That’s why you start small. A country of people won’t join a small-town movement, but they’ll be a lot more likely to join an existing country-sized movement. It’s a snowball effect. Not sure if you’ve ever lived somewhere cold enough to actually roll up a snowball, but it only grabs a small amount of snow compared to the size of the ball when you roll it.
A small ball won’t pick up a lot of snow, but it will pick up enough to grow into a larger ball that picks up comparatively more snow to grow larger and pick up comparatively more snow, and so on. It doesn’t take long until you’re picking up clumps of snow several times larger than the initial ball like they’re nothing.
If you tried to just pack all that snow into the ball from the start you’d be there all day, but starting small and diligently rolling will easily result in a huge ball so long as you stick with it. Obviously people aren’t so easy to gather, but the principles are the same.
You’re still thinking in their terms units of organization why tfshpuld I rsspe t their borders San Diego Tijuana are same city to me like Victoria Seattle it’s not smart to do that ‘country’ is stupid
I mean, who gives a shit whether I say “A country’s worth of people” or “100 million people?” If you’re going to be that pedantic about it, we’ll never be able to come together to rise up in the first place. I speak in terms of geographic locations because that’s how revolutions start. One person in real life teams up with another person in real life, who together team up with other geographically nearby people on a local scale before moving up to larger and larger scales.
No matter how much a person in Seattle wants to help a movement that’s currently confined to Tijuana, they won’t be able to do anything tangible unless they physically go there and help. They could alternatively start up their own local movement in Seattle that eventually merges with the Tijuana one, or wait until the Tijuana one grows to reach Seattle, but neither of those helps the Tijuana one right now. Technically they could go online and spread awareness of the Tijuana movement, but the whole “thoughts and prayers” thing is less of a tangible helpful act and more of a way to pacify us by making us think we did something tangible, and rest on our laurels.
A country’s worth Montenegro Switzerland India please specify you seem really attached to the form of countries geographic locations sure but alto California and Appalachia aren’t the same not even close you can throw things from San Diego to Tijuana like with your hand england and the Balkans are closer culturally than California and appalachia and geographically not that we can’t work together its geographically nearby sometimes but especially these days networks of comrades aren’t always same continent I’ve written for zines first printed in Sydney and Dublin like opposite side of world and completely failed to put shit together with people on my block used tactics and strategies from hong Kong learned about what not to do when being cavalry charged from a friend who sent me a pic of her breasts with the great pyramid in the background later that day
Jeez, man. I was raised in a world separated into countries, sue me. I’ve made it clear that I don’t care about borders, they’re just a helpful way to get a vague understanding of a size of a group of people. Towns vary wildly in size and proximity to one another, too, but you don’t seem to be harping on me about that.
My point is that you start with a small local group in the 10’s of people, then move to the 100’s, then 1,000’s, then 10,000’s, and so on. It doesn’t matter if they come from the same country or not, so long as they can physically get together. It’s just easier for most people - clearly not you - to picture how big “a country’s worth” of people is, instead of a 1 with a bunch of 0’s after it.
…Yes, you can purchase products from around the world and “support” people with words and thoughts and prayers and whatever makes you feel like you contributed. No, that doesn’t provide a tangible benefit to people literally fighting their own local government, unless you plan to send them guns, which probably wouldn’t work.
Someone geographically nearby, regardless of how different they are culturally, has a lot more they can do, and a lot more reason to do it, than someone on the other side of the world who thinks a zine is going to keep a resistance fighter alive.
To be fair, it’s difficult to follow your train of thought, but I assumed I understood it all. To summarize my understanding of your last comment:
Countries vary wildly in size- Switzerland, Montenegro, and India are all different from one another in terms of populace.
Borders don’t necessarily separate people, like when 2 towns are across the border from one another, and conversely, a lack of a border doesn’t necessarily mean people aren’t separated, like when there’s a mountain range between 2 towns
Information can instantly be transferred across great distances, and someone across the world can help teach people about how to rebel effectively.
Just because people are close by does not mean they will necessarily work well together.
Which of your points do you think was the crux of your argument that I failed to address?
I didn’t touch on information transfer because if someone is already part of a movement, they would probably learn a lot more from someone local who’s actually been fighting as part of that group than from someone who maybe did something kinda similar once on the other side of the world.
I also didn’t touch on how some people don’t get along, because that’s obvious; not everyone in any given area will join the movement - only the ones who are motivated to do so will, but that number increases as the total size of the movement increases.
Part two of part two was that borders can include places really really far apart both culturally and geographically like I’d count on comrades in Canada and mexico before Appalachia because yeah culture but also I’m in California look at a map
I see. Yeah, a movement that starts in California would obviously spread to geographically nearby regions like Mexico and Oregon before it spreads to South Carolina. I wasn’t trying to say that a movement needed to stay confined to one country before going somewhere else, just that it will almost certainly spread from one area to another physically easily-reachable area, and won’t be recruiting hundreds of thousands of people at a time until its already comprised of hundreds of thousands of people.
Not really sure why you’d count on people in Canada - or think about Appalachia at all - if you’re in California, though. How are they going to help you when you’re staring down a cop about to cave your skull in during a violent protest? You need the guy standing right next to you so that you both can tackle the cop before he gets the chance. In this scenario the movement is still on the scale of 10’s to 100’s of people - you’d need to be looking for allies in your neighborhood before you worry about completely different geographical areas. We can worry about how we’ll get people on board in Florida when the movement has gotten big enough to spread that far.
