If you are an American, join the insert party that I’m a member of
PSL gets a lot of love on lemmy, that’s fine, lot of PSL members here evidently. You can just as easily join any of the other parties that will reflect your personal line better or worse. All the big rallys and protests I see are run by a wide combination of parties and groups (although I’ll admit PSL and FRSO are usually the largest by attendance).
Always remember you’re joining to do work, it’s not just a cool club you join so you can go to a protest once a year and say “look at me I’m a communist now” (you can do that outside the party too!). You can join PLP, you can join the Avakianites, you can join one of the 100s of trot orgs, any of em, just don’t join a party you know nothing about and be disappointed when you disagree on something. Study the party program. See what kinda positions the party has held in recent history. Be ready to dedicate substantial regular amounts of time to this group. Different parties will have you spending your time differently, but they all will appreciate a member keeping themselves busy.
Also don’t join a political cult. My friend and I were briefly wrapped up in a political cult thinking we were part of something cool. Then they started demanding more time from us. They made my friend feel stupid for needing to spend less time in the cult to take some classes.
It was cultish. What really woke us up to that reality was googling the org and finding a bunch of people online who got wrapped up in it and how they were isolated from friends and family. The “cadres” were basically living off the grid upstairs from the office living off of donated food. Anything that wasn’t 100% time commitment was not enough.
If you are an American, join the insert party that I’m a member of
PSL gets a lot of love on lemmy, that’s fine, lot of PSL members here evidently. You can just as easily join any of the other parties that will reflect your personal line better or worse. All the big rallys and protests I see are run by a wide combination of parties and groups (although I’ll admit PSL and FRSO are usually the largest by attendance).
Always remember you’re joining to do work, it’s not just a cool club you join so you can go to a protest once a year and say “look at me I’m a communist now” (you can do that outside the party too!). You can join PLP, you can join the Avakianites, you can join one of the 100s of trot orgs, any of em, just don’t join a party you know nothing about and be disappointed when you disagree on something. Study the party program. See what kinda positions the party has held in recent history. Be ready to dedicate substantial regular amounts of time to this group. Different parties will have you spending your time differently, but they all will appreciate a member keeping themselves busy.
Also don’t join a political cult. My friend and I were briefly wrapped up in a political cult thinking we were part of something cool. Then they started demanding more time from us. They made my friend feel stupid for needing to spend less time in the cult to take some classes.
I mean, was it a case of being cultish or was it a case of not having the time to be a fully active party member?
There is a difference, and there is no shame in not having that level of commitment. You can always participate in the various mass/front orgs.
It was cultish. What really woke us up to that reality was googling the org and finding a bunch of people online who got wrapped up in it and how they were isolated from friends and family. The “cadres” were basically living off the grid upstairs from the office living off of donated food. Anything that wasn’t 100% time commitment was not enough.