Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated) @joepie91@pixie.town

@eblu I guess what it all boils down to is: find a Thing To Do With Others that at least somewhat aligns with your political views and goals, and "just" get talking to people while you're doing it, and things will develop from there. You just need to have a shared interest or goal for a bit, even if temporarily.

@eblu It varies a lot by where you are. What often works for radical communities is to find your local culture-focused squat, food-not-bombs effort, giveaway shop, clothes swap, something else that looks radical and has public events, and simply get talking to people and tell them that you've been looking for local community. There are event calendars on sites like radar.squat.net though your local anarchist/squat/punk/etc. scene may have their own thing too. Note that not every anarchist/radical group is necessarily very inclusive or open, so you may get a few duds.

If you're looking for a less radical community, other places to start include food banks (they almost always are looking for volunteers!), local churches doing homeless outreach (you'll want to check beforehand that they're not the sketchy kind), soup kitchens, and so on. There are also less obvious things in some places like "form-filling assistance" events where you might find like-minded people.

Generally speaking any kind of "helping others for free" thing is likely to welcome new hands to help, and that's the easiest way to get involved. Failing all that, it can be as simple as talking to your neighbours and trying to figure out who is (somewhat) receptive towards progressive views - they do not need to be radical, just open enough to progressive change to get along with them, though this can be harder to start with if you don't have pre-existing social connections.

Finally, don't underestimate what you might find in your local family and friends circle! Sometimes all you need is an idea for a thing to organize, however simple, as long as it is something that vaguely-close-to-you people can participate in.

@mynameistillian Goodnight, and hope you find good sleep!

@shauna (To clarify: these are things I have learned elsewhere, applied in various different kinds of communities, and have consistently found success with, so it's not just a "read this somewhere once" answer - realized that I didn't make that very clear in my post, it's late...)

@shauna I'm not great at keeping track of external sources so I don't really have links handy, but for the first point, I'd say that the most important thing is to focus on catching growing conflicts early (before they lead to resentment/grudges), and to create a culture of discussion rather than debate - where the framing is that you are collectively seeking the right answer that no one individual themselves might have yet, rather than competitively trying to figure out who is "right". The point is never to find a 'winner', always to find a solution that works for all.

I've found that those two things get you very far on the way towards a healthy conflict resolution culture. It's not an original thought, I'm sure I caught this idea elsewhere, but I do not remember where exactly.

(A related idea is that every attempt at conflict resolution should start with a non-judgmental conversation with each party to understand what *their* issue with the situation is, because different parties may have very different ideas of what the problem actually is, and very often it then turns out that their needs do not actually conflict after all and it was just a communication issue)

@rune Ah I didn't realize it was meant as a profile text rather than a message to a specific person, hm.