What Can We Do? A Hierarchy of 20 Things to Resist Fascism(Part 3 of 3)

Return to Part 1

1. Sur­vive (pre­pare and plan)
2. Thrive
3. Deep­en your ties to com­mu­ni­ty
4. Stay engaged
5. Think crit­i­cal­ly. Fact check.
6. Doc­u­ment the truth
7. Give support/ Deny sup­port
   
   Return to Part 2
   
8. Acknowl­edge strange bed­fel­lows (for tem­po­rary alliances)
9. Sup­port Demo­c­rat politi­cians (Yeah, I know.)
10. Do not obey in advance
    
    Part 3
    
11. What CAN you do?
12. Choose an insti­tu­tion or ide­al to defend
13. Start small
14. Con­tribute to the groups you want to sup­port
15. Edu­cate
16. Speak truth to pow­er
17. Pro­tect the vul­ner­a­ble
18. Resist
19. Dis­rupt
20. Pas­sive resis­tance

As we move into Part Three, I want to tell you a sto­ry.

I play Live Action Role Play­ing games. It’s pret­ty nerdy stuff, so you go ahead and laugh. You dress up like the char­ac­ter you’re play­ing, which tends tends to mean the women char­ac­ters are as glam­orous and Uber cute as their play­ers can pos­si­bly make them, and the dude char­ac­ters dress exact­ly like their play­ers… but with a duster. You pre­tend to be a char­ac­ter (around here, the ongo­ing games mean that the char­ac­ter is almost always a vam­pire). You actu­al­ly DO what­ev­er your char­ac­ter does (like walk across the room to talk to some­one) and dur­ing the time between games (down­time), you can say that your char­ac­ter is doing things that you don’t have the skills to actu­al­ly do. Like tank a city’s econ­o­my or cor­rupt a police precinct.

There’s some­one run­ning the game (usu­al­ly a few) whose job it is to cre­ate the fic­tion­al world and ongo­ing plots in which your char­ac­ters inter­act. They cre­ate a bunch of prob­lems, and it’s up to the char­ac­ters to fig­ure out what’s going on and what they want to do about it.

Here’s why I’m telling you this: these sto­ry­tellers make sure there’s WAY too much for any ONE play­er to fig­ure every­thing out. There will be like fif­teen or twen­ty plot points going on, and pos­si­bly three or four of them are in some way con­nect­ed. But it is inten­tion­al­ly designed to be enough for every­one in the game to have some­thing to do, some way to be impor­tant, and so that no one per­son can pos­si­bly solve all the prob­lems. So as a play­er, you can’t spend your down­time research­ing “every­thing” you heard about in the four hours you were at the game. You have to pick one piece of the plot puz­zle and dig into it as hard as you can. You trust that the oth­er play­ers are get­ting into it on the oth­er stuff.

This idea is going to be impor­tant as we move into the next half of this list. There’s too much to try to do some­thing about EVERYTHING. You have to trust that peo­ple are doing the same work you’re doing some­where else. Or slight­ly dif­fer­ent work, but with the same ideals. Or VERY dif­fer­ent work but with sim­i­lar-end val­ue sys­tems. Just grab your cause, your issue, your THING, and focus on that. Pull one thread and help to unrav­el the whole thing. You pick one or maybe two things, and don’t let your focus get spread too thin. It may put you on a weird side of the dis­course once in a while (sup­port­ing the ACLU when they are fin­ger-wag­ging at deplat­form­ing Nazis, for exam­ple), but if you believe in it, stick it out.

11. What CAN you do?

I can often be heard to say, “Vot­ing: it’s the least you can do.”

The full mean­ing comes across bet­ter in spo­ken than in writ­ten form, but it’s also one of those ambigu­ous phras­es that means more if you think about it. Of course, we want you to sur­vive and thrive, and move behind the scenes if that’s all you can han­dle. If you need to keep your head down, I’m not here to tell you that you should­n’t. But if you’re ask­ing me what you can do, there’s a uni­verse beyond try­ing to form a broad-based polit­i­cal coali­tion under the purview of the Unit­ed States Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty that will keep über­facists out of pow­er.

