Since we wrote the first version of this guide during the first Trump presidency, the Israeli genocide against Palestinians, fueled by US financial and diplomatic support, spurred a mass, multi-faceted movement for Palestinian liberation. As we write, false charges of antisemitism and support for terrorism have become the lynchpin of repression against the movement. Palestinians who have spoken up against the genocide are kidnapped by ICE and targeted for detention and deportation.
Additionally, the current regime is waging an all out war on immigrants, with escalated armed attacks by masked agents arresting undocumented people as they go to their immigration hearings, kidnapping children from their schools, detaining people in hospitals. Major US cities are under occupation by militarized forces, from ICE, National Guard and local police.
These attacks are intended to build more popular support for a white nationalist, anti-immigrant and anti-Black agenda and ultimately part of a strategy to undermine the right to free speech and protest for everyone. We must organize in ways that protect each other. This guide aims to support organizers in instituting practices that will strengthen our organizations and our movements.
This document offers suggested principles for building stronger movements in the face of surveillance and repression from the state and non-state actors who work hand-in-hand with the government.
In the last decade, social movements have created millions of new activists, most of whom were not alive or politically involved during the violent and widespread state repression of social movements in the 60s and 70s. They are generally unfamiliar with the tactics used by the state to disrupt and undermine grassroots organizing, and how to resist them in ways that strengthen our movements.
Many of our organizations still lack a coherent analysis of how political repression of social movements and working class communities of color maintains and enforces capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. We also lack specific, agreed-upon principles of how to keep our movements as safe as possible from these ongoing attacks while we continue to be big and bold in challenging the current racial, economic, and social order. If we want our movements to succeed, we must change this. There are many models from around the world of how social movements have survived intense political repression, from Argentina to Palestine, as well as here at home.
We created this document to start important conversations about how and why the state uses violence and coercion to enforce social control. We hope it will contribute to building unity about the need to resist political repression by every means possible—from campaign work to the culture and practices of our organizations.
This is a living document that is useful to everyone in social movements, and it will also sometimes address white activists and majority-white organizations to speak to the specific ways white supremacy in movements interacts with the white supremacy of the state and the ways in which people who have not been directly targeted by the state can be a weak link in resisting state repression. We welcome organizers in specific communities to take this document and adjust it for your audience. We hope that if you use it, you’ll use it collectively — read it with your crew or organization and talk about it, adjust it, make agreements, make plans, and make change. All the analysis and principles in this document are drawn from generations of on-the-ground lessons and experiences, and credit is due especially to the hard-won wisdom from the people most targeted by state repression.
While we offer this document to defend social movements, our battle against repression has to be proactive and not just defensive. We’ve got to support campaigns led by people of color that defund, dismantle, and shift power away from the repressive arms of the state – away from prisons, cops, ICE, surveillance, and the military.
Fear is one of the state’s strongest weapons; if fear prevents us from doing our work, it becomes a victory for the state.
We need to achieve a balance between being well-informed about potential repression, while not being paranoid or intentionally keeping our movements small. Mass movement support, through strong principles, politics, relationships, and alliances are our best defense against repression. Any movement seeking fundamental transformative change will have to contend with threats from the state, and we have many examples of people finding the courage to resist that we can learn from. More than that, organizing against repression can build our movements.
The constant threat and reality of state violence is used to maintain a vast system of racial and economic oppression. Indeed, we understand that the purpose of policing is to use force to protect the interests of the state, corporations and rich people from communities who want to redistribute power and resources: people of color, indigenous people, working class people, immigrants, disabled people, women, queer and trans people, and other social movement activists.
Today as in past generations, FBI, police, and secret grand juries are being used to attack these communities and movements. These incidents are not isolated, and they are not happening because the government wants to “solve crimes.” They are an attempt to divide us, isolate outspoken individuals, create fear and distrust among us, and rewrite our history of resistance, labeling our actions as “criminal” or “terrorist.”
The current regime is increasing imprisonment, policing, deportation, and political repression. But this expansion is building on the massive infrastructure/expansion of state capacity for repression that Biden and Obama (and many before them) built for this purpose. This isn’t about a single political party or a single president, this is about the role of the U.S. government.
We don’t have to think hard to imagine how the state responds to social movements that challenge the racial and economic status quo. We have seen tear gas, batons, sound cannons, rubber bullets, and water hoses in below-freezing temperatures used from Standing Rock to the student encampments in support of Palestine. Yet, some of the state’s methods are more insidious: spreading false information; creating or intentionally widening divisions and conflict within movements; and using violence and the criminal legal system to harass, harm and intimidate activists and to scare off supporters.
In a chilling precedent, they were charged under anti-racketeering laws designed to go after organized crime, known as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The indictment “labels the Cop City activists ‘anarchists’ and alleges a wide variety of crimes, from criminal trespass to domestic terrorism. Prosecutors also allege that, among other things, using a ‘burner’ phone shows criminal intent, a sign of just how expansive the indictment’s scope is.” As of this writing, the Fulton County judge says that he intends to toss out the racketeering charges in part because of organizing, but the prosecution continues and some protesters continue to face felony charges.