People in Mexico are close enough to hopefully help, but even if they’re close, they’d still need to cross the border if your battles are taking place in California itself, which would be difficult regardless of the fact that the border is unjust. Or you could cross the border and start in Tijuana - it doesn’t really matter where the movement starts, it just matters that people are able to get there and either help fight or help tend to the wounded.
That’s why you start small. A country of people won’t join a small-town movement, but they’ll be a lot more likely to join an existing country-sized movement. It’s a snowball effect. Not sure if you’ve ever lived somewhere cold enough to actually roll up a snowball, but it only grabs a small amount of snow compared to the size of the ball when you roll it.
A small ball won’t pick up a lot of snow, but it will pick up enough to grow into a larger ball that picks up comparatively more snow to grow larger and pick up comparatively more snow, and so on. It doesn’t take long until you’re picking up clumps of snow several times larger than the initial ball like they’re nothing.
If you tried to just pack all that snow into the ball from the start you’d be there all day, but starting small and diligently rolling will easily result in a huge ball so long as you stick with it. Obviously people aren’t so easy to gather, but the principles are the same.
You’re still thinking in their terms units of organization why tfshpuld I rsspe t their borders San Diego Tijuana are same city to me like Victoria Seattle it’s not smart to do that ‘country’ is stupid
I mean, who gives a shit whether I say “A country’s worth of people” or “100 million people?” If you’re going to be that pedantic about it, we’ll never be able to come together to rise up in the first place. I speak in terms of geographic locations because that’s how revolutions start. One person in real life teams up with another person in real life, who together team up with other geographically nearby people on a local scale before moving up to larger and larger scales.
No matter how much a person in Seattle wants to help a movement that’s currently confined to Tijuana, they won’t be able to do anything tangible unless they physically go there and help. They could alternatively start up their own local movement in Seattle that eventually merges with the Tijuana one, or wait until the Tijuana one grows to reach Seattle, but neither of those helps the Tijuana one right now. Technically they could go online and spread awareness of the Tijuana movement, but the whole “thoughts and prayers” thing is less of a tangible helpful act and more of a way to pacify us by making us think we did something tangible, and rest on our laurels.
A country’s worth Montenegro Switzerland India please specify you seem really attached to the form of countries geographic locations sure but alto California and Appalachia aren’t the same not even close you can throw things from San Diego to Tijuana like with your hand england and the Balkans are closer culturally than California and appalachia and geographically not that we can’t work together its geographically nearby sometimes but especially these days networks of comrades aren’t always same continent I’ve written for zines first printed in Sydney and Dublin like opposite side of world and completely failed to put shit together with people on my block used tactics and strategies from hong Kong learned about what not to do when being cavalry charged from a friend who sent me a pic of her breasts with the great pyramid in the background later that day
Jeez, man. I was raised in a world separated into countries, sue me. I’ve made it clear that I don’t care about borders, they’re just a helpful way to get a vague understanding of a size of a group of people. Towns vary wildly in size and proximity to one another, too, but you don’t seem to be harping on me about that.
My point is that you start with a small local group in the 10’s of people, then move to the 100’s, then 1,000’s, then 10,000’s, and so on. It doesn’t matter if they come from the same country or not, so long as they can physically get together. It’s just easier for most people - clearly not you - to picture how big “a country’s worth” of people is, instead of a 1 with a bunch of 0’s after it.
…Yes, you can purchase products from around the world and “support” people with words and thoughts and prayers and whatever makes you feel like you contributed. No, that doesn’t provide a tangible benefit to people literally fighting their own local government, unless you plan to send them guns, which probably wouldn’t work.
Someone geographically nearby, regardless of how different they are culturally, has a lot more they can do, and a lot more reason to do it, than someone on the other side of the world who thinks a zine is going to keep a resistance fighter alive.
You didn’t read most of what I said
To be fair, it’s difficult to follow your train of thought, but I assumed I understood it all. To summarize my understanding of your last comment:
Which of your points do you think was the crux of your argument that I failed to address?
I didn’t touch on information transfer because if someone is already part of a movement, they would probably learn a lot more from someone local who’s actually been fighting as part of that group than from someone who maybe did something kinda similar once on the other side of the world.
I also didn’t touch on how some people don’t get along, because that’s obvious; not everyone in any given area will join the movement - only the ones who are motivated to do so will, but that number increases as the total size of the movement increases.
Part two of part two was that borders can include places really really far apart both culturally and geographically like I’d count on comrades in Canada and mexico before Appalachia because yeah culture but also I’m in California look at a map
I see. Yeah, a movement that starts in California would obviously spread to geographically nearby regions like Mexico and Oregon before it spreads to South Carolina. I wasn’t trying to say that a movement needed to stay confined to one country before going somewhere else, just that it will almost certainly spread from one area to another physically easily-reachable area, and won’t be recruiting hundreds of thousands of people at a time until its already comprised of hundreds of thousands of people.
Not really sure why you’d count on people in Canada - or think about Appalachia at all - if you’re in California, though. How are they going to help you when you’re staring down a cop about to cave your skull in during a violent protest? You need the guy standing right next to you so that you both can tackle the cop before he gets the chance. In this scenario the movement is still on the scale of 10’s to 100’s of people - you’d need to be looking for allies in your neighborhood before you worry about completely different geographical areas. We can worry about how we’ll get people on board in Florida when the movement has gotten big enough to spread that far.
People in Mexico are close enough to hopefully help, but even if they’re close, they’d still need to cross the border if your battles are taking place in California itself, which would be difficult regardless of the fact that the border is unjust. Or you could cross the border and start in Tijuana - it doesn’t really matter where the movement starts, it just matters that people are able to get there and either help fight or help tend to the wounded.