Easy Direct Action

hello friends welcome back to seditious September now last week we discussed electoral ism versus revolutionary politics and it left us in a bit of a pickle we can't rely on bourgeois democracy to act on our best interests but there's not a revolution happening right now and it doesn't really feel advisable to start one so what can we do there are two terms you've probably heard a lot of pinkos and stinkos throw around praxis and direct action praxis just means applying theory with actions in the real world you might know that better as doing things understand we have to speak in code because it helps us feel like we're old-timey badasses and alienates everyone direct action just means taking action oneself rather than relying on an institution or representative to take action on your behalf you participate in direct action all the time whether or not you recognize it as such every given change to a homeless person that's direct action you didn't just go home and write a letter to your Congressman or a member of parliament or whatever and petition them to introduce a bill to address homelessness you saw that there was a problem and you personally took action to deal with that problem now is that effective direct action in a very short-term sense I suppose they can use your change hopefully to buy something they might need long-term though they're still homeless they're still going to be cold at night and every day will still be a struggle for them it's good to give homeless people change but not enough really a better solution might be to break into it hi just before I get into this I should mention everything I say on this YouTube channel is a joke it's all satire and legally speaking I'm not encouraging anyone to commit crimes don't do crimes this is all just YouTube jokes jokes for online obviously it's all satire so just be chill just just chill out an empty home and give the person and other homeless people a place to sleep anarchists worldwide run squats like these precise Li this reason and I think it's a pretty heroic thing to do it's heroic because it's risky it's against the law and you can be arrested or worse beaten up maybe even killed by the police and I command anyone who is brave enough to put their bodies on the line but since I personally am too much of a coward to do that I feel deeply uncomfortable telling you to do it either so I'm gonna share with you some ideas for direct action that pose little risk to you simple things you can start doing right now to advance the cause if you take nothing else away from this video let it be this there's only so much one person can do and if you're the type of person who gives a shit about leftist politics it's likely that you don't have a lot of time or money to throw around further limiting what you're able to accomplish on your own what we need is for like-minded people to work together luckily for you there left--oh is in every single look and or cranny of this flat earth working on building exactly that get in touch with them go to some meetings and get involved they will have work that needs to be done trust me there's always work that needs to get done might I recommend in particular the International Workers of the world I am a member and I'm just not realizing I'm behind them I dues so I'm a member in bad standing and I'll deal with that later the I devil dub and other organizations like it organized larger campaigns of action that you can contribute to in various ways be its standing in solidarity with striking workers defending communities from violence of the state capital in the far right raising money for community needs organizing reading groups distributing food or goods to needy people the list goes on you name it they're doing it but thought slime there's no good socialist organizations in my area there's no IWW chapter I'm totally hosed if you're feeling up to it maybe reach out to these organizations at the top level and try to start a local chapter maybe reach out to the closest local chapter and see if they'll help you organize something the reason I stress this so hard is that not only will joining an Oregon help you participate in direct acts it also broadens your social life do you ever feel crazy when you talk about hating capitalism do you ever get sick of explaining to people that when you say socialism you don't mean an authoritarian state if you've never been in a room full of other leftists I got to tell you it's a breath of fresh air it's inspiring motivating and it keeps you accountable so just join an org hashtag join an organ ARDS let's get that trending now check your local bylaws on this one because it might not be legal in your area so just know what you're getting into do we paste you need the following things paper flour water and a brush tweets pasting is a cheap fast and easy way to send a message to everyone in your area it lets you put up posters and messages and things like that but it's not easy for people to take down furthermore if some fascist singling out there is putting up hateful messages or trying to recruit in your area you can just weep paste right over it you don't got a shell out the dough for stickers you don't got to waste your time taking that shit down but if for whatever reason you do take down fashion edit prop do it with your keys not your fingers they sometimes split razor blades behind their shit to cut you if you try and pull their shit down so just be careful with that basically here's what you do makes two parts flour with three parts water oil the shit out of it add water and a little bit of sugar is necessary until it gets real sticky take a poster that you think conveys an important message for the purposes of this video I have created this poster that I think demonstrates an important message that I want people to hear splash some of your wheat paste where you want the poster to go and then slap the poster on and brush it up and down with more of that sticky goo that you made I mean the wheat the wheat paste don't don't take that out of context don't get worried about that that's it that's all you're done that's literally all people have even designed the fucking posters for you so if you have a printer or staples in your area you can print off a bunch of propaganda get it sticky and put it on things get sticking with me comrades Hey cut cut cut you're not you're not good I don't think that