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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: January 26th, 2024

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  • If you are elected into a position where you can enact change, those who elected you have expectations of you based on the policy you supported during the election.

    If, then, you turn around and do something completely different your actions no longer reflect the will of those who elected you, and you are not behaving in a representative manner and thus in an undemocratic way.

    So ignoring anything specific to the American system, class interests, etc., it is a losing battle to try and be anything different from the status quo and getting elected by aligning yourself with the status quo.

    A communist who gets elected by siding with a fascist is no longer a communist. A liberal cannot be a liberal if they denounce capitalism and side with socialists. They are fundamentally different ideas of who the political economy is designed for, completely contradictory ideas about hierarchy, property rights, human rights, and even what constitutes truth (liberal ideas are often utopian, like the “rational economic man”, and socialist/communist ideas are often based in the reality of the current and past material conditions, like believing people need homes and food, and a wealthy society should be able to provide these for itself, so people get homes and food. In contrast a liberal society would let the “market” provide these things in whatever way is profitable.


  • I’m not siding with you, but I’d like to take your idea and make it… Useful.

    Anytime someone engages in civil disobedience (like a protest) it is crucial that the correct people are targeted.

    For example: if you want to stop your school from investing in Israel you target the administration (President, VP, investment managers etc.) and specifically those who make the decisions. This could be protesting at fundraisers so that it deeply affects the image of the school and those in charge, and serves as a threat of reduced funding.

    You wouldn’t, for example, go into the classroom during a lecture and yell about Israel, making the lives of the students and professors worse. Why? Because the source of power and social change is the students, staff, and faculty, at the school. And annoying them creates more enemies rather than allies.

    Always do a “power analysis” to know who to talk to and bring on your side, and who you need to disrupt in order to make the change. Otherwise we ignore class solidarity (yes, soak up the pun) and are doomed to fail