Jesus Christ I don't think I've ever seen a posts comments so full of reasons this won't work.
You guys don't even need your media to dissuade you, you just convince each other not to do anything.
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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This event would have faired a lot better if it had any sort of actual organization and a core team of organizers to answer questions and provide solid information. All of my friends who would have been interested in an event like this decided to avoid it because there just wasn’t enough information for it to not seem “sketchy,” and something so poorly organized was likely to only draw small groups of supporters, thus reducing the “safety in numbers” that protesters would greatly benefit from against a crowd of fascist police and anti-protesters.
The instant anything is posted on here it's already been scraped. Know this. Act accordingly.
Some tips to help you out
- don’t take your phones to the protest
- if you take a burner, don’t take it home. buy it, and trash it at the protest.
- don’t take anything that could identify you as you
- superglue and baking soda on your fingerprints. don’t go crazy, just enough to make printing you impossible/difficult
- write any important phone numbers on your arm or ankle in permanent marker if you can’t remember them
- stuff a couple hundred dollars for bail in your shoe
- don’t give ANYONE your real name. don’t care how hot they are or how impassioned they are, just fucking don’t
- designate one trusted individual to come get you from jail. they are not to bring their phone, they should park at least 1/4 mile away and walk to get you(long enough to realize you’re being tailed by police).
Pay attention to your surroundings, specifically the movement of officers/agents. if they’re running you should be too. if there’s a large group marching or a wall marching, leave immediately and regroup.
ICE will be there. they will be picking people up. many of them not illegal. if you’re not white, wear makeup if you can get away with it. paint your face with state colors if need be. not a mask, so it shouldn’t be covered by “no-mask” states.
Know your rights. Bring the proof of your rights. Force them to acknowledge your rights.
Stream everything.
If you are picked up you will;
- go on a list
- be unlawfully monitored
- become a link in a larger web to ensnare organizers
You will now go dark for at least a month. No social media posts about the protests, no discussions about the protests, nothing. After that, it should be difficult to pair your online activity with your real world activities.
If you can’t make it to the protests, record the streams, share them online, pressure the public to demand answers for the crimes committed by the officers/agents.
One last thing.
There will undoubtedly be people there to provoke the protests. do not let them. once one incident of violence is determined all bets off and the police will become physically involved.
Trust no one, question everything, power to the people. 🫵
This message from a colleague will live here until the death of Lemmy
For further research here's a great video on mutual aid.
Its crazy to think if I weren't a US citizen and was reading this, I'd think "man that's 50 individual locations for everyone to be able to participate if they want."
When the reality is, if I wanted to attend my New York Stare protest in Albany, id be looking at a 5-6ish one way trip, 10-12hrs round trip just driving. I'm totally guessing tho. Ive never gone from my house to Albany before. Only ever went there from either the adks or NYC coming back to Buffalo with other stops on the way home. I've always used 7 1/2hrs as the time it takes to get to NYC so that's where I'm getting 5-6hrs Buffalo to Albany.
Tldr: Yo, America's big as fuck.
I just plugged in my state capital into my driving app. It says it will take 6 hours and 51 minutes one-way. Yeah, I can't even afford the gas for that. So I checked public transportation and it said 12 hours one-way and one of the three tickets I'd have to buy was $100. Your tldr is spot on.
I was going to go but after spending almost an entire evening trying to find organizing information, I gave up and decided to sit this out.
There was no information on who was organizing this, who is backing it, and most importantly, who to contact. From an OPSEC standpoint, without a clear contact on who was organizing, it read like a false flag.
- website had no information outside of the event
- all POCs were "to be announced"
- website for my area was on carrd with only the image of the flyer
- all social media accounts are on techbro websites with no presence on mastodon or lemmy. Their bluesky account never directly answered the question of who was behind the account
I hope to God I'm wrong and hope that organizers are well intentioned but given our current political climate, I need to know who is putting this out there. I'm not the only one worried. Many others on Bluesky, reddit, Facebook, etc all raised concerns. One reply I read was "contact us on discord".
Fuck. That.
There wasn't even a link to their discord!!!
I feel like the enemy started this so they then say "see nobody cares, nobody showed up" because we saw through their bullshit.
The lack of organizer info after a whole bunch of people have tried to find it is a huge red flag to me.
Definitely, and they can track the people that did show up as highly motivated.
Anyone have streams?
Awful short notice. My state capital is 3 hours away and I have work.
There’s a protest at your work today.
This is way too obscure. Most people would need more time than this to plan I imagine. I'm only hearing about this today after being tuned into politics for months and I'd only realisticly be able to participate if I heard about this 2 weeks ago.
Yeah, true that. I've been hearing about a lot of things like this more or less the day of, which isn't too convenient most of the time.
If it makes a difference, it seems likely to me that the protests in DC will keep happening on an ongoing basis until something happens to disperse them.
Yeah, I only found out two days ago. Unions usually get the word out weeks in advance for a strike, and that's for people that are necessarily engaged in protesting those in power and (currently) have the protections to do so.
I'm not saying people shouldn't try to go, but the expectation for turnout should be tempered accordingly.
