This is a very rough start for a guide to getting involved in activist work in your community. Please chime in with ideas! Many people are feeling at a bit of a loss as to how to get meaningfully involved and I wanted to try to offer some help.
The first step to becoming an effective activist is to become part of your community—something you cannot do online or in isolation at home. If you don’t know anyone locally you probably won’t be a helpful part of a network of resistance down the line except perhaps by lending monetary support online occasionally or phone banking for prisoners. In order to protect people in your community you need to establish yourself as a trusted part of it in some way shape or form.
Start small. Get involved in organizations that feed the homeless or provide meal trains for the sick, elderly, overwhelmed, or others that need it. Join a weekly trash cleanup crew in a local park. See if your local womens, lgbt, or homeless shelters need anything you can provide. One or more of these options usually exists even in rural towns.
- Check online for radical bookstores or community centers (some cities have lgbt clubs or community centers too) where you might start exploring local options or making friends with people who share your values. Even the local grassroots punk venue or garage show circuit might be a good avenue towards building community.
- don’t discount religious organizations only qua religion. Not all churchgoers (or church leaders for that matter) believe in god, and not every religious person supports the dark sides of their religion’s history. Often these organizations are the only already organized ways to get involved in very rural areas. Some church or mosque supported soup kitchens try to evangelize their visitors but some do not. Test out a few. Trust your guts. Unitarian, Buddhist, and Jesuit organizations are often among the more secular-friendly side of religious charity work.
- many religious organizations support/sponsor a number of refugees who may be at risk under the current administration. You can offer to provide rides if you drive (to the grocery, to ESL classes, a carpools to school), prepared meals if you cook, yardwork, woodwork, piano lessons, home repair, english conversation practice, etc.
Join existing activist groups. Join already active resistance groups. In an urban setting there are many to choose from. In a rural setting there will inevitably be less options.
- “Friends of the” river/park/community theatre organizations are one place to seek community connections that can solidify into important networks of solidarity down the line. Ask about volunteer opportunities in your area on nextdoor.
- Even if you are not an environmentalist consider volunteering for local branches of the sierra club or similar to build a network with other activists.
Stay safe
Trust your gut. If you go to the first meeting and they are talking about doing something you totally disagree with don’t feel like you have to go along with it no matter what theory they spout, you can always find something else more in alignment with your morals. If you find yourself doing something to prove authenticity or that feels like initiation/hazing that is probably not a healthy organization. If all decisions are deferred to one person and you are getting a creepy vibe from them that is probably a cult. Use your common sense. Use the buddy system.
- If you involve yourself in anything that might seem remotely sketchy to an ultra conservative government be wary of your online paper trail which could be used against you. Before engaging in online organizing, please learn the ins and outs of online privacy. Do NOT engage on platforms like ig/fb/twitter and other known bad actors. Ensure any platform you do use is encrypted properly. See the thread below by @[email protected] and the reply by @[email protected] for online safety tips.
etiquette
- Don’t expect people to always be grateful for your offer of food/resources. People are multi-dimensional and have complex histories. If you work with displaced people some of them will be intolerant or sexist. Just be kind, polite, and respectful to each individual’s wishes once they make them clear. If they are abusive towards you exit the situation and let others in your group know. In many cases your group will be able to point out these individuals beforehand to avoid confrontation.
- Don’t try to immediately voice your opinions loudly, feel an organization out by watching and listening to decide if you’d like to be a part of it. How do they deal with internal disagreements?, What are their priorities (as demonstrated by their actions? Their words?), Are they trying to control their membership in a way that comes off like bullying or grooming?
- There will probably be people involved in every activity you check out that you don’t like or don’t understand, or don’t find helpful. Someone who is always virtue signaling or always condescending, or just a huge oddball. This is just part of being involved in these spaces, it’s okay if you don’t get along with or like everyone.
- If you attend protests but didn’t organize the event don’t talk to journalists. They are likely to misquote, twist, and misrepresent your words.
Often times the Catholic Workers in your town may be up to some very radical and meaningful work. The Workers I know aren’t even all Catholic themselves, but the do take money from the church to keep their programs running.
