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hello long time protestor here. i know a lot of people are frustrated at home right now and want to help. donations are great and we appreciate them, but i also wanted to mention that logistics & radio relay are things you can do more easily on the computer than on the street
specifically what i mean is this: find out who your connections are and focus on their city, doesn’t have to be your city. sit in the telegram or signal chat while they go out to the street. find and listen to the city police and EMS radio. relay that information to the chat
don’t do this for or with people you don’t actually know. only cooperate with strangers if a friend has vetted them. assume everyone is potentially a fed or an informant or just bad at opsec until proven otherwise. it sucks but thems the breaks
one thousand people are going to reply to this begging me for specific instructions & there aren’t any. you just have to be, or get, good at the computer. finding radio streams and, even more difficult, finding the ones cops switch to when people find the first one, is hard work
another valuable service is knowing various people in a city and connecting them. if someone needs a ride and you know someone is down that way with a car, ask them if they’d like to be hooked up. this is stuff we can’t pay attention to or organize while dodging grenades
if an area has been gassed, send the medics there. tell people where water, food, or supplies are needed. keep track of which transit options are shut down and which are open. that kind of thing. do the googling and the twitter searches FOR people and send them the info
there’s no fb group or list of gangs to join. you have to do all of this one person at a time, by word of mouth, and you need to understand that strangers are smart to be suspicious of you until you’ve proven yourself, so stay humble and don’t intrude.
someone is gonna reply and say something like “actually leave your phone at home” and while yeah, it is the only way to totally avoid stingray surveillance/cops stealing your phone, it’s also very fucking hard to communicate with your group or find out what’s going on without one
everything you do in these scenarios is about trade offs, risk management and responsibility. if you can handle the risk of having a phone and can be responsible about protecting the information on it (PIN not touch/face ID, disappearing messages, etc) then you can make the call
one option might be to designate a comms person in your group. everyone leaves phones at home except the comms person, who is protected while checking messages, but you need to stick to them like glue
this thread is just me speaking from experience and from a limited background of security and computers. doubtless someone will get mad at me about it, but unless that person has also been teargassed more than once maybe take their objections with a grain of salt
you can sit on twitter and grow your beard with OpSec arguments for ten years and it just won’t really apply to the material conditions, which are that people need communications at protests 99% of the time. it sucks but there it is
had someone in a seattle chat today doing radio relay for seattle AND chicago at the same time. multiple pickups and evacs were organized. etc. it takes a certain kind of very online, tab-switching personality to do this kind of work, a personality that often does not go outside
not saying our multi radio person is a nerd, i have no idea who they were. i’m speaking generally about the extremely niche skills of the Very Online. you know who you are
i’m seeing a lot of people getting hung up on gear, first aid guides, supplies, etc. if you aren’t already a trained medic, don’t worry about it or think you won’t be “useful” otherwise. the number one most important thing you can do at a protest is show up.
the bulk of a protest is just regular people who showed up. not everyone has to be a specialist or a kitted-out tank or an official in any capacity. it is especially important for my fellow whites to just show up. if you need help, yell for medic and someone will come
it’s also extremely important not to attempt to provide medical care beyond your training. it is very easy to make injuries much worse by tinkering around with emergencies that are over our heads.