Still, in terms of try­ing to get out and make changes, vot­ing real­ly is the LEAST you can do. There’s so much more.

And here’s the ques­tion. What CAN you do.

Remem­ber in The Three Ami­gos (which… is one of those eight­ies movies that hasn’t aged super well, but it’s bet­ter than One of the Guys) when the Ami­gos ask what the peo­ple of San­ta Poco are good at, and some­one says, “We can sew!”

So Mar­tin Short is like, “Sew like the wind!” And then the bad guys come and think the Three Ami­gos are fuck­ing every­where because the towns­peo­ple are all wear­ing Three Ami­gos cos­tumes that they sewed.

Now I’m not say­ing we do EXACTLY that (although I’m pret­ty sure Trump would fall for it) but that’s the idea.

What CAN you do?

This move­ment needs every­thing. It’s going to need artists. It’s going to need ide­al­ists. It’s going to need ambas­sadors. It’s going to need politi­cians. It’s def­i­nite­ly going to need lawyers. It’s going to need key­board war­riors. I have some old com­rades who opened a free clin­ic in the inner city. I have a friend who knits Afghans. You might think that’s sort of bor­ing, phone-it-in activism. But she has, over time, been respon­si­ble for giv­ing upwards of a thou­sand cold peo­ple a blan­ket. I promise you that’s a pos­i­tive impact.

Some folks will be bet­ter at open­ing their wal­lets and sup­port­ing the cause finan­cial­ly. (And boy, do we need finan­cial sup­port.) Some will be bet­ter at orga­niz­ing. Some will be so good at doing their “five calls” that they can do oth­er peo­ple’s five calls—maybe even fifty or a hun­dred calls a day. Some will be bet­ter at cre­at­ing Tik­Tok videos. Fig­ure out what your skill sets are, and then make a plan for how you can use that to sup­port. Lean into what you’re good at.

Fig­ure out how to make your nat­ur­al skills fit into what is need­ed. Obvi­ous­ly, a lawyer can take a case pro bono, but even accoun­tants, mas­sage ther­a­pists, per­son­al train­ers, life coach­es… they can all help peo­ple strug­gling at the bot­tom of the pyra­mid. You don’t have to be on the front line—you can take a sup­port role. Give some­one one less thing to wor­ry about, and they might be able to move up the pyra­mid.

Sew like the wind.

12. Choose an insti­tu­tion or ide­al to defend

Our insti­tu­tions will not defend them­selves.

Most of them are real­ly just ideas. They might be writ­ten on paper. They might take place in a build­ing, but they aren’t the building—nor will the build­ing defend itself by trans­form­ing into a 40-foot mecha with ani­me mis­sile pods. The insti­tu­tion is peo­ple, and the peo­ple will need help. The peo­ple need to know they’re not alone and folks have their back.

This faith that insti­tu­tions would­n’t crum­ble could cer­tain­ly be observed dur­ing Trumplethinskin’s first term. Every­one kept think­ing there was an adult in the room, and there wasn’t. Even the Muller report—that said he was guilty as sin—didn’t go any­where because there wasn’t actu­al­ly any­one defend­ing the rule of law, and only a hand­ful of Repub­li­cans broke ranks to impeach him.

So pick an institution—maybe a media out­let, a par­tic­u­lar law, a court, or even an ide­al like vot­ing rights—and defend it. Use a search engine to find out about its strug­gles, and show up. Give time, ener­gy, maybe mon­ey if you have it. Make five calls to your rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and keep the pres­sure on to pro­tect this insti­tu­tion. 

13. Start small

Okay. You want to do even more.

Maybe you want to get OUT there. Maybe a protest or a vig­il or some­thing. Or maybe a big main­stream protest where you’re going to show up, chant, march, and there will be food trucks—nothing too dan­ger­ous. Or maybe some sort of dig­i­tal activism. Or maybe build par­al­lel infra­struc­ture to ren­der aid. You don’t have to do this all at once or all on your own. And you def­i­nite­ly don’t have to jump in with both feet to the kind of activism that requires your protest sign be nailed to a base­ball bat. Hands Off is doing a lot of big broad-coali­tion protests, and while I can nev­er guar­an­tee how things will go, there seems to be way too many white peo­ple and food trucks for one of their events to turn into a riot with­out notice.

