Here are a few unconnected thoughts about activism during the coup.
First, Betty’s post earlier this morning is spot on. It’s a good time to call Republicans if one represents you. In addition to what Frosty said, if you have a relative in the nursing home, ask them if they’re safe from unelected dictator Elon Musk, or if they’re going to freeze when the heat is cut off for nonpayment.
Second, I think there’s a widespread belief that Trump will shoot protesters. I’m guessing that will come at some point, but my affairs are settled, so I’m still looking for opportunities to engage in and document protests. I was looking for opportunities to protest in the Denver area and came up short. There were some protests last weekend that I missed. Indivisible, MoveOn and Working Families Party are having a zoom tonight about possible action. I can’t make it, but if any of you are joining, you can email me at: [email protected] and I’ll publish your report on the front page. Also, please share any resources you might have in the comments or via email to me. (Update: If you’re concerned about sending something securely, you can get a free Proton Mail account and mail me at [email protected] )
Third, it’s still worthwhile to call your Democratic Senators and Reps if you have them. I feel like they started getting more engaged in the last couple of days. This post by one of the leaders of Indivisible has the memo that Republicans sent to their members when they were fighting Universal Health Care. It lists all the ways that Senators can delay or gum up the works. You could reference that memo when calling your Senator and asking them to slow everything down.
Finally, I thought Oliver Willis was right about this, which is more inspiration for your calls to national, state and local Democrats who might not think that speaking out matters. It’s also good advice about protests.
Update: It looks like one action is 50 States 50 Protests on Feb 5. The Colorado one will be at the State Capital between 12PM-8PM.
MomSense
How secure is balloon-juice? We need to be careful about how we communicate.
H.E.Wolf
Postcard writers are also engaging in protest activity, and it doesn’t involve in-the-streets risk.
Any WI boosters here? For the next 5-6 weeks, PostcardsToVoters.org is writing to Democrats to ask them to vote for Judge Susan Crawford, who is running for the WI Supreme Court.
I have 5 unwritten postcards sitting on the table this minute, so I’d better get a wriggle on.
tobie
There’s a call on Reddit (r/50501) for protests on Wednesday, Feb 5, but I can’t figure out how to navigate the site.
Rose Judson
Family in PA and elsewhere have been calling their reps (I’ve been e-mailing, as my reps don’t tend to pick up calls from abroad). If the rep is a GOPer, family members have been pretending to be worried MAGAs asking why Congress is letting Elon Musk overshadow the President.
I have been suggesting to friends on this side of the water that they ask their MPs why the government isn’t speaking up on behalf of Canada, a Commonwealth nation.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@tobie: Here’s the link to that subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/50501/
@MomSense: I just updated the post with my Proton mail account, which is an encrypted email. You can get an account with them for free. https://proton.me/mail/pricing and pick the free account.
CaseyL
I do appreciate the information, but…
Other than giving Them an opportunity to react with violence (plenty of that without outright shooting people) I’m not convinced protests actually achieve anything … unless it’s the kind of protest actually blocks the government from doing what it wants to do. Like, mobbing government buildings, putting human shields around communities, blocking roads and airport takeoff strips. Things that people go into knowing ahead of time could cost them their lives, and deciding that is a risk they’re willing to take.
Let me know when those kinds of protests start happening, and I will be there.
Baud
Hard to envision there not being martyrs at some point.
MomSense
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
Thanks
ARoomWithAMoose
@MomSense: This site has public archives and is indexed by many search providers.
Adam had a post up from just as Trump I was taking off that he’s occasionally updated and reposted.
https://balloon-juice.com/2019/12/16/peaceful-assembly-personal-security-reposted/
He may have other posts more relevant to the question you asked.
Spanky
@MomSense: It’s not secure at all, of course, but it’s a mere blip on all the internet activity. It is, however, permanent, so I wouldn’t put anything out here that might incriminate you later on. (And by “you” I don’t mean you).
Spanky
@Baud:
I just want you all to know that if it comes to heavy fighting, I’ll be behind you all the way.
tobie
Related but a little off topic: Musk showed up at USAID and tried to get into the SCIF to view certain files. Two USAID officials blocked him. They have now been placed on leave. Musk went to X and tweeted out regarding USAID, “Time to die.” He chose the phrase. This is horrifying.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zeqq4z7aybrqg6go6vx6lzwt/post/3lh7ne3m6u22a
Starfish (she/her)
@CaseyL: Protests allow activists to meet with each other and do party organization. The organizers of the various marches where I live were involved with the political party, and some of them held state office.
