Good post, thanks.

The great organizer (UFW, IAF) Jim Drake used to tell a story from his days in the 1970s organizing Mississippi pulpwood cutters that applies here...and in all sorts of other areas on the left. The punchline is, "What's the chain oil?".

At the time pulpwood cutters were individual contractors with effectively no rights. The paper companies owned the forests. The cutters were day laborers responsible for their own tools.

The most important tool was a chainsaw and the worst thing that could happen for a cutter was to have his chain break. It meant paying for repairs and no income while the saw was broken.

So chain oil was a necessity but the only place to buy it was from the company store which (naturally) charged outrageous markups.

Drake found a cutter who also owned a small farm, and agreed to let it be used as the headquarters for the nascent cutters association. Every other week they'd drive to southern Indiana, buy a 55 gallon drum of chain oil from a wholesaler, and set it up at the guy's farm.

Anyone could buy chain oil for a few cents/gallon less than the company was charging. But if you joined the association ($35/year), you got it at cost.

That alone made it worthwhile for most cutters to join the association, which in turn gave them the power to pass some of the first and toughest labor laws in Mississippi since the Great Depression.

So, how do we create an eco-system where bloggers like Martin get paid decently? What's the "chain oil" that turns the millions of "No Kings" participants into dues-paying (or merch-buying, or whatever) members of an organization?