Organizers speak noticeably differently about politics. They aren’t looking for consensus or strict ideological commitment. They are building power which entails having different folks believe that their freedom is tied up to someone else’s, and together they can be more free.

I don’t identify as an organizer, I haven’t earned that title. But I have been influenced by organizers and study social movements. And what I see throughout history is that movements crumble when ideological commitment becomes more important than commitment to one another.

Many Young Lords reflect on the ways the movement climaxed when cadre debated the best ways to change society all while deepening their commitment to one another. It fell when hard ideological adherence (likely due to FBI infiltration) emerged while the org overextended itself.

During the 60s we see this pattern in many radical organizations. When they are able to bring people in by showing them how their humanity is tied to one another while encouraging debate around shared goals, movements pick up steam and grow.

I see this all the time, here on this app. There are ways organizers talk about political movement, building power, collective action, and *community* creation as central to all those things that really put in stark relief the ways others merely want ideological consensus.

As @james_hhilljr always says and I echo *in my bones,* I’ve already been through fundamentalism and I don’t want to go through it again. I want to build community power that holds space for complexity/disagreement *because* we are linked to one another.

A different world *is* possible, history shows us that. But history also shows a different world is built by people who are convinced that their freedom is tied up with others, in all their complexity. By people who believe we are connected in the deepest sense of the term.

Pay attention to who wants to build a better world and who merely wants to build a following, because those aren’t the same and they are languaged differently.

I’m starting to realize that....