A call to protest
Tomorrow (and tomorrow and tomorrow), with a Steps List, if you don't know how
It’s Friday, April 4th.
I haven’t been talking about specific protests recently but if you hate what is happening to the United States right now, and its impact on the rest of the world, tomorrow, April 5th, is set to be a very, very large day of protest, and I bet very much there is a protest near you that you could get to. Among many other organizations, Indivisible.org is helping to organize the protests and you can check their website to find one.
In the Boston area, where I live, the protest has Ed Markey speaking and the Drop Kick Murphys playing. I anticipate it will be relatively safe, well-organized, and family-friendly. 1
***
Protesting isn’t the only thing that needs doing in these times, of course. It is not the only thing I do. But, in the same way that singing along with taylor swift in the rain together, eating together, watching a baseball game together, and other group activities can feel joyful and inspiring and encouraging, protesting together can do that too. Feeling solidarity together can do that. And, look, big crowds are impressive and they do move minds, and not only do they move minds, in their visibility, they move others to action who are afraid to be the only ones acting.
Anyways, if you can’t go to protests for a million various valid reasons, not to worry, there are so many good lists of other things you can do.
BUT, if you haven’t been to one before (I wonder if this can be anyone who reads my newsletter, but I honestly don’t know, so let’s assume it’s someone), and you’re not sure how you feel about them or what to do, I want to encourage you to consider showing up at one tomorrow (or any other day). I made you a handy steps list (shoutout to my younger kid who came up with ‘steps list’ because they hate the idea of “checklists”) if you’re not sure how to do this.
STEPS TO GO TO A PROTEST (Tomorrow or any other day)
Find a protest to go to. For tomorrow: Find a planned protest here. You do not have to RSVP to it. Just note the info about when and where. For any other day, Mobilize.us has a searchable list.
Find a friend or two, to go with you, and make a sign if you feel like it. (Don’t let no sign stop you from going. There will be plenty of signs.)
Bring a mask and some food/water and some throat lozenges because there’s often a lot of call-and-response yelling.
Be careful with your phone. (I personally tend not to use my phone at all during protests, but my opsec has pretty much always been better than Pete Hegseth’s, so.) At the very least, a. turn off biometric ID on your phone — ie make it use a passcode instead of your face or fingerprint, and b. don’t post pics of other people’s faces to the internet.
Know your rights. I have a printed version of the MA know your rights in my backpack.
When you get there, feel free to take a few minutes around the edge or scoping it out from afar to get a sense of the vibes. Just like with a date or anytime you’re in a new situation, you have every right to decide the vibes seem… off and just.. leave again. But: please expect that not everything someone says or every sign someone is holding at a protest is going to be something you would say or a sign you would hold. A resistance movement that has any hope of moving the world requires us to come together through difference. If there turn out to be a ton of obvious Nazis at your protest and they seem belligerent, yeah, get the fuck out of there. But try not to police everyone else’s messaging to death.
During the protest, pay attention to what’s going on around you. Just like with any large gathering of humans (not all protests are large, but a lot of the ones tomorrow will be, especially if you show up), a group of protestors can be a little unpredictable at times. And cops are a little unpredictable pretty much all the time, so pay attention to the interactions of police and protestors. Just like with a date, you can also leave anytime in the middle of the protest if the vibes start to feel off, or you get tired, or your throat hurts. You can leave and come back. You can sit down at the edge for a while.
Have fun, feel empowered!
Go home and celebrate your taking action!
If you can’t get to tomorrow’s protests, don’t worry, there will be more. If you want to go tomorrow or some other day but are new to this all and want more advice or reassurance or encouragement, feel free to email and ask me. I’m here for you! I’m not an expert on any of this dissent/resistance stuff, but I’m also not a total newb either.
I had a whole lot of other stuff I was going to talk about today, but I just got my second mpox vax and I’m still feeling a little under the weather. Here are a couple quick hits:
This poem is super worth reading
Saw No Other Land the other night, worth seeing.
I just always read Rebecca Solnit straight through.
Anyways, happy Friday folks, and I promise you, whether or not you look at what the stock market is doing does not change what the stock market is doing, so I hereby give you permission to just ignore that whole situation for the moment. There is a lot of stuff that is entirely beyond an individual’s control at the moment and that is one of those things. That said, the bigger and more effectively we protest the faster we replace this grotesque regime with one that isn’t intent on burning down the world as fast as (in)humanly possible.
xo,
Amy
ps
don’t forget you can forward this to friends. i am not, as you all know, trying to ‘grow my audience’ particularly, but I want to be as helpful as I can, and “my friend/parasocial acquaintance/ex-girlfriend from high school/former boss wrote this little thing about protests that I thought you might like, do you want to come to a protest with me” is a very, very effective way for you personally to also have a direct personal impact.
People trust people they know. They care more about what someone they know says than someone they don’t know. If someone they know says listen to this person you don’t know but I do know, well, any salesperson in the world will tell you that is worth more than practically any other kind of recommendation. You are holding that amount of value in your hands right now! Fuck the stock market, you could do one of the most worthwhile and powerful things in the world right now and hit forward and write a little note to someone who trusts you.
And no, this isn’t just about this newsletter or tomorrow’s protests. It’s about the power you always have, not to crush your resistance goals or meet your protest OKRs, or master effective communication, but just to share information, ideas, inspiration, and also the work with people you know.
pps that was a very long PS that probably should have been a totally different essay. oh well.
Unfortunately recent advice I have seen (for other protests, but I’m reporting it here anyways) have advised non-US-citizens to stay away for their own safety, and yes, this is a fucking abomination that this is the state of affairs right now, but it is, which means that those of us in the US who are US citizens need to show up even more so.