Here’s a kind of ignorant and offensive question that I nonetheless have re this bit:
I have to assume that prisoners and migrant farm workers and the psychiatrically incarcerated are on my side since my enemies are engaged in war crimes against them.
How can I work with them in this fight? I don’t tend to think of them as very intelligent groups that can help me with any specific plans.
But this is likely my own ignorance given that I know basically no people in this population. (Which is something I could straightforwardly fix if I chose to.)
The first answer that comes to my mind is “If I were running for some election, I could figure out a way to communicate with these groups in order to coordinate their support and help them against their oppressors”. But other than straightforwardly having them vote people into power who want to fight against the broadly authoritarian political powers in many countries, I’d find it helpful to hear a suggestion or two of other things that I might do.
Hard to predict. In my case helping organize an early distribution of masks to prisons gave me cred with a formidable formerly-incarcerated mental health care activist who’s now running for NY state assembly with a credible shot of winning, and who’s already helping draft state-level legislation on multiple topics of interest to me. Not how I’d pictured that working out, and not every such venture bears fruit, but I tried fewer than 10 things like that before one did.
Currently hoping to help an African immigrant I know raise funds for a cheap-remittances-and-banking business, it’s focused on Africa rather than South America so there’s plenty of room for the latter.
More generally the way to find such opportunities is cognitively loaded—first we need to be able to include them explicitly in our perceptions and true decision calculus as politically relevant persons, with interests that bear some relation to ours, who might have something to offer us in trade.
I’m not the OP but I’d say read up on the methods of history’s most successful rabble-rousers, and look for data/ethnographies/whatever about the demographics you’re targeting so you can get an idea of what they’re like. Also read up on the “art of strategy” in general. Then again, I’m not sure there’s much in this sphere that you can actually do without A: devoting your entire life to it and B: doing things that both you and society at large would consider objectionable.
Here’s a kind of ignorant and offensive question that I nonetheless have re this bit:
How can I work with them in this fight? I don’t tend to think of them as very intelligent groups that can help me with any specific plans.
But this is likely my own ignorance given that I know basically no people in this population. (Which is something I could straightforwardly fix if I chose to.)
The first answer that comes to my mind is “If I were running for some election, I could figure out a way to communicate with these groups in order to coordinate their support and help them against their oppressors”. But other than straightforwardly having them vote people into power who want to fight against the broadly authoritarian political powers in many countries, I’d find it helpful to hear a suggestion or two of other things that I might do.
Hard to predict. In my case helping organize an early distribution of masks to prisons gave me cred with a formidable formerly-incarcerated mental health care activist who’s now running for NY state assembly with a credible shot of winning, and who’s already helping draft state-level legislation on multiple topics of interest to me. Not how I’d pictured that working out, and not every such venture bears fruit, but I tried fewer than 10 things like that before one did.
Currently hoping to help an African immigrant I know raise funds for a cheap-remittances-and-banking business, it’s focused on Africa rather than South America so there’s plenty of room for the latter.
More generally the way to find such opportunities is cognitively loaded—first we need to be able to include them explicitly in our perceptions and true decision calculus as politically relevant persons, with interests that bear some relation to ours, who might have something to offer us in trade.
I’m not the OP but I’d say read up on the methods of history’s most successful rabble-rousers, and look for data/ethnographies/whatever about the demographics you’re targeting so you can get an idea of what they’re like. Also read up on the “art of strategy” in general. Then again, I’m not sure there’s much in this sphere that you can actually do without A: devoting your entire life to it and B: doing things that both you and society at large would consider objectionable.
My guess is this answer is false and I’d potentially be able to do a lot different if such folks were part of my local community.