I’ve seen a lot of US lemmynauts being clueless about what to do to improve things and fight against the political situation. I understand that it doesn’t come naturally if it’s not in your culture so I’ve written the following. Feel free to suggest better ideas, alternatives and so on:
Here’s what I’d do:
- Join a union
- Join a political party or an organization that is not one of the sellouts
- Join any canal you can find that informs about protests, strikes and other actions
- Educate yourself on the actual methods of protesting, what works or doesn’t work, what you should do or not
- Organize these infos if needed and share them around
- Equip yourself, take a dumb phone, take liquid eye cleaners droplets (no idea how it’s called in english), take something to cover your nose and mouth against tear gas, take some kind of eye protection
- Learn your rights, what to do and learn a specific lawyer phone number (by heart) in case of arrest
- Relay those links, organizations and everything around yourself
- If it’s available to you and in line with your ethics, arm yourself before they confiscate weapons to politically awake citizens - and of course, start training yourself
This above is the easy part you can do from your couch. Then:
- Follow and participate to your union/party/organization events/meet-ups/flyer distribution/cybermilitantism/…, try to help them in the ways you can. You have a car? Offer to bring food to the meet-ups. You’re following the news 24/7? Offer to set up a RSS feed or some kind of news aggregator with what’s important in your area and all the shit that’s happening. You’re good with computers? Help those that want it to install a linux distro instead of spyware OS…
It is very important to find or create networks of people around you that are decided to help improve the situation, as they can help you in case you need it. It doesn’t even mean that you have to join dangerous action (you define what’s dangerous for you), but even just signalling to the people that will act that they are not alone by being one more person in the group is already a boost for everyone, especially if you help them in some ways.
Then, as much as you can, participate in the group’s actions, and evangelize the group’s existence around you.
What if there’s no action? Try to push for it in the meet-ups. Start with something easy. Tracts distribution, door-to-door to offer help and support around your neighborhood and make the group known, sentry in your communities to signal ICE/dangerous individuals raids and presence, offer to be a contact or to help people that might be targeted next, create workshops to rewrite the constitution in a way that would make it better for everyone, organize debates where people of different opinions actually listen to each others… The group needs to build confidence by actively doing something useful together. And it can stop here if people in the group have cold feet for more - it’s already great. Once the group is created and solid, it will be able to change direction if needed by the political climate.
Next steps if people are motivated: actual political activism. Protests, sit-ins, happenings, guerrilla urbanism, petitions, blocking highways, or going to talk to people in power… The research you’ve done in the first steps should give you ideas of what you can do, and how to do it. Advice from a french protester: keep things joyful. Our protests are always a happy moment (up until the cops come and hit us), we’re singing, we’re dancing, we’re having fun. It shouldn’t be a chore to be there, and if possible the action should make people want to join you. It helps grow the movement, it helps grow the links between people, it gives a good image of the movement.
And what if there is no group like that around you? (Well I can’t believe there is no union, but ok.) Then build one! Start small, with people in your community, with people that work at the food bank, with people you’ve met at the No Kings protests or something.
You cannot succeed as individuals. This is political, and political is the action of the many. Join the many, help increase the many, create the many if needed. The more numerous you are, the stronger you will be.
And walks away, like the coward he is.
Make sure to protest with cones and bottles of water to put out incendiaries. Keep masks and eye protection handy for protecting yourself from paintball strikes like this asshat.
ICE has been overrun with psychopaths.
What’s with the cut right before he fires?
If you work for the government you are a coward
I had the displeasure of visiting reddit’s doomercirclejerk subreddit where they acted like it was a justified shooting due to dangers posed to federal agents by all the Anti-ICE stuff floating around.
they want to provoke violent confrontation, and are likely supporting those who are contributing here advocating for violent reaction. Don’t fall into the trap and they will not have any excuses or justification for escalation.
To be clear: reacting with violence will allow them to justify their escalation of violence, which is exactly what they want.
this is chess, not checkers.
They are already murdering people…
Meanwhile they murder and deport people.
Keep playing chess and you won’t have anyone else to play with.You don’t fucking get it. No one listen to this guy.
FEAR OF ESCALATION WILL ONLY BRING MORE ESCALATION.
The “don’t be provoked” thing only works in the old world. The one where rules and laws still exist.
These people are taking over, completely, and they will happily do so over your dead body if that’s what it takes.
They know it, and I’m starting to get the feeling the shooter yesterday had instructions to kill. The fact that the shooter is not in custody is ALL the evidence anyone needs now to fully understand.
Good luck to all.
Right, placating Hitler instead of confronting him went great historically.
Dude, they are already shooting and killing peaceful protesters. What does escalation even mean in that context? They’ll shoot and kill even more people? When someone is shooting at you, self defense is allowed.
Okay can you share our next moves?
Because my calculus says civil war is inevitable and better earlier than later as they are actively preparing. They will look to build camps and disarm. It should crack off now.
The longer we wait the stronger their position became.
But please if you have a grandmaster mate worked out let’s hear it.
Protestors are coming to these events with no weapons in hand, I think it is perfectly reasonable, given what we’ve seen, for protestors to be carrying guns like the black panthers did. ICE needs to know that thier violence will not go unopposed, the need to SEE that.
If it was chess, Trump wouldn’t be winning. This is far from chess, it’s the jungle.
