jemartinez.bsky.social
Organizer/Analyst/Strategist. I help people fight & win (your results may vary). Interested in US politics, national security, and defending democracy from all threats—foreign & domestic
‘There are no shortcuts, only detours.’ – Anthony Thigpenn
91 posts
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Getting Started
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read if you want more info:
No Shortcuts by Jane McAlevey
The 2021 Political Typology by Pew. In the absence of a full blown power analysis, that report should be a wake up on the challenges of expanding beyond the 6% of the population who ID as progressive
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driven on social or legacy media, led and staffed by career activists or political operatives, and rely on public protest and social media to recruit people. Those are some of the reasons why those types of movements tend to fizzle or never reach critical mass
Here are two things to
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building program that recruits the grassroots, leadership development, skills training, issue education, research, capacity to field diverse messages and framing, systems to make it work together, and the expertise to know how to run it all.
Most protest movements lack that. They are usually
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either the 96.5% in Chenowith’s or the 75% in the Sci Am piece.
Protest movements tend to activate ppl—both in favor of and opposition to those efforts. One way to mitigate opposition is to have a robust organizing program as the foundation for protest efforts. That includes a disciplined base
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as a magic number or threshold, but it’s an historical observation of nations with less subdivided political environments than the US. It also doesn’t look at nations where 3.5% failed.
But the biggest critique I have is that these pieces don’t account for the agency of the remaining population
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the answers but I do have some fairly educated guesses and strong opinions based on hard lessons I’ve learned
That said, I agree with Chenowith’s support for nonviolence, but I think the lessons that ppl draw from her work compels us to low-ball our organizing goals. A lot of people treat 3.5%
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🧵Thx for sharing this and the 25% piece. I’m familiar with Chenowith’s work but not the other
I’m going to preface this by saying I’m not critiquing to be defeatist—I’ve been an organizer my entire adult life, trained people nationwide, and I think and work on this stuff. A lot. I don’t have all
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Revenge of the Nerds meets Ocean’s 11, but the cast are all assholes
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That’s like that really cheesy X Files with the emo hacker and her lover who end up transmitting their consciousness into a computer. So bad it was good
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Interesting how I advocated for nonviolence and you lept to conclusions about me, my politics, etc. Look, you don’t want to engage in a good faith debate? Cool, no pressure, you’re free to go engage in whatever form of political expression you want. Good luck with that
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100% agree. I’ve said as much elsewhere, not that I expect you to know that, but just agreeing . What would non-performative action look like to you? To me, most of what we see on social media, all the protests and town halls, that’s all performance and spectacle
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We can’t even win an election and you’re talking revolution?
I never said stay calm. I’m preaching strategy and nonviolence. The problem with social media algos and all these protests is they give ppl an inflated sense of power—power that we simply don’t have. But you do you
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I think you’re absolutely right. Our challenge is figuring out which messages & frames resonate with each of the diff groups we need to reach. There’s no one size fits all. Most people are not activated by passion…we’ve had passion and “resistance” now for how long? Most ppl are turned off by it
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I’m not talking about trying to flip the die hards. I’m talking about the ppl who aren’t involved, or on the fence, or reachable. Math doesn’t lie—we need more than true believers. But if you want to equate everyone who disagrees with you as a nazi, then don’t complain when you keep losing
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It is, but so is rolling eyes like a child. Come at me with an argument. If not, stay out of it
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No, I feel you, it’s definitely not easy. I’ve been helping people do it for a long time…as one of the people who trained me said, “There are no shortcuts, only detours.” And even if you do everything “right” you might still lose. It’s demoralizing, which is why we need to find ways to work together
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100% agree that this is a catastrophe. And everyone will act as they see fit. All I’m advocating for is what I’ve seen work with people who’ve experienced their own, personal catastrophes or who’ve been wronged. Most ppl are activated that way, and not because they possess a broad, moral worldview
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Talk to them, then talk to the others on your street, and then the others in your surrounding neighborhood. And keep that going and spreading
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We’re not being pushed into a corner, we’re being given opportunities to organize all those people who, up until now, weren’t concerned with issues that don’t affect their day to day. There’s a strategic way to build power, and then there’s the way the post I replied to is advocating
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You can interpret their “Cut the throats of ur enemies so the fear will spread” however you’d like, but that’s one of the most violent things I’ve read on here
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100% agree w being strategic. Most people aren’t thinking about issues that don’t directly impact their lives—those issues don’t immediately resonate. It takes time & trust to get alignment; figuring out which of those values and demands to lead with is key. Demanding 100% compliance hasn’t worked
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I appreciate the dialogue!
