memes

Thanks! And I agree. Here's an interesting article on what you talked about right through this link right here. Kinda says what you say about the limits of "direct action." We need a movement first, and then we need a revolution, but there are multiple steps we have to take from a movement to the revolutionary situation phase as well. We can't just have "revolution today" or tomorrow or soon; that's idealistic. We need movement now and, quite frankly, revolution later because we need to build ourselves up first, we need to build up our forces. I read Nick Estes' comments on Standing Rock. Oh yeah, and Extinction Rebellion has people that mean well, but will wear itself thin and I think they're weaker now than they've ever been, to your point.

A dose of what's called "social movement studies" (which is an academic field) would also help MLs that want to organize and do activism (rather than just "digital activism" or "education" online). It's good to do theory; but praxis is more important, imho. "Every bit of movement is worth more than a thousand developmenets in theory." (paraphrasing Marx). That's why I recommend William Z. Foster's American Trade Unionism (oh, and Mao's writings are good on this, but you need to keep in mind that he was fighting a civil war so some of what he says has to be amended for movement-building in our context). Oh yeah, and Convergence Magazine has a lot of good articles on activism and praxis, but is a bit lib (which is fine, so long as you're learning something).