I have a law profession and my partner works in art and we both have decent incomes and many of our friends have too. It's a bubble. I deal with unemployed clients on a daily basis and only then you realize how many people in this country (Belgium) live. In moldy houses, in uncertainty, without food some days, constantly between sickness - unemployment - shitty temp jobs. My friends never believe my stories because they never see the misery.
We have this orthodox Jewish district in my city which I ride my bike through every morning to go to work. Today some dude was riding in front of me when a Jewish guy in a car drove towards us. These are narrow streets so there was little space.
Anyway the dude on the bike went off against the car, screaming: 'fucking JEW, fucking UNTERMENSCH' and I was like: what the actual fuck man.
I caught up to him at a traffick light and asked him: 'what the fuck did you just say? Untermensch?' and he started stuttering. I asked him if he knew what we do with Nazi fucks around here and he quickly rode away. Not that I have any idea what I meant with that either but still.
Baffles my mind how you can be so confidently Nazi outside.
I think you make some good points and I'd be lying if I said that I don't have my doubts in the past few months. Especially with the focus on elections and endlessly wanting to bring in new members like a pyramid scheme. Don't get me wrong it is important to attract new people but it felt like it became the main focus and other important work was shoved aside. I became a member because the party was leading by example by doing protests and achieving things but right now I can't remember the last time I actually felt like making a difference.
At the same time pushing for change can be hard. I have tried to get some ideas across but to no avail. Community building stuff like setting up gym groups or other activity hubs, reclaiming parts of unused land around the city to plant stuff or make parks, martial arts courses, etc. Not necessarily communist but I feel like stuff like that is missing. It's better than the umpteenth survey we try I think.
I read the post more thoroughly and this part hit home:
And I can’t believe I have to explain that to some communists. People will go to the 🌹 party if you give them a choice between socdem-but-we-like-lenin and socdem-but-we-like-flowers. you need to offer something different, and electoralism is not it. But it’s safe. And then you capture young engaged communists, use their labor for your electoral campaigns so you don’t have to pay money for it, and the cycle continues. It looks good on paper and 100 years later you pat yourself on the back for having failed at doing any revolution. A party doesn’t get my involvement on virtue of calling itself a communist party. It needs to earn me. It needs to earn you
Especially after almost a year and a half of campaigning for electoralism which at some point almost caused me to quit as it is so far removed of what I actually want to stand for.
We literally just had an opportunist quit our party in the European Council presumably because of the wage thing lmao. Painfully accurate I guess. He's an independent now enjoying the big fat EU wage.
One of our party officials in the European Council quit our party and will continue as independent. He gives no reason himself but rumours has it that it is about money. Every one of our officials needs to give a part of their governments wage (which is enormous) back to the party so that they only receive an average wage as to not lose touch with the people. Guess he wanted everything.
This made me think about what my party does. We try to organize from the bottom up. We have a heavy presence in, for example, factories and industrial companies. We have people working at said companies as elected officials right now, voicing their concerns to Parliament.
Apart from the mentioned fraternal greetings from AES we actually co-operate with AES. We have exchange programs with Cuban doctors. We visited Palestine before. We offer educational trips to Cuba. We do aid after disasters like in Spain with the floods.
We have our own free healthcare network in place right now with more than a dozen clinics throughout the country.
We offer courses on Marxism to the youth, we have our own youth cadres and they organize things like free festivals and stuff.
We actually govern in some municipalities together with socdems and greens.
There are other things we do that I can't remember atm but I feel like those are some important things for now. We have our own international commie festival, for example. We organize lots of protests, just to name something. We offer aid to people in need in our local communities. We have our own independent cadres in municipalities throughout the country.
I feel like there is a lot to do still but for a commie party in Europe it is quite decent at what it does. Still not perfect (if that's even possible) though.
Juchelear Submarine (yes I have no idea how to pronounce Juche)
Maybe the perspective is odd but that thing looks huge. Like they are building a fucking star destroyer or something.
Busy day in Langley
I was gifted a big zinc tub for my balcony garden this weekend and I immediately went out to buy some native pollinator plants. I got some figwort, cowslip, ferns, wild garlic and endangered common bluebell. I hope it will work out and that the bees and the beetles and the wasps and the butterflies find their way to it.
Imagine being such a shit leader that fans of the two most bitter rivals in your country decide they have to take up arms together against you