I got pretty excited when I saw some of the things TST does, and immediately went looking for a local group. My hope was to be able to get out with a bunch of folks and do things that may have some sort of positive impact.

It was so cool seeing other chapters in different US cities and states get out and fight for things. Unfortunately, my state just… don’t try. It’s depressing to see how much people have given up around here.

Sorry, just ranting.

I hear you. I was a member from early '18 through mid-pandemic. The chapter I was in was moderately active, and I had a number of friends. There was a fair amount of shit-talking about Doug Mesner from disaffected people, but it was pretty easy to ignore. Then the new Code of Conduct came out, and it was… Bad. Like, members weren’t allowed to publicly talk about their own experiences in their chapters on Reddit without prior permission and having their statements vetted first. It was clearly authoritarian. I also saw a person that was fairly high up in the org use slander and lies to get someone he personally disliked–a former chapter head!–completely thrown out.

So I dipped. And in leaving, I lost most of my closer friends in the area.

Unfortunately, you can’t separate the org out from Mesner and Solling; they have completely legal ownership of the brand and all associated trademarks and IP. No matter what rules are put in place, as long as they have legal control over the entity the rules are meaningless. …As has been demonstrated by Mesner throwing out a lot of ministers that were critical of his bullshit.

If you want to find people that are like-minded locally, your best bet–assuming you aren’t in a hard-red state/province–is to find an anarchist mutual aid organization that’s close by. I’ve found that anarchists–not ancaps–closely align with the values that TST claimed to hold.