We are closer than ever as a world thanks to numerous communication platforms. It is also great to not have a monopoly on how we all communicate. I am involved in loads of different groups/organisations and the problem is *actually communicating* with people.
I can send out info, but to some people ONLY: check emails (if they even do that), Facebook, Twitter, Messenger, Instagram (not on it, MY bad, will do soon-ish), WhatApp (not on it, MY bad-will be soon-ish), text messages, answer phone calls etc. Some do all of the above, most not.
To give you an idea: If you send to all platforms, you will get some who say they have received the message multiple times and don’t want that (I get it, but read on), some say “Oh, I would definitely have gone to/attended that, but I didn’t know!” etc etc. So, just to give you one example: To get a Zoom meeting attended by, say, 10-30 people, it can take sending 200+ Individual FB messenger messages, group messenger messages (some people don’t check groups but do individual messages & vice versa), several hundred emails, phone calls, text messages, political FB groups, tagging on Twitter etc. Yes, really. You can work out how long that takes…and yes, I am aware there are now lots of meetings/events, and fatigue does come with that.
As ‘The Left’ I feel this is entirely unsustainable for both those organising and those receiving communications. I don’t have a solution; we on The Left are more dogmatic and stubborn re how they want to communicate. But I do want to start a serious debate. With Facebook and all these platforms constantly banning/suspending Lefties/Leftie posters (not just me, I can literally name loads of people); also, given the huge amount of Left organisations now, this makes things difficult again.
You then have people who want to temporarily ‘opt out’ (which I completely get) for mental health/personal reasons; but there is no realistic way of keeping them in the loop when they want to re-engage, or if they are needed for votes etc. THE key point is mobilisation-without a common, clear way of doing this, we weaken our entire Movement. With this level of ‘chaos’, and with the forthcoming Murdoch Channel and the other one (with Andrew Neil), and already not having ANY mainstream media AT ALL (yes, I am aware of The Daily Mirror…), we are left with the absurd position of more than half the UK (and elsewhere) not having a main focus point for info/important messaging.
This is where I feel the Unions have so far failed. That they have not yet invested millions in new media platforms I find simply astonishing, especially given Union memberships increasing all the time at the moment. They have to be the ones, as unless there are rich Leftie donors, or small donors by the thousands (which then takes months and months to even build to a basic level, and there are already many of those), policies/ideas/People we KNOW the public would support, will continue to be excluded and make it nigh-on impossible to gain any kind of power anywhere.
To be clear, we do have fantastic Union People and organisers. But we don’t have the Grassroots ‘ground teams’ they have in say, Venezuela or Bolivia (Latin America still leads the way here), that can win elections with 100% media hostility BECAUSE they have those networks of communication & engagement in place. Obviously I also accept there are political Party differences, and so my point here is mainly about a main focus of news information for The Left.
To use one quick example; Labour appointing a former IDF Agent to monitor Social Media content; this should be headline news. As it should if that person was from Russian Intelligence, British Intelligence or any other country. That role is *VERY* key and so it’s highly important & in the public interest. Outside our bubbles, barely anyone knows. How often does the MSM cover the atrocities in Palestine? Also, heard about UK support for recent coup attempts in Venezuela? No? Exactly….
So, and I want to mention this again to avoid confusion, there are (thankfully) lots of brilliant People doing all they can all the time. Amazing People. Truly inspirational People. But I am aware we now have a huge amount of People not in clear contact with each other, despite the various ways (because of?), and even more People not represented at all by a mainstream news platform.
I feel this is urgent as we enter VERY dark days, where ‘The Left’ soon in media terms will be seen as Tony Blair, for example. ‘The Right’ moves/is now ‘Far Right’ and then anything to the Left of Blair will be seen (and not represented/defended) as extreme hard Left, despite that being beyond ridiculous. With racism, fascism and now even so-called ‘centrists/moderates (never has a term been more inappropriate)’ acting as actual dictators, we have to at least try and save each other and our planet. That may sound an exaggeration/dramatic, but it really, really is that serious for us & those we need to reach.
Solidarity to all.
Adam Samuels
@finnfan05
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The Left needs to mass migrate to the MANY Decentralised, Self Moderated, Open Source Alternatives out there, ie Diaspora for Facebook, Mastodon for Twitter, Signal for WhatsApp, PeerTube for YouTube etc. Disroot is a good place to take care of it all! https://disroot.org/en
We could move all business ‘Left’ Decentralised and all business ‘public’ ie announcements, promos, etc onto Mainstream. If you have a business use the Mainstream.
We have to stop being frightened of Change, when Change is exactly what we need and if we don’t lead the change it won’t happen, FB, Twitter, Google, Amazon will definitely feel our departure!