i am unsure. the flash and circle is a fascist symble, but that usually doesnt have the arrow head. i assume its an antifascist symble but couldnt find anything about that.
This is why I love the west coast of Canada, I can talk to the cops all I want, I can call them pigs, I can tell them they should learn to do their jobs, I can just straight up troll them and it’s protected.
It doesn’t mean they won’t be absolutely shitty about it and try to start shit though.
That’s generally the problem. Nothing good comes of engaging with the cops at a protest. Best case scenario is they do nothing. What case is they decide it’s become “violent” and order it to disperse.
Like CNT did in 1936 when they got drunk on what essentially became grassroots market “socialism” and their leadership entered the bourgeois government thinking that there is no need to brutally and swiftly resolve the issue of proletarian/bourgeois dual power instead?
Or Zapatistas, who have literally captured the capital of such a huge country but then decided to compromise and go back to the jungle for some narrow-minded reasons and ban abortion while they were at it?
You forgot to make the point - you just vaguely gestured at examples of problems with those calling themselves anarchists… as though every last one of us hasn’t personally experienced problems with strong hierarchies.
I understand that relying on a point rather than implied threats of violence may be new territory for someone advancing the position you appear to be, so I’ll give you another try - try steering clear of transparent hypocrisy this time too.
Either you are a revolutionary and want to act decisively, boldly and with some cohesion to smash the state apparatus and brush off aspiring bureaucratic traitors or you either get offended at a large scale yet in what is mostly isolation and burn out or practice glorified reformism.
Nothing. But anarchism as a political movement is more divergent from Leninism (later rebranded by Zinovievites and Stalinists as “Luxemburgism” and “Trotskyism”) on the tactical matters which I find misguided, than anything else. Also I don’t love hierarchies and merely just view them through materialist optics like Engels did in “Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”, as opposed to the idealistic approach of anarchist apriorism. I’ve sadly seen many anarchists drift towards harmless individualism due to this rejection of a coherent (democratic) structure as a means of getting organized because “hierarchy bad” (even if the org is actually pretty horizontal)
Gee, people in the US need to be this cautious when protesting? Where I live it’s totally fine to just casually show up at protests, take selfies, talk to people and whatnot.
Sounds like someone doesn’t know (or care) what can happen to protestors that are protesting the “wrong things”… Like oil and gas pipelines, for example, or training centers for heightened police militarization. Or foreign policy, even, that one has been happening for generations already.
Lol if only they would protest the right way, they wouldn’t have to worry about anything, right?
Well the police can declare an unlawful assembly at any time for any reason, which tends to stir up even peaceful crowds. Not to mention being face to face with militarized thugs in riot gear, drones, helicopters, armored vehicles, mounted police, tear gas and “non-lethal” rounds. If I had a gas cannister lobbed at me, why wouldn’t I toss it right back. Fuck em. ACAB.
You might have no intention of causing trouble, but still get rounded up. Happened almost every day in my city for several months during BLM protests. Mass arrests of people in the wrong place at the wrong time. The countless live streamed videos don’t lie, each protest was non-violent until police agitated the crowd.
I don’t go looking for trouble but I have my limits just like anyone else.
The police have absolutely ordered peaceful day time crowds to disperse while blocking every exit. They then decide force is necessary because nobody is leaving. Look up police kettling.
It depends on where you live. This absolutely is the present now in some countries. Like China you have to do this and more to protect your identity.
And even if your country isn’t quite there yet, they could still be collecting all that data and just not doing anything with it other than observing and collecting more data on you/ the group.
I live in Canada and there is a university professor that had police visit his house because he took some pictures of an oil project that was being protested while he was on a walking trail near the university.
It was an interview on the cbc several years ago. He was a prof at SFU, I assume it was the trans mountain pipeline expansion.
You should take the same precautions in most european countries too, cops here are known to identify protesters and randomly raid their homes or arrest protesters under false pretense
I dont think so, I only see normally dressed people in major protests. People like this are usually doing something bad. Makes me think of the alt right tbh.
It depends on the issue, time of day, and local cops. In San Diego a pro Palestinian march was allowed to go around and the cops mostly stayed away except for helping to block a few intersections.
In San Francisco they decided it was fine to pull anyone they thought was associated out of their cars and arrest them.
So as general advice, yeah. Especially if the police are the subject of the protest. They take that personally and you’ll have to figure out how to deal with rubber bullets and tear gas
Did you know “ACAB” is a term that was invented by British Skinheads in the 70’s/80’s who would fight the cops over the increase in South Asian immigrants?