Hopefully the next one gives people a lot more advanced notice.
Reminder anyone that you don’t know who approaches you and suggests illegal activity is a LEO plant.
GET OUT THERE, STOP MAKING EXCUSES.
(For your protection read the EFF websites protest guide to keep yourself safe).
aweehh !! I have work!! and I love so much to slave away for my corporate slave masters !! bullshit.
it sure is convenient to have an excuse to let your country fall
I live in Austin TX and just saw this. Heading downtown now, cya there. Thanks OP
I’m skeptical of this one. On one hand, I am glad that this is going to be visible and let other people know that they aren’t alone and a resistance is there. However, this is unorganized as hell. You’re going to have a lot of first time protestors who don’t know the basics of protesting against an active police state. I think this protest is a net positive, but not a massive one. The best we can hope for is for organizers to make use of this enthusiasm in the future or we get very visible tension escalation.
People have to get started somewhere. Very few people in America are used to organizing and demonstrating; things have been so good in America for so long that we've become coddled. Seeing some new faces energized to get out there and start making some noise is definitely a win imo.
Yeah, that’s a good point. European countries have that protest game down strong because there’s such an enshrined culture of collective action. We don’t have that here. Yet.
Today, we start!
these events are about connecting with your community and getting organized. go with that in mind.
Everyone gets their start somewhere.
And you can be sure that the old hats are making sure to record and broadcast everything. So when the jackboots inevitably see a black person and start unloading with "rubber bullets" and tear gas, people will see.
Ugh, I really need to order some glasses. I'm blind as a bat without contacts but I'm also not trying to end up literally blind if the cops break out the tear gas (and Denver PD is still settling lawsuits from the 2020 protests, so I have zero faith in them to not escalate). Didn't have "buy glasses to protest the rise of fascism" on my 2025 bingo card but I probably should've.
Well you are wrong I'm not from the US
Did you check?
Yeah, we don't have states
Are you sure though? Sometimes we call them weird things like territories and allies. :)
Nope not it in croatia
Did they check if they have a state capitol? They probably don't need to if their country doesn't have states.
Sounds like someone needs to start an anti-Trump protest in their country. It's not like it's not going to impact you, or like your local government is yet doing enough to adapt to what's going to come.
Yeah, I don't think that'll have the impact you think it does. This is something we Americans need to handle ourselves, and not rely on the rest of the world to do for us.
I’ve heard from some of my more active friends that none of the usual leaders or orgs they know of were a part of founding this and there’s some suspicion it was created by right wingers to collect data; can anyone speak to this?
Edit: It seems that this claim is likely being made (either maliciously or like in this case just stupidly :P) to suppress protest turnout.
What do you mean "to collect data"?
Attending a protest opens you up to people knowing you attended a protest. That's pretty unfortunate yes, but why would this specific protest be different from any other one in that regard?
https://ssd.eff.org/module/attending-protest
Edit: Phrasing
I’m just echoing some suspicions I’ve heard from more knowledgeable friends and was asking, I don’t really know enough detail to have any opinion myself; sorry if it’s a silly question.
I’ve just heard that organizers coming out of it/ the Reddit accounts that originally elevated it seemed astroturfeyand there’s concern there, and I’ve seen some more paranoid ideas thrown around about it but idk
it seemed astroturfey
Fascinating. Can you ask your friends for more details? Surely for such an urgent concern, they'd be happy to share with you so you can pass on an important warning about it.
My suspicion of these "data collecting" / honey pot claims are that the claims themselves are suppression tactics
Ugh I hope not, if so it’s worked on at least a few people in my community and I apologize for helping it propagate with my comment here
Yes, that's more or less exactly what I was hinting at.
Of course, I would never do something as badjacketing as accusing some other poster of posting vaguely anti-protest stuff that doesn't make any sense, as some kind of deliberate astroturf, except that they seemed to feel totally comfortable accusing me of being "astroturfey" for posting the original thing.
You should absolutely be careful of your privacy at these events. But accusing one specific one of being a fake for "data collection" is totally strange.
I definitely didn’t intend to imply or accuse you of being astroturfey or anything else for that matter and I’m truly sorry it came off that way. It seems I should be much more careful in my wording. I did a bad job of paraphrasing something I heard about how the original Reddit accounts and lack of traditional organizers are a bit suspicious.
At the end of the day I think we’re all scared and trying to navigate a complex media ecosystem and it’s easy to make mistakes.
I genuinely have heard concerns from friends and was trying to check their veracity. It seems from what I’ve heard here that they are bogus and I’m grateful to the commenters who have pointed that out.
I added an edit to my original comment to try to make this clearer to anyone else who’s been fed the same misinformation as me and I’ll definitely share that with my community.
I definitely will ask, that’s what I was trying to do with my original comment. It seems like it’s not a widely shared concern which I’m very glad to see.
I definitely don’t mean to discourage attendance or anything like that, I totally agree with you that as long as people are cautious about PII, etc. there shouldn’t be more risk here than at any other protest
Sure, let me know what the friends of yours who you heard this from say about it.