Some of these comments are awful. Apparently, if we all aren’t wrapping ourselves and children with explosives and becoming Jihadists overnight, we’re not doing enough.
This is a class war. The rich have taken over all the checks and balances in our system to where they can break every rule and comfortably get away with it; all the while getting richer and us poorer. We’re powerless and spread too thin geographically to do anything meaningful. Maybe we do need to get that radical, but I really hope it doesn’t ever need to get to that point.
Ok but there is quite a way between going oh I don’t like what’s happening on social media and blowing yourself up.
Write to your representatives and make it extremely clear that if they want to be reelected they will stand up to Trump.
Massive protests, the No Kings protest were good but then you all kind of just gave up. Nothing violent but just a stubborn refusal to go along is all that is required. Boycott companies that support Trump, don’t buy the next iPhone (it’s basically the same phone every year anyway), don’t go to FIFA, don’t go to the Olympics, go to as many town meetings as you can and raise points of order and complain. Make it even possible for the powers that be to ignore the situation.
Just imagine you’re a French dock worker complaining about industrialisation.
Nobody is blaming you for what Trump is doing.
Nobody is asking you to become terrorists and this hyperbole is extremely unhelpful.
We are blaming you for the fact that we’re not seeing protests every day that make the BLM protests seem like small gatherings. You guys are way past the point of being able to hope. Do something today. This is your country, so it’s your responsibility.
We are blaming you for the fact that we’re not seeing protests every day…
This is just not possible and the rich are banking on that. It would have to become much much worse before people will risk their own employment, access to medical benefits, and personal security so that we can march.
It’s easy to suggest those things but in reality it’s just not going to happen.
Here are concrete steps we can take to combat this (the titles below expand if you click them).
Learn First Aid! ⛑️
The future us likely to be violent, and It extremely important to have the skills to be able to keep yourself and others alive if they get hurt. You can never have too many medics.
Tacticool Girlfriend provides a great introduction to building a personal first aid kit, called an IFAK, which can deal with things like bullet wounds and other serious bleeding wounds. I also want to emphasize her recommendation of only buying medical gear from reputable sources (not Amazon!), such as North American Rescue to avoid fakes that could cost you your life.
But you’ll need to learn how to use that equipment, too. The best resource for that is to take a local Stop The Bleed class, which are pretty widely available in most places. They may cost a small fee, but can also sometimes be free. Alternatively, if you cannot access a local class, this video by PrepMedic will give you a solid understanding of how to use Tourniquets and Gauze for wound packing.
Injuries are less harmful if they are tended to early. Learning first aid can help conserve resources when healthcare becomes unaffordable. Having several medics in case of harm by police is an extremely powerful morale booster during a protest that may become a police riot. When you become comfortable with the basics of first aid, riot medicine is the next suggested step.
Establish or join local Mutual Aid networks ✊
If you haven’t already, get to know your neighbors. Mutual aid is a willingness to support and grow your community. This can include informal networks through friends, tenant/renter organizations, solidarity groups, and industrial unions.
These are groups using direct action to solve each other’s problems. Building strong communities makes it difficult for fascism to take root. The actions of the government are going to hit every community hard, and the ones who build trust in each other and work together are most likely to survive. We’ve been building a list of resources in !inperson@slrpnk.net to help you on your way. Also check out this handy guide to find existing groups in your area.
This isn’t only for your own community protection. Your ability to organize today will change the political landscape tomorrow. When revolution occurs, the social organizations that show the greatest resilience through the regime are the ones typically calling the shots when the dust settles. When it comes to elections, get out the vote drives are useless if most of the voters are fascists. At some point, you have to do grassroots political education if you don’t want fascist candidates winning elections. Mutual aid networks are excellent forums not only for teaching each other good political ideas, but demonstrating them in practice.
Join a Union and Prepare for a General Strike! 💪
The most effective non-violent action we can take is preparing and organizing for a General Strike.
The country would be brought to its knees if suddenly deprived of profit and labor. That tactic was extremely effective in Chile in 2019, and had they not fallen for the trick of liberal reform, they would’ve had a successful revolution on their hands with virtually no bloodshed.