You get to decide your own lev­el of involve­ment. 

I can’t tell you WHAT to do because everyone’s got dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties, access, and risk assess­ments, but I can tell you that this is very much like doing drugs, exer­cise, or chang­ing your lifestyle. Real­ly, any­thing new that has the poten­tial to be very over­whelm­ing if you over­do it. Start small and easy, and grad­u­al­ly ramp up your expe­ri­ence. Do one main­stream march, and the idea of march­ing will seem much less scary. Do one easy protest, and you will real­ize there’s a dif­fer­ence in risk between peo­ple at the front stand­ing hard and tall against some­one in their face who des­per­ate­ly wants to fight vs. those in the back pass­ing out water and using their first aid kits. Do one online “know your rights” class. Get involved in one let­ter-writ­ing cam­paign or phone call cam­paign. 

If you go to one thing, there will be orga­ni­za­tion for anoth­er. You can always add more. You can pick up a fli­er or talk to some­one or just write your name down to be on some email lists. You now know where to find the next thing.

There’s always one more.

14. Con­tribute to the groups you want to support

This is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from an ear­li­er item where you were maybe buy­ing local and avoid­ing Wal­mart. Now you’re see­ing that there are a lot of spokes on this wheel, and you can’t pos­si­bly be part of all of them. You’re doing more than one main­stream march every cou­ple of months.

It’s time to iden­ti­fy the spe­cif­ic groups (or indi­vid­u­als) out there doing the work you want to sup­port direct­ly and find out how you can be more help­ful to them.

This goes beyond just show­ing up—though that is impor­tant. Now you might be ask­ing them how you can help. Mak­ing fliers. Host­ing orga­ni­za­tion meet­ings (or just bring­ing dough­nuts). Donations—the left could ALWAYS use more fund­ing. 

WHAT OR WHO you help is up to you. Maybe a group mov­ing at the state lev­el. Maybe an inter­na­tion­al watch­dog group. Maybe a media plat­form you trust. Maybe you host a LUCE event where they talk about how white peo­ple can han­dle ICE. Maybe you assem­ble an email list or main­tain a social media page. Give time, skill, ener­gy, or mon­ey if you have those things. 

15. Edu­cate

Edu­cat­ing is hard­er than you might think.

You’re not going to drop a post on social media that says, “Trans women are women” (they are), and that’s the ball­game. It goes so viral that trans­pho­bia is a thing of the past. Peo­ple buy you drinks wher­ev­er you go.

Game. Set. Match. Take that, big­otry!

The job of an edu­ca­tor in activism is to com­bat false nar­ra­tives, check bunk facts, frame argu­ments, point out choic­es in lan­guage. And call J.K. Rowl­ing names. 

Most peo­ple have a motive to pre­tend to be rea­son­able, and then reject ideas that cause cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance. (Includ­ing the one where they’re not actu­al­ly that open-mind­ed if they walked in deter­mined not to be swayed. Oh, irony—thou art ratio­nal white guys.) You will face a wall of peo­ple want­i­ng to derail you (from left or right) as well as an intel­li­gentsia more inter­est­ed in grind­ing your ideas to pow­der and human strug­gle into a stim­u­lat­ing intel­lec­tu­al exer­cise (which they ful­ly intend to “win.”)

Warn­ing: don’t get trapped into wast­ing time, ener­gy, breath and sali­va on those who are play­ing games (whether it is “dev­il’s advo­cate,” or some­one who is a true believ­er in fas­cism). Your sali­va is worth more than that. Work at edu­cat­ing those that can… you know…. actu­al­ly be edu­cat­ed. Some peo­ple can­not be reached and need to be removed from any space you con­trol. Some need to have their ideas spanked pub­licly.

The job of an edu­ca­tor is not just to redi­rect much of the noise and focus on the sig­nal but also eval­u­ate, in real time, which are the minds that can be reached, and what might be the best way to get through.

