Our local group of anarchist and Marxist hooligans are in early talks on how to start educating and radicalizing the group of radlibs that we were helping run cop watch, scanner duties, and jail support for. There is a lot of confused and scared libs that the little optimist in me thinks we can work with and help them start to understand things from an actual leftist perspective. If we can see even a few new comrades come out of this with the smaller turnout we had at the protest, I think it will be worth it. We won’t counter-coopt the org, but I think it’s a good place to develop networks and go from there.

Co-opt the events themselves? Unlikely. Recruit from them and agitate within those spaces? Possible, but I’m not gonna do it cause I can’t stand libs and would just end up yelling at them

You go and talk to people to find people who might join your org, make connections between orgs, etc. But on the whole, these protests are absolutely not productive

I saw PSL recruiting at my local event, but they didn’t really try to coopt the thing as a whole. Basically, they seemed to talk, kept their speeches mostly to stuff everyone agreed about (Wallstreet and Trump is bad), inserted some anti-imperialist talking points, and then used that to find receptive people, and sign them up or hand them flyers.

So, they were selective about it, but it doesn’t mean the protests weren’t useful to them. It’s a chance to grow the movement and get people who wouldn’t have otherwise heard of them. I’m sure other communist movements did a similar thing.

Probably not. Your average Westerner is incapable of changing their minds via someone presenting evidence or a well thought out argument. They have to come across it organically and it has to be their idea. It looks weak if you change your opinion in the face of new evidence, so it has to be something they bump into on their own, like when your aunt “discovers” this hip new restaurant called chilis