the next thing she does is try to define mobilizing differently from organizing, as though we can snap our fingers and an organized movement will appear.

i take the point that she's making: often times left-wing agitators end up as this group of people that are essentially walled off from society. the movement really only exists in their own minds. i know this well because i've been there. the occupy kids were the same thing as the iww kids were the same thing as the idle no more kids were the same thing as the student strike kids, with minimal differences. these weren't different groups, but rather a way for a single group to organize it's own thoughts. but, it's not  like we didn't know that, and it's not like that was something that we decided upon or even wanted.

what is more real is to point out that what we wanted to do was what she calls "organize", but what we had no other choice to do was what she called "mobilize", and the reason that we had no choice was that we didn't have enough support. we didn't have the people and we didn't have the resources because we didn't have the interest.

so, it doesn't make sense to argue that mobilizing is a failed strategy. when mobilizing is effective, it becomes organizing merely by expanding the number of people involved. and, that's really what the difference between mobilizing and organizing is, as she defines it - the question of how many people you can actually rally to the cause, which is the question of how effectively you're actually mobilizing.

a more productive thing to do here consequently wouldn't be to define organizing and mobilizing as different ideas, and then say that mobilizing is the wrong thing to do and organizing is the right thing to do. rather, the crux of the problem is in realizing that we're just not actually getting through to people and/or that the people we're getting through to don't have the time or ability to agitate. in order to substantively organize, we have to more effectively mobilize.

so, that is the meaningful question in front of us: how do we more effectively mobilize?

and, i know people are going to look at me blankly and state "social media", but i'm not sure that that's really the right answer. what we need to do is look at this idea of power, and ask whether mobilizing well paid union workers even actually even makes any sense or not. if the question is "how do we mobilize a worker that already owns a house due to victories won through previous generations of struggle?", maybe we're not asking the right question.

maybe we're not even mobilizing the right people, and maybe that's why our organizing isn't getting us anywhere.