much of the heat of the summer uprising has mellowed out and given space to addressing the minutiae of long haul organizing.

seems like a good time for those who’ve developed strong positions to now develop strategies to bridge communication gaps.

in labor organizing, there’s always lulls. it’s baked in: people have an immediate need and seek help and are ready to do whatever it takes to see it addressed. once things settle, their activity levels plummet. the next time something crops up, they pop up again.

knowing the lull exists is vital for organizers to recognize the difference between “dead” and “hibernating.”

organizing is reactive: a problem arises, people join together to fix it.

an invaluable reminder: those issues wouldn’t have happened in the first place if the workers were organized enough to prevent them.

knowing Something Always Happens sustains organizing through any lull.

within the lull, there’s a lot of work that can be done:
- finding ways to keep people engaged
- planning next steps
- taking space and time to figure out strategies for bridging communication gaps
- building a stronger foundation

the communication gap is of particular interest to me because there’s inherently a huge space between leftists who read theory and, say, your coworker who’s annoyed they can’t clock in before changing into their uniform.

your coworker knows time theft is bullshit but they might not know “time theft is bullshit” is an established talking point of proletariat organizing.

you, being deep in the weeds, might not be strong on explaining those connections without leaning on a string of buzzwords.

a massive hurdle facing labor organizers is *workers are socialized to believe their problems happen in a vacuum.*

when every single day isn’t dominated by an urgent need to fix an immediate & intense problem, you have space to be that ideological bridge.

agitating is simply the process of guiding others toward recognizing, in their own words, that their struggle is part of a much bigger one & that every step they take is on a well-trod path that they’re walking for untold countless others who can’t.

now’s a good time for that.

this isn’t to say your coworker is stupid. in fact, the most radical people are always the ones who don’t need buzzwords to fluff them up. the work is not about building up a vocabulary.

all you need to do is encourage folks, on their own, to recognize the urgent interconnectedness of it all.

now’s a good time to figure out how to communicate outside your extremely-in-the-weeds comrades to make that happen.

(hint: empathy & de-escalation)