That’s interesting, because All Coppers are Bastards was first used in the 1920s, and abbreviated in the 1940s to ACAB by striking workers.
Could it be, perhaps, that you’re just attempting to slander perfectly valid critique of brutal, draconian systems to fascism itself as a form of fascist apologia? Why else would you be lying about valid critique, if not to undermine it?
Like your lie about ACAB originating with skinheads in the 70s? Nah, I’ll let history be factual. Historical fiction is great, but you can’t pretend your fascist fanfiction is reality, bud
If I was a fascist wouldn’t I want people to keep using the term if I claimed the term was fascist? You make no sense. Anyone who reads the article and the citations knows I’m not making it up. You’re just trying to embolden laziness amongst the angry and then wonder why leftists don’t accomplish anything meaningful.
Do some work and research instead of ego bolstering and you might make some real changes.
You’re claiming an antifascist term has fascist origins, because you want to tie antifascism to fascism. This is fascist apologia, making fascism not seem as bad and making the left seem bad.
I’m not trying to “embolden laziness among the angry” or whatever the fuck you think I’m doing, I’m calling out misinformation presented by someone trying to paint the left as fascist so as to take away from the ACAB movement. That makes you, at best, an extreme reactionary, and at worst, a fascist.
Every bomb sent to Ukraine is a bad day for someone, statistically mostly women and children. The purpose of diverting attention away from an actual genocide to the war in Ukraine is to encourage sending more bombs.
The only stance on Ukraine (and israel) that is not a call for more blood is a call to cut off all arms shipments and call for peace.
There is an actual genocide happening in Ukraine at the hands of Putin, and he has the power to stop it at any time.
Can we agree that Russia should stay the fuck out of Ukraine, and Israel should stay the duck out of Palestine? Or do you only (pretend to) care about genocide when it is politically convenient for you?
There is an actual genocide happening in Ukraine at the hands of Putin
No, there’s not, hence why Israel manages to kill more children in individual strikes than Russia has in 2 years.
It is concerning that a german cannot identify a genocide.
he has the power to stop it at any time.
Neither of us live in Russia. Advocating your country’s enemy unilaterally stop the war is not meaningfully different from advocating your country escalate the war. Even the most bloodthirsty hawk shares the position that the enemy should just give up.
But also the war has been going on for nearly a decade now. Eastern Ukraine was getting shelled right up until the day of the invasion. There would not be peace if Russia pulled out.
Can we agree that Russia should stay the duck out of Ukraine
No matter what sophistry you wrap this up in, you are advocating more Ukrainians and Russians get killed in a conflict that ultimately will end in the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine joining Russia, no matter how many bombs are sent.
Once again, the only stance on Ukraine that is not a call for more blood is advocating all arms shipments are cut off and immediate peace.
I just wish you Putin trolls or useful idiots would for once argue in good faith, but I guess you wouldn’t be very good at what you’re doing if that was the case.
not all of us live in countries that have any political influence over Israel, only the US holds their leash, and protesting anywhere else can’t really affect that clusterfuck
plenty of awful shit is still going on around the world that needs to be fought, and that doesn’t change just because a worse thing is going on in a very specific part of the world. Climate change, for example, is still happening, still an existential threat to all of humanity, and still needs public protesting to do something about.
Which, living in a country that can’t help Palestine in any diplomatic way, gets a bit annoying when people are regularly protesting about that (and before that, the invasion of Ukraine), while a huge percentage of our country’s electricity still comes from burning fucking coal, we still export large amount of it to the global market, our CO2 emissions per capita manage to be some of the highest in the world, and protests about that could actually do some tangible good, but are a blip in the ocean compared to foreign wars of late. I get the anger at the injustices going on right now, but it’s not anger that can get anything done here
It’s a very dangerous strategy, but you’re kinda right. My understanding is that armed protests tend to ironically be the most peaceful because cops tend to be too scared to challenge you. However, that only works if the cops think they’re outnumbered, so you have to have a lot of people openly carrying and hope the cops don’t decide to escalate past basic riot gear.
Edit: you also have to be prepared to pull the trigger. Like, seriously. If you’re open-carrying during a protest, you’d better be prepared to kill a cop or two in the event they decide to challenge you. If you don’t, then they’ll know the guns are just for show and will be quicker to challenge you in the future.
You need to absolutely out number the police and have enough trigger discipline NOT to fire first. Otherwise the armed protesters would just be put down and the cops would control the narrative. Look at the 60’s era Black Panther armed protests. They had enough guns that the cops weren’t interested in escalating.
