This is how it starts. First two. Then a dozen. Then you’ve two hundred Guardsmen unwillingly to follow illegal orders.

Some of that is already happening: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/23/federal-immigration-agents-deploy-tear-gas-discount-mall-little-village/

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/09/03/california-oregon-and-washington-to-launch-new-west-coast-health-alliance-to-uphold-scientific-integrity-in-public-health-as-trump-destroys-cdcs-credibility/

But I agree that state and local leaders need to do much, much more. I think part of the problem is that we, the people, need to be pushing our “leaders” to do these things, but we’re largely not, instead waiting around for someone to save us. But we need to start resisting and acting ourselves, and seeing that will hopefully embolden our “leaders” to act.

Also protecting you from the East Wing of the White House.

It’s not about purity testing; it’s about harm reduction. I’ll give you an example. T-Mobile is directly collaborating with both Trump (via Trump Mobile, which runs on T-Mobile’s network) and Elon Musk (via a T-Mobile/Starlink partnership). That’s pretty fucking bad from a fascist collaboration perspective. Are Verizon and AT&T any better? A little. They still donated to Trump’s inauguration, but at least they’re not running mobile networks for him. (EDIT: Or paying for his fucking ballroom.) So would I encourage everyone to switch from T-Mobile to AT&T or Verizon, even if that’s not a perfect solution? Absolutely.

I just think it’s a really specious argument that “everything we buy is connected to the U.S. government and therefore no purchase is better or worse than any other purchase.” That just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

As for putting pressure on the construction company tearing down the east wing of the white house… I dunno, that seems like fair game to me. We can leave negative reviews for them while also cancelling Amazon Prime.

Totally. But I’d submit to you that these aren’t normal times where we can just go about our business ignoring politics and using whatever products/services happen to be convenient. Unless each of us individually fights back against the fascists by doing our darnedest to avoid products and services that fund fascist collaborators, we are complicit. Put another way: It is in our power to bring down this regime, and one of the biggest levers we have for doing that is changing our buying habits.

At the absolute least, building a grand ballroom in the middle of a government shutdown while you’re depriving people of wages and healthcare is not a good look. And collaborating with the wannabe dictator doing this, even if it’s just to make them look good and not to actually kill or disappear people, is kind of shitty too. I think it’s fair game to go after such companies; they’re part of the support network keeping the regime in power.

Are you asking if we should boycott every company doing business with (or bending the knee to) the fascists in D.C.? Then yes, we absolutely should. Target, T-Mobile, Palantir, Apple, Amazon. Fuck them all for selling out the American people.

Many of them, yes. For instance, there have been zero National Guard illegally deployed to Portland while the challenges wend their way through the courts. That could change, of course. But the Trump regime has clearly deemed it in their interest to listen to the courts on this point, at least for the time being.

That’s not the behavior of someone who thinks they don’t have to listen to the law at all.

Shit is fucked in the U.S… and it sounds like elsewhere too. All I was pushing back on is the idea that the Trump regime is untouchable, legally or otherwise. That should give us a sliver of hope and one lever to push on. In fact there are several such levers…

If he thinks he’s above the law then why does he abide by many court rulings?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/20/court-ruling-trump-national-guard-portland

My point is that the courts are not always siding with Trump about the National Guard or really any other issue. He has both wins and losses. And so there’s no need to be an armchair doomer.

Ah, so the protests aren’t meaningless after all? And they’re just one part in a portfolio of resistance activities whose combined effect is aiming to stop the authoritarian regime?

So a resistance action is meaningless unless it is the final resistance action? What about all the other resistance actions that need to come first for the final resistance action to build on?

While I agree on all points, I think many folks on Lemmy are pretty uneducated on how activism and non-violent resistance is work and takes time—leading to an expectation that if something unjust is happening, we should all just riot and engage in armed rebellion or whatever. It’s like they’re impatient with the slow progress, which honestly I am too. The difference is that I recognize that slow progress is really the only viable path right now.

For our part, I think we need to do better at surfacing progress so that it’s clear that real resistance wins are happening even if the media generally prefers not to report on it.

(I expect there to be some serious progress surfacing going on at No Kings tomorrow.)

The purpose of a mass expressive protest is threefold: 1. Demonstrate to the fascists that we are many, we are organized, and we will not stand by silently as they try to steamroll our rights, 2. Demonstrate to other anti-fascists or just those with doubts about the regime that they are not alone, and 3. Get casual protestors involved in more direct resistance activities. There are often tables with resistance organizations handing out flyers with ways to join up.

These big protests are just one piece of a healthy resistance movement.

Also, they’re not drug dealers.

Do you think an organized group of people physically protecting a Grandma from state violence is any less effective in radicalizing people?

Yes. As soon as ICE blood starts spilling onto the streets, you lose the normies real quick. And then the bad guys have justification (in the eyes of some) in hitting back even harder.

Do you think people want to go out and protest when they are surrounded by other people that will stand by and do nothing when they get grabbed?

Ehh I never said do nothing. There’s quite a large gulf between “de-arrest” / “put cones over pepper bombs” and “shooting people”. I do think most people don’t want to go out and protest if it’s really “go out and engage in armed conflict with the state.”

Do you think people want to go out and protest when they are surrounded by other people that will stand by and do nothing when they get grabbed?

You’re conflating violence with resistance. The two are not the same. One could argue one is a subset of the other.

Standing by and doing nothing

Again, that’s not what I’m advocating.

Showing people what organized physical resistance actually looks like gives people that are already on the streets hope and solidarity. I know. I’ve experienced it.

I’m curious. If you don’t mind sharing, where/how did you experience this? What was the resistance?

When ICE commits violence against the unarmed grandma in the chicken suit, they radicalize ten more grandmas—and solidify the position of the normies against ICE.

And anyone who shows up to a protest is making their own risk assessment. Some protests are the strollers and marches type, and that’s a pretty low risk level. Some protests are spicier, and they tend to draw a different crowd with a different risk tolerance.

And yes, I’m saying we should remain non-violent in the face of ICE’s atrocities, because that is the best tactic for gaining and retaining the wide-spread support necessary to defeat them.

I think the part you’re missing is what that support gets us. When there’s wide-spread support for those opposing ICE, that gives us more of an ability (and the people power) to attack the pillars of support that prop up the authoritarian regime.

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Notice I said nothing about what is just or unjust. I’m strictly talking tactics. And at this moment in the Trump regime’s authoritarian breakthrough, non-violence is still our best bet. History of these sorts of breakthroughs shows that authoritarian regimes are best countered by broad-based public resistance. And yes, that means from normies.

As soon as you start shooting back, you yield the upper hand to ICE and the regime’s goons. They know how to deal with violence… It is their language. What they don’t know how to deal with is a pissed-off grandma in a chicken costume with the full moral backing of 70% of the population.