> Can secular leftists create political institutions on the Left that
> involve about 4.1% of the Americans every weekday, 15.2% of them every
> weekend, each of the participants spending 1.21 hours every weekday
> and 1.97 hours every weekend, and that get them to pay for the
> institutions' operational expenses, missions at home and abroad, and
> services to members and others? If we can, we can rival religious
> organizations -- if we can't, we can't.
You know, I think we owe Yoshie a bottle of wine and a nice dinner for hitting this nail perfectly on the head.
This is what it boils down to, folks. I've spent thousands of hours over the years on activism and volunteer projects. I look at how much time my family members spend donating their time to church projects. Religious people spend hours and hours each week on religious volunteering. Of course, as my sister points out, she has the same problems finding volunteers that I do.
But the left doesn't go anywhere fast because our people do not have an ethic about volunteering. Sure, we volunteer, but in a lazy, comfortable way. Our comrades aren't volunteering at the same level as religious people. Yes, many of our comrades are busy with work, but so are religious people.
Work is one of the significant reasons why leftists don't volunteer more. I've seen this personally with our infoshop, which constantly has has had to compete with employers for the time of our volunteers. This is one reason why I think we need to prioritize projects, such as cooperative housing, which can free up more people to do volunteer work. It also would make sense for the labor movement to demand shorter work weeks.
Chuck