I’m not american. Why not bring your phone? Around here as long as you have a legion of people pointing cameras at cops they’ll not outright beat you senseless since it’ll be impossible to lie about some bullshit justification about how you did something first.
Because they can use the phone company records to say “We think you were here when this “violent riot” happened (actually just a protest that police started shooting at protestors because they know they’ll get away with it), you’re arrested”. And cops don’t care if you’re recording, they’ll either break your phone or shoot you anyway and then claim it was self defense.
They can use phones to track you. I guess if you’re the one who is planning on throwing bricks then don’t bring it but if you’re just a warm body to fill the crowd a phone is fine since it’ll also prove your innocene if you record your whole stay there.
If you do that for video/photo evidence, make sure you are actively synching with your cloud. If you are streaming, make sure recording is also enabled.
One, it’ll get smashed anyway. Two, if you manage to get away, they’ll work with your provider or location based apps to prove you were there and arrest you. Or, force you to unlock it so they can arrest your contacts. Filming them barely helps, there’s so many videos of cops beating the shit out of people with no justification, who have been identified and never faced any repercussions
Further, cops have learned to just play copyrighted music (say the Frozen soundtrack) when they see they are being recorded, that way if people upload it to the internet, they can rest easy that Disney will hit that video with a copyright strike and the video will be taken down before anyone can see it.
Thankfully for protestors, audio editing exists, and certain AI tools have become very good at stripping certain audio from videos while keeping relevant audio. Leave it to cops to choose a “brute force” solution every time when finesse is all you really need to bypass their brute force.
Funny, that was always my plan if I ever got hounded by paparazzi or journalists outside my house. Ear pro for me, a speaker blasting tunes, and a bullhorn loud enough to cause physical pain for entry/exit.
You. Cannot. Be. Forced. To. Unlock. A. Phone. With. A. Password.
(In the United States)
If you are caught with your phone in a bad situation, fight to manage to get it to shut down. Android will be stuck in a locked out state where biometrics are disabled. Im sure iphones can do something like that but rethink bringing your stupid iphone to a protest. Ask for a lawyer. Do not talk, do not answer questions, do not say anything else.
Don’t trust the surveillance device to turn off because you ask nicely. Leaving it at home helps sell the idea that you weren’t at the protest you were at.
The GPS data will not be sent to the carrier, will it? And your phone will only be searched if they can tell its you in the first place. In which case you got caught physically there anyway.
Also this no id thing is confusing to me. I guess its just american law. In many other countries, they just jail you until you tell them who you are.
If you have an iPhone you can go ahead and try Flight Mode right now. You’ll see that it disconnects from WiFi and disables cellular. NFC, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi stay powered on, Bluetooth stays active. Yes, latest iOS has Bluetooth tracking protection on by default (varies by country, illegal in some), but it is not completely safe. I’m not sure about NFC and Wi-Fi. If you power the phone off it is unlikely to turn off the radios - they are needed for “find my iPhone” and similar features on Google and Samsung Galaxy phones.
Overall you can’t be confident that your phone does not reveal your location and identity to “law enforcement”, especially in places where police is well equipped to track you.
Funnily enough, mu iPhone doesnt say anything about that
EDIT: in the phones that do have it, the find my phone thing works using bluetooth. So still no data directly to the carrier
Your local police department doesn’t have access to this. And they don’t need that, they can just arrest you. You are there in person. That’s the point of a protest.
Phones are easily tracked, and police generally can get that info. As for the beatings, in the US police commonly aren’t held responsible even when they’ve clearly broken the law. Often, they aren’t even charged.
Tracking via bluetooth, wifi, cell signals, nfc, etc. Does one trust airplane mode?
Seizure of the device if one is arrested. There is legal debate about what methods law enforcement can use to get into the phone. One is exposing both whatever pictures and video was made at the protest but everything else going on in one’s life too.
If one has a unique case or model, one can be doxxed.
Action cameras are cheap, durable, and many come without any radios that can be used to track someone. They all look the same. Using a brand new sd card means that the only data on there is the pictures/video taken at the protest. The major downside is that if they are seized, they are an open book for law enforcement since they are unencrypted. If the sd card is taken or destroyed then one loses any evidence along with it.
Gen-X here. Gen-Z answers a question I had as a teen. “What the hell children will the extreme sports, tech-centric, video gaming, gangsta rap, grunge, rage against the machine, angst filled ‘slacker’ generation raise?”
Also don’t wear any clothing you bought from a unique Etsy store (or any store you physically visited and paid with a card).
The clothes you wear to the protest should also be bought from a thrift store that you visited without your cellphone and paid for the clothing in cash.
