I expect 2017 will offer a wide array of grassroots activism operating within the political system, organized marches seeking influence from without, and unorganized chaos seeking to simply disrupt and monkeywrench - all guided by a general opposition to the Trump presidency and its enablers in the House and Senate. For lack of a better term, it is being called The Resistance. This thread is for news, resources and the usual Politarding about all of the above.



A sampling:

For using grassroots activism within the system to shape government, a collection of former congressional staffers has produced A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda.



The Women's March on Washington is a permitted event scheduled for the day after Inauguration.



Operating outside of any formal structure we have Disrupt J20 which, if successful, will involve lots of law enforcement in riot gear squirtin' pepper spray all over the place on January 20th. The chaos is unlikely to be confined to just D.C., but there are simultaneous calls for a nation-wide general strike so couch potatoes can participate just by staying home, playing video games and eating leftovers.



Happy New Year!

I'm on strike

I went to one of the DC anti war marches way back when and ended up getting gassed. I'm sitting this one out.

Trump will probably stick with his private security force and request they be extra brutal. Bonuses for each cracked skull!

I'm not doing ****.

If it requires leaving my parents' basement then I'm out.

I'm on strike in that I'm leaving the country before January 20th and I don't know when/if I'm coming back.

Keep fighting the good fight y'all. I'll throw some cash towards some charities who are gonna need it when Trump tries to destroy them.

The most practical way to resist is the vote with your feet. Actually voting does next-to-nothing, and protests, which I attend from time to time, only last for a while. Much of the anti-war movement went on holiday when Obama was president.

(nyt 1/2/17) - With No Warning, House Republicans Vote to Hobble Independent Ethics Office

Where do you propose we go?

Oh come on. Black people have enough barriers to voting and now you want them to use their feet?

Lol, I don't subscribe to democracy so I'm not the person to ask. But, don't tell anyone, Wookie is watching.

The problem with organized protest is that its only real value is in indicating the potential of violence directed at those in power. Other than that the purpose of marching serves mainly to provide a community and organization for protesters.

There is the danger of reflexive marching. Mostly marches do not "raise awareness" or influence politicians. However in certain high-profile situations like inauguration they are severely embarassing to people in power. Trump, a petty thin-skinned man, clearly hates the protesters, which is a good reason to support them.

That said, protests confined to marching and street activism will not be successful by themselves ultimately.

What should genuinely worry those in power is the ability the general public have to damage corporate power and interests through the internet. If the protesters learn how much power they have there they can destroy Trump's economic interests and effectively control him and his allies.

a tip to activists. try to win elections. if the state of massachusetts can have a republican gov. than methinks marching down a road getting peppersprayed just aint to smart. just try to win elections. use your get out the vote skills, call all white men racists, put up more horible canidates. you know like do what it is you folks do. but in the end just win elections. i know its a novel idea but it works. trust me. how else do you think someone like donald j. trump could become prez.this was typed in by becky88 as a direct quote from, wait for it,













HIM

This is not correct. There is also a distinction being glossed over between protest and direct action. The real highest value is in the ability to disrupt the status-quo, and in particular disrupt the flow of profits. This ability is a power, and when taken to the level of a General Strike can and has been a revolutionary power: see Tunisia 2010.

Now, I'm not denying any possible efficacy of an implied threat of violence. However, in the US context, nobody but an incredibly tiny buncha peeps who commonly organize as "black blocs" practice this tactic, and they scrupulously limit their violence to purely symbolic petty vandalism style property damage.

Where we see the violence is from the authorities. And when we see it, it's in response to a threat of disrupting the status-quo y/o disrupting the flow of profits. We just saw this in 2016: compare the treatment of the armed and violence threatening Oregon ranchers -vs- the treatment of the unarmed and NVDA protest against that damn pipeline.

Finally, community and organization are really job #1. Every action or protest that you walk away from is victory... because it's training and experience for the next action or protest. Non-violently blocking a street, for example, isn't easy or obvious. Simply put, activists need to "train as they fight". There really should always be a steady, frequent, and regular stream of protests/actions to build organization, gain experience, and even experiment with tactics. The really should be a "minuteman" capability so the streets can be flooded with experienced and pre-organized activists on a moments notice.

That, and this is something I can only attempt to describe, personally taking direct action is good for your soul. It's fun to an extent that can only be experienced. Universally, for participants, these days of action are among the halcyon days of their lives. It makes you a better person. It makes the world a better place. It's worth doing just for the sake of doing it.

Uh, Tunisia says different.

