READ ME
Welcome to leftactivist.com. The main purpose of the site is to provide a place where there is Progressive Debate through the Comments section at the end of each post. You are welcome here regardless of whether you identify as progressive or not. The goal of the site though is to bring self-identified progressives together to debate differing progressive ideas about rethinking our theories and analyses, strategic goals and programmes for change, and tactical forms and methods of organizing and mobilizing. It is also perfectly fine if you don’t have the time or inclination to comment, but get something useful from reading a post or two. Maybe it will encourage you to discuss the ideas with others elsewhere.
To post a comment, go to the bottom of a post and put your cursor in the Comments white box (in some templates you have to click on Comments to open the comment field). Write your Comment. Click on Post Comment. The ‘Post a Comment’ screen comes up. There are three fields — Name, Email Address and Website Url. Only Name is required. Click on Comment as Guest and you are logged in, and your Comment will be posted. NOTE: If you want to see how your comment will display before posting it, click Preview. Then click on Edit to go back to the Comments box (where you can still edit what you wrote before posting). Post Comment.
If you want to advertise your website or email, you will have to type them into your comment. Note that clickable links are not supported in comments, but you can give your website url as text anyway.
If you want to comment on a specific comment, put your cursor in that posted comment, hover over the small icons and click on the right-most one, Reply.
To show you liked a posted comment, click on the second icon, Like.
To report a comment that is malicious or offensive, click on the first icon, Report.
To read the posted comments in a different order, click on the default Newest First and choose one of Oldest First, Most Liked, Least Liked.
HOW TO NAVIGATE THE SITE
The site is simple. Most of the posts are full essay length. I typically select one or more books as a primary source, and then pose a single main question about what progressives could do to become more effective in some area. I draw on the work of the source author(s) and formulate my own answer to the question. The purpose is to provoke you and others to comment, so I try to be provocative in a good way. I don’t have the answers, only my (tentative) answers. Most of the time I am rethinking what old answers I used to have to that question, in the process of writing the post.
You can scan the home page for the top ten or so most recent posts, pick one, click on Read More, read through, and make a Comment at the end. Clicking on Blog returns you to the home page.
Or you can click on Archive to scroll through all the posts on this site in chronological order. Click to open one, read through and make a Comment at the end. Click Blog to return to the home page, or Archive again.
Or click on Sites which takes you to a page with an annotated list of links to other progressive (or just useful) sites.
Click on Contact to email me to make suggestions for sites to add, or to flag problems with the site and to suggest improvements, or just to contact me personally.
Both Contact and Subscribe to Our Newsletter are reCAPTCHA protected, so click on ‘I am not a robot’ (you may or may not be asked to pick photos to prove it).
ON A SMARTPHONE, access the navigation links (ReadMe, Blog, Archive, Contact, Sites) by clicking on the ‘hamburger’ menu (two horizontal lines). On your laptop, they are links in the header and footer.
HOW TO GET NOTIFICATIONS ABOUT NEW CONTENT:
(1) When you have made a comment and hit Post Comment (and then log in to Comment as Guest), you can click on Subscribe via email. You will be notified when someone else adds to the Comment thread (perhaps replying to you). NOTE: You can only Subscribe via email after logging in to Comment as Guest.
(2) Click on the ‘Follow on Twitter’ bird icon to get notifications (to your Twitter account) of new posts.
(3) Scroll to the bottom of the home page and SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER to get less frequent notifications, plus some other content, emailed to you.
OTHER STUFF
Clicking on Act Now at the upper right of the home page puts you on a site for a current progressive campaign. You may have to click on the previous tab in your browser to get back to leftactivist.com.
NOTE: The earliest posts are notes for a book on the 1960s student movement in (English) Canada that I am working on. Go to SIXTIES STUDENTS: Read Me First and Comment on ‘Other Campuses’ for an explanation, and to comment, if you were in the student movement in Canada then. To read the other SIXTIES STUDENTS posts, click on Archive.
GUIDELINES FOR COMMENTS
Comments are expected to be written with a mind to contributing, in a non-sectarian way, to greater success for left movements and popular struggles for social justice. No abusive assertions or offensive language. No recruitment or marketing advocacy for a particular organization or individual or business product or miracle ideology (but it is fine to say good things about this or that organization or set of ideas). Do not make references to actions by individuals or organizations that could get them into trouble.
HOW TO SEARCH THE SITE
There are two ways to search the site. To be frank, neither will be of much use until there are a large number of blog posts on the site.
SEARCH FIELD Type in a (key)word or word string in the Search field at the bottom of the home page. It will bring up the links to posts that contain that word (string) plus some instances of the word(s) – but not all the instances. It is probably only useful to locate a very specific and uncommon reference, such as a title or proper name. Note that there are clickable Tag or Keyword links at the end of each post that I have assigned.
CATEGORY SEARCH When you are looking at the headline and lead for a blog post on the home page, you will see several clickable ‘category’ words just before Read More. The four categories refer to: (1) the main type of content (Theory/Goals, Strategy/Tactics, Practical Organizing); (2) the level of the analysis (Society, Organization, Individual); (3) the country or region that is the main factual basis (Canada, USA, Britain, Europe, Majority World, Many Places); and (4) the main Movement or Issue Area (e.g. Political Mvt, Anti-Racist, Green. General Left). This is mostly to give you an idea about the content of the post that you don’t already get from the headline and lead. If you click on a category, it will pull up links to all posts that have also been assigned that category.
ABOUT US
I am a Canadian, a retired former Sociology professor. My social and political views crystallized out of my involvement in many different left-wing social and political movements of the 1960s and since. I have spent many decades doing my best to study and understand left-wing movements, and how they both fail and succeed. I created this site because it is the best way, at my age and stage, that I can make my modest contribution to rethinking and strengthening today’s left movements.
MY CURRENT POLITICS IN A PARAGRAPH (but read the posts on specific issues)
Liberty, Equality, Democracy, Peace and Justice for All. Progressive movements everywhere share that core vision of an alternative. How do we get these things? We need to put an end to systems of imperialism, racism, sexism and homophobia. We need to replace them with a post-capitalist system of some kind yet to be invented. To make systemic changes, We the People need political decision-making power in every institution in society — in the economy, social institutions and government. Leftactivist.com aims to stimulate debate among progressives about the way forward.
SHARE WITH YOUR FRIENDS
Please read the posts and Comment frequently and thoughtfully. Debate with others through this process. Use Contact to send me sites and other information for the Sites page. And use your social media and other means to tell your friends and colleagues about leftactivist.com.