Otherwise, yes, your clothing purchases are tracked, and the young lady who torched a cop car during the George Floyd protests was literally found by the FBI searching Etsy purchase records for people who had bought that shirt.
Yeah, the gait analysis is where I am truly fucked because I’m visibly disabled (and have gone to protests where i have been threatened with arrest, but evaded so far). I have been thinking about using my wheelchair at more protests though, so that might be able to fuck it up in the future.
Or everyone just needs to stick a rock in their shoe, or wear one shoes that has a bit of a platform.
I remember reading a book about this hacker student kid that would do that to sneak out of the school because they had gait recognition cameras. Can’t remember the name of the book though…
I’ve had this vague recollection of that book for over a decade and could never find it despite multiple search attempts and even requests on tip-of-my-tongue esque forums. I just could not remember any useful specific information about it for the life of me.
To make this discovery from a random thread so organically is incredible.
You’re not alone - what I did remember was completely incorrect. I would have sworn that the cover was burgundy with the title in black lettering. Also I had thought the whole time it was called Big Brother - which was quite the wrench in the machine when it came to searching online. Wrong on both counts. Goes to show how fallable memory is.
My library didn’t have a copy but the author has it available for free on his website in a few different formats. I’m looking forward to reading it - it’s a good deal longer than I’d thought. Thanks again.
I highly suspect the “adverserial attack” clothes are gonna work, it seems more like they are just taking advantage of a buzz word and it goes against not wearing easily identifiable clothes (you will be one of a handful of people wearing your stylish riot sweater). Carry a concealed ski mask with you and wear it when you need to and keep it hidden when not (so you don’t get easily identified as a rioter and become a target when alone).
I think they work, but will quickly be defeated. Facial recognition is nothing more than advanced pattern recognition. This clothing works by confusing the pattern the AI is trained to recognize. That may work with current models, but all it takes is to train the AI on what this adversarial clothing looks like so it can differentiate it from actual faces.
That’s certainly true. I think the more effective method is using makeup/face paint instead. But any of these methods are designed to confuse AI, they fall apart as soon as there’s any human intervention.
Not to mention if you get hit with OC spray, you’re not going to want to keep them anyhow. That shit is meant to get into and onto anything you touch. Getting it out again, is a pain in the ass.
Please don’t use those sweaters thinking you’re not identifiable by face recognition. Making an AI think you’re an animal is good for walking around the city. The second a human is reviewing the footage they’re going to correct the AI and go straight to your face.
Edit for y’all who thought I don’t know what cell triangulation and gps tracking are: If you’re involved in protesting to the extent that you might be actively tracked, you should have the proper precautions in place on your phone that make it untraceable even when you’re carrying it with you.
Edit 2: “Proper precautions” includes using GrapheneOS with 2 SIMs. Only use one of those SIMs at protests and make sure to never use them at the same time. If the government is tracking you past that point, why do you even have a phone in the first place?
Your phones manufacturer or carrier can be subpoenaed for the location, cops can seize it and identify and/or extract data from it, and IMSI catchers are often used at protests. If you need, you can buy a burner phone and prepaid sim just for the protest.
If you need, you can buy a burner phone and prepaid sim just for the protest.
But can you buy it without a credit card or debit card tied to your name? A lot of places around me have made it so you must have a traceable type of payment to be able to buy a pre-paid phone. They won’t let you pay for it in cash.
Not sure, I haven’t tried that route. That seems like a simple workaround, however, so I suspect they probably don’t allow it with pre-paid cards but I could be wrong.
That’s how the FBI has been able to positively identify where people were during the January 6th Insurrection. The FBI said shortly after the insurrection that if you had your phone with you, you would be caught.
Also worth noting that a fuck load of those mouth breathers kept their location on and were posting pictures and videos to Parler, which didn’t bother to clear the EXIF or any metadata from user uploads.
I highly doubt airplane mode actually does anything anymore. At the very least, do you really believe companies like Google would willingly give up collecting data just because you’re in an airplane?
Govts and corpos will use bluetooth and wifi mac addresses to ID and track people. luckily more and more devices are shipped with wifi mac randomization.
To respond to your edit: no, you just shouldn't bring your phone
You can't harden your phone against every hypothetical because you can't think of every hypothetical and it's dumb to think you can. Why would you think you alone can outsmart teams of very well-paid people who literally sit around all day thinking about ways to track you using your phone?
Your phone literally can't even have signal without your carrier knowing where you are, so why bother bringing it?
