I’ve had a few events so far where the discussion/feedback part had 1-2 white guys doing longgggg monologues about something unrelated to the main topic. Last time had some stoner guy ranting about the confusing service at airports here (the event was about Gaza). Before that it was some boomer guy trying to explain Madonna to the non-white teens in our group (the event was about trans rights). Sometimes it’s just two white guys monologuing back and forth. It’s super counter productive and cringe.

I’m just thinking of a hard rule. Like “if you’re a white guy, you’re welcome, but please try to listen more and keep unrelated monologues to a minimum.”

For the record, I am a white dude.

  • rando895English
    2·
    8 days ago

    I took a course on social organizing. And every time a question like this was asked (how do we convince x…) I would try and come up with a clever way of doing it. Then the instructor would provide several examples of what you might say and they were all direct.

    So here’s what you could do:

    Tell them to shut the fuck up and let someone else talk.

    I’ll add to this: Trying to be nice to people who are disruptive in an organization, or people you dislike for some reason, will undermine the cause/organizing/institution etc. It is far better to personally deal with issues rather than let them fester and lead to resentment.

    That doesn’t mean kick someone out (necessarily), but confront them and do the uncomfortable thing. We have power through numbers, which means all our efforts are necessarily social.

    It will be hard, it will suck, you might even need to go home and have a cry afterwards. But you, your organization, and your comrades will form stronger bonds, and experience far more wins than are otherwise possible.