Don’t overthink: just click something!
Cart Jam
Whether you’re skipping all shopping this week, or boycotting Home Depot, Target and Amazon, take it up a notch with a digital cart jam. From the organizers: “When thousands of carts sit full but never convert into purchases, it hits their KPIs, signals that something is wrong and shows that their business practices are…
Join a Buy Nothing Group
Shift away from the capitalist mindset and build community by joining the local gifting economy! BuyNothing groups can be found across the country, are hyper-local, and help you learn how to give and receive goods and services without expecting or providing immediate recompense. It all comes back around! Check buynothingproject.org for information.
Small Spectacles
Are you in an area without a big No Kings III protest? Maybe you’d rather join a smaller group due to mobility issues or anxiety. From bubble guns to inflatable frogs, joy is resistance. Protest with whimsy and fun, and raise everyone’s spirits!
Learn Something
Learning new skills builds mental flexibility and resiliance. Make a list of things you always wanted to learn. If it involves stretching your mind, it counts: Read a challenging book or learn a sport or new language. They want us to cower in fear. Scream bad Mandarin at them instead!
Watch CECOT
Hours before airing, 60-minutes redacted its coverage of U.S. treatment of “detained” immigrants. They forgot to cancel it on streaming services to Canada though, and some quick-thinking Canadian filmed his TV and posted it online. Within an hour it was popping up — then getting redacted — across the internet. Watch what they try to hide.
Flag Resistance
Battles over symbols matter. Furious efforts to brand the No Kings! rallies anti-American were countered by a strong presence of American flags in protest images. It’s time we reclaim the image of America as inclusive and constantly striving for greater fairness and justice. Fly a U.S. and progressive flag together, to send a clear message:…
CERT training
Even before the regime diverted FEMA to detention, the “Community Emergency Response Team” program trained local people to step up in emergencies. Focused on closing the inevitable gap until trained professionals could be deployed, this training is more relevant than ever. Click through for information about emergency preparedness programs.
Maria Ressa : How to Stand up to a Dictator
Maria Ressa is an American-Filipino, Nobel Peace Prize winning journalist. In this memoir Ressa discusses her life as a dual citizen, her journey into becoming a journalist, and her groundbreaking research into the ways Meta as a corporation, and social media as an industry, is contributing to the rise of Fascism across the globe.
Characters
From Portland’s Fearless Frog to historic characters with a message, costumes add spectacle and defray the fear-based messaging of the right.
Create a persona for your protesting activities. Make it silly or pointed — it’s dress-up time!
Use Signal
Signal isn’t suitable for military-grade security, but it’s vastly better than Messenger or SMS, both easily surveilled. Apple’s chat is better, but still owned by a big company whose interests may shift, and integrated AI raises questions about privacy. Install Signal, learn to use it, and begin building your network there.
Record ICE
Learn how to record ICE abductions before you encounter one. What are your legal rights? What should you focus on? What should you do with the video afterwards? Click through for details.
Splurge!
Splurge on a small treat for yourself. Resistance is exhausting and fascism is a grind. Buy tiny trinkets, wrap them in pretty paper, and open one after you engage in resistance!
Interview with an activist
No matter what we’re doing, we all have times we feel like it isn’t enough. Whether we’re in a slump, or it’s just imposter syndrome, one thing can cut through the ennui : talk to someone whose resistance you admire. Be up front, or invite them out for a hike or coffee and see where…
Refuse AI notes
Many medical offices are integrating AI-mediated note taking. In a different world where LLMs prioritized accuracy and practices weren’t squeezed for every dime of profit, this wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. That’s not our world. In this world over-worked medical staff don’t have the time to review notes based on pattern-matching and hallucination. Say…
Entertainment Budget
Shift your spending from massive corporations to small artists, local venues, or better companies. Replace a Sinclair station with PBS Passport, buy from bookshop.org instead of Amazon or dump Spotify. Search local news for a concert, comedy show or art festival today!
Bureaucracy Busting
The GOP steals through beurocracy: they made it harder to keep SNAP benefits, and now they’re trying to make it harder to vote through legal hurdles. Any time you hear about or accomplish a bureaucratic task, share your hard-won knowledge. If you check voter registration, share why and how you did it. If you know…
Patent Defense
“The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has proposed new rules that would severely restrict the public’s ability to challenge improperly granted patents. If adopted, they will give patent trolls exactly what they’ve wanted for years: a way to keep bad patents alive and out of reach.” – EFF.org
Submit comments by December 2nd, opposing this…
Memorize one Phone Number
Remember how we all learned our home phone number as kids? Today, I couldn’t call my own mother without looking her number up on my phone.
Choose one person you could call in an emergency who is NOT likely to be with you. Memorize their number.
