It seems like about once every week somebody comes here and posts “what are we actually supposed to do about it.”
I’m not an expert; I’m just a dumbshit who was cursed with sentience and a desire to attempt to answer questions. With that in mind, here’s what I’ve gleaned so far to be actionable goals for our cause.
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Talk about the issues outside of this subreddit. You know capitalism is poisoning everything in your life: you think about it every time an example of it occurs. Just start saying it out loud instead of only to yourself. Nine times out of ten, someone within earshot is gonna get pissed and start a debate. Try to be as civil as possible and focus on observable reality and the theory that is supported by those observations. Avoid buzzwords, avoid accusatory language, avoid getting strawmanned. TL;DR learn productive communication and use it ceaselessly with people who have yet to identify with our plight.
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If you are employed, try to unionize. It doesn’t matter if your particular employer treats you great—we need to put power back into the hands of working people. It will probably be impossible. Try nonetheless.
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Create or join a mutual aid program in your community. Take care of the people that capitalism is neglecting, and use the platform it creates to draw attention to the ways in which the suffering you are addressing is inherently interwoven into capitalism.
Develop a social safety net outside of the government that will allow for actions such as strikes to be financially supported. -
Keep educating yourself. Learn the fallacies that are going to be used against you. Learn the histories of the movements that tried to achieve our goals before us—learn what worked and what didn’t. Listen to the voices of the disenfranchised and underprivileged.
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Go to your city council meetings. Learn the names and faces of the people who decide the laws that most directly affect you. Speak to them. Often. Know how they vote. Let everyone else know how they vote.
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I think, electorally speaking, our highest priority needs to be ditching first-past-the-post voting at the local level, and then expanding that to higher elections once it has established precedent. This breaks the cycle of lesser evil voting and brings some democratic legitimacy back into the American electoral system which can be further leveraged from there. I don’t realistically see meaningful political change occurring without this step.
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Run for office yourself. Make number six non-negotiable to your platform. Other than that, either play the politician and just say whatever it takes to win, or put your faith in people to know what’s good for them and be honest, but once you are in office, do whatever you can to put power back into the hands of the working class.