this post was submitted on 28 May 2025
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Stewardship volunteering. Anyone motivated enough to care for their local environment is on some level an eco-Marxist. They may not know it yet, they may not know any of the terminology to describe or interrogate it, but on some naive level they understand the fundamentals of society are built on something at that thing's expense and to the detriment of society. You can easily correct them out of that by asking pointed questions that make them think about things they have been told to not think about.
If you volunteer with your local parks department, at least here everyone you'd be interacting with that day is some kind of socialist. If you go with an environmentalist org it's much more open and a more holistic critique. In both cases you're protecting the Real Thing that enables your community to exist on top of it. The more you describe the importance of the Real Thing and subservience of society on top of it, the more it clicks with those people who share the same lived experience and anxieties.
You might not even meet socialists, but you'll at least meet the only good liberals around you and the right-wingers who are too stupid to realise they aren't right-wingers. And you'll do good work with them that benefits you.
A couple who are coworkers of mine 'don't like politics', don't vote, don't watch the news or go out to protests, but they have a big garden and volunteer at local agricultural projects all the time, vegans, build their own furniture and such. When we talk about labor or the rich they are the most radical leftists I know.
That's more or less how it is for me. To list the specific people on my crew (that OP would be directly interacting with locally if they did this):
Naive socialist who has never read any theory. Intrinsically understands that environment is a human construct downstream of development. Will read anything I give them and actually think about it.
General socialist who studies political science. Not particularly environmentally motivated but gets it when I describe anything from tearing down Jane Fonda attack posters to the importance of a particular plant species.
Non-political person who materially and ideologically aligns with socialism.
Non-political person who materially and ideologically aligns with socialism.
Non-political person who materially and ideologically aligns with socialism and is at least familiar with the DSA.
My boss, seemingly non-political, who at least understands the importance of diverse native green space and hates ornamental plants.
My boss's boss, maybe vaguely conservative, who is willing to listen to issues of progressive urban green space versus regressive as long as it doesn't neuter her ability to advocate for the budget required for that.
I've stopped giving a fuck about saying what I feel. Worst case scenario my boss can cost me money before I earn way more money doing the same work. Climate change is real, you and I are going to die as a result if we're "lucky", anyone doing apologia for the old system deserves death. Death. As much as I express this exact thing with as extreme a sentiment I feel, no one there has pushed back. We just get it even if we don't know how to express it. If you can express it in a way that resonates with that person, and it's so much easier with environmentalists, they just see it as refreshing that someone is willing to say the words.
That sounds like a good idea. There's at least 1 state park near me, and I've been neglecting outdoormanship since I aged out of the Scouts over a decade ago.