Apologies in advance for this being part rant.
I have a group of people who, in theory, are pumped up to go out and fight ICE. My local org is full of people who claim they want to do things, but what they actually do is endlessly bicker about theory minutae, criticism of other orgs or politicians, but rarely showing up.
I mean the org has turned out for some things but the most activity was one anti-ICE protest and then tagging along to a bunch of PSL events.
So we had a minor win with our immigration campaign the other day and were trying to pick a next action. I suggested several low-lift activities like canvassing local Hispanic businesses, handing out whistles and getting to know our community, or showing up to yell at Lib candidates to do better on fighting ICE. Doing more advocacy at local city council meetings. Going door-to-door in a local Hispanic neighborhood and getting to know people... and instead I get people saying we need a "mission statement" and wanting to plan out something perfect.
I feel like my local org doesn't know how to do anything! They mean well but I'm tired of sitting around waiting for buy in to do things I thought we should have been doing for six months now. Every little event is a huge ordeal and feels like pulling teeth!
IDK what to do. Am I personally being a poor organizer? Is there something I can do to convince people to start doing things and stop just talking about them? I could go out alone but I'd rather build a group that will go out together vs. my awkward ass walking into some Panderias.
Is there a manual for how to do this that actually works? I believe we had a reading group for No Shortcuts a year ago, but I guess that either didn't apply or people didn't learn anything from it.
Honestly even the Ancient Roman authors they are doing a poor job of paraphrasing generally don't have this kind of social backwardness writing from 2000 years ago. I think the bigger issue is encouraging people to think in gender-essentialist ways, but on top of that the author just comes off as so pathetically gross keeping up this affectation about "manliness," to use the site name, to nurse the wounded egos of men who feel emasculated and want some balm to let them feel like Real Men^tm, because that's a quicker buck than telling them that what is hurting them is fundamentally thinking in terms of those norms and standards as though they are sub-standard exemplars of some perfect form of "manliness" that exists in the aether rather than as human beings that exist for their own sakes. You aren't a shadow of "manhood" cast on the cave wall that should be judged against an arbitrary model, you're just a person.
This is just the standard self-help trope of giving extremely generic positive advice but mixing it with some shitty, pseudo-intellectual ideology, I guess.