There are many people who have been posting about wanting to mobilize and become more engaged in mutual aid and organizing in my local subreddit. People are starting to become more desperate and are waking up to the fact that marches and solidarity protests and voting only do so much and they want real change. But many are probably Dems/Liberals who are just coming around to this since Trump won the election. So they have hardly any political consciousness whatsoever and some may still be turned off by the words “anarchism” and “communism”. Though I think more people may be sympathetic to anarchism than ML, Lenin is still bad and scary to them I’m sure. Even Marx.

The discourse has actually been kind of sympathetic to alternative politics in forms of upvotes and such, so I am compiling a list of mutual aid groups locally and nationally that are doing on the ground, tangible work besides electoralism and I want to gather very digestible reads/podcasts/etc. to put into this resource list.

I am looking for Democratic Socialism resources, Anarchism, Socialist, Communist, Trans liberation, Indigenous liberation, abolition, organizing, stories about apolitical-represented sources regarding mutual aid, analysis of how Democrats & Republics go hand in hand etc. etc. ANYTHING to push people left, regardless of how milquetoast it may be. Whatever started to de-worm your brain that’s perhaps a notch left of Bernie. Extra points for resources that are more focused on examples of organizing as opposed to strictly theory based stuff.

If there are particular episodes of more radical podcasts to listen to, all the better. I think ideal texts and such would be where the author critiques their own beliefs and finds faults in them, but can argue the benefits of it as well.

A couple ideas I have as of this morning are:

  • People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
  • The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
  • Second Thought Podcast (Haven’t really listened but it seems like a decent primer. Specific episode recs welcome)
  • Blowback (So dense but riddled with primary sources and relatively unbiased)
  • People’s Guide to Capital (by Hadas Thier, quick and more focused on labor solidarity than revolution)
  • Why Marx Was Right (by Terry Eagleton. Haven’t read but was what pushed Breht from RevLeft to claim himself a communist)
  • Possibly Dessalines’ essays on github
  • DragonBallZinn [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    30 days ago

    It’s an old boomer favorite but I still swear by it: What’s The Matter With Kansas by Thomas Frank. Also Howard Zinn’s A People’s History Of The United States. I named my username after the guy + my favorite anime and it really opened my eyes.

    However, a lot of people might not be interested in books, considering dropping literacy rates in burgerland (idk if this is the same trend elsewhere), but a good web series is Adam Ruins Everything: 99% of the reason why whatever Adam is saying is bad actually is because of corporations. Even on his recent podcast called Factually! He has critiqued capitalism itself on more than one occasion. If there is one concise video on why communism is superior, I love Noncompete’s video called Capitalism is a Friggin’ Scam. Keep in mind this was made in 2018 during the big Breadtube boom.

    I do think there’s some room to be had for a bit of pop marxism for lack of a better term as the first part of the pipeline.