First time writer, long time reader. Also, socialism.
In my first year at university I was immediately jumped upon by the resident socialist club. For orientation day they had parked themselves right at the entrance to the oval where all of the other clubs had their stalls set up, creating a lovely chokepoint to prey on any and every student.
Luckily for me, their representative was a real talker. The sort of guy who never shuts up or lets you get a word in, asking constant rhetorical questions and sucking you in to an increasingly emotional argument.
Also luckily for me, the only exposure to socialism I had had before then was a high school mandatory reading and viewing of Orwell's Animal Farm. So this concept of a world where all people are equal really struck a chord with me, and I embarked on that activist journey we all have upon our first days as an adult.

Now for the relevant part. It turns out that some corporation or other was putting in some rather nasty new laws and the construction unions were having none of it. I was invited to a protest with said workers, to march as part of the activist group. I was understandably nervous, expecting them all to be giant gruff men who hate black people. Imagine my surprise when they were all lovely people. Some of them even bought our magazines.

We paraded down the streets chanting stereotypical socialist slogans and booing at the bourgeois office toffs watching us from their twenty-story office buildings. Apparently a number of workers were told that they would lose their jobs if they went to the protest, so we booed them too and called them cowards. It was great fun and I really felt like I was doing something worthwhile for the first time in my life.

However, it soon turned out that these guys were doing something or other every week or so. I was being asked to help on the stall a few days a week on top of the weekly discussion sessions and various events far out of the city I had no idea how to get to. Which I would have been happier with if I didn't want to spend every waking minute of free time playing TF2 in the computer club with my geeky pals.

In the end, it was all too much and I was far too lazy. I left that group at the end of the year. Bugger wouldn't stop calling me and the fees were racking up.

Length? A few hours, never kept track.
(Avnas dosh!, Sat 13 Nov 2010, 5:44, 3 replies)

Sympathy here.
I've had this problem too when being involved with protest groups. Don't get me wrong - I'm not against protesting - but I feel it's something you should do because you truly believe in the cause, not because you're being pressured by other people to do it.

...especially not when there are computer games to be played! Whoo!

/gets coat
(Draco Rattus ate all the pies on, Sat 13 Nov 2010, 7:00, closed)

I've always wondered how on earth you can be socialist AND part of a university - an institution that operates on the idea that the lucky few are inherently better than everyone else.

( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Sat 13 Nov 2010, 13:28, closed)

Yeah
but socialism as practise (rather than as an ideal) invariably creates elites.
( wotofco pissing in your swimming pool, Sat 13 Nov 2010, 16:13, closed)