YSK: There's a protest today at noon at your state capitol.
Posts on various social media platforms called for demonstrators to show up at all 50 U.S. state capitols.
The instant anything is posted on here it's already been scraped. Know this. Act accordingly.
Some tips to help you out
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;
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....
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.
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.
Edit: One of the accounts which is expressing well-intentioned nail-biting concern that something really bad might happen to the people who go to these protests, and urging people to stay safe if they do decide to go... is the same account that has been telling me about how Ukraine is the bad guys, and the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans, and other interesting things.
The thing is if everyone said "fantastic! This will be huge" and the actual protests are underwhelming, well that serves to confirm the false narrative that a very small minority of people are upset.
Declaring high expectations and delivering low is a path to undermine your cause. Waiting until after the fact to explain why sounds like making excuses rather.
The protest in my region was like maybe 50 people. I don't think this is because people are broadly happy, it's because as many many people pointed out, this was poor planning. The optics of pulling off a huge protest in only a week would have been amazing, but just impossible in the real world.
as many many people pointed out, this was poor planning.
So fucking organize it better then.
Jesus this American shoulder-shrug-why-do-anything-if-it-isn't-perfect is so frustrating to watch.
The thing is if everyone said “fantastic! This will be huge” and the actual protests are underwhelming, well that serves to confirm the false narrative that a very small minority of people are upset.
But nobody did, they just said "this day this time go protest in your capitol".
The optics of pulling off a huge protest in only a week would have been amazing, but just impossible in the real world.
It was a protest across the entire country, and it can be done again, and again, and again.
Seriously do you guys even need opponents? You just give up and convince each other to not do anything unless it's perfect and then sit back and watch your neighbours get put in camps, declaring that you sure don't agree with those actions.
Even if it was a huge protest, the psychopaths in charge will walk over their backs and casually walk into the capitol.
Protests don't do shit because you cannot convince people who don't feel emotion to suddenly care about your situation. They only care about self-enrichment, power, and self-preservation. Do you have enough political capital or leverage to influence a politician?
Maybe if you threaten their sense of self-preservation, you might cause them to notice.
The Women's March on January 21, 2017 was one of the biggest protests in US History. It did jack all. The US gov't has been taken over by anti-Consititutional, anti-American, anti-law Republicans at all 3 branches. Going to a protest has about the same impact as typing outrage on Lemmy. It's not pessimism, it's reality. Until masses are seriously prepared to get violent, we are fucked. Personally I'm just getting the fuck out and watch it implode into Gilead.
Interesting how you skipped over the BLM protests, which were literally 100 times larger than the Women's March, and resulted in significant changes to the exact thing they were protesting, which had previously been a basically unchangeable fact of American government and society.
There's also Euromaidan, which toppled a corrupt government, with about 4 times the attendance of the Women's March.
The Women’s March on January 21, 2017 was one of the biggest protests in US History.
I didn't say protest, I said strike. They are not the same thing. Protests require Centrists and 'moderates' to care enough to join them. Strikes are meant to directly impact Capitalism. Going to marches every night for a week doesn't hurt business owners, but a week of strikes loses them money in a big way. With sympathy strikes you can get the capitalists fighting each other. With a General Strike all of the lines-go-downward and they'll freak out.
Until masses are seriously prepared to get violent, we are fucked.
Guess which step precedes that?
Get the fuck out in the streets, prevent cars from getting places, block entrances, cause consumers to avoid places, then they'll start paying attention.
God it's so fucking frustrating watching your older brother whining there's nothing they can do when there are provable things they've done in the fucking past that have worked.
Look at the Pullman Strike. Seventy people were killed by cops/military, the strikers still won and it was a massive, historical win for American labour laws.
Awful short notice. My state capital is 3 hours away and I have work.
There’s a protest at your work today.
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.
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.
This was Colorado. I agree that the timing sucks for people with regular jobs, but we also need to get the attention of our representatives and disrupt the peace.
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.
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.
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
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?
Which upcoming protests would your friends recommend going to instead? Assuming that someone can’t travel to DC.
One that:
As many of the above that can apply.
What might happen to someone who attended a not “well intentioned” protest, that wouldn’t happen to someone who attended a normal one?
If you end up going to a protest because "I want to do something" without doing any due diligence, you are placing your faith and trust to someone you do not know. If you arrive there, they may pretend to be a part of a leftist organization. You may end up trusting them more than you should, giving them more information than you should. If they are running the protest as a false flag and in bad faith, then you've given your private information to someone who intends you harm.
Best case scenario, the organizers don't know what they are doing and are running the protest in good faith, but it also means they are new to this and don't have good operational security.
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
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?
Well you are wrong I'm not from the US
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 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.
I was wrong. At least for my state. There was a huge protest in Denver yesterday.
We may have just hit the point where enough people are pissed off that a lot of organizing/motivating isn’t needed.
I’ll be at the next one, and I’m already planning how to comply and assist with a general strike in March. I have the teeniest hope that some momentum might be starting to resist these fuckers now in charge.
Definitely, and they can track the people that did show up as highly motivated.
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.
Online glasses places are pretty cheap and good quality, if you know your pupillary distance and your prescription isn't complicated. ⭐Encouragement⭐
Not true, I don't live in the US lol
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.
But at best if you saw the very first mention of the ideation of going for this, you still would have had barely over a week of notice. This is not enough time for people to plan someone like this, especially during a school and work day.
Reminder anyone that you don’t know who approaches you and suggests illegal activity is a LEO plant.
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.
Thanks for the only rational reply lol. All the love to the other two replies but one of those starts out, "America isn't a country it's a continent." ????? While the other comment is telling me the 715 municipalities in Germany dwarf the 50 locations in the US. Lol. Cheers for following the conversation rationally 🍻
Nah, 50 locations is rookie numbers. Like, Germany has 715 cities over 20k pop and I just checked and yep the smallest one did have a protest in 2024 when the AfD "remigration" plans became public.
Protest where you live. Protest where people are. Wait that doesn't work in the US. Protest on the Walmart parking lot. Fuck trying to hit individual record numbers on prime time news noone cares noone watches that shit if it even gets reported, be visible to your neighbours they can't censor that. Think globally, act locally. Have grandmas and cookies.
Lol homie, where are you getting 715 cities in Germany from? According to Wikipedia, Germany has 11 cities.
Is this a translation thing where you are calling every municipality a "city?" If that's the case then the comparison would be 715 towns/villages/cities for Germany vs approximately 30,000 towns/villages/cities in the USA.
The organized protests are only happening in each state's capital. Which is one city per state that someone a long time ago in a galaxy far far away decided would be called that State's Capital City.
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.
No there isn't
I live in Austin TX and just saw this. Heading downtown now, cya there. Thanks OP
I wish I'd known about this like 2 weeks ago instead of 30 minutes before I go into work. I'd call out if it didn't mean financial ruin for my family
Fake news, not american
Well if you'd show up it could have been a solidarity protest in your provincial capital but you don't care about democracy!
Anyone have streams?
Why is this post a link?
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
You have to start somewhere.
The people of this country have been, for the most part, just sitting back and letting the politicians run everything, and that definitely isn't working. If people are going to do something about it, the first step is getting off the couch and going and meeting some other people who want to do something about it.
It probably won't directly change anything but it will and can change public perception and what lawmakers see. It at least shows them "look at all these people who won't stand by and take it."
It will show that people aren't alone, Trump wants to pretend they have an overwhelming mandate to do whatever he wants, having upset people together shows that actually there are a lot of people that feel similarly. Organizing and coming together is the first step. The next is the strategic plan.