should be there that that gets sticky with me thing people are gonna take that out of context to edit that out for me could you edit that out Thanks Prison is a demoralizing place by design Prison is made to break people make them compliant with the system that doesn't have their best interests at heart and if they won't become compliant to keep them locked away from the rest of the world and left to rot anarchists receive a lot of state repression and that shouldn't be a shock to anyone anarchists wanna destroy the state and buddy that feeling is mutual a lot of anarchists end up becoming political prisoners because a lot of anarchist activism is highly scrutinized and often the target of harassment by the police that results in ridiculous trumped up charges you can make someone's time in prison a little easier by writing them a letter giving their morale up letting them know that the rest of the world hasn't forgotten about them in fact here's a letter I'm sending to political prisoner and whistleblower Chelsea Manning dear Chelsea let's get this out of the way first and foremost I think you're an American Hero your bravery in the face of repression is a guiding light that I hope we can learn to live up to I say this upfront because if I didn't the next thing I say might cause some anxiety for you I run a semi popular leftist YouTube channel which is an embarrassing piece of context but stay with me I recently made a video about your personal history and current detainment and asked the people write messages to you in the comments that I could mail to you now you have to understand that YouTube comments are inherently pretty toxic you might expect that a lot of ding dongs would say terrible things and I'm pleased to tell you this is not the case I received hundreds of glowing messages addressed to you and have included as many of them as I could find here omitting ones that I thought might get this letter rejected by the nerds who monitor your mail is this kind of white lie though because there were a lot of mean messages but they were all directed me not her but she doesn't need to know that I could waste your time telling you how great I think you are but I think the message is you're going to read from hundreds of strangers that you have moved and inspired speak for themselves you are not forgotten the world has not moved on we are still here and we are still outraged for you we are still fighting for you they can't beat you yours in solidarity Matt yes some of the comments say the phrase thoughts line which you should probably know is the name of the YouTube channel because out of context that doesn't really make a lot of sense were you surprised that my real name was Matt then you're not subscribed to scaredy-cats busted go subscribe to scaredy-cats where I talk about horror movies I did a video on basket-case go watch it now thank thank you thank you everybody for since sending nice messages to Chelsea you can find a list of anarchist political prisoners in the comments and helpful guide to writing to prisoners with some do's and don'ts here's a tip don't talk about anything illegal in writing not just when you're writing to political prisoners also like all the time don't do that don't do that in social media don't do that in emails don't do that on disk or channels even if nobody is watching and that's a big if if they ever have reason to watch in the future they might go back and find those things and you don't want them to do that act like there are eyes everywhere like you're somewhere full of eyes like an area that's full of eyes I don't know what you would call such a thing but like it's full hello and welcome to the eyeball zone here in the eyeball zone I leverage the infinite power of eyeballs to shed light and under viewed leftist projects mostly YouTube channels but not exclusively because they're just easier for me to promote here on YouTube there is a rich and storied history of anarchism in Latin America more so than probably anywhere else on earth and this is shockingly under discussed on left Tube if you want to learn more about it I'd recommend you check out Camazotz a latina comrade who puts out extremely quality videos and livestreams on latina x issues and struggles of particular relevance to this episode is his guide to screen printing agitprop but i'd also like to highlight his video on the history of the Zapatistas you should also follow him on twitter he does a weekly talk showery hostility next an indigenous panel discussion this is the shit we need please God support his work do you have an under eyeballed project you want highlighted email me exactly once at thought slime editor at gmail calm with the word eyeballs somewhere in the subject line please include your pronouns where I guarantee I will fuck them up maybe you'll find yourself trapped here in the eyeball zone a food service just what it sounds like you find a place where a lot of hungry people are and you make or collect a bunch of food and distribute it to them serve it to them one might say once again this is really something an orchid probably help you with hash tag join in organ ERDs might I suggest searching at a group like Food Not Bombs they have like hundreds of chapters and just look at this fucking map chances are they have one around you and if not you can start one food Serbs are great because they are a direct and efficient demonstration of the type of thing that is possible if we all just help one another like we can just do this we don't need anyone's permission it shows people we don't have to rely on the whims of the rich or the state we can just take care of it ourselves and who extend to benefit more from our movement than the most vulnerable the people who are being fucked the hardest by the system's we want to dismantle it's one thing to tell people hey we're gonna make things better for you and hope they believe you it's quite another thing to make things better for them to show them now I've been a great big hypocrite for almost everything on this list but if there's one that I'm gonna specially big hypocrite for it's this one I hate talking politics with people in real life that might shock you to hear given what I do here but I find it exhausting to have to explain the very basics of what I believe over and over and over and over when people ask me what I do for a living and I'm not sure they're gonna be chill like I'm not sure