Something that stops organizing around where I live is that no one actually lives here. I don't mean it's underpopulated or rural. I'll be open and say I live in Houston with 7 million people. It's a populated place with plenty of marginalized communities, a whole bunch of queer people, and a very working class character. You'd think it's ripe for organizing, and there are good people who've done good stuff (shout-out to the local IWW and the Starbucks union campaign), but getting anything big off the ground is like pulling teeth.

When I say no one lives here I mean no one stays here. It's a community by happenstance, everyone is here just long enough to move along to somewhere nicer. It's not a place to grind your feet into and refuse to back down, it's a place where you're already worn down and you're scraping up enough to move to a house in the suburbs just leave Texas in general. Not to mention the physical separation of people here. The whole city is a bunch of highways and HEBs masquerading as a society. Everything's so far apart and people are so scattered it's hard to coordinate anything, especially because these are poor, stressed, working class folk who already have a bunch on their plate. Everyone's tired and no one wants to be here.

Me personally I'm impacted by all of that. I dream about leaving, so it's sometimes hard to get too involved with organizing because it would chain me here. I do work around here the best I can, but a lot has to get done. I think a major thing would be getting more Latino people involved. I mean this as constructive, but the socialist orgs around here really do fit the nerdy white guy in college stereotype. That's not necessarily bad but it does mean outreach is a problem.

Non-white folk around here, if they have leftist tendencies, tend to filter into orgs with more focus on fighting racism rather than explicitly advancing socialism. Like there's a Brown Berets chapter here and some César Chávez folk. There are some really cool indigenous people's groups as well. I wish all the orgs here would coordinate more, that would really be a good first step. Most of the time when I see multiple orgs at the same thing it's more by happenstance and shared interests than coordination. Everyone tends to get along like comrades at events, but communication is poor and coherency is worse.

It's not all bad and there's a lot of room to improve. I'm hopeful and I'm gonna keep helping out where I can.