Sure, logistics and communication are flipsides of the coin in our information age. And sure, activists are doing 'hackivism', often under the banner of 'anonymous'. When the powers-that-be are stressed, they have military grade secure communications channels to fall back upon. Few activists are going to have the 3lite skilz needed to do hactivism. The stakes are much higher too. There are multiple 'anonymous' activists doing felony prison time with effective life sentences, while ignoring the Riot Act on the street is commonly a catch-and-release civil citation.

Bottom Line, disrupting the flow of information can never completely replace disrupting the flow of people & things.

I signed up to volunteer with the AZ Dem party. They haven't asked me to do anything yet. All they are doing is sending spam emails gloating as one of the only states where Democrats made gains. They have also sent a few surveys.

WTF did you expect ??

I suggest you venture outside of the donkey-elephant ghetto.

Meanwhile, there seems to be a few nice & legal parades you can do in AZ on 2017-1-21: "... hundreds of people in Phoenix and Tucson say they will descend on the state capitol and Armory Park, respectively..." Better than just viewing y/o marching, you can actually do some activism, and help organize these events. These marches take a lot of work to plan. There are surely regular planning meetings going on right now in PHX & TUC. Typically, these meetings are open to the public, and all attendees are peers with equal voice & vote... which is 180 degrees backwards from how the donkeys operate.

MD getting introspective. I like. More please.

Also, can someone correct the spelling in the title.

I don't disagree with you about Trade Union power but for the time being the unions are incredibly weak in the US and probably not a reallistic source of threat to power. Do you disagree? Automation is probably going to make them weaker if anything. Trump also seems to be doing an effective job of a carve-up with industrial labour.

Regarding violent revolution: are you sure? It looked like the black community was on the verge of starting a civil war even before Trump. Every time a white cop kills a black dude, probably even when it really wasn't intentional, I suspect there will be retaliation. That always escalates. It may spread to other opposition groups. (Btw I don't think this is necessarily desirable).

Hacktivism: Anonymous are a busted flush. I think the power of that specific group is quite limited. DNS attacks and the like might be trivial for a competent hacker to execute but for various reasons only a limited number of people will be involved.

There are much more effective and simple ways to attack authority digitally. For example, here's an easy way to cost a corporation money: do a google search for a high-value keyword team with name of corp x. Click ad link. Rinse and repeat. Very effective. Build a list of Trump/Republican controlled or affiliated organizations, a small group can really damage them. There's about thirty tricks like that.

I had someone throw glass at me in Paris in '06, so I'm on the #activist plan. I'll gladly do nothing all day to top it off.

Sure, the conservative business unions have become weak. But what else is there? There really is no hope, and I mean for the planet hosting human life, unless the power of rank-n-file workers remains disorganized and dormant. IMO one of the main reasons this weakness happened was allowing themselves to become almost appendages to the donkeys.

Automation is really a red-herring. It's certainly not the reason there are less factory jobs. Absentee owners don't personally operate robot lines, real working folk do. Who live in a community, the same community which enables the absentee owners with enforcement of their ownership "rights", infrastructure, raw materials, land, and the literal hours and days of peeps lives. All that cooperation can be withdrawn... not a wheel turns without our effort, all we gotta do is cross our arms and say "no". Trump "carving up" labor is basically a MSM lie.

Well, what you are talking about here is an animal of a different kind. Ferguson style riots aren't activism, and are a distinctly different kinda protest... an angry spontaneous protest that isn't organized or primarily composed of peeps who are otherwise activists. These types of riots/protests are also about the farthest thing you can get from being revolutionary or part of a 'civil war'.

Sure, and I'll give you one of my ideas: a team of digital artists create popular but copyrighted meme pix; another team of hactivists to propagate those memesin to be hosted or linked on the target's various websites; at the proper moment, all the linked pix could be flipped to some propaganda (like: XYZ corp kills babies !!!1!), then activist lawyers could swap the target with perhaps 1000s of individual take-down notices.

If you wanna get more hands on, most POS systems, easily accessible internal in store networks, company wi-fi, all that inventory shiz happening out on the loading dock, etc, etc is usually almost wide open, and can be disrupted quite easily.

I'd also like to point out that (a) don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and (b) IRL protests and actions build community in ways that virtual hactivism never could. Building community is job#1. It is always more important than the immediate issue being contested. And I could add (c)... there's a joy in IRL actions, it's worth doing for it's own sake. My advice is everyone able and privileged enough should be involved in some IRL activism, even those who primarily focus on the interwebs.

My point remains however, that disrupting communications in and of itself will never be enough... at some point the movement of people and things will also need to be disrupted.



This is what needs to be done. Over and over again. Practised until we got it right. Not a wheel turns without our labor.

Follow this guy

what the ****

Maybe they want to laugh about his idiocy, knowing that it will not affect them in any way because they'll still have their hundreds of millions.