Are you seriously here to tell me there are no uses for a cell phone without signal or Internet access, when the most common use for cell phones at protests is taking video?
Yeah, like if you’re going to the trouble of getting a faraday bag or a lead lined case or whatever you think makes it untraceable… Just leave it at home? It’s a liability.
Not a balaclava, but there are goggles and full-face masks that offer some protection. And even a balaclava is better than nothing against rubber bullets and bean bags.
It doesn’t help that cops purposefully misuse those types of guns. If I recall correctly, they’re supposed to “bounce” the round off the ground and into the target, reducing the total amount of force hitting the target since some of the impact will be reduced from the first impact on the ground.
The number of cops who just shoot people straight with these things point blank is too god damned high. However, you can still get deeply fucked up, even if they’re using it “correctly.”
I didn’t say it wouldn’t leave a bruise. Even solid armor plates won’t stop that amount of kinetic energy without leaving a mark. But having soft padding between the projectile and your skin will reduce the abrasion and force of low-angle impacts. “Better than nothing” in this case means the difference between a deep bruise, and a deep bruise under potentially an open and bleeding wound.
I am saying that something as weak as a balaclava would not even accomplish this. If you have ever seen people get hit by these wearing hoodies, and the like, you will see they tear right through that shit like it isn’t even there. This is like trying to reduce the trauma of a hammer blow with a sheet of paper.
Protest is never peaceful, if it is you’re doing it wrong. It should be non-violent and as respectful as possible but it needs to be disruptive and you can’t be peacefully disruptive
Non-violent in the context of political action does not exclude property damage and looting. A non violent protest is still disruptive, it’s the entire point
The term is “causing a disturbance” they avoid that term for a very good reason.
You understand a word can mean multiple things… yeah…?
There is no first definition, just multiple, they aren’t ranked, other dictionaries have the one I put first. So what point do you think that was making?
I see a lot of other people have responded with examples and argument.
So I’ll disagree and say the argument falls apart when I don’t argue. (Cause it’s Friday. You ain’t got no job. You ain’t got shit to do. I’m gonna get you high today.)
It is a disturbance to the system, and it isn’t tranquil. They are not synonyms. Non-violent means you aren’t hurting anyone, peaceful means you aren’t disturbing anything. You can’t be violent and peaceful but you can be non-violent and non-peaceful. Peace is sufficient but not necessary for non-violence.
One definition of peaceful is synonymous, and one isn’t. This is exactly why language has so many synonyms, each one is sliiiightly different. Choosing one intentionally instead of another is important.
In this instance, “peace” is being defined (not directly, but through context) as status quo, going about your day unhindered. “Violence” is being defined as causing direct physical harm to a person, and possibly property depending on who you ask.
With these definitions laid out, it’s easy enough to see a situation that is not violent (no one got hurt at all) and also not peaceful (some people’s days were interrupted) - one person mentioned blocking a road. This is a FANTASTIC example of non-peaceful non-violent protest. No one likes a pedant.
Yep, just like the people trying to say blocking a road isn’t peaceful. They are trying to pedantically choose a definition to make a point. Blocking a road is absolutely peaceful, trying to explain it any other way would be to be pendantic. Lmfao.
Thats happening a lot lately in Germany. At every fucking Antifa protest at least one suspicious looking guy films with his handy. I honestly doubt, that they have the necessary skill and contact with other fascists in other cities to identify everybody, but I still don‘t want them to know my face
Masks are no indicator of criminality. The idea that bad protesters wear masks is complete horseshit. It serves to divide movements and prevent momentum from being gained. It seeks to dissolve solidarity that couls have been gained at the protests.
Masks allow peaceful protests to remain peaceful if they prevent the violence of the justice system. Sometimes protesters and organizers are simply arrested and thrown in jail for a bit, sometimes even given nonsense charges, which is something that happens to organizers and some protesters in my area.
As well as that, masks can simply be good secops in some counter-protests such as protesting against fascist marches, gatherings, etc. If I’m showing up to show nazis or boogaloos or proud boys that they are unwelcome, the last thing I want is a violent right wing extremist group to try and doxx me. If I’m escorting people to a drag-queen story hour, I don’t want fascists to doxx me.
It’s also smart in some areas, such as Harvard’s campus where organizers are constantly doxxed and accused of antisemitism even though they are not.
Finally, what if the government makes your particular movement illegal? What if they start throwing the book people, accusing everyone involved(or at least the ones they can catch) of domestic terrorism? Wearing a mask will make it a lot easier for you to maintain your freedom when faced with the tyrrany of the state.
Also, masks look cool, and that’s a pretty good reason imo.
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