Debating leaving group, looking for advice

It will come up. They cannot avoid letting it come up, and ultimately political questions are important, in the mid to long term.

It's very difficult to work on your own, and if the left-groups around you are toxic (like FRSO-Fight back) it can be pretty damaging.

If you know one or two or three leftcom, anarchist councilists, or just not maoist members, maybe start a reading group? It's a good way to help people find their political footing. There is strong chance the maoists will see this as competition and try and squash it. But all in all, if you guys can read through some classic marxist, anarchists texts and have open discussion, it will be a good bit of inoculation against the maoists.

As for concrete organizing of a chapter of some group, well that's tough because there you have to have unity in politics, which I think comes with regular interaction, discussion and work; so a solidarity network or iww gmb make sense, but they must have some regular activity (reading/writing).

I use to think that 'politics' in the sense of mid-term long-term should take a back seat to 'struggling for gains today' but now I realize that's totally bogus. IT doesn't have to be a strict and tight unity, but around certain points. For example, the mirage of electoral politics as a road to the working class taking power. Or the problem of internationalism being a concrete, and practical one.

What does the group does?

..do.

Do you know people who you have more in common with, politically? If so, I would start by talking to them about starting your own group. I've never lived in a town that had more active Maoists than anarchists, so I would think you might be able to find somebody who has more in common with you politically (I'm assuming you live in the US? That would maybe be different for another country).

If you don't know of any local contacts, I would start casting a wider geographic net. For example, I've had good luck in the past approaching relatively nearby (like, an hour or so away) IWW GMBs and asking if they knew of any IWW members, ex-members, or sympathizers in my town. You could also try to e-mail IWW general headquarters and they might be able to point you in the direction of local contacts, if the IWW was something you wanted to do.

All that is, of course, only relevant if you're set on leaving the group. Personally, I've had really terrible experiences working with Maoists, but those have all been members of FRSO-Fight Back. I'd say that the important questions are how closely the work that you're doing (like Jamal, I'm curious what that is) matches with you own political perspective and how much that intersection is threatened by the different political outlook of the other members. Personally, there'd have to be an extremely compelling reason for me to put energy into a group that was actively working in local elections.

You could just avoid mentioning Kronstadt/Tianamen as it is just historical but if at some point you find yourself on the wrong side of the leadership (say for example on recruiting new members) their true colours may be revealed. I know you said it is non-hierarchical but that might just be your perception of it which they are happy to not challenge.

sounds like you are in philly? or are you in louisville or lexington?

no matter what its gonna come up, and you are gonna need to know if these are the types of marxists and workers organization you want to build.

i just mention the above because they are the groups i know who are broad left but marxist oriented doing solnets

I dunno, Captain. If you are doing good things for people, why let ideology get in the way of doing something that is actually helping people? If I were you I'd stay in the group and just argue your politics, and argue against things like participating in elections that will necessarily take way from the good work that you're doing now. If ideology comes in the way of things, let them be the reason for it. And you could try to bring more like-minded people into the group as well. You can always leave later.

I've been in groups that have been pretty likeminded in politics, but never really done anything even remotely close to what you have done. I'd take the doing things over ideological cohesion any day.

Captain Function - are you from America? I ask because you mention Maoists - and in the U.K I've never yet met one. Just wondering, but I keep hearing people in the U.S talking about Maoists, and it seems pretty fucking fishy that there wasn't any Maoists portrayed in Friends.

As it's doing some good stuff, stay with the group, put forward your views and argue for doing sensible stuff rather than sinking the group's energies into an electoral vanity project. If it does go all electoral, then most of the good stuff will disappear anyway so you can bin it off then. In the meantime, develop ideas with non maoist comrades and any prospective allies so you'll have something to salvage if it all goes tits up.

Most UK Maoists for whatever reason seem skittish about adopting the label, they tend to be organised in groups that are heavily ML and proudly "antirevisionist" I'm pretty sure they're mostly in the CPGB-ML.

For the OP, I'd echo the above sentiment, but you should probably try and reach out to others, because I think this will be a problem that'll get worse overtime. Especially if they give an election campaign a major push.

Just curious but is the group a one off or part of a wider network?