With the presidential primaries in full swing, this Thanksgiving holiday requires radicals to be organizers. It’s understandable that many dread political conversations around the turkey — nobody wants to be harangued during the holiday meal. But serious organizers don’t harangue, and if you follow my tips here, you should be able to win more street canvassers, phone bankers, or donations for your preferred candidate (or at least neutralize the effect of relatives who might remain confused about who and what is to blame for the economic and social malaise gripping the nation).

The concept of acting like an organizer, not merely an activist, is key. Organizers devote their time to engaging with people who are not yet in our movement, who don’t identify with “us,” who are disengaged from “our” movement — the vast “undecideds,” those who aren’t reading this magazine, or any of our social media feeds (yet). Activists are already in agreement about what’s wrong and who is to blame, and their focus is on getting other activists to take action. The first step to organizing is your approach and your attitude: you must shift from wanting to be right, to be heard, or to win the intellectual argument while everyone walks away from the table and retires to either play football, fall asleep from tryptophan overload, recline on the couch — or shop.

Organizing and being an organizer starts by behaving like one, by committing to a set of principles and methods, and trying them over and over. You talk less, you ask more. You plan the conversation strategy ahead of time and predefine success. For example, you persuade family members who might be wedded to a particular candidate in the election to change their mind instead of nailing the seven hundred thousand reasons Trump should be impeached. (That’s one reason for every federal worker he made come to work for no pay for a month at the start of 2019.)