through the Red Lens

the Red Lens is how I see change. Political, social, or even personal. We. Us. Our. Solutions that include and support all of us. I'm not going to get into labels deeply. I don't care about theory in detail, it's good, whatever. I don't care about "More progressive then thou," I'm not here to exclude and cancel people moving our way. Work to make things better. Work to help people, especially those that are marginalized, disenfranchised and precarious. Fuck labels.

That said, Anti-Fascism forever. Our best heroes punched Nazis and that's the right idea. Anti-Fascist Action can take many guises, it is supported by a diversity of tactics, so feel free to choose your level of engagement. But bigots, Fascists, and other hateful people have no home or place here. that includes those that support the actions and opinions of bigots. If you want to be included, if you want to sit with us? Change your mind first. that's the difference. Bigots can change their minds. Change it and join us. The marginalized can't change the features that bigots hate them for.

Things YOU Can Do!

Shit's bad and feeling helpless makes us less able to help. So doing things where you can how you can as much as you can helps make it eaiser for you to do more.

Journal what's Happening!

Write things down, clip newspapers and magazines. Print out articles and pictures from the internet, save things in thumbdrives and external harddrives offline. Print as PDF and save the PDFs onto something that is isolated from the internet. Put this offline stuff on a box, lable and add any context you can. Stuff on paper is harder to memory hole.

this also applies to fanfics, and art that you have sticking around as JPGs. Even porn. Print it out, save as PDF and/or download it to USB Mass-storage

Show up!

Get to the meeting. What meeting? any meeting! Go to the city council meetings. Show up as the farmers markets and street parties your city puts on. Look for posters and search for your local orgaizations and drop by their events. Be a part of your community.

This counts for your friend group too. go on hikes, have picnics. Do things together. See if you can find something that you can do as a group to help people. then do it.

There's a lot of people worried about government "Martial Law" occupation and control of the country. And there are experts who say that, by the numbers, that occupation is impossible. The experts are correct, as long as a signifigant fraction of the population refuses to comply. If you can do something and you aren't, they don't need tanks in the street to suppress you, you supressed yourself. Effective resistance is not the actions of an individual, but require orgaization. So Organize! Get yourself to a protest, find an org that needs members and do something. Do not comply in advance. We outnumnber the cops, we outnumber the troops, but ONLY if we SHOW UP!

The Septastar

I've been building a better symbol, a battle flag and badge we can fight together with. Download for larger versions. Please feel free to remix and create vector art and yourown stuff. I figure this is simple enough to be in the Public Domain and as I'm pubishing anomously, I'm not going try to enforce any kind of copyright.

The Standard	The BattleFlag
BiStar	TransStar
Star Template	Circle Star Template

A message that needs to be understood from YZY Prints. Used without permission so I linked the site. No connection.

Protest Safety and Orgaization

There is a a lot of advice and information about protecting yourself from government surveillance. the more security steps the more they are chilling attendance and engagement. While all of these concerns are based on real technology and government capablities, organizers and people attending events need to decide what defenses are worth engaging in and which should be either discarded or possibly actively discouraged.

• Photo Recogination From Facial Recognition to being idetified by your clothes, you can be identified at an event by cameras. Drone Cameras, CCTV, police cameras, all can be used against you to identify and incriminate you.
• Posting Posting online that you're going to the protest, or posting pictures from the protest, is a pretty good indicator that you were there, if the police want to take an interest in that.
• ISMI/Geofencing/Databrokers Your Phone is a snitch. The basic functions of the phone will identify you throu cellular records or "Stingrays" that the police use to gather phone data from an area. Further they can select a geographic area and time and get a list of every phone account in that area. Finally databrokers sell data to anyone for any reason. If they have an indicator you were there, the police can find it by reading their data sets
• License Plate Readers/Travel Apps/Transit accounts Getting to and from the protest is important. Licence Plate readers can identify all the cars parcked in an area or driving on surveilled roads. Uber and Lyft and similar apps can share your ride data with the police asking for all rides near the protest. Similarly, if you use a Transit card that is linked to you credit card or bank account or other identity, trips to and from the area can be identified.
• Credit Card Tracking Further, credit card purchases can be tracked geographically. If your phone is at home but your card is buying a water 2 blocks from the protest, that can ID you.

Generally the more legally dubious the activity, the more important it is to engage in strong protection of yourself and identiy. However, mass protests and peaceable assemblies benefit from wide attendance. Scaring attendees and advocating strict personal security to attend them will dissuade people from particalating and this can weaken or even destroy the activity's ability to acheive it's goals.

One could create a hierarchy of activities and how important various types of personal security are for those activities.

Mass protests protect attendees by being large. The more people who are at the march or gatehring, the harder it is for the police to arrest and hold them. The more data they have to go through to determine attendees. Sure, computers help with that by making lists and collating them against databases of interest. But the protest that "Everyone" is going to is weaker evdience to be used agaisnt you, then the one only "severly hardcore protesters" attended. While all of the protection recommendations are still reasonable, maybe you have your phone because you went to the protest between one place and another. it might be useful to have your phone to add new contacts of friends you meet at the event. Maybe you aren't wearing a mask so that you can talk with other protesters and make a human connection. Peaceable assemblies and marches are made better by large, diverse attendence. They are made better by the attendees making human connections amongst themselves. There's a risk of being attacked or arrested, and it's a risk you must accept. but for the casual attendee, the risk is minimal.

