• alexei_1917 [mirror/your pronouns]@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    This, except there really isn’t any violence. If you’re really lucky, maybe they actually read Lenin and don’t discuss how actually he was totally in favour of electoralism. But hey, the reading circle probably does something somewhat leftist, even if half these groups treat Stalin’s works like a hot potato, and maybe they use their group resources on some sort of meaningful direct harm reduction, and at least they have pizza at the meetings. Maybe juice boxes, if some 40-something stay at home mom who just comes to dump the kids on her partner for a few hours and say she’s attending “book club”, has extra after a primary school/scout troop thing.

    (Tbf, I know a stereotypical liberal mom who’d absolutely have gone to an ML book club just for fairly basic snacks and to get away from the kids, when her children were both under 10. And she might even have actually read the book, at least once every few meetings.)

    • BobDole [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      11 hours ago

      If you’re really lucky, maybe they actually read Lenin and don’t discuss how actually he was totally in favour of electoralism

      The last CPUSA meeting I ever attended in a nutshell

      • alexei_1917 [mirror/your pronouns]@hexbear.net
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        1 hour ago

        Yeah, that sounds frustrating. If I wanted to hear supposed socialists say Lenin advocated for electoralism, I’d go to a liberal space. I can get liberal nonsense at home, I don’t need to hear it from supposed comrades!

        Why are Western communist parties all such garbage?

    • Damarcusart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 day ago

      (Tbf, I know a stereotypical liberal mom who’d absolutely have gone to an ML book club just for fairly basic snacks and to get away from the kids, when her children were both under 10. And she might even have actually read the book, at least once every few meetings.)

      Setting up evil commie daycares is an important part of community building in this day and age, most daycares are so absurdly expensive that parents can’t afford them, and parents just end up isolated as they can’t find the time to interact with people because they always need to “watch the kids”

      • alexei_1917 [mirror/your pronouns]@hexbear.net
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        1 day ago

        “The kids will learn sharing, the Clean Up Song, and some revolutionary tactics, but it’s community building!”

        “Okay, so the last three pictures Katie drew at preschool were on red construction paper… but that’s not really a serious red flag… okay, so she lectured me about how grownups need to be better at sharing, but she didn’t mean to advocate for communism… look, you get what you pay for, and the church nursery is worse.”

        “Nap time? What kind of anti-woke fascists do you take us for!?”

        “A dramatization of the October Revolution is totally an acceptable story for the 3-year-old room’s circle time!”

        “Yes, we have two bins of teddy bears per room while we don’t have near enough of any other toys. No, it’s not a Soviet Bear thing that we have teddy bears literally all over the building.”

        “Yeah, Jamie goes to that damned commie daycare. I’m not a commie or anything, we just can’t afford a nicer center and he got kicked out of the church daycare. He drew a nice portrait of Lenin last week. McCarthy would roll in his grave, but what else can I do? Any other childcare would cost more than my wages, and we can’t afford for me to be a stay at home parent either.”

        But seriously, at the very least, when we organise the kind of stuff where it’s safe to have kids in the building, we should have some people take turns watching the kids. We don’t want good comrades not organising because “I can’t even attend a reading group, never mind anything more involved, I have no one to watch my kids for one damn hour”. And setting up affordable childcare is a good community project.

        • ClathrateG [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          23 hours ago

          Alongside other projects like the more well known Free Breakfast program, the Black Panthers set up free childcare as part of the larger ‘Survival Program’