If you aren’t in a union (or even if you are, it’s worth dual-carding), consider joining the IWW to unionize your workplace (bonus: you’ll get higher wages, better benefits, and more time off if you succeed!) to strengthen a general strike if we manage to enact one, as most unions have a strike fund that can supplement your income during a general strike to make it more financially bearable (you should also save as much money as you can reasonably do, so it can also be used to keep yourself afloat during a strike).
And for our international friends, you should join one as well, as fascism is gaining momentum globally. If your country isn’t listed below, just contact the IWW directly in the link above, and they’ll help you set up a new local branch.
Sometimes benign seeming efforts can turn into unexpected personal data collecting traps. Like an obscure website for exchanging contact info with other students turning into a global ad-tech surveillance network (Facebook), or innocent seeming online personality tests being use to harvest character profiles. Even Etsy, Reddit, Tinder, and Duolingo are feeding information to US Government Agencies like ICE.
Security culture is commonly used to describe the general awareness of such potential traps and how it can affect groups or entire communities. This goes beyond mere individual privacy efforts, as without joint efforts these often fail to work.
Especially in activist circles, security culture is paramount. For opsec reasons not everyone in the group might be aware of what clandestine efforts others are involved in, but with a general security culture many potential data leaks can be avoided.
Movements are made by the volume of their participants, and the easier and less dangerous it is to participate, the more people will get involved. As more people get involved, individual involvement becomes even less dangerous, creating a virtuous cycle.
We’ll start it off with some General Advice:
Mentally wall off personal uniquely identifying info from your online presence, actively build a habit of opsec so that withholding information is your default mental state
Be careful about who you meet online
Use different, unrelated usernames, passwords & emails for every account. And try not to connect to those accounts with your real IP address (use Tor or a VPN)
Be mindful that anything done online leaves a trail
agents provocateurs may seek to find patsies willing to perform an ill-advised illegal activity in order to legitimize police repression. If someone is trying to pressure you, especially if you don’t have a long and proven history with them, be extremely wary.
For a full guide on what encrypted communications platforms to use, and how to stay off the radar, read the Digital Camouflage section within the Monthly Meta post here (you’ll need to scroll down. I’d add it here, but it won’t fit in this comment).
Some of these comments are awful. Apparently, if we all aren’t wrapping ourselves and children with explosives and becoming Jihadists overnight, we’re not doing enough.
This is a class war. The rich have taken over all the checks and balances in our system to where they can break every rule and comfortably get away with it; all the while getting richer and us poorer. We’re powerless and spread too thin geographically to do anything meaningful. Maybe we do need to get that radical, but I really hope it doesn’t ever need to get to that point.
Ok but there is quite a way between going oh I don’t like what’s happening on social media and blowing yourself up.
Write to your representatives and make it extremely clear that if they want to be reelected they will stand up to Trump.
Massive protests, the No Kings protest were good but then you all kind of just gave up. Nothing violent but just a stubborn refusal to go along is all that is required. Boycott companies that support Trump, don’t buy the next iPhone (it’s basically the same phone every year anyway), don’t go to FIFA, don’t go to the Olympics, go to as many town meetings as you can and raise points of order and complain. Make it even possible for the powers that be to ignore the situation.
Just imagine you’re a French dock worker complaining about industrialisation.
-hey guys, hitler is going to invade Poland soon, you said most Germans actually don’t support him so maybe do something about it?
-sorry, buddy, we already made some angry posts on Bluesky and it didn’t work. welp, it can’t be helped. good luck, guys!
Nobody is blaming you for what Trump is doing. Nobody is asking you to become terrorists and this hyperbole is extremely unhelpful. We are blaming you for the fact that we’re not seeing protests every day that make the BLM protests seem like small gatherings. You guys are way past the point of being able to hope. Do something today. This is your country, so it’s your responsibility.
This is just not possible and the rich are banking on that. It would have to become much much worse before people will risk their own employment, access to medical benefits, and personal security so that we can march.
It’s easy to suggest those things but in reality it’s just not going to happen.
People in far worse circumstances than Americans got out in the streets and forced change.
The time to act is now, not in the future when they’re even more entrenched.
Sure, but name one that is as big and spread out like the US? We are unique in that regard.
Here are concrete steps we can take to combat this (the titles below expand if you click them).