Some, who can be reached, will need your gen­tle patience. Many folks just woke up. They need some time to become James Con­nol­ly. Teach them the truth of what is going on. Teach them their rights. Teach them how to build a response team. Teach them how to give mutu­al aid. Teach them how to do phone trees. Teach them how to build par­al­lel infra­struc­ture. Teach them how to resist. 

16. Speak truth to power

We don’t real­ly have a roy­al court any­more where some­one can walk in, stand before the monarch, tell them there is no food in the North, and doom will befall them should they con­tin­ue to feast while their peo­ple go hun­gry, and by the way, your silk breech­es look like an owl threw up all over “huu­u­u­ur­rrk.” (That last part was the sound they made when the cap­tain of the guard’s sword burst through their chest from behind, since they didn’t notice the slight head tilt the monarch made that meant, “Deal with this, will you?”)

Speak­ing truth to pow­er in the moder­ni­ty is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. You might have a social media plat­form of mil­lions or just an open mic and three reg­u­lars at the bar. You use what­ev­er you’ve got, and you tell it like it is. No fil­ter. No soft­en­ing lan­guage. You let loose with the cold, unvar­nished truth. The real words.

Here’s what I’m talk­ing about:

The real word for grab­bing peo­ple with­out due process is kid­nap­ping. It is against the law—a law we have for a rea­son (because how do you con­vince a judge you were arrest­ed false­ly if you don’t ever get to see one?) and wear­ing a badge doesn’t mean you are above the law and thus autho­rized to just kid­nap peo­ple.

The real word for peo­ple who didn’t com­mit a crime is inno­cent. (When you skip the due process of the Fifth Amend­ment and the cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment of the Eighth Amend­ment, I don’t even have to drill down on the nuance of the abor­tion of jus­tice that is the Thir­teenth Amend­ment.)

The real word for mov­ing some­one from where they are to a coun­try they are not a cit­i­zen isn’t depor­ta­tion. It’s human traf­fick­ing.

The real word for a camp that is full of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers with­in a rel­a­tive­ly small and insuf­fi­cient­ly resourced space is a con­cen­tra­tion camp.

The real word for a police force such as ICE that dis­ap­pears peo­ple and deports them is a secret police.

The real word for the key char­ac­ter­is­tics that have ALL shown up late­ly is fas­cist.

The real word for peo­ple who do the Nazi salute and pal around with neo-Nazis is NAZIS.

The real word for a gov­ern­ment that embraces exec­u­tive author­i­tar­i­an­ism is regime.

See how this works? Now put it all togeth­er:

The Repub­li­can par­ty is open­ly enabling a fas­cist regime to use their secret police to help Nazis kid­nap inno­cent Lati­nos and traf­fick them to an El Sal­vado­ri­an con­cen­tra­tion camp.

Woah. Did you just feel your sphinc­ter tight­en? Did you think, “I don’t dis­agree with any one point in par­tic­u­lar but daaaaaamn. Someone’s going to fall down an ele­va­tor shaft… onto some bul­lets.” 

That’s speak­ing truth to pow­er.

Now… can you see how this might call down the thun­der? At best, you’re going to get oceans of apol­o­gists and sta­tus quo defend­ers in the com­ments sec­tion telling you how hys­ter­i­cal you’re being, and worse*. But keep at it, and you prob­a­bly go on some list some­where. I’ve heard of them mak­ing sure peo­ple know they’re being fol­lowed and watched, and even hav­ing spooks tell them they need to be qui­et or some­thing bad will hap­pen. They prob­a­bly go in and dou­ble-thumbs-up Tele­tub­bies on your Net­flix account. And I need to be hon­est with you… If you are con­sid­ered an ene­my of the state, you might not get a warn­ing, and you cer­tain­ly won’t be told when it’s your last. You might end up a polit­i­cal pris­on­er or a mar­tyr.

[*I’ve got­ten death threats from ran­dos. It’s fun! Some­where out there, a Mus­lim has a fat­wa on me.]

