You voted. Great! That’s pretty much the base level of participation in a democracy! Which might be why you still feel anxious and relatively powerless. What do you do next? How do you get more politically involved, especially if you don’t have a lot of time or money?
Try Rebel Steps, a limited series podcast about how to get politically involved, particularly in leftist politics, though its lessons apply to multiple ideologies. It’s a two-hour intro to political organizing, split into seven short, friendly episodes. Here are my favorite lessons from the series.
Find the right level of involvement
In episode 4, “Join a Team,” anarchist Sarah talks about developing a browser extension (No Platform for Fascism, which helps people report hateful content that violates YouTube’s terms of service). Anyone can download the extension and do a little low-effort, low-commitment political work. But the organization behind the tool involved closed-door meetings among people who could trust each other.
This strategy of multiple tiers of involvement, each group given responsibilities appropriate to their level of trust and commitment, works for a wide variety of projects. Don’t rush in too fast to start your own group; look for existing groups where you can help out, and figure out how deeply you want to get involved. You might find you’re most comfortable one or two steps out from the center of an organization. You’ll also see that not everyone can immediately get in the middle of every planning meeting. Political groups have to watch for government surveillance and attacks from opposition groups, so they can’t invite every new member into sensitive strategic meetings. As with any human relationship, you need to build trust before you can expect full access and responsibility.
Work in the right medium
Several sources tell Liz that they’ve abandoned one medium for another when it comes to taking action. You need to choose your medium based on your target audience, your skill set, and your appetite for risk. Sometimes a print zine makes sense, but these days a blog or a Facebook page might reach more people.
And it’s not just about abandoning IRL activity to get online. If you’re talking to younger people, you’ll choose Instagram, Snapchat, or Twitter over Facebook. But you might also choose to recruit on campuses instead of outside offices.
In addition to your goals, think about your skills and risks. For example, wheatpasting posters might not be an option for you if you’re concerned about getting arrested or hassled, or if the only design you know is MS Paint. You might choose to make GIFs and memes, like the dank political commentary that Data for Progress tweets out between its scientific graphs and charts:
Tweet may have been deleted
Tweet may have been deleted
Question the familiar modes of involvement
My biggest personal takeaway from Rebel Steps was that donating to charity—which seems like the ultimate in irreproachable goodness—isn’t always the most moral use of your money.
Donations are good and they’re useful, and you don’t need to feel inferior to those who donate their time! But you should consider donating to mutual aid projects. At the surface level, these projects work like other charities. But they avoid a lot of the paternalistic, strings-attached practices that some charities carry out, like requiring recipients to attend religious services, or somehow “earn” things that should be basic human rights, like health and shelter.
Mutual aid recognizes that we live in a broken system, that accepting help shouldn’t mean sacrificing your dignity and autonomy, and that the giver is not morally superior to the recipient. So they focus on the actual needs of the recipients, instead of carrying out the agenda of a rich donor, a corporation, or a government by manipulating those in need.
It’s hard to question basic assumptions like “giving to charity is always good,” because it’s hard to even recognize it as an assumption. And it’s not like you have time to systematically question everything you believe, re-establishing that the earth is round, 1+1=2, and you’re not actually in the Matrix. This is why you research. To effectively research, you need to read viewpoints that challenge you.
They don’t have to be radically different viewpoints, though those can certainly be helpful. You should study the history behind the beliefs you identify with, and you should listen to people more directly affected by political decisions than you are. They necessarily have to pay more attention than you do just to get through their lives.
This research is a one-way flow of information: you’re listening, not debating, because you’re the one trying to educate yourself. Read some things that you disagree with, and instead of debating with the author, debate with yourself. Sometimes you’ll re-affirm your current beliefs; sometimes you’ll change your mind. Now go and do something about it.
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