1. be prepared for pepper spray, tear gas, etc.
masks and gloves aren’t just for anonymity. take a mixture of (50/50) water and milk of magnesia (liquid maalox works well) to rinse off pepper spray, and wear gloves to handle tear gas canisters. LRAD “sound-cannons” are more difficult to counter, but some people have tried out improvised shields to absorb the sound waves, using things like layers of plywood and denim insulation. at the very least, make sure you have earplugs, in case of LRADs. not noise-canceling earphones (which only block low frequency sound waves, not the high frequencies LRADs use), foam earplugs.
2. take a gun.
federal agents are still shooting people. you have to be ready and willing to defend yourself and those you care about. that means having a gun and being prepared to use it. this is literally a life-and-death situation. when someone shoots at you, shoot back!
it should be noted that courts will – obviously – deem the killing of any law enforcement personnel who are doing their job within the confines of the law as murder. however, when agents like Jonathan Ross draw guns on people who aren’t a threat to anyone, it’s perfectly legal to kill that ICE agent/cop/soldier/whoever. self defense, and defense of others is legal, so long as what you’re defending them from is an illegal action, like Ross’s murder of Renee Nicole Good. we’re not suggesting you go out and start murdering cops (tho we wouldn’t be sad if you did), but we are suggesting that you shoot anyone who points a gun at a protester without a legally justifiable cause, whether they’re a counter-protester, a cop, or ICE.
it should also be noted, that just because it’s legal to kill an ICE agent in self defense, that doesn’t mean you won’t be charged with, and convicted of murder for it. courts are not fair. shooting back also doesn’t guarantee that you’ll survive. but you have to try. don’t just lay down and die, or watch your comrades die. take whatever chance is available to you, when all you have are terrible options.
3. deal with cameras.
Flock, Ring, the phone in your pocket, etc., there are cameras everywhere, at all times. if protests turn to riots, a tactically-minded rioter’s first goal would be neutralizing surveillance. the first step of that goal would be to leave your phone at home, obviously – particularly if you use an iphone or google-android phone (and you really need to get rid of it, if you do have one of those). dealing with cameras that exist in the world (using spray paint, hammers, sling shots, etc.) is often one of the more fun aspects of riots, and we can’t wait to see what methods protesters develop for that this time around.
it would be a shame, however, if someone got caught on camera doing something illegal before cameras were destroyed, and was identified by their face, clothing, the location they came from, or their walk (gait recognition), so those are all things any prospective rioters would do well to take into consideration. black bloc is a common strategy for anonymizing one’s face and clothing, but it does nothing to mask your gait, or prevent police from following you backward through time, on different camera feeds to see what house or apartment you came out of before joining the protest. it’s very easy for police to follow someone down the street by switching from one streetlight camera to the next with a single keystroke. it’s not much more difficult to rewind the footage and follow you to your point of origin, using the Ring and Flock networks they already have access to.
if you own a Ring camera; destroy it. right now. it’s spying on you and your neighbors, 24/7, for the police, FBI, and ICE. if your neighbor has a Ring camera, they might need to be convinced to get rid of it, or perhaps they just need help destroying it. (they might not be very tech savvy.) but since there are cameras everywhere, everyone has to assume they’ll be recorded any time they’re in public (and probably while at home too).
some people have interfered with cameras using devices that interrupt wifi signals, sometimes worn as watches. some people have blinded cameras at night, using “IRR” (infrared-reflective) materials or lights, and sometimes AI is fooled by “adversarial” designs, like overlapping pixelated faces printed on a hoodie, or something like that…we’re not tech experts, so we won’t presume to tell you what methods work best, or what the precise limitations of any particular tactic are, and hopefully there are lots of surveillance-subverting strategies we haven’t heard of yet, we simply want to remind everyone to be aware of all of these surveillance tools and tactics, and use your best judgement.
also, remember, if you wear adversarial anti-surveillance clothing on your way to a protest to prevent AI from tracking you, you’ll need to be able to change into more plain anonymous black bloc at the protest, or the clothes you’re wearing to remain anonymous will be exactly what makes you identifiable when anonymity is most important. plan ahead for your return trip, too.
as far as gait recognition, this is a rapidly developing technology, and it’s hard to say exactly how accurate it is right now, or how thoroughly it’s fooled by things like putting a rock in your shoe. maybe just slouch more than normal, or stop slouching if you normally do, or do something weird like consciously putting all your weight on your heels while you walk to the protest, then walk on your toes on the way back, or just limp, if you got hurt at the protest. idk.
4. don’t let liberals control the protests or the narrative of the protests.
every time protests get a bit spicy, liberals immediately try to divide protesters and throw anyone who engages in more aggressive tactics under the bus. let the march organizers know that they don’t own the streets, and they can’t control the protests that take place in them.
let everyone know that the rhetoric of “peaceful protests” has no place in a movement aimed at stopping the heavily armed militarized gestapo from murdering us. we will do whatever we have to do to survive, defend our loved ones, and gain our collective freedom.
we’ve seen liberals put forward lies about infiltrators and “agents provocateurs” a million times in a million different protests at this point, and for some reason, people keep falling for it, thinking that anyone in black bloc, or anyone who throws a rock, is an undercover cop. i was even personally accused of being a cop in a black bloc, by someone else in the same black bloc, once, because of some destruction i was alleged to have caused. punching that person did feel very good, but hopefully we can avoid having altercations like that at all this time, by simply shutting the liberals down whenever they spread their typical, predictable lies.
that said, don’t trust anyone you don’t know intimately with sensitive or personal information. always maintain good security culture and opsec practices.
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