/r/MDLeftist

Photograph via snooOG

This subreddit is for any socialists, communists, or other left radicals in Maryland.

Welcome! This subreddit is for any socialists, communists, or other left radicals in Maryland. Post news, ideas, or anything else you think we might want to hear about.

Before posting, please make sure you:

  1. Read and recognize established rules on this subredit

  2. Look over, read, or examine our wiki

  3. We are a new subreddit. Hence, comments to improve the maintenance of this space are completely welcome.

Related Subreddits:

  • /r/intlleftalliance/ (place for standing in solidarity with nations and peoples who are under attack from Western imperialism and the global capitalist system)

  • /r/communism (This subreddit facilitates discussion between marxists, and Marxists of all tendencies are welcome there)

  • /r/SovietHistory (A place for learning about the history of the Soviet Union or U.S.S.R. from 1922 to 1991, and first Soviet/Bolshevik government from 1917-1922)

  • /r/marxism (discusses Marxism in practice)

Some of MD's leftist groups

  • Baltimore Branch of the PSL

Chapter of the Party of Socialism and Liberation, a self-defined "revolutionary Marxist Party." They can be contacted at baltimore@pslweb.org

FIST is a socialist organization, with chapters nationwide, and is comprised of "national group of young activists committed to fighting racism, sexism, oppression of lesbian, gay, bi and trans people, and exploitation of the working class."

Branch of the IWW, a democratic, member-run industrial union which aims to "win better conditions today and build a world with economic democracy tomorrow."

A Baltimore-based anti-racist, anti-oppression "grassroots collective of Friends, Families & Neighborhoods; United to Decolonize Communities & Organize for Kujichagulia"

Organized by folks from the Workers' World Party and elsewhere, this assembly "fights to defend the rights of poor and working people. This includes racism & sexism, police terror, low wages, jobs, education & healthcare." This group in Baltimore is one of the four chapters nationwide.

A Baltimore-based organization dedicated to fair development, equity in public policies, and government accountability, with a specific focus since 2013 on public subsidies to developers, environmental justice, and housing.

Grassroots thinktank in Baltimore "which advances the public policy interest of Black people, in Baltimore [with]...youth leadership development, political advocacy, and autonomous intellectual innovation" and also seeks to "radically change the discourse around local and regional politics by injecting community voices into political conversations through policy research, advocacy, and community organizing from a grassroots perspective."

A organization which "opposes any form of bigotry and supports full equality of all people," and stands in solidarity with Palestine, working with the Jewish Voice for Peace chapter in Baltimore and supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement call to action in 2005.

A group dedicated to "Stopping Extraction and Exports Destruction, fighting dirty energy production, transport, and consumption!"

A grassroots group resisting the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline which would "disrupt preserved farms, precious woodlands, and families' homes...[and] majority of the fracked gas that it would carry is intended for export at the Cove Point Liquid Natural Gas terminal." Connected to No ACP!, which is a group opposed to Dominion's Dirty Energy Projects.

A Baltimorean community group composed of "people experiencing homelessness, allies and advocates promoting the human right to housing" which works to "end homelessness in Baltimore City through access to permanent affordable housing for all" through numerous different methods such as "education, leadership development, direct actions, political advocacy, and grassroots community organizing."

Many other groups that could not be included in this list are posted here for your viewing pleasure. Suggestions and changes to this list are welcome.

/r/MDLeftist

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Words/lables vs. Concrete political analysis and praxis

I must describe my political praxis and analysis as being based on the ideas and principles of both communism and anarchism. I feel that the two words and concepts both correspond to shared, indespensible political, ethical principles.

So I'm confounded by one of the rules of the group.

I'm not sure what I am allowed to discuss here because actual, elaborated ideas will always be labled and pigeonholed differently by different people. Many of which don't want to engage with ideas without vetting them through/projecting them onto the vulgates and strict traditions of what have become accepted as closed sysyems of representing the world. This includes unchanging party lines that take themselves as purely contiguous with an unquestionable system of truths established long ago in a different time and place, as if we are still in that time and place and there are no new valid or useful ideas that contradict long held assumptions; particularly assuptions of the purity that is attached so firmly by some to the words 'anarchist' and 'communist'.

I'm a dialectical thinker, not a dogmatic one. And my engagement with political discourse and action is not determined by an obedience to some conclusion about the traditions and debates of the 19th century as if I am not able, and in fact responsible to live and think beyond them. My politics are not based on arguments about which party, group or author was totally correct about their particular conditions which have long since developed into what they cannot be crudely equated with.

I'm interested in the issues of struggle today, in changing ideas in a changing world. I believe social revolution is an endless process and there is no map that will relieve us of the task of continually responding to unforseen events and circumstances, the task of always repreparing ourselves.

Thank you.

1 Comment
2019/09/08
08:39 UTC

2

Resigning as a mod

To be frank, this subreddit is slowly dying and not much is being done about that. Since I post so little content on here, I think I have contributed positively to to this subreddit in the past with established rules, a wiki, and whatnot.

Bye!

1 Comment
2018/03/24
04:05 UTC

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