Buy Woke
Black History Month is the time to find new, local Black-owned businesses! Local papers and groups may run special editions with lists of businesses, or look for special events in your area like tasting tours. If you’d like to support Black entrepreneurs more, this is the best time of the year to find them! (Remember…
Trans Rights
Use translegislation.com to check for anti-trans measures in your state. Take the time to learn about the measures — look for information from GLAAD or other queer-rights groups so that you understand what the bill really does. Most of these bills rely on fear-mongering and misleading language, because the truth wouldn’t win. Once you have…
Lost Tips
Shutdowns that include service industries are hard on tipped workers. This is doubly true for shutdowns on busy days, like the “ICE OUT OF EVERYWHERE” shutdown on January 30th.
During closures, look for businesses supporting the cause. Make a plan to go soon, and tip twice what you usually would, if you can.
Analog Addresses
The holiday season is a great time to rebuild non-digital contact lists. Imagine you lost your phone and you couldn’t get online. Who could you reach? Begin with family and expand until you have an old-fashioned paper contact book again.
Phone Security
Before traveling or attending a protest, review your phone security. The easiest and safest option is to buy a cheap dedicated phone. If that isn’t in the budget, click through for ways to make your existing phone safer.
Spread hope
Buy some fun post-it notes, stationery, or even a printer, and start leaving inspiring messages all around town and anywhere you travel for people to find, like tiny, any-time protest signs.
Protest Playlist
Get in the mood for No Kings III with a fortified playlist! Whether you’re trying to rebuild after leaving Spotify, or just need some new inspiration, we have playlists from Rolling Stones to a few trusted friends…so turn up the volume!
Travel
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness” – Mark Twain. Make a plan to spend time in another country if you can. Even a lunch trip to Canada will help remind you that our nation didn’t always feel like this. If you can’t risk a border crossing, or can’t afford international travel, plan a…
Public Funding
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was defunded and is now shutting down to avoid being mis-used. This leaves PBS, NPR, and hundreds of local radio and tv stations in our hands. Donate or buy merchandise to keep them going!
Phone home
People in detention have to pay just to make a phone call. When wage-earners are locked up, phone calls may be a necessary luxury they can’t afford. Donate to commissary funds for jails and detention centers. See post for links.
First Responder
Do you want to know how to help in an emergency? Maybe someone on your gift list does? Sign up for a first aid, emergency responder or CPR class to learn some basic life-giving skills. Should you really apply pressure to a gunshot wound? How fast should you do chest compressions, and does it really…
Reduce Taxes
Use every legal means to reduce the money you give this regime via taxes. Here’s an entirely legal one: make contributions to IRA or HSA accounts before the tax deadline, and you can remove that income from your taxes for the prior year.
Holiday Planning
It isn’t too late to de-commercialize your holidays! Shift away from flashy events and gifts, toward meaningful memories, or add some mutual aid days to the busy calendar now! If it feels too late to make changes this year, lay the groundwork for edits next year.
SAVE voting
The SAVE act is stalled in the Senate, but it isn’t dead yet. A LOT of disinformation about it exists. Many people think they’ll be able to register and vote with just a driver license, but that’s not true. Meanwhile a new executive order seeks to limit mail-in voting. This is the steal you’re worried…
Good Neighbors
Create relationships in your neighborhood. Do it formally through a neighborhood project, or take the next step with someone. Wave, borrow a cup of sugar and take back cookies, or invite them to dinner. Start slow and build.
This is especially easy to do over the holiday season when dropping by with cookies or inviting folks…
Adopt a corner
Do you want to support immigrants more directly, but don’t know how to get started? Adopt a Corner is a well-organized way to stand with vulnerable people before ICE “surges” in your area. Sign up for a training Friday, January 30th, at 5pm PST.
Free Whistles
Whistles can be 3D printed for pennies, and now there’s a group whose “lane” is sending hundreds or even thousands of free whistles to anyone who needs them. Volunteers have already distributed more than 127k whistles. Help fund their efforts, or contact them to fuel your own whistle packs.
Fight antisemitism
On this, the last night of Chanukah, the internet is swarming with claims that the massacre one week ago on Bondi Beach was a false-flag operation. This is the kind of obviously false propaganda we laugh at MAGA believing, yet some anti-Trump groups have hundreds of comments insisting Israel killed Jews in Australia. Disinformation fuels…
Holiday Market
Many ethnic communities rely on holiday markets to fund year-round programs. Cottage makers do too. Look through local event listings for seasonal fairs thrown by immigrant, minority or other local communities, and make it an outing!
Document ICE
House Democrats have officially launched an information-collection portal for ICE abuses. If you often say “they all need to be prosecuted” this is where the records are collected for that day. Make sure people know about it, and if you have first hand knowledge of immigration abuses, report them. It’s also worth a few minutes…
“We Ain’t Buying it”
Join Black Voters Matter in shifting your spending from big corporate powers (especially Target, Amazon and Home Depot) to businesses that invest in our communities.
Sign a pledge card and put your money where your values are. This isn’t a boycott, it’s a conscious re-factoring of your economic power. Support your community.
Keep Calm
Staying informed but calm is a trick these days. To avoid disconnecting or shutting down with overwhelm, curate your news sources regularly. Do you have reliable, steady voices that use rational, calm language? Raise the volume on those, while minimizing ones that leave you feeling so panicked you can’t act.