So, I guess, maybe it’s a lit­tle more like the per­son who walks into that roy­al court after all.

The first casu­al­ty of fas­cism is the truth. Peo­ple don’t want to think about this—even often peo­ple who would agree with every sep­a­rate piece of a state­ment like the one above—because then they might have a moral oblig­a­tion to do some­thing oth­er than yell at Democ­rats for not ins­ta-fix­ing every­thing (some­how… with­out con­trol of any branch of gov­ern­ment). They like envi­sion­ing them­selves as some­one who would have done some­thing about slav­ery in the ante­bel­lum South, with­out real­iz­ing that what they prob­a­bly would have done is arrange a full MCU screen­ing in chrono­log­i­cal order. 

Whether you’re Heather Cox Richard­son writ­ing day after day a sim­ple and fac­tu­al account of what the admin­is­tra­tion has done as it descends into fas­cism and how unusu­al it is in the annals of his­to­ry…
or Antho­ny Fau­ci talk­ing frankly about Covid even though the admin­is­tra­tion want­ed to down­play the pan­dem­ic…
or Gre­ta Thun­berg putting the abject moral fail­ure of envi­ron­men­tal exploita­tion on full dis­play with lan­guage as impas­sioned as it comes…
or Angela Davis point­ing out the ongo­ing slav­ery of the Thir­teenth Amend­ment and the racism of the prison indus­tri­al com­plex…
YOU don’t have to do more than speak (write, what­ev­er) truth­ful­ly about what is going on in sim­ple lan­guage, and you will piss off the peo­ple who want to mud­dy the water so they can go on grab­bing pow­er and over­reach­ing. They do not want their behav­ior described accu­rate­ly. 

Use the real words that describe them. MAGA is a cult. Musk is an oli­garch. Sell­ing peo­ple to El Sal­vado­ri­an labor camps is human traf­fick­ing. This is a regime. Do not water this down or allow any­one else to.

17. Pro­tect the vulner­a­ble

Fas­cists go after peo­ple in a par­tic­u­lar order. They’re like hye­nas that way. First, they go after folks with mar­gin­al­iza­tions. Trans folks. Folks with dis­abil­i­ties. BIPOC. Even women. And inter­sect any of those axes (like a trans BIWOC with a dis­abil­i­ty), and it might as well be Looney Tunes where they turn into a steak walk­ing down the street. Whether it is law enforce­ment or a para­mil­i­tary mili­tia, they will always go after vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple first and think twice about the headache of going after a cis-het able-bod­ied white man. 

When you pro­tect the vul­ner­a­ble, you put your­self between these peo­ple and harm. You can do that phys­i­cal­ly in a protest or even just on the streets by putting your­self direct­ly in the way of the per­son you’re pro­tect­ing. You don’t have to be a kung fu mas­ter or any­thing. In fact, I am work­ing VERY hard to make a non­vi­o­lent list. Just form a block­ade and make the fas­cists have to go through you first.

This includes at a protest. The lead­ers (almost always BIPOC) should be in the mid­dle of the march sur­round­ed by a bor­der of white people—preferably white men—whose only job is to lever­age their priv­i­lege into a shield that even cops will think twice about going through.

Be warned, though. Some peo­ple will see get­ting through you as the cost of doing busi­ness. You might be the first one arrest­ed or attacked.

You can do this in non­phys­i­cal ways too. Mar­gin­al­ized folks just exist­ing (nev­er mind telling their lived expe­ri­ences) make eas­i­er tar­gets, but you can defend them. Tell peo­ple to back off. Jump in on a social media com­ment thread. Take some heat.

Mutu­al aid is vital to our long-term sur­vival, and vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple need a lit­tle more help. If you can, throw some chiz­zle into a GoFundMe or help some­one move or some­thing, or oth­er­wise make sure they’re okay.

And… I hate that this has to be said, but we are already there… vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple are the ones who may one day need a place to hide. Do you have an extra bed­room? Crawl space? Any­thing? … just in case?

18. Resist

Every­thing on this list is a ris­ing tide of resis­tance, so what do I mean by this?

