Finally, the cat's out of the bag! Steve is a volunteer social worker who believes in charity. Kudos for your honesty at last.
Buzzwords that indicate the ameliorative (definitely not radical or revolutionary) strategies of a social democrat:
Donating (as in, sacrificing for others), distributing it correctly (as in, don't give anything directly to people, but use established institutions -- see below), like-minded people (I guess this means his vague term socialists), helping the needy (surely not ourselves, who obviously have enough extra cash to donate it to established charitable institutions), protesting against the laws and corporations (again, a mediated activity; nothing about breaking the laws or attacking the corporations -- not that those things are so easy, but then, who said being an active anarchist was easy?), finding out about assistance programs whether government or NGO and advising people how to use them (that is the job of a social worker; those soft-cops are among the front line people who [re]integrate the poor and dispossessed into institutions that perpetuate the exploitative relations of capitalism, duh), build irrigation (I'll just start up the backhoe I keep in my back yard...), schools (NOT self-organized free schools, but regular schools...), preferably radical unions (like what? the Wobblies, who organize baristas and movie theater workers?). Perhaps the worst term used is "citizens" as if the official designation of a non-marginal person who happens to live/survive within a particular polity is the basic unit of human existence.
Really, Steve, this shit is already old, played out, even reactionary. Everything you've listed here is a tactic or strategy for keeping things as they already are. Charity, funneling people into assistance programs, and building unions or schools does nothing to challenge the exploitative relations inherent in capitalism.
Let's be clear: I'm not calling for doing nothing, but I'm also not calling for (re)integrating poor people into the capitalist machine. There's nothing anarchist about helping to prop up relations of dominance, exploitation, and legality. Anarchism is predicated on the strategic principle of direct action -- which means doing things for ourselves without the permission or assistance of NGOs or states. Everything you've listed is predicated on the existence of NGOs and states, which means that while these activities may soften the harshness of dispossession and exploitation, they cannot and will not do anything to eliminate them.
The political lineage that uses ameliorative strategies for softening the harshness of capitalism while doing nothing that fundamentally challenges institutions of exploitation and domination is called Social Democracy. That is 100% socialist, so at least on that point you're not confused. Your confusion comes from wanting to call it anarchism, which it most certainly is not. Not because I say so, but because there's such a thing as anarchist philosophy, anarchist theory, anarchist activity, and anarchist history... all of which point in a very different direction.
