I'm thinking of not so much socializing together as having a sense that one's local struggle, for instance, for a higher wage, is connected to a struggle elsewhere for inclusion of information critical for GLBT teenagers in school curricula, all adding up to a collective endeavor to make social change, and folks involved in one struggle in one place being organizationally -- even just as a part of a loose network -- connected with one another. Also, having opportunities to report back on what you have done, hear what others have done, and figuring out next steps together would be nice, too. I suppose the Social Forum movement may have been originally meant for that, but by now it may have become more of a festival of left celebrities and tourists than anything else (mind you, having such a festival is not bad).
> > On the other hand, I have always been profoundly
> dissatisfied with bearing witness. So are most Americans,
> I believe. More people would get involved in politics
> if they thought they could make a practical difference
> on big issues that matter to them, if they believed that
> they had a good chance of changing the nation.
>
> I long ago reconciled myself to the reality that since
> everything I work on may not come to fruition until long
> after my oblivion, I cannot pin my level of satisfaction on
> whether I see a practical difference occurring because of
> my work. Also, having discovered that I am best at
> counselling and mentoring teenagers helped immensely
> with establishing this discipline, since teenagers rarely
> provide any feedback whatsoever.
You need strong discipline to live with an idea that "everything I work on may not come to fruition until long after my oblivion" and keep on working. People who come from faith traditions are better at it than those who come from secular left traditions. But most people don't have and can't be expected to have that discipline. It's natural for people to get encouraged by victories and discouraged by defeats. The trick, I think, is to figure out what is worth winning that we are capable of winning right now and link that to a medium-term strategy to win medium-term goals (like winning single-payer health care, restraining Washington from adventures in the Middle East, etc.), but, since we don't have an institution where we can decide on the most important medium-term goals and figure out viable medium-term strategies, what we do, significant in each instance, doesn't add up to a big collective strength at the national level.
> > What we need, I think, is a critical mass of leftists getting
> together and coming up with a medium-term strategy that
> clearly charts a path to power
>
> But don't you find that many leftists are allergic to taking
> power/control?
Yes, that's a problem. Admittedly, the history of the socialist and non-socialist Left has been replete with misuses of power, so it's understandable that allergy to taking power/control has gotten developed among leftists, especially among young leftists. But I think that's changing now, albeit slowly, due to changes in Latin America. Now more leftists than before can see that power is worth winning and can be used for good causes, especially to enhance people's capacity for self government.
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>