WTFGhost
If Trump starts shooting protestors, I’ll go out, gladly, and hopefully, but otherwise, I’m too busy not-dying. It’s amazing how many people think “not dying” is, you know, *easy*, like choosing to go through torture every day for the rest of your life, so that, each day, you’re set up for ANOTHER day of torture. There is no other purpose!
Hee. Talked to a disability attorney who glibly told me “Oh, don’t die, our standard contract forbids that,” so I had to write back “I hope you were joking, because if it does, I can’t sign it.” It’s okay, though: it will eventually be seen by a federal judge, so… I’m fucked. I won’t get to speak, and dry words always fail to get the idea across.
MomSense
@Spanky:
For reasons I can’t go into, I’m already in the line of fire.
jimmiraybob
@Baud:
The head of the EU is talking about the NATO Alliance sending troops to Greenland to defend against possible military aggression by Trump’s America, a member of the NATO defensive alliance.
Awkward.
I am pondering volunteering to help NATO to defend the Greenlandians. Weird.
When does Trump’s well-documented treason against the US via betrayal of our allies kick in? Yeah, I know.
different-church-lady
Annnnd… we’re off!
Face-eating leopards never thought others would try to eat their faces.
jimmiraybob
Maybe market the resistance as the American Spring.
The Audacity of Krope
Marketing is the way to the American heart.
jackmac
After my dour post downstairs I just found something positive.
I went to the Social Security web site to make sure Musk hadn’t shut it down. I found it was still active and saw that next week’s payments for my wife and I are on track.
At least on track for now.
The Audacity of Krope
…and they’re still letting you post about it on Balloon-Juice?
jimmiraybob
@different-church-lady:
This is exactly what Trump’s far-right militia and white supremacist base will use as an excuse to start the shooting (the forever longed for Civil War 2.0).
Spanky
@MomSense: And that’s all you’re going to say about that, OK?
The Audacity of Krope
They’ve been winning that very war for decades with abuse of power and economic terrorism. Why start shooting now?
MomSense
@Spanky:
You have seen family members in ads for Harris Walz. Shit is real. Threats are public. Crazy town.
Lapassionara
@tobie: the actions Musk is taking are essentially acts of war, and we should be calling on every elected official that represents us to defend us from these acts of war undertaken by someone who is not a citizen of the US and who does not have the best interests of the US at heart.
jimmiraybob
And just to point out that Trump’s use of Federal military and federalized National Guard troops to shoot unarmed protesters is not absurd I enter the 1970 Kent State Massacre into evidence. I was a freshman in HS but the memory is vivid.
Kristine
@H.E.Wolf: I should sign up for this one.
Kristine
This might be of interest to some folks.
WTFGhost
@MomSense: Use a VPN, and make sure your nym isn’t encoded with your primary e-mail address, for maximum security.
If your nym has your primary e-mail, and they can discern that, these days that’s a big deal – they might get Android or Apple phones from there. So, vpn, and psuedonymous e-mail should keep you out of the line of fire unless you’re seriously dangerous.
E.
Of course he will shoot protesters, if only to show total domination of Milley. Our country is falling. I can’t believe this. And by popular vote! The gods are twisting the knife.
bluefoot
@CaseyL: Protests help people know that they are not alone, that they are supported. People have posted here to the federal worker reddit, and how they feel like no one cares because the media isn’t covering what’s going on. Protest shows that neither FFOTUS or Musk has a mandate, that we don’t agree with what’s going on. It also connects people and communities – different groups trying to find ways to be effective can meet and connect. And courage is contagious, a protest can lead to broader action.
In the current environment, we can’t know what’s going to be effective.
jimmiraybob
Vengeance, satisfaction and the fulfillment of prophesy come immediately to mind. Also too, they’ve spent a lot on bullets with no return on investment.
scav
Well, a jet catching fire at Houston (on the runway) and having to be evacuated will no doubt calm things down. Youtube (shows flames) Reuters (is very coy and seems to report no fire put out)
The Audacity of Krope
Judging by their rhetoric regarding our military, I’d guess that in their view the simple fact of having a bigger arsenal is the return they were looking for.
Besides, they need it to swagger around for their militia cosplay.
MomSense
@WTFGhost:
Thanks. ATM I’m more worried about some of the wahoos/vigilantes who have said things – for now. BUT things seem to be developing quickly.
jimmiraybob
50 States, 50 protests. Feb 5. Google it.
Miss Bianca
@CaseyL: I too share a skepticism about the efficacy of protests at this point, unless they are of the risky type you describe.