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People are pretty passionate here. In my experience, they’ve either never done the work on the streets, or they’re infiltrating and instigating. Most serious people aren’t biting everyone’s heads off
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Is it? So tell me, what’s your plan?
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I feel you…I deleted a few of my original replies to OP because they didn’t have the right tone, which is hard to nail online
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That’s fine. But having organized around those positions for a while, most people don’t support the entire platform. OP’s purity politics attitude isn’t going to make people embrace progressive positions
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I’m not talking about trying to move the people in power. I’m talking about the majority of people who aren’t even activated. I’m talking about organizing them and the ppl who aren’t die hard MAGA. That’s where the real numbers lie
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Is that all you got?
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Ahistorical comparison. We couldn’t win an election and you’re talking what, revolution? Might want to do the math, literally
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The advice you’re giving is the exact wrong way to go about things. Violence is the strength of the weak, who use it because they can’t persuade any other way. Learning to persuade people, not threaten them, is the key to victory
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reasons why something like 12-15% of the population identifies as Progressive. But you don’t need everyone to call themselves Progressive, not unless you want to just be the Left’s version of MAGA. We need a platform that people can get behind, and messengers who know how to organize, not shun
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I agree that the playbook should be tossed; it hasn’t worked. But the progressive message isn’t appealing to jaded Republicans, nor the rest of the Left, partly because it includes things that not everyone can get behind, and purity-politics enforcement pushes people away. That’s one of the ⬇️
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Exactly. Events like these tend to give people an inflated and false sense of power. I also think a lot of the identities of those involved are rooted in their identity as part of the ‘resistance.’ Loving your status as the underdog is a luxury—and definitely isn’t a substitute for winning
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Probably both. As far as third party vs transforming the Dems into a Prog Left party, I doubt either is feasible until people trust Progressives with their economic livelihoods—which they don’t, yet. I’m also not totally convinced that Dems weren’t facing a lose-lose scenario with the shutdown
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I hope you’re right. But the reality is most people still won’t get involved. The idea that turning out to protests and town halls will somehow activate everyone to our side and give us the results we want is wishful thinking, especially when the Dems can’t even get their act together in private
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One thing’s for sure: it’s easy to talk to people who already agree with you, but getting new people involved, or those who might not agree with 100% of what you’re saying? That’s something that most people who’ll show up to a rally aren’t willing to do. That’s why these movements often fizzle
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Given that WW2 wasn’t commonly referred to by that name until after the war ended, I think it’s safe to say what we’ve seen since Russia invaded Crimea in 2014 are the early stages of WW3. Whether we’ll see nukes used is another thing, though, but I think the fear of that is overblown
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Protesting can feel good, but righteous indignation isn’t a substitute for power or strategy. Don’t fall for the false hope that ‘we just need 3.5% of the population’ to win. That number is mostly true believers. Real power will come from organizing those who aren’t involved—or those we can flip
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Thank you, love the data. A question in my mind is, how bad does it have to get until it becomes intolerable, and what will the admin’s response be when we reach that point? My guess is that it will need to get very bad, but without united leadership in response, we risk spiraling in the infighting
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Until we choose to put our strategic and tactical disagreements aside, quit the purity politics and name calling, and unite to build power, we’ll keep facing these sorts of weak-hand dilemmas: fight and get slaughtered, or retreat and lose ground.
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Exactly. People forget that while demonstrations of political protest can activate people, that doesn’t mean your protest will activate them to your side
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That’s the community-building spirit that will help us win