To understand what the state is doing today, it’s helpful to remember what it has done in the past. From 1956-1971, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) collaborated with local law enforcement agencies around the country on COINTELPRO to covertly suppress, disrupt, discredit, and destroy political organizations.
COINTELPRO represents the state’s strategy to prevent movements and communities from overturning white supremacy and capitalism. COINTELPRO is both a formal program of the FBI and a term frequently used to describe a conspiracy among government agencies—local, state, and federal—to destroy movements for self-determination and liberation for Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous struggles, as well as mount an institutionalized attack against allies of these movements and other progressive organizations.
The official program ended in 1971, but its tactics are still used today:
The U.S. government also uses counterinsurgency tactics against Third World nations: funding and training repressive regimes that reign terror on their people; overt and covert war-making, from ground invasions to drone strikes; overthrowing democratically elected progressive and Left governments and installing puppets; disrupting people’s movements, and more. All of these actions take place in the name of protecting our freedom and safety. In reality, all of them protect the current racial, economic, and global regimes of power and violence.
While learning about the tactics the state uses to disrupt our movements can be scary, it’s important to remember that wherever people are working for a liberated future, we gather strength from each other and find ways to resist. Knowing this information empowers us and gives us tools to build strong, creative resistance movements. Most tactics of disruption rely on exploiting our movement’s weaknesses, but we can change those weaknesses. In this spirit, we offer the following “Principles for Racial Justice Activists In the Face of State Repression.”
In our current time, we are seeing deep collaboration between state and non-state actors, where private forces create the ideological and cultural grounds to justify and build support for government intimidation, harassment, and violence against grassroots movements. Right wing organizations and individuals are sending information about radical organizers to the federal government and engaging in smear operations to undermine their legitimacy. Funders of pro-Palestinian organizations are being dragged before McCarthyite Congressional committees. SLAPP suits (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, suits with no true legal claims) are filed to intimidate progressive organizations.
Collaboration between state and non-state actors is common in the history of political repression. We only need to imagine the mixed military and civilian forces that committed genocide against indigenous peoples, the slave patrols, or collaboration between police and lynch mobs to understand the ways the state has always relied on paramilitary accompaniment and civilian cooperation to carry out its control.
As we saw after 9/11, accusing individuals, groups and communities of supporting terrorism is a tried and true way to justify and popularize the erasure of constitutionally-guaranteed rights to free speech, protest, and due process. In perhaps the most important example from this time period, the Heritage Foundation, author of the now infamous Project 2025, produced an ideological and strategic blueprint to both dismantle the movement for Palestinian human rights, but to also use false accusations of antisemitism, support for terrorism, and “anti-Americanism” to attack the entire social justice Left.
In Project Esther they lay out their extensive strategy for a public-private partnership of severe political repression that is being actively carried out as we write. It includes defunding higher education institutions; removing student groups and faculty; deporting leaders; filing lawsuits against organizations; getting groups federally designated as supporters of foreign terrorism; eroding popular support for groups by smearing their reputations; using congressional inquiries and legislation to stop groups ability to “conduct or sustain demonstrations or protests”; cutting off funding to organizations; creating conflict and distrust between organizations and leaders so they can’t effectively collaborate; enlisting “state and local law enforcement support” and generating “uncomfortable conditions” for leaders.
Organizations are our most effective and powerful way to build the collective power that can make change. They also keep us stronger. Many state repression tactics rely on people being isolated and individualistic. Defense against state repression requires strong relationships and collective thinking.
For example, a person who isn’t practiced at thinking collectively will have less understanding of how talking to the police can put other people at risk. A “solo flyer” who is targeted by a grand jury subpoena won’t have the community resources necessary to resist. People in an organization are more likely to share a political analysis and a commitment to each other that will protect the movement, rather than just protect themselves. People in organizations can also be held accountable or better supported to change if their behavior is problematic. Collective leadership also makes us stronger. Organizations that prioritize leadership development and building lots of people’s skills and leadership are harder to take down than projects that can be undermined by picking off a single leader who holds most of the skills, experiences, networks and clout.
Notably, during COINTELPRO the police and FBI relied on targeting people who were isolated, vulnerable, or peripheral to become informants or comply with their legal inquiries.
People who don’t understand the role of the state are more vulnerable to its manipulation, and can make our movements more vulnerable to its violence. For white activists and organizations or donors who are supporting organizing in communities of color, the FBI might say something like, “we know you’re not a threat, we’re concerned about the people you’re supporting.” Defense against this kind of manipulation is one of the many reasons political education is important.