Learn First Aid! ⛑️
The future us likely to be violent, and It extremely important to have the skills to be able to keep yourself and others alive if they get hurt. You can never have too many medics.
Tacticool Girlfriend provides a great introduction to building a personal first aid kit, called an IFAK, which can deal with things like bullet wounds and other serious bleeding wounds. I also want to emphasize her recommendation of only buying medical gear from reputable sources (not Amazon!), such as North American Rescue to avoid fakes that could cost you your life.
But you’ll need to learn how to use that equipment, too. The best resource for that is to take a local Stop The Bleed class, which are pretty widely available in most places. They may cost a small fee, but can also sometimes be free. Alternatively, if you cannot access a local class, this video by PrepMedic will give you a solid understanding of how to use Tourniquets and Gauze for wound packing.
Injuries are less harmful if they are tended to early. Learning first aid can help conserve resources when healthcare becomes unaffordable. Having several medics in case of harm by police is an extremely powerful morale booster during a protest that may become a police riot. When you become comfortable with the basics of first aid, riot medicine is the next suggested step.
Establish or join local Mutual Aid networks ✊
If you haven’t already, get to know your neighbors. Mutual aid is a willingness to support and grow your community. This can include informal networks through friends, tenant/renter organizations, solidarity groups, and industrial unions.
These are groups using direct action to solve each other’s problems. Building strong communities makes it difficult for fascism to take root. The actions of the government are going to hit every community hard, and the ones who build trust in each other and work together are most likely to survive. We’ve been building a list of resources in !inperson@slrpnk.net to help you on your way. Also check out this handy guide to find existing groups in your area.
This isn’t only for your own community protection. Your ability to organize today will change the political landscape tomorrow. When revolution occurs, the social organizations that show the greatest resilience through the regime are the ones typically calling the shots when the dust settles. When it comes to elections, get out the vote drives are useless if most of the voters are fascists. At some point, you have to do grassroots political education if you don’t want fascist candidates winning elections. Mutual aid networks are excellent forums not only for teaching each other good political ideas, but demonstrating them in practice.
Join a Union and Prepare for a General Strike! 💪
The most effective non-violent action we can take is preparing and organizing for a General Strike.
The country would be brought to its knees if suddenly deprived of profit and labor. That tactic was extremely effective in Chile in 2019, and had they not fallen for the trick of liberal reform, they would’ve had a successful revolution on their hands with virtually no bloodshed.
If you aren’t in a union (or even if you are, it’s worth dual-carding), consider joining the IWW to unionize your workplace (bonus: you’ll get higher wages, better benefits, and more time off if you succeed!) to strengthen a general strike if we manage to enact one, as most unions have a strike fund that can supplement your income during a general strike to make it more financially bearable (you should also save as much money as you can reasonably do, so it can also be used to keep yourself afloat during a strike).
And for our international friends, you should join one as well, as fascism is gaining momentum globally. If your country isn’t listed below, just contact the IWW directly in the link above, and they’ll help you set up a new local branch.
Adopt Security Culture and Digital Camouflage 🛡️
Sometimes benign seeming efforts can turn into unexpected personal data collecting traps. Like an obscure website for exchanging contact info with other students turning into a global ad-tech surveillance network (Facebook), or innocent seeming online personality tests being use to harvest character profiles. Even Etsy, Reddit, Tinder, and Duolingo are feeding information to US Government Agencies like ICE.
Security culture is commonly used to describe the general awareness of such potential traps and how it can affect groups or entire communities. This goes beyond mere individual privacy efforts, as without joint efforts these often fail to work.
Especially in activist circles, security culture is paramount. For opsec reasons not everyone in the group might be aware of what clandestine efforts others are involved in, but with a general security culture many potential data leaks can be avoided.
Movements are made by the volume of their participants, and the easier and less dangerous it is to participate, the more people will get involved. As more people get involved, individual involvement becomes even less dangerous, creating a virtuous cycle.
We’ll start it off with some General Advice:
For a full guide on what encrypted communications platforms to use, and how to stay off the radar, read the Digital Camouflage section within the Monthly Meta post here (you’ll need to scroll down. I’d add it here, but it won’t fit in this comment).