Also, maybe I am just out of touch, but I am on a.lot of these mailing lists, and I don’t remember them putting this kind of effort before the election into mustering votes for the Dems, which might have helped forestall this whole verschullegene mess. But I could be wrong.
The Thin Black Duke
@jimmiraybob: If that happens, what makes you think some people on our side of the political divide won’t shoot back? There’s more than enough guns to go around, unfortunately.
Soapdish
When contacting our representatives, are we better off emailing, calling, or writing?
H.E.Wolf
@Kristine: “I should sign up for this one.”
That would be great! We’ll be a mighty duo, on behalf of Cheeseheads we know and love.
My secret tip for success is to ask for addresses on a Thursday. They’re always due into the mail within 3 business days, and Sunday is not a business day. Extra time to write!
NaijaGal
NY doctor indicted by a Louisiana grand jury for prescribing abortion pills to a teenager. Governor Hochul says NY will not extradite her. BBC News link.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Spanky: @ARoomWithAMoose: @MomSense:
Do not type incriminating information into a computer. Any computer. [Cue Stringer Bell clip]
Marmot
@WTFGhost: What if I update the email address associated with my nym? Are there archives associating the former address with that nym, or does the new address supplant it?
Mr. Bemused Senior
This is why I think it’s not going to come to actual shooting. Yes there may be sporadic violence, but not all out war.
H.E.Wolf
@H.E.Wolf:
Off to write the next sentence (of 3 total) on my 5 postcards, and then eat lunch.
Marc
A few things about network security/privacy. First, keep in mind that encrypted email and HTTPS (encrypted website access) hide the content of messages, not the headers. The headers are key to determining who is communicating with who and what they are looking at. It’s actually very easy to determine the structure of any organized group of people without looking at the content. This is something that the NSA spends a lot of time doing (you don’t want to know how I know). All US-based commercial VPNs and phone systems have law enforcement back doors. All anonymous encrypted routing systems (Tor) have probably been compromised. If the government might become interested in your activities, don’t communicate over the internet or phone system. That is all.
zhena gogolia
@Miss Bianca: This is what is making me sick. Now it’s all romantic cloak-and-dagger resistance fighting. When all we had to do was support our candidates loudly and vocally and go to the voting booth.
jimmiraybob
@The Thin Black Duke:
Yesterday I Googled “left-wing militias.” Yes, it will not be confined to a single side.
The Audacity of Krope
And not just during election season.
Kristine
@H.E.Wolf: Great idea!
Ohio Mom
@Lapassionara: I have read that Musk is a naturalized U.S. Citizen. Not a very good citizen, but a citizen.
jimmiraybob
I respectfully request that you review the decade before they fired on Fort Sumter. I live in Missouri and have friends in Kansas and have drank John Brown Ale at the Free State Brewery. Lot’s of bloody history to ruminate upon. Don’t underestimate.
CaseyL
@Miss Bianca:
@zhena gogolia:
The people who spent a great deal of time and energy denigrating Democrats – and, specifically, Harris_Walz – before the election are not in any way shape or form our allies. If they’re the ones calling for protests NOW, I might go just so I can spit in their eyes.
Professional disruptors have been a plague on the Left at least since the WTO riots in 1999, when they succeeded in ruining any chance for peaceful advocacy groups to be heard. They may have been sabotaging us for much longer than that – looking back on the 60s, I have to wonder how many of the riots and whatnot were not FBI agents provocateurs after all, but these kinds of anarchist-nihilists who are happiest when sabotaging liberal Democrats.
Ohio Mom
@bluefoot: I was thinking, “Not another protest march, I’ve given up on that idea,” but your comment sways me. I can’t go to Columbus on Wednesday though.
Scout211
Rebecca Solnit has a good commentary up at The Guardian.
She recommends all the things, but especialyt encourages everyone to use words to fight back. Everywhere. All the time.
. . .
. . .
Read the whole thing. It’s inspiring, at least to me. Some of us are homebound and not able to get out and protest. We can use our words.
Ohio Mom
@Miss Biancaverschullegene? Do you mean meshugge (spelling from Joys of Yiddish) or meshuggenah? I tried looking up verschullegene and couldn’t find it.
But yes, some of this protest seems a little too little too late.
cmorenc
@jimmiraybob: the stock market decline itself may create domestic fierce points of resistance among a predominately R- voting financially interested audience.
The Audacity of Krope
Which is great, but I’m inclined to let that particular group fight their own fights.
