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.
i may recommend upper thigh or stomach or somewhere else generally hidden from view, so that fuckers don’t try targeting that shit.
True. If you’re in the kind of protest where you cover your whole body anyway, your arm is fine. But if your arms are uncovered, cops can see that phone number as a sign that you’re a troublemaker (because why else would you want to prioritize your rights?) and fascists can harass your legal team. So stomach or upper thigh is better.
There’s a lot of other advice that could be put here, this post was about making a point, not providing an exhaustive list, but yeah, this detail is useful.
Another person replied to this post with a big DO NOT FUCKING DO THIS about writing your phone number on your arm and to that person I’d say: please remember to be chill when dealing with inexperienced protestors. The whole point of a good protest prep is to be safer AND feel safer.
One of the problems of the ‘stay safe’ posts that I was criticizing is that they spread fear without reassurance, which 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.
QueerAnarchism 