Renee didn’t escalate, and see what that got her?
ICE is dependent on people not being able to fight back. They are bullies, and would be much less likely to engage if they could end up getting three bullets in the face. Power that can be applied to them, is the only thing that a bully would respect.
they’re going to do the violence anyways, and they’ll make up excuses
woman trying to drive her car away from them? shoot her in the face
This seems like just a guess though of what seems “likely” and who “they” support. Truth is that no one knows. They may be supporting you as your argument is one that suppresses resistance and makes it seem futile, which also favours them and can be quite dangerous.
Not that I know what the truth is, just want to make clear no one knows. And they do not seem to need a justification for violence anyway.
They’re just playing you (saying this from outside US) because they know you can’t make sense of this, and resisting or not will both work in their favour.
Exactly what “violence” was Renee Good guilty of?
These gestapo don’t need excuses or justification because they have no responsibility or consequences.
It’s not what OC means.
If people start actually fighting against ICE, as in, with physical violence, Trump will enact martial law and take any remaining restrictions off of his goons.
take any remaining restrictions
So fire 6 times instead of 3?
reacting with violence will allow them to justify their escalation of violence
This position is not sustainable. All it takes is one act of violence to justify escalation against everyone.
I advocate for violence all the time. That’s because I hate them.
I think it’s silly to prolong this. They are doing damage by the day.
I think it’s silly to prolong this
Yeah, you guys should just speedrun to “martial law and no midterm elections”, that would make everything better.
They don’t need actual violence to declare martial law and suspend elections. They can just lie.
They don’t lie, just the other day they found Sadam’s WMDs.
no midterm elections
Oh no, we might not get the chance to vote in Democrats so they can…
checks notes
write a strongly worded letter then send another $2 billion to Israel!
Well, clearly the only viable alternative is a civil war with thousands of dead. Because clearly nothing has changed in the Democratic camp, since - as we know - Marry Sheffield, Michelle Wu, and Zohran Mamdani are all, famously, in the capitalist pockets of Big Business, right?
Those are all mayors. With the exception of Zohran, by virtue of how massive NYC is, none have the ability to meaningfully influence federal politics. Your counterpoint just proves it’s the Democrats functioning as the graveyard of leftist movements as they were designed to be. They have to allow meaningless wins to frustrate momentum.
Fuck me, you can’t be serious…
After decades of capitalists being elected, finally some of the most socialist people in the history of US win, and you’re like “nah, nothing of importance has changed”.
Come on, bruv!
Also, calling the mayor of NY a “meaningless win” is certainly a vibe…
Zohran has already condemned the righteous Palestinian resistance and caved to pressure from the national security state in having the NYPD Commissioner report to him directly instead of a subordinate.
My hope for Zohran is that he moderately decreases the cost of living for the people of New York. I don’t expect a socialist revolution, though I’m ready and hopeful to be proven wrong.
Am I wrong that they have no meaningful influence over federal politics?
No, we’re way passed this point. They are going to enact violence no matter how well behaved you are. The only hope is to show up in massive numbers and remind them how many more of us there are.
But it is a double negative. Peaceful protests hasn’t done jack shit so far, now it’s naturally a phase two…
Let’s put on frog costumes and dance on the sidewalk. Its been so effective at stopping this. /s
I mean,… those puffy costumes sure are great for concealed carry… so i’ve heard…
👆 listening to this fool will get you and your loved ones killed
Bullies need to be punched in the face.
They will do that anyway. What are the ptotesters saving themselves for, slavery? Maybe they should try to emmigrate. That way, they can all be here, when we start gathering every person we can for the fight.
Username does not check out.
I’ll bet you also like to call Trump TACO, too, huh?
That they will escalate their violence is inevitable. At this point we should all be organizing our communities for self defense.
this is chess, not checkers.
They just ate their own rook.
Yep. At some point they’re going to do this and some folks are gonna open fire on them or throw a Molotov or something, and then the repression will get harsher and harsher. We need to stop them before this escalates.
Hope this isn’t too “controversial” to say in today’s America, but in theory I wouldn’t be sad if these individuals were subjected to the same things they are doing to civilians.
On the other hand, I guess it’s important to remember that at some point during a typical day on the job, a small business owner might have hurt their feelings by refusing to let them eat at their establishment without taking off their uniforms and leaving their weapons outside.
So I guess if I’m able to put my anger aside for a moment to be totally rational and fair, in some ways it’s like they’ve already experienced such harsh treatment, it kind of equals the whole murdering civilians in cold blood thing.
Edit: unsure if it’s really not obvious this was sarcasm or if there’s some Nazi fans with hurt feefees?
Widespread Protests in major cities against the unpopular and authoritarian
IranianAmerican regime.Better then getting shot in the face with a bullet.
All these masked up garbage humans were all whining like toddlers about masking up during covid.
Fuck ICE
With the force of a thousand suns.
Bring ballistic goggles to protests. They are not fucking around. Neither should you
I think this was a spur of the moment the neighborhood coming out to protest. But for future ones yeah, eye protection, breathing protection, pads.
Id advise everyone to get a pair of ballistic goggles whether they plan to protest or not. Just be prepared. These idiots will start blinding people without realizing or caring.
We need more self-defense classes against ICE agents. For Renee.
