I want to talk about anger.

Right now, there are a lot of reasons to be very, very angry.

We are all experiencing bursts of anger, often onset by news or statistics or videos of powerful people saying dumb things.

Then we are told to breathe deeply, self-care, step away, anything to lower our blood pressure and go back to not feeling angry.

Because it is *bad* to feel angry, we are told. We must do what we can to avoid anger, we are told.

Here's the thing.

We use a different word than angry in organizing contexts: we use the word agitated. And agitation is actually an absolutely necessary thing.

When people are conditioned en masse to dilute, ignore, deny, or hide their anger, often through consumerism ("treat yourself") or messaging of disempowerment ("it's out of my control"), a very powerful emotion is taken away from us.

Anger is an active emotion. It leads to action.

Conditioning the working class that anger is an emotion to avoid is literally conditioning the working class to avoid action. This is intentional. They do this to keep us from standing up from ourselves.

Agitation is the very first step in the AEIOU process of organizing because people need to be angry in order to change their material circumstances. People that result to nihilism and passivity do not stand up for themselves.

We agitate workers to help them.

To say "your boss gave you this open wound. You have gotten used to the pain, accepted it as reality, & think it's normal, but you're still bleeding. You should not have this wound." We poke it. Gently. To remind them it's there, but shouldn't be

Wounds can be no healthcare, forced OT, no benefits, abusive management, no PTO, etc.

We are taught to be apathetic, appreciative of what we DO have, timid. The wound could be so much bigger. I'm not bleeding THAT much.

BUT YOU SHOULDNT BE BLEEDING AT ALL.

In order to tell them to stop hurting you, you have to be aware of & acknowledge the pain to realize you need to demand them to stop! And that everyone else around you has wounds too! You all have the same fucking wounds & you've been taught to all just sit there & be ok with it!

But realizing it's happening doesn't make the wound heal!
Noticing people are hurting doesn't make the wounds heal!

You have feel active emotions like anger that empower you to open your mouth and stand up and tell whoever is hurting you to cut it out!!!!

We CANNOT let them take anger from us b/c anger is what causes us to email that union rep or join a mutual aid group or show up to a protest or reach out to fellow tenants!

Nihilism makes us say "this is as good as it gets!"

Anger makes us say "I'm going to DO something!"

So yeah!! Be fucking pissed!! And then channel that active emotion into constructive action like organizing your neighbors or self education or joining a revolutionary party or joining caravan protests or whatever you can do TODAY that helps us reach a more organized TOMORROW!

Revolutionary optimism + active participation is the solution to nihilism. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Whatever you can do is a step in the right direction. Organizing is a series of small slow steps. Take one step today.

Tl,Dr: being angry feels bad. But we can do powerful, good things with anger. Let yourself be angry and channel it into constructive things. Thanks for listening.