Protests that intentionally and directly provoke the police also become safer for individual attendees by having more attendees. These are generaly protests of police brutality that often turn into more incidents of police brutality. I'd strongly recommend masks at such a gathering, and you should make your choices of what clothing to wear and what to bring based on the higer likelihood of being searched, arrested, teargassed or otherwise "Crowd Controlled". For larger protests, I wouldn't recommend bringing your daily driver phone, but a second phone without your accounts and contacts may be a useful tool, especially if you are livestreaming police actions. You should expect this phone to be lost, confiscated, broken or compromised, so something inexpensive that is as secure as you can make it with no accounts that you usually use on it would be recomended. This could be a second phone on your family plan, or a Pay-As-You-Go phone that you may or may not be isolated from financially and socially. Since your attendence is likely to be public information, especially if you are searched, interrogated or arrested, it't less important that the phone be a true "Burner" that cannot be plausibly tied to you.

More dangerously should you choose to engage protest with intent to be arrested. Those that splash soup on picture frames to bring attention to the Climate Crisis, those that block traffic or chain themselves to doors and equipment. These actions are planned to get the participatants arrested. therefore the participatants should dress appropriately for the action, and not bring anythign they don't want to hand over to the police. Masks are less important as arrest is going to unmask them anyways. At this level is also particalating in riots and other mob or mass violent action against our advice to only protest peacefully, the above recommendations become more important and not bringing any phone or electronics would be your best course of action. At this point it would be best to research and emulate the security protocols of the Black Bloc tactics. However, people makes these choices should be orgaized and planned and prepared, and as such have had time to consider their security precautions.

Beyond that are other premediated crimes in the service of the cause where the participants aretrying to escape afterwards. The need for the maximum level of personal security as well as group security is self-evidient.

The Basics of Identity Protection:

• Turn off biometrics: Phones and other electronics that can unlock with FaceID or fingerprint can be unlocked against your will by the police. You can refuse to give a passcode or password, but they can compel your biometric data. this only matters if you are in custody or being searched. Personally I consider it a good practice even if you are not at an event, as it's easier to break your biometrics in a robbery or other crime then your passcode.
• Use Encrypted Messengers: Less of an issue at the protest as it is to prevent information from leaking in transit. Apple Messenger, WhatsAPP, Google RCS and the gold standard Signal all prevent data in transit from being read. However, if a phone is compromised, all conversations to thatphone are compromised unless you use disappearing messages. Further you must trust who you are messaging. Both that they are who you think they are with security numbers and out-of-band checks and that they are not an informant, or someone who's going to blab casually.
• Assume online posts are available to the police: At this point it's safe to assume that any an all content on social media is available to the police. the companies refer reports to them, the companies sell data to databrokers that can resell it to the police, the companies invote the police into their systems. It's a good idea to train a critical review of "Is this post liklely to get someone in trouble?" into your posting. Don't post video or photos of protesters faces. Don't talk about crimes that may have occurred. However, bur mass protests, posting that you are going or that you were there can both be useful to share with people who have access to your posts. There's risk, but less risk then being there.
• Minimize faces in photos: As above but in specific, if you photo or video at the protest, focus on the police or on the signs. Other people may be taking more precautions then you and don't need to be proven to be there by your footage. this also can take safter action editing and careful framing and understanding of all the infomation in the frame. Perhaps it's easier just not to photograph at all.
• Wear a Mask: In addition to protecting your identity, a mask can reduce the chance of illness. COVID is still with is, colds and pnenoumias and other respratory diseases are also endemic. Being in a close packed crowd, it may be prudent to wear a mask just to protect yourhealth. Masks can also help prevent facial recognition. But be advised that glasses and jewelry can be postitively identified seperately, as can unique or unusual clothing. If you have an iconic hat, perhaps choose a different one for the event.
• Leave your phone at home: If you leave your phone at home, leave it powered on. Perhaps playing music or video plugged in. Phones that get tunred off for long reaches of time generate more attention then phones taht simply stay still in a place where they often stay still. Same thing with Faraday bags. Sure your phone goes dark when it's in the bag, but if you are travellingin the direction of a protest, your phone disappears for a period of time and then turns back on moving away from the protest, That's what they call a clue. It's less certain to have you flagged then having your phone on at the event, but it'll demonstrate operational knowledge and may elevate you from "Attendee" to "Possible organizer or troublemaker". The other reason to leave your phone at home is that if you are searched or arrested, police may copy your phone's contents and compel you to unlock it so they can go digging through your social media, contacts, emails, drafts, downloads and otehr information on your phone. If your phone isn't there, that can't happen.

Generally easy and low-friction security is a a good idea generally. Most people shouldn't use biometrics with their hardware anyways as a matter of course. Encrypted Messenging is no more difficult then plain text. Being Mindful of posting and giving a meme or joke or picture a second thought of "How could this be used against me?" takes practice and understanding that everything can be used against you by the police in the worst possible light. My main concern is that showing up, especially for mass movements, is better then not showing up for the movement. If all that's stopping you is some online secuity recommendations, without a specific threat profile, don't stress it and just go.

Your personal risk profile will also determine your need to protection and willingness to participate at all. Take careful stock of how these activities could harm you and the ones you love, and also how not helping could endanger the community and others. there are many roles to play. Not everyone needs to go to protests. There are other actions and activities that one can use to advocate for, promote and build the better world we want. It's valid that the risk may be too high even with perfect personal security. You know your risk factors, you decide your risk tolerance, you choose your actions and the security you take.

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