Fixing the candidate happens by changing those broader political waves; we can't wait around for another candidate that's going to be better, or discard electoral politics because elected none of them will "save" the masses -- the job is to transform the movements that dictate a candidate's actions

Zohran (especially) is just an expression of the current political powers and conflicts, and all of its contradictions among the left. Him trying to bring liberal Zionists in coalition with pro-Palestine activists is just a function of what kind of power and alliances were needed to win

we are running an anti-data center mass meeting today for campus workers and students. Last week I was joking around and said "wouldn't it be crazy if 150 people signed up for this thing?"

and today there are 150 people signed up, enough to make us worry that we did not book a large enough venue

But in the current context it feels instead as if we are developing strategies that indeed resonate with people

at an apartment complex on Sun, folks were shocked to hear about a fire another tenant experienced due to management negligence and were enthusiastic to join

as much as we try to update our analyses and do the Right Strategy for the moment and context, things fail, then things feel pointless and estranged from reality

people do seem upset but all too often it seems no call to action would succeed, feels like we are making irrelevant strides to organize

The no kings rally is no different; sure the politics of the movement are like totally off the mark, but it’s sort of our job to recognize that it is an anomaly that people would show up to ANYTHING, and seize that opportunity to maintain/extend and do something with the gathered space

In these cases the task of organizing isn’t just to have a billion 1:1s but to make people like each other, talk to each other, see each other as having shared interests, and create a sense of collectivity, since only with that can any form of democratic practice take hold

One more thought… to me the largest struggle in tenant organizing or our ongoing GSRA unionization campaign at UM isn’t even that people have the wrong politics and opinions, but just that there is no social fabric with which we can produce any politics other than what’s been gifted to us by capital

Anyway take all of this with a grain of salt; when I flyered at the summer No Kings rally for the Ann Arbor tenants union there were about a hundred great conversations and zero new members, and I couldn’t attend anything yesterday because i was facilitating a planning retreat for GEO (grad union)

It’s true that the no kings rally has zero mention of Palestine, no challenge to shit Dem leadership, vague slogans with no path to action — those are things that have to be Created, and in so doing alter the character of the existing politics and mobilization

Of course the question is always how to shape mass politics so it actually takes on a liberatory character (I.e. have some reckoning that trump is not an aberration here) — but that requires a “yes and” approach to the existing activity that adds to it

Feels like jasbir puars terrorist assemblages / homonationalism stuff gets close to this

lol and it’s not as if bigger words = better analysis in the first place