In Person Activism

Disclaimer: I'm not American.

My plan is to cooperate with a local non-profit and start supplying dirt cheap drones to Ukrainians, since they'll be needing more if ¹ US assistance gets cut by Trump. The cooperation has actually started since we didn't wait for things to hit the fan. I hope we'll pick up speed. Product development is terribly, nerve-stretchingly slow.

¹ more likely "when", not "if"

For some reason, I suspect that many people have made a similar decision in Europe recently. Visited a civil engineering company recently. Saw engineers fitting a precise replica of a Browning 12.7 mm machine gun into something. Didn't ask what it was - had no need to know - obviously some robotic system. It's kind of sad that we're undergoing a rush of militarization, but when the biggest member of an alliance starts to go haywire and there's a conquering dictatorship next door, it's pretty much the only thing that can be done to change the outcome.

Resisting Trump presidency is too short sighted.

We need fundamental change in how our elected officials relate to the concerns of their constituents.

Studies have shown that public opinion actually has statistically no impact at the federal level. That is, unless you have the money to afford a lobbyist.

If money and the concerns of the wealthy are all they care about, we should do what we can to limit the supply.

The US economy runs on consumption. That's where we have leverage.

We should organize a general consumption strike. Buy what you and your family need to survive and that's it. Cancel your Amazon, cancel your Netflix, buy locally in cash, buy second hand.

It wouldn't take as many of us as you might think to make our presence felt.

This will certainly cause hardship for some (I myself work in retail) but the pain y inevitably at this point it might as well be productive.

Hit them where it hurts.

I’m not American, but for basic essentials, creating an online local network seems like a good idea to me. You could use it to share free clothes, food, seeds, and so on, and perhaps help run or boost local projects. The rich absolutely hate trading or gifting, so that makes it even better.

I think a huge one is also encouraging friends and family onto platforms and apps/programs that don’t sell your data. That way, you have a safe place to chat and organize without the government watching and collecting info, and without algorithms trying to bury movements.

Use trusted encrypted platforms for important chats.

First and foremost: at this juncture, I would implore everyone to keep OPSEC firmly in mind, and to take preemptive precautions.

Use a phone with Graphene OS, and use encrypted communication (preferably XMPP, but Signal at the very least. No technology is best)

with that said,

Mutual aid will be more important than ever, join and build up your local groups if you're able, it will pay off in dividends in the coming years.

• Search your local area + 'mutual aid'.
• Help your local food not bombs.
• Create a worker owned cooperative with your friends if possible, or join an existing one.
• Help spread the meshtastic network to build up communication resilience in your community.
• Plant trees in your community to help reduce the heat island effect for the coming heatwaves.
• Create or join a community garden near you to bolster food availability and foster connections with those around you.
• engage in guerrilla urbanism, make your community safer to walk or bike
• encourage your coworkers to unionize under the IWW, contact them for help on how to unionize your workplace.
• vote in your local elections to try and have a state or city government that is less hostile to the above actions, but continue to build decentralized power independently of them regardless. Do not make the mistake of handing off the responsibility to make things better to them, it's up to YOU, and your community, and hopefully other nearby communities doing the same, but that is all.
• consider having the means to defend yourself and the skills needed to do so effectively. But do not neglect medical equipment or its use either. Hope that you never need them.

We have tremendous collective power if we just use it, and hopefully this outcome will result in us coming together and building that world in the shell of the old. Collective solidarity is our only solution left.

Small things you can do:

Document things. Download speeches and clips, save articles, pictures, record your own videos and photos. Keep your receipts, build a weather station, log the effects of this administration on yourself locally. Write a journal. Keep it all offline and be discreet about it. When they try to distance themselves from the inevitable fallout, you can share your own evidence, your own story, and throw it right back in their smug faces.

Take upward flowing money out of the economy any way you can. Repair, reuse, rebuild, swap, share, create, grow, buy local, take on a roommate, do anything you can to avoid pumping cash into the orphan killing, billionare making, machine. Stop feeding Google/Amazon/Meta clicks and advertising dollars. Get a used laptop. Put Linux on it. Get VPN incorporated in a country that doesn't give a fuck about the US and pirate media. Better yet, make your own media and give it away. Starve the people who will profit off this administration and the chaos it'll create as much as you can.

Practice opsec. Limit your online profile. Keep location services off. Don't talk about how you can't agree with Trump's policies because the trans kid next door is a good person. Don't tell people a trans kid lives next door to you. Get a dumb phone or use a privacy focused OS on your smart phone. You can learn how to install a custom ROM, I have faith in you. Help others do the same, make it harder for them to dox people and reduce the data they have to target propaganda and manipulative media with.

I'm not sure it will be possible for a while.

Hunker down, make allies, have an escape plan. Keep doing unobtrusive things to keep important seeds alive and healthy, they're about to face some challenges. Stay off social media or anything that will put a target on you, keep your nose clean.

Until there's a critical mass of resistance, all it will do to try to oppose this is give it more cause for repression. Once it reaches a certain point, then sure. But in the meantime I don't know what would even be possible that would make anything any better.

It's not going to be a fun time.