bad impression that they don't even have a flyer or something to hand out, or actually do anything helpful for anyone around.
I am part of a (not-well-funded) Trotskyist group and the stated reasoning for charging for papers and buttons and stuff is that people are more likely to read a paper or put a button somewhere important if they paid for it. I have a drawer at home full of free stickers. We have leaflets that are free though.
But you should look on social media and ask around. I know about a bunch of orgs in my area that I've never crossed paths with organically.
Don't worry about them. Start something yourself if you need to. In my experience, there's a lot of people out there that are just looking for opportunities to get involved. If you build it, they will come kind of thing. Please resist the urge to bring sectarian frictions into your organizing though. Focus on broader aims.
When I was in college free childcare and tutoring where things we'd help the community out with, I think its a more local small niche thing than any large org per say.
We're very much in a building stage, providing awareness, a sort of tilling the soil for conditions in the core and it moves very slow since conditions we're in are comfy for many who would otherwise be totally in (this will change in the upcoming future), we're dealing with such propaganda and oppression even a free afterschool tutoring/food/whatever program or shitposting on an obscure forum makes the bourgeois tremble and drop fat checks and pull all the legal and illegal ways they can to make it stop. Societal economic changes don't happen overnight.
My excuse? I’m getting a degree and training to become a white collar tech worker. The mindset is a mixture of hatred for the violent, imperialist country I live in and still chasing the bag. The cope is that I would reach a comfortable position and “donate” my money to people who are actually useful to society to do the work. It’s rather pathetic because the western, capitalist notions of “charity” and individualism have infected me in ways I don’t know how to recover.
It’s unfortunate that fascists have claimed the “good times make weak men” bullshit, but I find it to be true. Relatively good times, created by a the murder and exploitation of millions across the world, have made me complacent and complicit. It has made me lazy. It has made me weak.
Much of the militant left actions are being done in exploited countries in the global south. They have to witness the the violence and exploitation imposed upon them by people like me and they either fight back or perish. I’m not saying I would automatically be like them or that I would be a successful organizer if I was working alongside them, all I know is that my priorities and mindset would change. And I’m not even working for the MIC or ever plan on it - I work for customer service on a computer, and I still truly mean it when I say “violence and exploitation imposed by people like me.”
I’ve worked manual labor before and currently have family in manual labor. Nothing has made me more hateful of humanity than when I worked there. Sometimes it was the coworkers. Sometimes it was the customers. But primarily it was the physical and mental toll, and I never stayed long enough to “organize.” Yet it was the only times where I felt everyone around truly understood what it’s like to experience the bullshit dealt by glorious capitalism. Now I’ve been spoiled by getting paid the same or even higher wages as a warehouse or outdoor job while sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours, and everyone is too comfortable to rock the boat.
I don’t encourage anyone to fetishize poverty, but you have to be aware that escaping it can do great harm to your mind. It’s the labor equivalence of paying off all your debts and your credit score drops. Labor aristocracy brainworms are real. The PMC brainworms are real.
Relatively good times, created by a the murder and exploitation of millions across the world, have made me complacent and complicit. It has made me lazy. It has made me weak.
Why would any person do more than necessary? Isn't one of the goals of communism to achieve self-determination for all? If there are no options available to you that allow you to pursue your own interests (e.g., living without violence), are you at fault?
I'm angry at this system, which prevents me from self-determination, which prevents me from living such that I do not cause harm to others. But I'm not angry at myself, I'm neither lazy nor weak, I'm powerless to determine my own life.
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i've been thinking about this lol, is there a handbook or something on the communist side of things that tell you what to do - cause i am so lost with all this stuff
Most of the leftist organizational writing is regarding armed struggle and political structuring. Few, if any, are about financing and legalese.
All the best organizations undermining progressivism and liberties are laundering money and financing violence and legislation through shell corporations and dark money. I think many of us, myself included, are still stuck in the “civility” stage and getting held back trying to do any of this shit in an honest fashion.
ahck yeah, i was talking with some lad in an activism group and i'm like, are we suppose to have fun doing activism? we're exhausting all legal routes and working within the confines of our system, so that we know we have no other choice - but i honestly just feel like a liberal.
was listening to proles of the round table with deathnography and he was saying "yeah the activism in hong kong was fun, and all the dude were like lowkey communists" and i'm like where is the fun, how do we have fun?
but ahck also stuck in the civility stage here
Fundraising by doing crimes is real, real, real, real hard these days. The fbi, treasury, and irs have better tools thant they did in the 60s and 70s, you can't really make any money robbing banks, smuggling cheap consumer goods isn't really viable. To launder money you've got to have money coming in from somewhere. There aren't a lot of sympathetic criminal enterprises that need someone to run their money through the laundry right now.
Shit man even in the internet I’ve maybe heard 3 other people mention PSL, not all that many, not all that grouped together, and thus not all gonna be able to come together to help out large communities consistently (especially those you’re talking about DAILY and at the same time and for free. That’s just an unpaid job. Hard to get people to do that cuz people gotta live.) Doing activities people are interested in participating in or getting people together for a protest on occasion are WAAAAAY easier than having a consistent set of volunteers who are willing to continually give up their free time to their communities. Especially if those are people who may already be doing so in other ways.
I suppose they could take donations and use those to pay people to do so, but that’s barely “free” especially in a party that’s very small.
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Your question is entirely fair.
Now, you couldn't pay me enough to get near someone else's kid in a semi-organized fashion but without the requisite employment, background checks, insurance, etc. etc. etc. No sense borrowing trouble.
But "direct action" !== "destructive action," contrary to the belief of some. We need more being the change.
Dunno, I'm too busy ensuring kids aren't homeless. I'm running myself ragged on that one already.
DSA and a few other non-explicitly communist orgs in my area do this