Ohio Mom
@Soapdish: I call, and I know that my arguments mean nothing, the interns answering the phone just put down a hash mark in the appropriate column on their “For or Against Issue XYZ” list. The same with the letters I’ve written, you get a boilerplate letter that has very little to do with what you said
We are going after volume here, so the interns can tell their bosses the grand total of constituents angry (or less frequently) happy about whatever.
Scout211
@CaseyL: Besides what others have said here, protests will get the attention of the legacy media and they will flock to the protests, bringing their on-the-scene reporting. Maybe it will not be shown accurately by Fox and OANN but the legacy media will be there and people will be interviewed. They will also explain why there is a protest. Sadly, they should be reporting on all of this in their regular news but this is what they love to show.
And remember, the live broadcasts of Trump using military aircraft to threaten the BLM protests in D.C. in his first term (and the fake bible show pony) did get a lot of coverage. And none of it was good (except for Fox and OANN, etc.)
A Ghost to Most
@MomSense: Slowly, then suddenly. Be careful.
MobiusKlein
I’m pretty damn sure that HTTPS includes the entire request – headers, method, body, url, and query parameters. Mail is a different beast.
For https, the host you connect to will still be knowable, as well as the SSL handshake patterns.
Not saying that the decrypted contents are unavailable to the various Spy orgs, but that most probable way those orgs will get your info is by compromising your device, or the target system.
MagdaInBlack
I guess my thoughts are that elon and his tech-goons are already in. They’re stealing, manipulating, altering and deleting data. How do you fix that?
RevRick
@MomSense: I called Elon musk a demonic force unleashed in our government on his personal X account. He hasn’t responded yet, probably because he is a small, hollow man.
Fear is what they want, and I will not give it to them.
Carol
Paul Krugman advises from his Substack podium:
“Oppose. Oppose. Oppose – And do it loudly
Opponents of MAGA: Don’t despair and don’t appease.”
Part of the activism that’s needed, imo, should be aimed at Democrats – authorities and office holders at every level. I’ve heard nothing from them, but correct me if I’m wrong because I do not follow the news as closely as I have in the past…head in the sand perhaps. I don’t want to hear any appeasement from them. I don’t want to see them hanging out at MAL, or at any of his golf courses. I want to hear opposition from them and there are plenty of things they can oppose. I wish they would put Buttigieg in charge of propaganda, or at the very least someone who knows how to talk to these people and how to get attention in the press and other media.
Ten Bears
@jackmac: Ten minutes ago, same thing. Not sure how reliable that will be in the future
Miss Bianca
@Ohio Mom: Mad Magazine. :)
It may be a nonsense word, or I may have spelled it wrong, but Mad was my first introduction to Yiddishisms – blame Al Jaffe and the Usual Gang of Idiots. :)
Marc
Nope, the routers need to know where to send your packet, TCP/IP will at minimum disclose your IP address and the server IP address, port number, and URL you are accessing. Only the content is encrypted.
MobiusKlein
@Marc:
I don’t want to get into a nerd fight. When I say headers, I mean the things that are passed as encrypted text as part of the http protocol, versus the tcp/ip and ssl envelops and such. HTTP headers are inside the encrypted connection, and I’ve hand typed http requests doing such
GreatandSmall
Members of Congress need to march on OPM building now and demand to oversee what Musk/DOGE are doing. During Trump I, some marched to at least one family migrant separation center and demanded oversight access. Pressure for such access was part of push that ended the separations. Similar tactic is needed now.
sentient ai from the future
@MobiusKlein: unless you’re doing DNS over HTTPS, you still have to query a nameserver over the “open air” to get the ip address that matches up with a domain name to ask to start a TLS handshake.
see also “pen register”, “metadata” (circa 2004-2008)
A Ghost to Most
If nothing else, this will be the kick in the ass I needed to finish our escape pod trailer. Fortune favors the prepared.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Soapdish:
IMO: Calling if you can get through, then emailing. I don’t know if writing letters is worth it at this point — the post office has issues and since the anthrax attack after 9/11, I think it all goes offsite and is scanned, not sure.
Marc
And even then there would still be leakage of information, as TCP/IP was never intended to support fully encrypted communication.
JoyceH
If Elon’s minions have control of the Treasury computers, as news reports are saying, is there anything that would prevent them from simply transferring hundreds of billions of dollars into private accounts in Switzerland and the Caymans? And if they did that, would we ever know? I can’t help feeling that this administration would be inclined to cover up such a massive heist because it would be such an embarrassment to Dear Leader and also probably cause massive panic.
