How Do We Find Our People?

[hugs]

Organizing is the first step to meaningful political action, and the first step to organizing is getting to know your community. It seems clear to me that building local communities where maps can meet, interact, and learn from each other is the next logical step in our road to liberation. With this in mind, I've decided to begin a search for fellow maps in my neighborhood and especially at my university. The problem is that I'm not entirely sure how to go about this safely, so I wanted to ask all of you for ideas. How can I get the word out to the maps around me without drawing too much unwanted attention, and how do I communicate with everyone once I have them assembled? Should I just make a discord server, or are there better options?

My current plan is simply to plant some stickers and fliers that grab the attention of maps and direct them to my discord or reddit accounts so they can pm me. From there, I intent to vet them and invite them to a private subreddit or discord server where we can chat and make plans to meet in person.

Do you have any suggestions or ideas you'd like to share? Is there anything you would do differently? Most importantly, for those of you who have met other maps in person already, how did you meet?

[Walton]

Only an idea I'm not that familiar with cybersecurity but use session app that seems the safest print out the qr code for scanning I'm sure there will be a lot of haters dm you but won't be able to cause any trouble besides cussing you out. Or use the registry and find people who are non violent. Again it's just an idea.

[Jim Burton]

There is the danger of being perceived by genuine MAPs, as an agent setting out on an entrapment mission, and by non-MAPs as a target for an entrapment mission.

[hugs]

Only an idea I'm not that familiar with cybersecurity but use session app that seems the safest print out the qr code for scanning I'm sure there will be a lot of haters dm you but won't be able to cause any trouble besides cussing you out. Or use the registry and find people who are non violent. Again it's just an idea.

Thank you for the recommendation! I'll definitely look into using session.

[hugs]

There is the danger of being perceived by genuine MAPs, as an agent setting out on an entrapment mission, and by non-MAPs as a target for an entrapment mission.

Yeah, I'm fully aware of those risks and ready to take them on. Though, I do worry that maps will be too afraid to join. Hopefully they realize that an agent would be extremely unlikely to pull a stunt like this. I'll also have to carefully weed out any undercover antis.

[Outis]

It'll be interesting to see how it goes, how many people respond.

Will anyone respond? Will a few or many? There will be many in your local population but how many reach out and what kind of messaging would work better? What message would encourage people to reach out? Why would they reach out, what is being offered as the reason? If a few reached out and joined would that encourage more to follow on to create a snowball effect?

What ever the result, many, a few, none, it will be interesting to see and it could be retried with changes.

I've thought about similar things in the past, reaching out to people convicted of CP to form a support network and help back into society and to recover, including people wrongly convicted of CP, there's no assumption of guilt or judgement, just people helping each other to rebuild their lives. Or just reaching out to people with map feelings to form a support network with other maps, friends to support and listen and help to stay out of trouble, using messages of friendship while adding the part about helping to keep out of trouble so that society sees a positive outcome.

Anyway, I'd love to know how it goes.