This is like resis­tance with a side of resis­tance and a sal­ad on a bed of resis­tance with a glass of resis­tance after the resis­tance bisque course. 

At this point, you are caus­ing trou­ble for trouble’s sake. Yes, you’ve got every­thing low­er on the pyra­mid going on, but you’re also just get­ting in the way. Waste fas­cists’ time with lengthy, wan­der­ing, point­less expla­na­tions. Be hos­tile (with­out get­ting your­self into trou­ble for being vio­lent). Talk at length. Bring up irrel­e­vant issues. Go on tan­gents. Spend sev­er­al min­utes look­ing for your ID (even though you have it with you). 

Keep your­self safe from injury, reper­cus­sions, and always make sure you have plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty, but start to be absolute­ly EGREGIOUS every time you deal with a fascist—be it a law enforce­ment offi­cer, a sol­dier, or just a die-hard MAGA. Make vague patri­ot­ic state­ments so they feel embar­rassed to cut you off. (“I know some­one doing their best to uphold this great coun­try we both love, like you and I do, under­stands the need for tight­ly laced shoes—so I’m just going to do that right now, shaky fin­gers be damned. This won’t take TOO long, my loy­al friend. I hope you’re not in a hur­ry. What am I say­ing, of course you are—you have so many impor­tant things to do since you are such an impor­tant person—a cog in the great­est machine in the world, am I right? Now… what was the ques­tion? Oh right, right, right…my ID. My ID. Let’s see. It’s here some­where…”) Mis­un­der­stand every­thing and try to clar­i­fy end­less­ly. Ask for instruc­tions to be repeat­ed. Quib­ble over word­ing. Reopen pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sions.

Act stu­pid.

Con­sid­er that every­thing every­one is try­ing to do has a trans­ac­tion cost in time and ener­gy. You are not going to set the reac­tor to over­load in the main ene­my base by wast­ing one officer’s time, but you ARE going to con­tribute to rais­ing the cost for every­thing they do—even just the mun­dane tasks. And if enough of us do that, it will take them a tremen­dous amount of time and ener­gy to get any­thing use­ful done. 

19. Dis­rupt

Dis­rup­tion is… well, it’s basi­cal­ly a form of soft sab­o­tage. It cov­ers every­thing from mali­cious com­pli­ance (insist­ing every­thing be done through prop­er chan­nels even when it doesn’t real­ly have to) to mis­us­ing resources to break­ing things. Report MAGA folks as spies to the author­i­ties. File fal­si­fied anony­mous reports with seri­ous orga­ni­za­tions like sug­gest­ing Wile E. Coy­ote to the autism reg­istry. For­get things you’re sup­posed to do and ask about them every time.

If you work for some­one sym­pa­thet­ic to the regime, give easy jobs to com­pe­tent peo­ple and hard jobs to incom­pe­tent peo­ple. Hold con­fer­ences (“This email could be a meet­ing!”) Make small mis­takes where they won’t get you in trou­ble. Work as slow­ly as you can with­out get­ting rep­ri­mand­ed. Run every deci­sion up the chain of com­mand rather than be “rash.” And if you can get away with cut­ting a phone line or shut­ting off pow­er… that’ll prob­a­bly cost every­one at least a few min­utes.

The trick is not to get caught, so back off if sus­pi­cion is ris­ing, but fuck shit up. Be sand in the gears of this machine. 

And where you do have pow­er, make the less fas­cist deci­sion wher­ev­er you can. Whether it is a boss, a doc­tor, a lawyer, or any­thing. Find small and sub­tle ways to slow the machine down instead of grease its wheels.

20. Pas­sive resis­tance

We’re now mov­ing into ter­ri­to­ry of much, much high­er risk. You might spend some time in jail for some of this. (I’ve sat in the drunk tank for a few hours, but—probably because I’m white—I’ve still nev­er been charged.) You might lose your job. You might have neigh­bors that want to key your car. You real­ly want to start to be care­ful, and you might want to make sure your day job and your activism life are a lit­tle sep­a­rat­ed.

Pas­sive resis­tance involves break­ing unjust laws.

