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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I wonder why a bunch of people might be jumping onto social media, spreading pessimism and suspicion about protests and discouraging people from attending.
Edit: I asked every single person who said that their protest-aware friends told them this was a "false flag" or something, what protest their friends would recommend attending instead. I'm curious to see what the responses are.
I expect you'll he hearing a lot of crickets.
Some of them are downvoting me for asking them the question.
Most people don't live in their state capitol, and have no hope of attending something there that they learned of at the last minute. They should have been informed of this days ago.
I dont even live in that shithole and I have been seeing these posts for days.
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.
Also... at noon during the work week? 😒
To be fair thats the time when its most effective
The news doesn't cover what happens at 2pm on a Saturday unless there's multiple bodies.
That part I think I understand. Capitol buildings tend to be kinda empty during the weekend.
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,”
Which upcoming protests would your friends recommend going to instead?
What might happen to someone who attended a "sketchy" protest, that wouldn't happen to someone who attended a normal one?
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.
I went to my local capitol protest today and it went peacefully. I was prepared for (and very much expecting) escalation. I wrote the ACLU phone number on my leg, left my phone at my girlfriend's house, and carried pepper spray in my pocket. My gf and I (and a number of other people) wore medical masks. We also brought clear, full-face shields in our bag too, just in case.
The capitol and the police station were near each other; lots of cops drove by our crowd, but thankfully that's the only interaction we had with them. But a lot of drivers, bicyclists, and other passers-by made noise in solidarity.
I should also probably note that I live in a blue state. I haven't heard yet about the experience in red and purple states, but hopefully people will be sharing their stories soon.
One last thing - I'm glad you made the note about phones. Apparently some of the people at the protest reasoned, "I might get arrested, therefore I should bring my phone." Then they were confused when I used the exact same reason to justify me not bringing my phone. Do people not realize that the police seizes a person's belongings when they arrest them? Considering the way this administration is going, I wouldn't be surprised if they rewrote the law to allow police to break into phones without a warrant. At the very least, they certainly won't stop cops who do it unlawfully.
Happy you made it. Ours was small and uneventful except one person brought us all a bunch of pizzas which was cool for those that could eat cheese, I brought a big pack of hand warmers and a big caraffe of hot mint tea. It was pretty much just a lunch. None of the state reps came out, and there was no counter protest. Fliers were handed out for another protest soon. Hopefully others are seeing the attendance numbers and planning for more better organized protests.
I handed out the EFF protesting .pdf that I had printed out at work.
https://www.eff.org/files/2017/06/19/protest-one-sheet.pdf
It's usually enough for most people.
Damn, this reads like a guide for protesting in Belarus. Hope your situation gets better.
It won't get better if we sit on our asses. It's also a guide for Lebanon or Israel or Syria or Russia....
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!!!
Edit: compare this to the protest happening in front of the Treasury
- clear organizer (Elizabeth Warren iirc -- I stumbled across this yesterday and can't seem to find the source) and promoted by other prominent Democrats
- shared publicly along Democrat official channels and accounts
- press notified and documented the event
Which upcoming protests would your friends recommend going to instead? Assuming that someone can't travel to DC.
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
What might happen to someone who attended a not "well intentioned" protest, that wouldn't happen to someone who attended a normal one?
Awful short notice. My state capital is 3 hours away and I have work.
There’s a protest at your work today.
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.
I'm pretty interested to see how widely upvoted this is.
Definitely, and they can track the people that did show up as highly motivated.
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.
America's not a country. It is a continent.
America's government is not a government. It is the largest, most varied, most complex single human organization that has ever existed. Also the most powerful. But very little of it is organized. And almost all of it, to almost everyone, is invisible.
America's culture is not a culture. It has cultures within in, and some are quite good. Once you've met with the beating heart, it's hard to forget. But like the onion it has no center. Once you reach the center of the dream, you realize it is nothing but marketing, it never existed.
America is sleeping fitfully. America died long ago. America has yet to be born. America was always a lie.
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.
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).
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.
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I live in Austin TX and just saw this. Heading downtown now, cya there. Thanks OP
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.
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