H.E.Wolf
A 4th option is FaxZero, which lets you send up to 5 free faxes a day to Governors, and Members of Congress (House and Senate).
They don’t limit you to your own elected officials.
https://faxzero.com/fax_congress.php
Sally
I didn’t expect the US to fall as quickly as Kabul, two weeks. I thought the US systems would hold for at least a year or two, Germany took about six years.
When I initially told friends I feared the crypto boys getting into the Treasury, they scolded me. They think I’m shouting “Fire” in a crowded theater. Well, I am. Can you tell me there is no fire?
It truly is following the nazi playbook. Drug addled and ideologues, the pettiness. Theft and cruelty valorised.
Sally
@JoyceH: That’s (one of) my worry.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Two of our favorite substack authors, Robert Hubbell (“Today’s Edition Newletter”) and Robert Reich, who have understandably been a little darker than usual lately, both predicted something like what is already happening: that the American people are not sheep, that there are going to be massive protests growing over the course of weeks, and that this does not end successfully for Trump and Musk.
More concretely than hopeful predictions, I’ve been looking for something by Philadelphia local Quaker activist George Lakey, who is known worldwide for his training on nonviolent protests, particularly nonviolent resistance to violent regimes and coups. This is not pie in the sky stuff, it is hard practical advice. He was doing the training in other countries, but started saying the C word out loud in this country in 2020.
Here are a few pages I’ve found so far. The second link to “Choose Democracy” is I believe Lakey’s organization, and the articles there are current.
NeenerNeener
On the other hand, if they stole it before Trump could steal it first he’d be complaining about it loudly, everywhere.
RaflW
Aha, re 50 states on the 5th, I’ll plan to swing by 200 Colfax Ave in the later afternoon on Wednesday! Glad to have something to show up to.
I’ve been wondering about showing up at some district offices of our Reps and Senators, too. Nothing aggressive, just politely arriving and asking what they plan to do about what sure looks like the biggest unsecured data heist in the history of the Treasury Department. And that I/we feel really scared that identity theft is going to go through the roof now that people not under any federal control have copied our private data and taken it… somewhere.
RaflW
@@mistermix.bsky.social: In the past (post anthrax threats) orgs I was engaged with did a lot of postcards. More at the state legislative level, but also administrators and even MOCs.
If there’s no envelope, our thinking was that the messages would get to the destinations faster. And most communications with leaders really should be about postcard length: I’m worried about X, please pass bill #xyz.
Or, my grandmother lives in a Lutheran Social Services nursing home. I just read that Musk is cancelling all payments to LSS and I think this means she’ll be homeless in a few weeks. Is this what you wanted when you endorsed DOGE, senator?
(That latter is based on actual reporting this weekend.)
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud:
keep in mind, mistermix, you are more useful to us alive.
I am continuously valuing your Posts here, and on Bsky; your calm but well thought out clarity makes a difference.
WTFGhost
@Marmot: the e-mail is only in the database – the only time it’s exposed is during transmission. From a VPN, to a secure website (HTTPS:// instead of http://), you can both appear to be coming from another country, *and* you’d have two levels of encryption that have to be broken. I’m not an encryption expert, but the only easy way to crack encryption is to steal the key. But there are multiple sets of keys, and with only one of them, you still see nothing but gobbledygook, and that, from an unexpected location – maybe even another country.
You don’t have to use “another country’ – you can probably use another state if you prefer. You see, a VPN lets you connect to, e.g., Canada, and all of your activity will seem Canadian – the VPN acts as a proxy to all your communications. This also means that, if Netflix shows Dr. Who in the UK, you can VPN to London and binge, though this *may* violate the terms of service, so I can’t recommend it.
So: only the front pagers know your nym/e-mail, and if they changed it on the backend, it would be about as secure as any computer operation can be.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Which is to say, not very.
In general, the state of computer security is, in a word, abysmal. This is mostly due to non-technical reasons.
TONYG
Where the fuck is the Democratic Party now that we’re more than 48 hours into this coup? My idiot congressman, Josh Gottheimer, is, as always, worse than useless. I keep hearing the same stupid ad from him now that he’s trying to run for governor (to do more damage). Yes, I know that the house is out of session — but so what? This is a crises, not the time to concentrate on kissing the asses of donors.
Ohio Mom
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Late to this thread but you will never find anyone more cynical about computer security than Ohio Dad, who worked in that field, once a long time ago.
Marmot
@WTFGhost: Circling back. Thanks brother/sister/sibling.