Tools & skills are about efficaciously changing the world. And, um, that doesn't really reinforce a sense of community nor a status hierarchy, ah, I don't know why you would assume anyone besides a few nerds would be interested. https://twitter.com/mutual_ayyde/status/1302862089896128512

There are very very few people who are primarily motivated by trying to change the world rather than scratch the primate itch for social standing.

Those people tend to be anonymous saboteurs, hackers, and antifascist researchers who will never get credit for what they do.

In an average activist meeting 90% of The Work is predicated upon knowing people, "having connections," 5% requires unique skills, and 5% requires knowing the lay of the land in discourse, culture, theory, etc.

All of these things are jealously guarded rather than shared.

So for example, a meeting might resolve with several tasks that involve talking to "contacts" in other activist groups, churches, reporters, administration, etc. Then another task might be "design and screenprint 1000 posters." And another task might be "write a statement."

As previously indicated all of these tasks *require* the possession of social, knowledge, and cultural capital that some normie off the street won't have.

Since these tasks garner respect, ownership, and influence, they provide social standing within the group.

If the folks involved were sincerely primarily motivated by changing the world these forms of capital would be aggressively shared, with new members introduced to said contacts with social/cultural context explained, but in practice they are most usually de facto gatekept.

There are some collective pathologies that can emerge from this, one is the inner core of an activist group doing all the work and feeling stressed by it and so browbeating those outside the core. But never really expanding opportunities for those outside the core to help.

I've had enough friends fall into this trap, & even fallen into it myself -- it's not always possible to share all forms of capital -- but since there's no resolution to the tension, it's just a status hierarchy where the overworked core gets praised by those not allowed to work.

Anyway, this is why I'm a fervent proponent of sharing skills and dumping social/cultural context for new folks (including airing dirty laundry).

(Also why my fav role in some orgs was secretly making posters for the action and putting them up on my own.)