Re-upping this thread, because the stuff in post 4 is exactly, •exactly• what I have seen from my communities here in Minneapolis these last few weeks.

@inthehands @paul_ipv6 Does everyone forget DC because we’re not a state?

@dalias AFAIK my Masto clients just don’t support this yet

So yeah, as @dalias is perhaps implying, part of the reason you don’t see it is that the mainstream press is under-covering everything that’s happening in Minneapolis.

BUT! There’s a second reason you might not know about this activity, equally important: the activity that followed the murder of George Floyd — rallies, protests, marches, police riots — was of a highly visible sort. What I see now is much more community infrastructure work: neighborhood organizing, watching for ICE, delivering food. That happened in 2020 too, but the scale of it now…!

https://hachyderm.io/@dalias/115857252713224712

@gregatron5 @paul_ipv6
I only omit DC because I haven’t personally heard of people getting tips from organizers there. But I’m sure some here have! We love DC too!

@lor @inthehands If only people were fighting back.

@inthehands I think people outside the US largely don’t understand the sheer size of US cities, and the widely spread population within, which makes it hard to have the kind of spontaneous mass demonstrations that could coalesce in cities like Europe’s. A million or two people trying to converge for a rally/protest in downtown Minneapolis would turn the metro’s road infrastructure into one enormous parking lot, and most wouldn’t arrive.

Instead, people take action locally.

@mwyman Plus, per the later follow-up post, people here are mostly not responding to ICE with rallies and protests (though there were MANY today). They’re responding with counter-action. Community- and neighborhood-based, as you say.

@PattyHanson @lor
They are.

@inthehands exactly. I think we’ve seen the Trump regime demonstrate they don’t care about their opponents rallying and protesting. But spontaneous action, even just blowing whistles, seems to scare the shit out of them.

@inthehands im assuming some of the negative comments are inauthentic, or from the dangerously stupid, but the only reason this incident happened at all is because the volunteer resistance effort, the only reason there are multiple videos are from other volunteers, this whole incident is a sign of serious resistance, not just showy protests that the authorities ignore

@dalias @inthehands the organizing is happening on a local level, it’s not happening online

@inthehands the Trump folks set about hiring the worst gun-nut folks who for ages fantasized about raising arms against their fellow citizens, and mostly hired them for that reason; but those folks are also really quite chickenshit, yet just imaginative enough to consider their chances if the crowds willing and determined enough to stand against them despite the explicit threats, armed with nothing but whistles, decided instead to show up for war.

@mwyman
The problem with that is that it would open the doors to martial law, which is what Trump’s desperately been trying to foment.

@inthehands oh, I’m not advocating it; I’m just pointing out why the chickenshit ICE folks start wigging out when the crowd arrives— they’re personally cowards, suddenly confronted by real personal courage, and while they’re excited to bust heads, they’re imaginative enough to know they stand little chance personally if that kind of amassed courage were to suddenly raise arms against them.

@mwyman
I do think it’s a wonder that the counter-ICE action has been so disciplined thus far.

@inthehands I’m rather surprised there haven’t been the anarchist saboteurs that sometimes showed up and started fires during the George Floyd protests. Perhaps because the counter-actions have been so spontaneous, and locally organic, rather than giant groups marching and chanting, where outside folks can slide in and cause mischief. Or perhaps those saboteurs are now working for ICE.

@mwyman @inthehands Groups doing actions, whether they’re Tesla Takedowns or rapid response things, are deliberately watching for and stopping anyone who might try to smash a window or set a trash can on fire. They learned something from the protests after George Floyd’s death and the coverage thereof.

For a while last year some Internet leftists were Big Mad about this but the people actually doing the work didn’t care what they thought.