The Quuuuuill

Trump’s mom’s story is… interesting and also tragic. it’s largely an exploration of how unhealthy power dynamics can break a person. she came to america broke as shit and worked as a housekeeper in Fred Trump’s estate. immediately she thought he was handsome and wanted to get with that, and was absolutely certain she’d found her handsome prince to lift her out of poverty. they eventually were wed, and the details surrounding Fred Trump approaching her family are murky but… it seems to me he thought of himself purchasing her like one of his development properties. once she gave birth to her first son, she wasn’t allowed near him. her second son, Donald, she swore to be close with, but she didn’t have the power in the relationship to get to be close with her son.

Fred felt that her feminine influence on his sons risked that they wouldn’t grow up to be the strong men he needed to run his burgeoning real estate empire. Donald’s older brother coped with the pressure by drinking himself to death. then Donald, the spare, became the main bet on who would run the empire.

it’s all so fucked. i’d much rather be broke as fuck and close with my mother

There’s already documented sexual abuse

ah shit! don’t forget an n95, kn95, or respriator mask

1. we are safer in the streets resisting this than sitting at home awaiting death
2. see my comment about reducing direct risk py not bringing phones
3. my full scale going to a protest list includes:

• appropriate closed toe shoes (boots, steel toed shoes, running shoes, gym shoes, and court shoes are all considered appropriate depending on circumstances)
• full length dark athletic pants you can move in
• long sleeved dark nondescript (no logos) athletic top you can move in
• facial covering
• eye protection (splash goggles ideal, impact rated required)
• backpack filled with other supplies you may need

what other supplies go in that backpack:

• first aid kit (ideally with a tourniquet you’ve been trained to use)
• 2+ bottles of water
• an umbrella
• heat resistant gloves or mitts
• collapsible traffic cone
• snacks

what you keep asking for is more armed observers, which we do need more of, but the best way to learn how to be an armed observer is to get out in the streets with other protestors and meet them first hand, or to join a local community defense group. people looking to become armed observers also need to be aware of the responsibilities and risks. Alex Pretti was present for an ice kidnapping and executed for recording it. it’s a very serious undertaking and it can’t be taken up over night. i can’t speak on the specifics here as that isn’t my role, but none of the armed observers i know comment online at all. the only way to get in touch with them is over secured comms like signal. you probably will never hear from any on Lemmy, though you might see videos they’ve recorded and gotten out in places

I’m not bitching about fuck. I’m just saying the projected messaging is going to be skewed rightward because they own the TV, we own the truth. Whether or not this will work out depends mostly on if we can recruit more people to get out here in the streets with us. I’m less and less concerned with whether or not people outside of this pending civil war believe it’s happening or not. My presence here is only at this point meant to encourage other inclined Americans to get out here in the streets with us where The People are. It’s the only way we’ll survive this because only The People can keep The People safe.

My recommendation: let it go. Too many people on lemmy demand The People here do things differently. More and more I’m finding that people are more interested in the entertainment of watching protests somewhere else from them than in getting involved in their local communities. I have no interest in performing for the internet the role of protestor, and am much more interested in being involved where I am in making changes. If lemmy wants to be a cesspit of obnoxious keyboard warriors telling eachother to do something and prove they’re doing something, that’s fine, it doesn’t need us. If it’s just going to be an energy sink, it’s going to exist in a place of making us less, not more, effective as mobilized participants in social good.

@[email protected] is frequently posting good comments like this one about how to get active.

“those are paid crisis actors. and all those people making loud noises all night while ice tries to sleep are Japanese sex bots programmed for drumming”

i’ve been at this for 21 years. most people i talk to strongly recommend against bringing phones to protests, and recommend not posting any photographs taken with a basic camera if you can see anyone in the picture’s face.

if you have good techniques for defeating NSA/FBI tactics that would let us get our imagery in front of more people, i’d love to know them. for now i’m gonna keep not bringing my phone and keep any photos i take off the internet because they put people at risk of intensive harm from our oppressive police state

other than on the fediverse it absolutely does. but a lot of us aren’t taking our phones to protests because the NSA/FBI uses the data of crowds pinging off cell towers to break our movements. plus they’ve been deploying mobile cell towers to exactly pinpoint our locations and apply force to us.

in otherwords:

no. social media is not an option. we’re less interested in you seeing us do this work than we are in making sure the work gets done. we know this lets the right wing skew the messaging their way, but it’s better than not being out at all because you’re scared to go out and be beaten, or because you’re spending 9+ months in a detention center.

if they try to gerrymander their way to permanent power, blue states will continue their countermandering work. it seems like the republicans are trying to provoke a civil war, use that to justify suspending elections, and establish permanent power for themselves.

the key for us, the people, is that we absolutely must organize into collections of people power that have the resilience to defy all this. in Minneapolis, everyone is mobilized. it’s reached a point there where everyone is out in the streets defying ICE, supporting the people out there in some real way, be that recruiting, educating, feeding, keeping warm, or they’re tacitly in support of ICE.

this regime is offering everyone a simple, sadistic, choice. you can fight in civil war they want to enact, or you can die in the genocide that’s been in motion for 600 years. DC, Chicago, North Carolina, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis are becoming proving grounds of what does and does not work.

the biggest thing is organization and for organization we need recruitment. too few are active. so please, any fellow americans reading this comment, seek a local mutual aid project to work with. seek a community defense league. get out here and help us fight before there’s no fighting left to do