ProdigalFrog

Cheers for confirmation ^^

The ultimate goal of joining those types of groups is to find individuals that share your values who you can make connections with.

The more rural the area and sparsely populated the area, the harder it will be to find those types of existing groups, making churches, food banks, and non-profits or charities the only realistic options in the beginning.

If you live in an area where you're not able to find any existing group that deals with a particular issue in your area, the only option at that point would be to create your own group to tackle that issue, becoming the mutual aid you seek.

An example of what the latter could look like is to create a community garden or open a community fridge to help with creating food stability for your community, possibly by working with local businesses who have excess food to give away/write off, or by working with your local food banks or churches.

If you have a local DSA chapter, that can often have people interested in joining up with you in mutual aid.

Did you get any results from using a search engine to search your town/city plus the word mutual aid?

Just to be sure; when you click that link, does it take you to a guide on how to find like minded people, or only a comment below the guide that says nonprofits are sellouts? It seems to bring me to the guide, but that's only a sample size of one.

I ask since food pantries and churches are some of the places it recommends looking, among others.

If you have a Food Not Bombs chapter near you, that'd be a good group to visit and talk to as well.

Short of going there as a medic or for humanitarian aid, the most powerful thing we can do to help is to organize ourselves in our local communities to better prepare ourselves for resistance and build up grassroots movements to demand our governments stop assisting in the genocide.

What that actually looks like:

1. finding those local communities and getting involved to make connections
2. We can effect things drastically with a general strike. This targets their income streams, and can bring a fascist government to its knees if done on a large enough scale.
3. Contact a union and attempt to unionize your workplace, so that the general strike is even more effective.

Suggestions:

• 🌍 Global: IWW (Français) - (Español)
• 🇦🇷 Argentina: FORA
• 🇦🇺 Australia: ASF-IWA
• 🇧🇷 Brazil: FOB
• 🇧🇬 Bulgaria: ARS, CITUB
• 🇩🇪 Germany: FAU
• 🇬🇷 Greece: ESE
• 🇮🇹 Italy: USI
• 🇳🇱 🇧🇪 Netherlands & Belgium: Vriji Bond
• 🇪🇸 Spain: CNT
• 🇸🇪 Sweden: SAC
• 🇬🇧 United Kingdom: UVW

4. Continuing to participate in publicly visible resistance demonstrations like 50501 to encourage others to stand up with you and prove to them that there are hundreds of thousands of others who will join them in the fight. A large part of Nazi Germany's success in taking over the country was a lack of massive public demonstrations against the new regime, making people feel helpless and afraid to take a stand.

If we put in the work, we can resist this and we can win, and that would be the best way available to us to help the Palestinians being genocided right now, as well as speaking out about what is happening.

Something to keep in mind: only 65% of the population voted, meaning only 32% of the population voted for Trump, and he currently only has an approval rating of 40%.

If we compare to Nazi Germany, Hitler had an approval rating of 60 to 70% even towards the end of the war when they were losing.

We're in a much better position to win against them than the Germans ever had against Hitler.

Publicly visible resistance demonstrations like 50501 are going to be more important than ever to help encourage others to also stand up, and show them that there are hundreds of thousands of others who will join them in the fight. A large part of Nazi Germany's success in taking over the country was a lack of massive public demonstrations against the new regime, making people feel helpless and afraid to take a stand..

I know it seems like this just keeps going on, but we have to keep up the fight.

They're really not. I'd recommend reading the Dawn if Everything by anthropologist David Graeber and Archeologist David We grow, which reveals that our true 'human nature' is actually egalitarianism and cooperation, and that our current modes of existence are an oddly different blip on the timeline of humanity.

The guy who heads that gave a fantastic Defcon talk showing it in action.

Far as I can tell, it does that when the phone is running low on ram. At least, that's when it does it to me.

Glad you enjoyed!

Wanted to come back to this after getting about halfway through the book so far, as well as finishing What Is Politics' series on the book (which, it turns out, only focus on the first 3 chapters). My conclusion is: they're kinda both right.

As someone who has never looked into anthropology, Dawn of Everything showcases some incredibly valuable history that I likely wouldn't have stumbled across by myself. The historic debate with Kandiaronk and his background in particular was exceptionally cool to read about, and the breadth of examples Graeber and Wengrow have to show all in one place is astounding.

What Is Politics' critique, though, does have merit IMO. There are a fair amount of times Dawn of Everything either misquotes, misleads, or withholds relevant context of the hunter gatherer tribes and cultures they reference. As an example, David & Wengrow suggest that cultures which experience only seasonal hierarchy are proof that these ancient cultures experimented with different forms of structuring society, but they left out the parts of the studies they reference to make those claims that show those seasonal hierarchies are absolutely not a conscious choice, but one that is quite clearly something the people being dominated by the hierarchy tolerate only due to environmental circumstance.

As an example, Marcel Mauss's study on the Eskimo: The Inuit experience somewhat egalitarian lives during the winter, and a more strict hierarchy during the summer where things become decidedly patriarchal, as the hunting men have full domination over their families. This is not out of choice by the women, but due to the seasonal change forcing their food supply (which concentrates in the winter) to disperse during the summer, leading individual families to venture out alone to continue to hunt game. This isolates women from their families which would normally act as a power equalizing effect against abusive or dominating husbands. The patriarchal domination does not appear to be a willing choice or experiment in any practical sense.

I also think it's odd that they seem to be suggesting that personal choice is what ultimately caused these egalitarian outcomes, but then also mention materialist reasons for why a culture might've stayed egalitarian, such as their reference to one tribe's use of a constantly shifting fertile river bank for agriculture as not lending itself to laying down territorial claims, which likely aided that culture in not becoming hierarchical.

What is Politics definitely is hyper materialist, but I think he makes a solid case in many of his critiques. His materialism does, however, seem to blind him to the solid argument Dawn of Everything makes that culture and conscious choice does seem capable of playing a large part in shaping society, such as the case of the differences between the Californian and Northwest coast native American tribes.

Without having finished the book, I can't make a final conclusion. But at least from what I've read so far, I'd put forward that environmental conditions do seem to have a not insignificant influence in determining whether an ancient society will lean toward becoming hierarchical or egalitarian, simply due to the conditions being more or less favorable to a group or individual gaining a foothold over others due to resource access. But culture and choice seem capable of playing a large part in that outcome as well.

I think ultimately Dawn of Everything is going to result in more regular folk becoming aware of the facts that our ancestors were fully capable of egalitarian societies and that it was in fact the norm until recent history, which is a terrific boon, and I'll certainly continue to recommend it for that reason alone. Though I think What is Politics' series is also enlightening, and a good companion piece to the book to fill out areas that Graeber & Wengrow likely got a bit wrong just due to the sheer size and complexity of the project.

No worries :)

I wasn't aware that they were particular magnets to drama. Our specific community does not allow Pro-Authoritarian content like the others appear to, and the slrpnk community itself is quite a chill corner of the lemmyverse, which likely contributes to our lack of drama.