50501

For the protests Trump is hoping for one of two outcomes:

1. The protests escalate and he seizes power just like Hitler did: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/hitler-public-order/683098/
2. People roll over, stay silent and comply with the administration out of fear.

If fact I wonder if #1 would be more ideal for Trump because it would be a unifying cause for Republicans who are currently divided and soon face economic uncertainty. Remember that Trump's polling was worst in April during times of greatest economic uncertainty. However let's not give him either of those. Let's humiliate Trump by making all the people he brought in, in hopes of escalating useless and bored. Imagine the pictures of them standing around with nothing to do. It will foil the well used dictator playbook for seizing power.

The reality is a vast, vast majority of the protests are going to be peaceful no matter what. The problem is that the media even the mainstream media will focus on any violence there is so we need we really need to be as perfect as we can so let's do everything we can to ensure that every single protest remains as peaceful as possible and also take charge of the narrative too.

What we need to do is protest peacefully and lawfully, be a little more spread out, stay away from situations that are violent. I'd also recommend staying away from police and military. Use the time to expose Trump's corruption and educate people and bring new people to the movement and maybe even help register people to vote. By building a broad peaceful coalition we can reach even those who are stuck in echo chambers where they will only see what little violence there is and not notice the peaceful protests. The only way to break through is to protest peacefully in your city so they can see that protests are peaceful or get previously neutral people involved in protesting who will talk to their friends who will in-turn talk to their friends and so on eventually reaching those in echo chambers.

I'd recommend bringing American flags, say we love our country, we believe ALL Americans have equal rights and that we support the constitution and upholding American tradition like separation of power, that no one is above the law and that there are no kings in America. The more people who do that the more chances the media will be forced to show this which disrupts the false narrative that we're not patriotic, in fact I feel we're way more patriotic than the people who still worship traitors like the confederates, those who want to destroy our country and those who feel that only Americans who have the right skin color, gender and socioeconomic status deserve rights.

Online and in person we must strongly push back against those who call for violence, balkanization or civil war. These things will be devastating to everyone. I can tell you that I'm a blue dot in a red state, I have lots of friends and family members who are as well. Nearly all of us are too poor and too deeply rooted in our communities to move. This could literally be deadly for us and millions of innocent people who don't support what's going on now and even if not deadly lots of us could one day be subject to a oppressive regime in a spin-off of part of America, that would be horrible. If we make it to the midterms we can win enough elections and make our country better in all 50 states peacefully and legally.

Remember: broad peaceful coalition, bring more and more people over, eventually even some Trump supporters will see the light and we'll resolve this peacefully. I know we can do it!

PS: Hands-off put together a list of articles about de-escalation training here: https://actionnetwork.org/user_files/user_files/000/122/370/original/Hands_Off!__De-escalation_resources_(4).pdf

The YouTube link in the PDF wasn't stripped of tracking so use this link to watch their de-escalation training: https://youtu.be/_Pgmn9QRr48

I also saw an interesting idea of having monitors in high visibility vests and using whistles whenever they see even initial signs of violence, in the original suggestion they advised sitting but I read some persuasive comments that mentioned sitting down could be dangerous, instead I think leaving is the best approach.