From an article on Maoist organizing techniques, specifically the Mass Line:

We go to the masses, conducting mass meetings, discussing situations and problems with them at bus stops, demonstrations, classrooms, workplaces, bars, homes, churches, and wherever else they can be found. Consider the mass line a sort of factory except instead of products, we make revolution. The ideas, correct ones, from the masses, represent the raw materials. Everywhere we go, our task is to ask people what’s going on in their communities and on their jobs. The police are killing people. There is struggle with landlords. The houseless are being suppressed. Alright. What are we going to do about it? This is another thing we must ask ourselves, and the masses. Prating and whining are not revolutionary solutions, neither is begging the power structure that keeps us in these atrocious situations in the first place for some warmed over solution. Maoists understand that the only way to develop a revolutionary movement is to actually go among the people, do research, talk to everybody and collect both correct and incorrect ideas, and develop ourselves theoretically to ensure that we are able to tell the difference between the two.

And the most important part:

Maoists seek to unite the advanced, win over the intermediate (most people are intermediate), and isolate the worst of the backward.

Every person you encounter falls into 1 of these 3 groups. Usually, like in this case you’re explaining, class relations and material interests come first in deciding where they are (so it’s typical that a petty bourgeoisie will trend towards backward, proletariats may be more intermediate etc). Your job is to ignore the backward, and conduct political education among the intermediate and advanced sections of the masses. So that means really listening to and getting to know people, and more specifically their concerns and the things they care about the most. Then, the goal is to connect these things that they care about to socialism (or depending on where the person is, connecting what they care about to prerequisite ideas like anti-capitalism, with the goal of building up to revolutionary socialism).

This is the concept of agitation. Agitation means to connect the interests of the people to socialism. An exploited worker who cannot pay rent, an immigrant who faces violence from the state, a minority who faces white supremacist or state violence, a person who has/is facing police violence and incarceration. Sometimes you find people who already care about something, like a person who already cares about climate change but doesn’t understand that capitalism is causing and profitting from it. These are all issues, caused by capitalism, that can be sharpened and connected to revolutionary ideas.

If you have not already, you should check out The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats and What is to be done?, both by Lenin:

“Our task is to merge our activities with the practical, everyday questions of working-class life, to help the workers understand these questions, to draw the workers’ attention to the most important abuses, to help them formulate their demands to the employers more precisely and practically, to develop among the workers consciousness of their solidarity, consciousness of the common interests and common cause of all the Russian workers as a united working class that is part of the international army of the proletariat.”

Where to find unorganized people who are intermediate and advanced? You mentioned being poor, so you can readily encounter the masses in proletariat workplaces. 3 comrades I know began working at a restaurant, and through their efforts, it has become unionized, and they are more able to conduct political education and agitation among their co workers.

I will give you 2 pieces of advice:

1. Remember that agitation, education, and organizing should never be individual. It should be collective. Over the internet you’re usually seeing the thoughts of a bunch of faceless people you don’t know whose words usually don’t have anything directly to do with your material reality, or when you read theory you’re usually just individually consuming the knowledge within the pages, but organizing should be as opposite of this as possible. This makes sense from a Marxist perspective because we probably already understand that the masses make history, and not individuals. Every now and then you can have an individual agitational conversation with someone, but it’s difficult individually trying to bring an intermediate or semi-backwards person to a higher political awareness. Humans are very social, so having multiple people conducting agitation/education with you is very helpful, especially in socially atomized countries like America (not sure where you are tho). A strategy I use is inviting an intermediate person who I want to organize to a political event, either from my org or people we know, then allow them to get to know and make connections with comrades who are also present. From there, when there’s multiple friendly, trusted people telling you something, or offering their own perspectives on an issue, it’s easier to bring that person to higher politics. This is how we’re conducting further education among the unionized workers I was talking about earlier.

2. Unless you’re talking about US imperialism and its devastating effects, generally avoid stuff like geopolitics and, more specifically, trying to convince people that China is a good country. You need to meet people where they are, starting what the material reality around them and their interests. Usually defending China isn’t where they’re at. But you did do a good job of deflecting it back to america.

Feel free to ask questions, criticize, disagree, etc with anything I said.