I’ve been dabbling in the past year and a half with getting into orgs, which haven’t been that hard since I live in a big city, but I still had trouble staying consistent with it or feeling like I have any actual impact.
I went through orgs dealing with asylum seekers, unions for part-time workers, food security, fun local events that raise money for the aforementioned food security project, and now I landed in an org dealing with helping low-wage workers getting benefits that their employers stole from them. Most of them are refugees, some are Palestinians, which does feel somewhat impactful, but it’s still a minority.
These were all great orgs with moral people, but the catch is that I can’t be passive with it like in my work. There aren’t really any managers that are responsible for finding me work at these orgs, because they’re busy with their own work. There are no Bullshit Jobs there. I need to ask around and find work myself.
This is exhausting, especially while juggling a 9-5 and a couple of hobbies, and while I’m fully aware of the capitalistic scam of keeping us busy working instead of organizing, I’m yet still frustrated with it. Anyone feeling the same? I hope it’ll get more impactful as my life gets more stable, and I have an overall optimistic feeling about this, but non the less the helplessness I feel right now is real :(
To be frank I got lucky here. Palestine-Israel is a tiny country and the based leftist orgs are concentrated in the three biggest cities: Jerusalem, Haifa, and Tel Aviv. Most people live around one of these three cities, with Tel Aviv notoriously being the most left leaning, and I live in its metropolitan area for work so life is good.
Now with this info in mind, I found these organizations through social media. The food security project is called Culture of Solidarity and they’ve made an ingenious decision of putting a strong emphasis on their Instagram presence. The women who founded this org (who I personally admire) have immense people skills and they leveraged the Corona crisis to create this network of food security.
The org I most recently got into is one that my psychologist recommended on, though :)