askchapo

Organizing is just getting people to do things in a coordinated way, amplifying your power through numbers and differential impacts (solidarity from those in a position to do more than others). If you have ever had people sign a petition, you have done some light organizing work. If you got them to also commit to go to a meetig, you did fairly substantial organizing work, bread and butter stuff.

RevComs are a Bob Avakian cult. No surprise that they were inappropriate and good on you for noticing something was off.

CPUSA is full of contradictions. It has good commies in it but also climber liberals revisionists (one of the clearest cases where that word can be validly used), particularly in the upper ranks at the national level. It is simultaneously the main internationally recognized communist party and one of the most wrong-headed in action, including their disastrous repeated attempts to focus so much on promoting Joe Biden and liberals in bourgeois electoralism. It is not a bad idea to look into your local group and pote join, but you may need to prepare for identifying the internal factions and getting very frustrated with leadership at at least the national level. I don't personally find projects that require saving the org from its core leadership to usually be a good use of time, but I won't tell you not to do it.

I would recommend that you find a local group that is vaguely commie-friendly and that actually does things like host reading groups, rallies, marches, etc etc. It might be DSA, it might be PSL (less likely for a small town but maybe they cover you regionally), it might be an orf that only exists in your town but has solidarity with other groups. A good sign for an org that "gets it" will be that they actually do things and they have decent anti-imperialist lines: they don't condemn Hamas, they don't promulgate liberal nonsense about existing socialist project states, they do place focus on the USA itself and ita complicity. You might find them based on a local march in solidarity with Palestine or hosting a reading or movie viewing about a relevant topic. Even if the "best" group isn't the host, you can discover them by asking around at these events.

It is also okay to join an org that ends up not being the one you stay with. Most people transition throigh a few orgs as they radicalize and develop experience and skills. It's better to be in an okay org than to wait for a really good one. Just avoid the ones like the Avakian cult.