Also don't wear any clothing you bought from a unique Etsy store (or any store you physically visited and paid with a card).
The clothes you wear to the protest should also be bought from a thrift store that you visited without your cellphone and paid for the clothing in cash.
Otherwise, yes, your clothing purchases are tracked, and the young lady who torched a cop car during the George Floyd protests was literally found by the FBI searching Etsy purchase records for people who had bought that shirt.
Gee, people in the US need to be this cautious when protesting? Where I live it's totally fine to just casually show up at protests, take selfies, talk to people and whatnot.
Gen-X here. Gen-Z answers a question I had as a teen. "What the hell children will the extreme sports, tech-centric, video gaming, gangsta rap, grunge, rage against the machine, angst filled 'slacker' generation raise?"
I'm not american. Why not bring your phone? Around here as long as you have a legion of people pointing cameras at cops they'll not outright beat you senseless since it'll be impossible to lie about some bullshit justification about how you did something first.
This is why I love the west coast of Canada, I can talk to the cops all I want, I can call them pigs, I can tell them they should learn to do their jobs, I can just straight up troll them and it's protected.
It doesn't mean they won't be absolutely shitty about it and try to start shit though.
Edit for y'all who thought I don't know what cell triangulation and gps tracking are: If you're involved in protesting to the extent that you might be actively tracked, you should have the proper precautions in place on your phone that make it untraceable even when you're carrying it with you.
Edit 2: "Proper precautions" includes using GrapheneOS with 2 SIMs. Only use one of those SIMs at protests and make sure to never use them at the same time. If the government is tracking you past that point, why do you even have a phone in the first place?
Did you know "ACAB" is a term that was invented by British Skinheads in the 70's/80's who would fight the cops over the increase in South Asian immigrants?