Less telling young protestors to ‘stay safe’. (aint no such things)
More telling young protestors to write the name of a pro-bono lawyer on your arm, make sure the legal team and a friend know where to find your medication and prescription, don’t talk to cops and have a protest buddy.
Give your closest friend or relative a key to your place. Leave your credit card at home and tell them where to find it so you can maybe make bail without use of a bondsman.
MEMORIZE useful phone numbers. Lawyer, friend, relative.
Now my old person & parent thoughts:
Unless you are well connected, famous (and probably white), in which case even your minor mistreatment can get your cause a platform & attention, make the decision to risk bodily harm and serious (even if trumped up) charges mindfully.
Getting beat to shit, gassed, doing real jail time, etc. can haunt you for a long, long, time. It can cost you and your loved ones more money than you might imagine. You risk disability and real jail time, both of which can affect your ability to get a job, do the work you do now, etc. And sometimes that happens and nobody except your immediate circle gives a shit or even notices.
If you’re risking all that, try to be as smart as you can about it.
The legal team phone number will be different every time. You can try to memorize it but remembering it under stress can be difficult so it’s good to also write it on a non-visible part of your body, on a place where it doesn’t get rubbed off by movement and sweat, with a good permanent marker.
I also gotta say that I don’t think your tone is very sensible here. What sort of action are you imagining? Do you think inexperienced protestors are likely to jump right into a felony?
Be realistic and remember that risks are different from country to country, place to place, from person to person, and sometimes from day to day as cops are under more or less pressure to avoid incidents that would look bad in the press.
If you’re going to talk about the risks of getting arrested, be equally honest about the thousands of times protestors get arrested for no reason and released after 6 hours (depending on where you live) with no further consequences because there isn’t a shred of evidence against them. Talk about how often trumped up charges serve as a scare tactic and get thrown quickly out in court. Talk about how boring an arrest can be, about how a legal team works, about how a good action has a bail and legal defense fund and medics and an emotional support and recovery team.
Don’t just spread nightmare scenarios and fear. That is not a useful emotion when protesting. A stressed out or even panicked protestor isn’t going to be as good at making smart safe decisions as a calm protestor that is confident that they can deal with most possible outcomes of the day. Even if everything goes wrong and an activist faces an absolute nightmare scenario, an attitude of ‘I can get through this’ is an important part of actually getting through it.
QueerAnarchism 