this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2026
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In Person Activism
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"Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them." -Tim Snyder
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Wake me when the guillotines come out.
I don't live in the US so my assessment might be completely off here, but with protests like this you shouldn't hope for the more radical positions. If you're more radical yourself this can be annoying or feel like it serves no purpose and I get that. It still provides opportunities for us.
There's two main reasons I advocate for showing up at things like this:
Treat it like a networking event. Go talk to people, hand out flyers, wave your flags, bring funny signs, hand out vegan cookies... As an anarchist I'm very much aware that most people never think about anarchists, and when they it's rarely in a positive way. Protests like are an opportunity to get people to see, however briefly, that anarchists can be nice people with free cookies.
If or when things go poorly, like if the police or the far-right decides to escalate, I'd want people with experience there to provide assistance. Whether that's taking up the front to defend others, yelling: "Walk! Don't run!" while people are trying to get out of tear gas, handing out water so people can rinse out pepper spray (and telling people not to use milk), explaining how to handle a kettle, etc.
Fuck that. Start building them yourself
I can build them, but if the crowd doesn't support it, it's painting a target on my own back for nothing.
By the time the guillotines are usable, you've already won. They'll just be turned against you. Build community if you want to win.
There probably will never be a demonstration with perfectly aligned opinions, but I think you would definitely find your crowd or more likely your crowd would find you with such a rallying point.