This is a very rough start for a guide to getting involved in activist work in your community. Please chime in with ideas! Many people are feeling at a bit of a loss as to how to get meaningfully involved and I wanted to try to offer some help.
The first step to becoming an effective activist is to become part of your communityāsomething you cannot do online or in isolation at home. If you donāt know anyone locally you probably wonāt be a helpful part of a network of resistance down the line except perhaps by lending monetary support online occasionally or phone banking for prisoners. In order to protect people in your community you need to establish yourself as a trusted part of it in some way shape or form.
Start small. Get involved in organizations that feed the homeless or provide meal trains for the sick, elderly, overwhelmed, or others that need it. Join a weekly trash cleanup crew in a local park. See if your local womens, lgbt, or homeless shelters need anything you can provide. One or more of these options usually exists even in rural towns.
- Check online for radical bookstores or community centers (some cities have lgbt clubs or community centers too) where you might start exploring local options or making friends with people who share your values. Even the local grassroots punk venue or garage show circuit might be a good avenue towards building community.
- donāt discount religious organizations only qua religion. Not all churchgoers (or church leaders for that matter) believe in god, and not every religious person supports the dark sides of their religionās history. Often these organizations are the only already organized ways to get involved in very rural areas. Some church or mosque supported soup kitchens try to evangelize their visitors but some do not. Test out a few. Trust your guts. Unitarian, Buddhist, and Jesuit organizations are often among the more secular-friendly side of religious charity work.
- many religious organizations support/sponsor a number of refugees who may be at risk under the current administration. You can offer to provide rides if you drive (to the grocery, to ESL classes, a carpools to school), prepared meals if you cook, yardwork, woodwork, piano lessons, home repair, english conversation practice, etc.
Join existing activist groups. Join already active resistance groups. In an urban setting there are many to choose from. In a rural setting there will inevitably be less options.
- āFriends of theā river/park/community theatre organizations are one place to seek community connections that can solidify into important networks of solidarity down the line. Ask about volunteer opportunities in your area on nextdoor.
- Even if you are not an environmentalist consider volunteering for local branches of the sierra club or similar to build a network with other activists.
Stay safe
Trust your gut. If you go to the first meeting and they are talking about doing something you totally disagree with donāt feel like you have to go along with it no matter what theory they spout, you can always find something else more in alignment with your morals. If you find yourself doing something to prove authenticity or that feels like initiation/hazing that is probably not a healthy organization. If all decisions are deferred to one person and you are getting a creepy vibe from them that is probably a cult. Use your common sense. Use the buddy system.
- If you involve yourself in anything that might seem remotely sketchy to an ultra conservative government be wary of your online paper trail which could be used against you. Before engaging in online organizing, please learn the ins and outs of online privacy. Do NOT engage on platforms like ig/fb/twitter and other known bad actors. Ensure any platform you do use is encrypted properly. See the thread below by @Anahkiasen@lemmy.blahaj.zone and the reply by @ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net for online safety tips.
etiquette
- Donāt expect people to always be grateful for your offer of food/resources. People are multi-dimensional and have complex histories. If you work with displaced people some of them will be intolerant or sexist. Just be kind, polite, and respectful to each individualās wishes once they make them clear. If they are abusive towards you exit the situation and let others in your group know. In many cases your group will be able to point out these individuals beforehand to avoid confrontation.
- Donāt try to immediately voice your opinions loudly, feel an organization out by watching and listening to decide if youād like to be a part of it. How do they deal with internal disagreements?, What are their priorities (as demonstrated by their actions? Their words?), Are they trying to control their membership in a way that comes off like bullying or grooming?
- There will probably be people involved in every activity you check out that you donāt like or donāt understand, or donāt find helpful. Someone who is always virtue signaling or always condescending, or just a huge oddball. This is just part of being involved in these spaces, itās okay if you donāt get along with or like everyone.
- If you attend protests but didnāt organize the event donāt talk to journalists. They are likely to misquote, twist, and misrepresent your words.
The communication aspect is vital. Just getting people on anonymous forums where the can actually coordinate would do a world of good.
When it comes to the live disks, I agree, itās 100% sketchy. Which is exactly why Iām not handing them out to random strangers. Iām only personally going to be giving them to friends who have frequently trusted me to have full access to their computers anyways. If those friends then want to distribute more drives to people who trust them then we might get a network effect going.
If other people started doing this the the only part I would be personally distributing to them is the guides and ideally those would just be hosted somewhere like github (but preferably not github specifically) for community input. If they donāt have enough knowledge to download and verify their own tails live disks then they donāt have enough knowledge to be trusted to hand out sketchy flashdrives.
Also the cheapest source I could find for bulk small flashdrives also happens to customize them for free, so Iām personally going with some business card sized ones and will have printed on the front in big red letters āTHIS COULD BE A VIRUS. Only use this live disk if you received it in person from someone you trust.ā After that disclaimer I should have enough room to add instructions for booting the live disk.
As I said, itās very far from perfect. But if itās someones only option then itās there. The reason I am going the premade livedisk route is that there are plenty of people who arenāt tech savy enough to properly and securely configure their own setup. The preconfigured live disk eliminates all of that which also happens to be the most complex step. Iām aiming at making something that even my mom could use. As far as the physical booklet goes the reason Iām not going that route is mainly just from my personal experience writing instructions for factory workers, some of whom brag about being borderline illiterate. Iāve found that if you give people too much information in a single doccument then they tend to not read any of it. Remember, the average user on lemmy could almost certainly do this all on their own, they arenāt my target audience. When writing something that you want even the least savy average person to read and understand Iāve personally found that itās better to split the instructions into several doccuments of ideally only a single page with lots of visual aids included. Believe it or not, but Iāve found that while people can read seperate short doccuments perfectly fine, if you put them all together and call them chapters or sections then a lot of people are suddenly no longer able to read it. It defies all logic but I have personally seen it happen over and over again. My best geuss is if a single doccument has enough sections then it starts triggering some ingrained textbook phobia.
Ah, that definitely changes things a bit. I hope that goes well for you and the people you know!
Thatās very fair. Iāve noticed that tendency within myself as well. Though I feel that a one page booklet, if well designed could manage to be brief enough to help somebody through a basic installation and use of Tor. Itās not much more complicated than installing your average desktop application.
Itād just have to be very light on wording for each page, and primarily use pictures.
Perhaps, though it also might just be that dense or long documents quickly become overwhelming. So people just say āfuck it, I donāt careā.