Not only do you not com­ply in advance, but you don’t com­ply when it’s legal to demand you com­ply. You’re not going to fight, run, and you are par­tic­u­lar­ly not going to resist, and it is crit­i­cal­ly key that you are absolute­ly non­vi­o­lent, but you are going to raise the trans­ac­tion cost of enforc­ing an unjust law by sim­ply ignor­ing it—often in big demon­stra­tions of peo­ple who are also ignor­ing it.

This is like the sit-ins of “Whites Only” restau­rants or Rosa Parks sit­ting at the front of the bus. You flat out refuse to com­ply with a law that you find immoral. And you hope the world is watch­ing.

The cops WILL come. They WILL detain you. Make sure you tell them that you aren’t going to resist and keep repeat­ing that you are not resist­ing. They work for the state and a lot of them have swastikas under those uni­forms, so they aren’t like­ly to be very nice to you. (I got off lucky—I’ve nev­er had to do more than sit on a hot curb in the direct sun­light for five hours with my wrists uncom­fort­ably zip-tied [while being taunt­ed with water and told I would prob­a­bly enjoy being peed on] until the protest was over, and then sent home with noth­ing more than a real­ly bad sun­burn and a warn­ing to “know my place.”) YOU might very well get arrest­ed. Pos­si­bly charged. Maybe tried and con­vict­ed, and you might do time in prison.

Let me say that again, just so you under­stand where the stakes are—you might do time in PRISON for this.

So, think hard about this one. At this point, you’re not fuck­ing around.

A final note about direct action:

Allow me to speak… hypo­thet­i­cal­ly…

The day may come when direct action is the only recourse or the most appro­pri­ate recourse. This day is not quite today—or at least not the day of this writing—but it is clos­er than you might think, and approach­ing quick­ly.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there is every rea­son to sus­pect that such action is exact­ly what the cur­rent regime wants in order to give it the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to invoke all sorts of anti­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and ille­gal pow­ers to “restore the peace.” Direct action at this phase would only speed up the process of our loss of rights and lib­er­ties. Often, provo­ca­teurs (even, quite often, law enforce­ment offi­cers dressed up as pro­test­ers) attempt to spark vio­lence in order to esca­late their ratio­nale for vio­lent sup­pres­sion. This is “Protest 101” stuff.

HOWEVER… let me be blunt: if you are new enough to resis­tance move­ments to be ask­ing the ques­tion, “What can we do?” you absolute­ly DO NOT need to be decid­ing when direct action is your only recourse. A lot of peo­ple with a LOT of expe­ri­ence fight­ing fas­cism can guide you through their cal­cu­lus. You might feel like you’re ready for the next step, but let’s keep it a con­test of wills for as long as possible—they have WAY more weapons than we do.

Hook up with a group you trust—preferably with BIPOC lead­er­ship, since they will have the best sense of what is at stake and who will get hurt if things escalate—and fol­low their cues. It will be obvi­ous if “upris­ing” becomes “insur­rec­tion.” 

Hypo­thet­i­cal­ly.

And if you do take some sort of direct action…hypothetically…shut the fuck up. You do not brag. You do not hint. You do not innu­en­do. YOU DO NOT POST ON SOCIAL MEDIA. You do not let peo­ple buy you drinks. You do not text about stuff. You do not talk to law enforce­ment. You do not use it to impress chicks or dudes. You do not talk in a hold­ing cell. You do not give up names. You do not tell them so much as how your day is going. You will put your­self and your loved ones at risk and get every­one you ever came in con­tact with into trou­ble if you don’t shut the fuck up.

Okay… I hope that helps. That’s what you can do. Start by just sur­viv­ing, and work your way up from there.

Do you want to print this arti­cle out? Give it to some­one? Take it to a meet­ing? It is a pub­lished work, but is also free to print out (even though, if you have a cou­ple of bucks, that would be help­ful). Go here to find lots of print­ing options.

[This arti­cle is offi­cial­ly pub­lished! But you can still print it out, and there are even some real­ly slick options for how to do that in pam­phlet for­mat HERE.]

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