Fascist policy has moved quickly in response to the recent solidarity encampments that sprang up to support Palestine. It seems like every state action right now is geared toward either making sure these camps can never again exist, or they can legally be crushed by any fascist who wishes to do so. I'm NGL, it's a scary time to be an American with left views right now.
What's happening just off the top of my head:
- Camps are being destroyed and dispersed by armed police, attacked by right-wing mobs, and harassed by Zionist propaganda shops.
- Positive coverage of the protests on mainstream media is near-zero. Same thing we saw during BLM protests in 2020.
- Individual protestors are facing consequences ranging from doxxing to harassment, to school suspensions, expulsion, and jail time.
That's all run-of-the-mill, seen that before. What's new:
- A man who was convicted, by a jury, of murdering protestors was just pardoned by the Governor of Texas.
- Protests continue to be attacked by fascists in vehicles.
- The federal government & many states are passing laws changing the definition of antisemitism to include the messages that the students were using at the camps, making it that much easier to legally suppress them.
- At least one state (NC) is about to change it's mask law to prevent protestors from wearing masks to protect themselves from Zionist retaliation.
So... protesting is basically banned, extremely dangerous, and silenced due to media blackout, state oppression, and social media bias. I know showing solidarity is important but I am struggling with seeing the local camp my local org helped support, a group of peaceful students and activists, just utterly crushed. IDK what to say to the people who effectively lost their rights to free speech.
Any ideas on what to do? How to escalate? How to protest in a way that is more effective and safer for the folks involved? I know the state is scared of these movements growing because of the sheer amount of action it is taking to quell these. At the same time I see these tactics working. I am tired of seeing good people dragged into jail. I'm tired of seeing them speared under the false charges of "anti-Semitism". I'm afraid of losing the life I have if I speak out. It feels like literally everyone is against us and it is depressing af.
I originally wanted to post a question about defending against vehicular attacks, but I remembered everything going on and realized there's a lot more stopping protests than that. I don't have the answers but hopefully we can collectively figure out some options.
With stopping vehicles the issue is you have a massive object moving at speed and it needs an equal, opposite amount of force to stop it.
to stop movie vehicles is putting a massive object - another vehicle, deeply secured anti-vehicle bollards, tank traps (saw some during BLM20 no shit) between you and the oncoming vehicle. You can use terrain - position yourself somewhere a vehicle cannot easily go, or somewhere it will struggle to go. You could in theory use caltrops and tire poppers but the vehicle will still likely be able to move on damaged tires and you'll need to place them far enough away for the vehicle to come to a stop.
I don't think people are ready to steal heavy equipment and start building ditches and berms.
Shooting the engine won't stop the vehicle. You need at least 12.7mm/.50 bmg to have a chance of damaging the engine enough to stop it and you need a lot of warning. Similarly, shooting the driver won't stop the vehicle unless the driver takes their foot off the pedal. At which point the vehicle will coast to a stop.
Significant barricades - sand bags, tired full of dirt, stacks of concrete barriers, things of that nature will likely dissuade most vehicle attackers and cause significant damage to most civvy vehicles.
Any serious defense is going to bring the cops out but I guess that's just the game we play now.
we talk a lot about the Cool Zone
This is actually it. We are not prepared for this from an organized armed resistance standpoint and we need to get there. I am gonna take some coworkers shooting soon and while we are hanging out outside work I have been educating them on What Is To Be Done
tbh the easiest and least provocative step is for protesters to get mechanized. An environmental catastrophe and terrible for OPSEC but we gotta utilize this car centric society where we can
Word. Having a bunch of cars in front of, behind, and in the middle of a protest makes ramming attacks less attractive. Plus, they can carry water and play "fuck the police" really loud.
Protesters in Brazil use stacks of old tires lit on fire. It's funny how every society has their protest traditions.
Rubber burns for a long time and puts out a lot of thick smoke. Works in a pinch.
tire fires are a great way to block a road and make it impassable for a while until it's cleaned up and the road repaired.