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Too bad majority of people that are part of unions are MAGAts.

It's well established that a line of calm protestors with rifles is the best way to keep the police from rioting

You go ahead and do that, but make sure there are no innocent people nearby when you do. They haven't been trained on the rules of engagement, nor do they care about them. When they're fired upon, they won't just fire back at the individuals who shot them. They'll consider everyone a threat and start spraying the crowd. If you shoot one of them, you're creating exponentially more danger for everyone around you.

Look at the videos from their attack on Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis. A kid threw snow at one of the agents - not even a snowball, just a handful of snow - and the agent turned around and bear maced everyone he could see.

I agree. But most of liberal America doesn't, unfortunately.

There is a lot of good advice all up and down this thread, but this year please have a plan for defending or escaping home.

Assume it will happen. Have multiple escape routes. Be real about what tools and techniques work best for your abilities, skills, and risk profile.

With enough of us on "the list" it becomes a badge of honor. Pete Seeger would have been half the legend he was if not for McCarthy's blacklist.

I will not hide my objection.

Burner phone if anything, and ALWAYS take public transit to protest events.

good, the more people in that database, the better

Don't forget the flock cameras tracking your license plate

Depends on what you expect to happen. If you think you could be arrested, leave it at home. If you just don't want to be caught in a mass surveillance event, airplane mode is fine. You might not even care if you're identified at something large and public like No Kings type events.

People need to be aware of their threat profile, but having a mobile video recording device and using it as part of an influence campaign is a valuable tool. Going to a candle lit vigil and recording a video of a bunch of somber people to make your MAGA mom feel something is a different event and risk than going with some bloc comrades to sabotage ICE vehicles.

Definitely leave phone at home and maskup

Clearly, you haven't looked at the map. Red states are anything BUT silent. (Note: navigating the map will show numbers in areas that look blank until you move to that part of the map.)

They will be, but not in an instant gratification manner.

Sociopolitical change requires the long haul.

Anyone expecting some kind of revolution needs to see about 35 million in the streets at once, plus a well developed infrastructure of philosophy, ideals, and civil organizations.

In the meantime, mass dissent is necessary and fertilizes the roots of liberty -- cf. history.

Protests are already effective, in multiple ways.

Mainstream media loves to "both sides the same" and minimize every new excess and unlawful act, making all of us feel very, very alone when we learn of the newest outrage in the silence of looking at our phones. Yet possibly the biggest thing attending a protest will do for anyone who goes is powerfully prove that they are NOT alone in their grief and outrage, that they are NOT crazy or misguided for thinking that which is blatantly wrong is, in fact, blatantly fucking wrong, that there really is still such a thing as community after living for so long in their own personal desert, even as the protest itself allows opportunities for making contacts with other like-minded people, offering inspiration that tomorrow need not feel as bleak as today.

It's no accident that the biggest assault of regimes who aspire to totalitarian rule is on community itself, from every possible direction: propaganda, sowing discord, pitting in-groups against out-groups, normalizing antisocial behavior, criminalizing assembly, raising the specter of surveillance, fostering self-censoring, using public words to mindfuck and lie and call every evil The New Good, etc. They attack community in all its organic, non-supervised, non-approved forms wherever they can because to be human is to have an inbuilt desire for community: control the community and you control the human.

Yet in a single afternoon, attending even one protest can destroy all that carefully plotted work to cognitively and emotionally separate you from the rest of humanity, and worse still, pull in others to your cause that were otherwise happy sitting on the fence.

It's not all about regime change, though it is certainly that. It is about building community that won't stand for a shitty regime, one person at a time. And in that respect it is already overwhelmingly effective, for everyone that can attend even just one.