A project I’m personally working on now which I’m sure many people on here could also do is I’m making and distributing Tails live disks with prewritten guides on how to use them including how to use Tor and how to purchase illegal goods on it.
With many lifesaving drugs about to become illegal in the US ( i.e. abortion pils, and drugs for gender afirming care) many people will soon have no option other than to turn to illegal sources for these drugs. While this is a far from ideal solution I am hoping to make the process as safe and straightforward for people as I possibly can for when they run out of other options. I have a background in writing manufacturing instructions where I take highly complex engineering doccumentation and break it down in such a way that any new hire off the street could understand it; so I’m hoping to apply those skills to writing these guides.
Unfortunately, while I used to know a fair bit about online security and how to safely use online black markets, my knowledge is about a decade out of date. I’m sure recomended practices and safety concerns have changed quite a bit. So if anyone wants to give me a hand with this I could use some more up to date info and more technical guides myself just to brush up on things. It would save me a ton of work in tracking them down myself. I’m mainly just hoping to traslate any existing technical information I can find into something the average person would be able to understand because that’s where my skillset lies. When I have these guides more fleshed out I plan to post them somewhere for community input and, after further refinement based on that input, for others to use and distribute.
That’s a great idea! I’ve been in the position where I had to source asthma inhaler cartridges online for a friend. A guide to doing so safely would have been really helpful, especially for drugs that might garner less sympathy than asthma inhalers to potential judges/jurys.
Good post, I would add be very mindful of your data, the trace you leave looking up topics about resistance or protesting and such, the purchases you make. Those can all be used as proof of “plotting” or whatever by current or future governments down the line. Don’t communicate on big platforms that don’t care about you. Don’t ask how to make sensitive stuff to ChatGPT and such.
Agreed. Now would probably be a good time to give attention to adopting good privacy habits and services where you can.
Some examples:
- Big tech email services have the possibility to rat you out and allow agencies to build a case against you through your emails, find out who you associate with, etc. Consider switching to a privacy focused email service, like Tuta, Posteo, Mailbox, or Disroot. Don’t rely on them to be impervious, but by using it, you’d make it much harder for them.
- If possible, consider switching to a privacy focused phone, such as a google pixel flashed with GrapheneOS (very easy to do, even for non-technical people)
- Use encrypted communications wherever possible. XMPP is a great federated option, but if you have to use Element or Signal, that’s still a great improvement.
- Making Linux your main OS will go a long way to making your desktop more private, and you can still dualboot Windows for essential apps if you need them. I’d recommend Linux Mint generally.
- While not a silver bullet, a good VPN can help mask your general surfing from your ISP. I’d recommend Mullvad, or for free options, Rise up or Calyx VPN . However, for ANYTHING actually sensitive, use Tor!
- Consider using an encrypted password manager, like Keepassxc for desktop, or keepassdx for mobile. Bitwarden is a more convenient option, but be aware it uses the cloud (though it is encrypted).
- A bit more extreme, but consider using an older car without trackers to avoid your movements being recorded if you cannot find a way to disable the tracking device in your new car. Combine this a faraday bag for your phone, so it can’t track your movements.
- Boost the resiliency of your community’s decentralized and encrypted communications by expanding your local meshtastic nodes.
- Use a hardened web browser, like the Mullvad browser or Librewolf on desktop. For android, try Fennec (F-droid) or Vanadium. Be sure to enable DNS over HTTPS with the Mullvad DNS if you’re not using a VPN.
So many people say ‘organise’ without saying how to organise and activate, thanks for the detailed guide. I’ve saved this post so I can point others to it later
I definitely would be extremely careful about protesting in this political climate.
Hope it helps someone and that others will chime in to improve it!
don’t discount religious organizations
John Brown was a very religious man
The Quakers, too, were a very important part of abolitionism.
There’s some Quackers that hang out at our mutual aid org. I was pretty standoffish to them at first but they’re based af. They don’t know it but helped me not be such an asshole to religious people.
Thank you for posting this
Alternatively you can just do your own thing. Don’t feel obligated to need to do something some other way simply because that works, or is purported to work for other people or groups. It’s perfectly fine do not be a part of a community and take actions where you see fit.