they could hang I usually say something like oh I I work in digital me yeah if they press me I'll be grudgingly admit that I run a YouTube channel and when they ask oh what's your YouTube channel about I give the non answers of either you know politics I guess or you know left-wing anarchist philosophy now I wouldn't consider anything I make on this channel to be philosophy but it's a lot easier to say philosophy than theory or or whatever because that requires a much longer conversation but about half of the time when I say the phrase anarchist philosophy people make this space and then they say anarchist philosophy that's a contradiction anarchists by definition don't and then I have to say no an anarchist is someone who believes that authority is not self justifying and must meet the burden of proof required to demonstrate that it is both necessary and beneficial or else be dismantled and replaced with a more horizontal institution and usually by around that time they've stopped listening but I'm already mad and this is a big problem because I'm a very boring person I've seen almost all of the Marvel movies I'm a white schlubby dude who dresses like a conservative bachelor I can name about a dozen Green Lantern's from memory I have an encyclopedic knowledge of Minecraft whenever someone asks me what kind of music I like I kind of just freeze in terror of having to explain power metal to a normal human being it just sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon theme song okay I like it I am NOT what people typically think of when they think of an anarchist no one could possibly be threatened by me I'm a big cuddly goofball if I could get over my own short temper I think that would make me a pretty decent ambassador for this belief system I'm not some punk kid I'm not interesting in any way I'm the exact kind of boring asshole that society has convinced you it's a more reasonable person and I still believe this shit maybe you should too I even have a big vocabulary that tricks people and to think real smart I can say the word bourgeoisie anytime I want I don't have to spell it there's too many eyes in it eyes eyeballs no we did that already the point is we need to be able to talk to people and explain ourselves we need to be able to normalize our positions most people find an argument more persuasive if they hear it multiple times that's why you'll see the same few commercials for Rage shadow legends on every YouTube video you watch today because most people find an argument more persuasive if they hear it multiple times hashtag join an ordinary so when you say some radical shit for somebody and they don't listen or they don't take you seriously it still makes it easier for the next person to explain it to them and if enough people do that it might start to look pretty reasonable it's harder to dismiss because most people find an argument more persuasive if they hear it multiple times the right is amazing at this discuss gender with them and you'll hear one of the two following jokes I identify as a silly thing did you just assume my gender and that shit works despite being childish garbage because they just say a lot it's not equivalent to identify as an attack helicopter and to identify as a woman there's a woman is a thing a person can be it doesn't matter though they just say it a lot so talk to people you might not convince them but you will make them easier to convince in the future revolution isn't built on the foundation of armed conflict armed conflict is just the most dramatic and visible form of revolution if we want to make our revolution succeed where others have failed we need to make sure we communicate our ideas work together make sure people's basic needs are met the things I have outlined in this video are probably not what you might think of as revolutionary activity because you already know how to throw a brick through a Starbucks window you don't need me to explain how to do that if we're going to build up the infrastructure for a successful and more importantly just revolution we gotta lay the foundation and I truly feel the need to stress this because people find arguments more persuasive when they hear them multiple times please join an organization like the IWW Food Not Bombs your local anti-racist act even the fucking DSA if you must it's a lot easier to work together than it is to work individually why try to reinvent the wheel there are groups out there doing the work right now and if you're not sure where to start they can absolutely get you up to speed down to business now it's me thought slime no funny business this time please press the like button also please subscribe to me I would appreciate you doing both of those things and hey if you want you can also go to patreon.com/scishow and standard time right now I'm playing until dawn but hopefully if there is a god I will be finished that game soon and never have to play it again did you know I have the second YouTube channel called scaredy cats of course you did I already mentioned it in this video go to there and watch the videos there I command you you will obey wait actually let me use reverse psychology don't watch the videos you're probably not cool enough to watch the videos haha that'll get them I'm just right now what I'm doing is I'm still talking to fill space because there's all these credits and drawings and I want that space I don't want people to just stop watching when the credits come I put a lot of work into these drawings look at them we're cute you

Channel: Thought Slime

Views: 63,607

Rating: 4.9644661 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: a2nuF9IXnkg

Length: 19min 21sec (1161 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 11 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/PM-ME-GIS-DATA]

“We call it direct action because it makes us sound like old timey badasses” lol I love this video

[u/phil701]

#joinanorgyounerds

[u/lotod]

Why is TS just the fuckin best

[u/Ymir_from_Saturn]

Need to watch the previous videos first but I’m looking forward to this. I’m still trying to figure out what kind of praxis I need to be doing.

Thoughtslime is consistently one of the best out there. Always makes great stuff

[u/fofajuba]

Wholesome af

[u/InvisibleEar]

Watching Youtube in bed naked is praxis.

[u/lostinthemyst3]

TS throwing shade at DSA and raising up the wobblies is legitimately bothersome to me.