Everyone’s new to political activism at some point. We probably know we’re not going to change the world in a day. No one was born with a bullhorn in hand and a cowering group of bourgeoisie 5 feet in front of them. To change the world takes time, comrades, and effort.

But sometimes movements come along and sweep up far more newbies than usual.

The 2016 presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders is one of those movements. It was neither the first nor even the most recent. It’s not even the only one with current impact (see, e.g., Black Lives Matter, pro-immigrant movements gaining steam since 2016, etc.). But it’s one that included many, many, first-time activists.

You can find Sandersistas doing many things now. They’re joining the Democratic Socialists of America and running for Congress. They’re working on immigration or housing or employment justice. These Sandersista newbies tend to be: 18-30 years old, either in college and afraid of student debt and part-time, dead-end work, or currently engaged in part-time, dead-end work that they’d like to escape. They’re a racially diverse coalition. Economically, they’re largely from middle and upper-middle class backgrounds, but precariously so. Consequently, they’re worried that they could backslide.

They’re correct to worry.

I’ve been engaged in activist-y type activity (‘change the world’ type stuff, broadly construed) since sometime in the late 90s or so. Consequently, I feel I’ve picked up a few things along the way. These are a few lessons I’ve learned in that time that maybe the Sandersistas will find useful:

How to Change the World

1. Build movements that are grounded in material conditions. Fight evictions, fight firings, organize workers’ and tenants’ unions, win better wages and benefits for employees, fight against ICE/deportations in your community, etc.

2. Activism is about solidarity. Work directly with people, side-by-side. That’s how it’s done. Activism isn’t charity, and no one knows people’s needs better than people themselves. Charity has a positive role to play in the world, but it’s a different thing from activism.

3. Stay away from electoral campaigning and partisan politics. Political campaigns use the activist energy of you and your friends without giving much in return. Electoral campaigns will win or lose. But either way, they’ll do it without building any kind of broader, sustainable working class movement. Vote, but don’t waste time and energy campaigning.

4. #3 is worth repeating: stay away from electoral campaigning and partisan politics. When you first start thinking about how to change things, it’s natural to start with the “official” institutions. It’s a mistake most of us make, because in many cases there aren’t established organizations working for change outside of electoral politics. You’ve got to get beyond that trap. If there’s no organization, get together with some friends and make one. Read Frances Fox Piven on this topic. She knows what she’s talking about. Grassroots solidarity is how to build popular power. Electoral politics and institutional structures can sometimes help turn that power into certain policies, but they won’t build popular power.

5. The Internet is not a primary tool for activism. It can be a great tool for meeting people and getting them to attend meetings. It can be a tool for involving people who, for whatever reason, can’t be physically present at the meeting. Use Google Hangout or Skype to help them attend! The Internet is also a great tool for blowhards like me to publish their thoughts to an audience, maybe even (hopefully even?) a wide one. But it’s lousy as a primary site for activism. It’s full of people who want to talk, virtue-signal, troll others, scam others, and engage in all manner of asshole-like behavior. Activism requires a great deal of trust-building and understanding of others, which is almost impossible to do online.

6. Activism is not therapy. We work together and meet new friends. Sometimes the conversations we have with these friends feel therapeutic. We can and should help each other, and mental health is a part of that. But activism is no substitute for a therapist. I’ve seen people over the years try to take it there, and it never works. Your comrades aren’t therapists. They can’t give you what you need. You’re not a therapist, either. And you can’t give your activist friends what they need.

7. Have fun and be creative. It doesn’t need to be sober or serious all the time. Try something new. I’ve proposed some weird shit over the years, some of which has worked and some of which hasn’t (see #8). But if you’re not having fun and doing something new, you’re doing something wrong. Fix that.

8. Fuck up, and be OK with fucking up. That’s not necessarily a problem, and we all fuck up. Fuck up, and then fuck up less next time. And then fuck up even less the time after that. Let other people fuck up, too. But you may need to toss someone if they fuck up in some very unacceptable way (e.g., committing rape, persistently harassing people, being a police informant, seriously abusing the trust of others – all of which I’ve seen or heard about in local activist groups). Beyond that, we all make mistakes when it comes to things like what type of actions we participate in or how we achieve our strategies. That’s going to happen, and it presents us all with opportunities to learn.

9. Set practical goals, but don’t get too bogged down in them. Have a strategy. I’m not necessarily endorsing the strategic thoughts put out by Nathan J. Robinson in Current Affairs in this article, but it’s a good example of the kind of thinking that left-wing activists need to collectively engage in. But…

10. Finally, be flexible. If something you’re doing isn’t working, try it a different way or try something else. And so always be prepared to evaluate and modify tactics or even strategy.

Postscript

This post is one of a series I’ve identified as central to my blog. You can find the others by clicking the ‘Foundations’ category. If you’re looking for other posts where the advice in this post is key, check out:

Why You (Probably) Shouldn’t Run for Office
Pragmatic Approaches to Voting
My First Protest