Without political unity and a plan, members of a targeted organization may keep law enforcement contact to themselves or comply with the police, putting organizations and movements at risk. Intimidation is a core policing tactic, and many people crack under the pressure if they don’t have strong political foundations and support. It’s crucial that we understand that attacks on individuals are attacks on our organizations and movements, and act accordingly.
Even when targeting activists, the state often treats white people differently than people of color. As anti-imperialist political prisoner Marilyn Buck put it “in terms of dealing with white people, the state thinks we can always come home to them again.”
In situations of groups rather than individuals being prosecuted, people can choose to make collective decisions to protect the entire group, which helps protect its most vulnerable members and can also expose the political motivations of such attacks. During the first Trump administration, 200 protestors who were arrested for actions on Inauguration Day released a unity statement. They pledged:
“We will not cooperate against any of our co-defendants, nor accept any plea deals that cooperate with prosecutors at the expense of other co-defendants...[and] will refuse to accept that any of the charges or actions of law enforcement were necessary or justified. ... We will not say anything publicly or privately that has the possibility of harming individual defendants or defendants as a group.”
Does your organization or group have agreements about how you deal with the police, ICE, grand juries or the FBI that all of your members would follow? About digital security? Do you have a commitment to financially, emotionally and legally support anyone who is targeted? Do you have a plan for those resources, such as a defense fund and a lawyer? Do you have agreements on who has access to non-public organizational info? It’s important to think concretely and practically about what would happen if you or someone else in your group were detained, deported, or arrested and how people’s different life circumstances enhance certain risks. Do you have a plan to support the most vulnerable people in your group: undocumented people, trans folks, people with disabilities, elders, children? See pages 13-14 of “Prepare Against Raids” for a safety plan checklist for undocumented people, but useful for other vulnerable groups as well.
In this era of increasing repression, many of the rights we have relied on can no longer be taken for granted. In a clear violation of the First Amendment, the Trump regime has arrested student activists and sent them to ICE detention facilities in conservative areas to suppress dissent and manipulate federal court jurisdiction. Even with the clear violation of some bedrock rights, it’s still important that we invoke our rights whenever possible. Many people do not know their rights with a beat cop, let alone with ICE, the FBI, the NSA, or with a grand jury summons. The state relies on this lack of knowledge to harass, coerce, arrest, and imprison people. For those of us who are white and/or class privileged, we were likely taught to believe “if we aren’t doing anything illegal, we don’t have anything to hide or fear.” We never know how the police will use information they get from us, but we can be sure it will be used to harm our movement or other people.
While there are some differences between agencies and state-by-state, this always applies: if an officer approaches you, ask “Am I free to go?” If the answer
is yes, walk away. If it’s no, you should not answer any questions other than “What is your name?” You should say “I am going to remain silent.” If you are searched, say “I do not consent to this search.”
From the Center for Constitutional Rights’ “If An Agent Knocks”:
The Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution protects you from being forced to reveal self-incriminating information to law enforcement. This is easier to say than to do. Agents are trained investigators: they have learned the power of persuasion and the ability to make a person feel scared, guilty or impolite for refusing their requests for information. An agent may suggest that any unwillingness to speak with her/him means you must have something to hide. S/he may suggest s/he only wants you to answer a few questions and then s/he will leave you alone. The agent may threaten to get a warrant. Don’t be intimidated or manipulated by an agent’s threats or assurances. It is always best to not talk without an attorney present...Clearly convey your intention to remain silent. Say “I’m not talking to you,” or “I’d like to talk to my lawyer before I say anything to you.”
In addition to not talking to cops, don’t let cops in your home or office, no matter what they say, unless they have a valid warrant. A valid warrant must have the correct address, describe the area to be searched and what they’re looking for or the name and description of the person to be arrested, be signed by a judge, and not be out-of-date. You can ask the police to slip the warrant under the door, and if any of these things are incorrect, tell them it’s invalid. Talk to anyone you live with about this, as they may try to come when you’re not home.
Grand juries have historically been used to harass, intimidate and destabilize resistant movements, most often Black, Indigenous, Arab, Muslim, Latinx, and other anti-imperialist movements.
Grand juries are secret panels of U.S. citizens called together by a prosecutor to investigate crimes and issue indictments. They issue subpoenas – documents that require the person targeted to testify and/or present documents to the grand jury. The usual rules of evidence do not apply in grand jury proceedings: there is no judge; no defense attorneys are allowed; and anything a witness says may be used against them and their movement. Grand juries are witch hunts or “fishing expeditions” to learn about movement connections and alliances, build criminal cases or bring false charges, understand political positions, and to make use of political differences. The goal is to sow dissension and distrust. Even information that seems innocent can be harmful when combined with other information gathered by the grand jury investigation.
Refusal to cooperate with a grand jury can result in being jailed for contempt for the life of the grand jury, up to 18 months. Not everyone who takes a non-collaboration stands goes to jail, but this is a real risk. In the case of grand juries, the jail time is meant to coerce you into testifying. If you make it very clear that you will never testify at a grand jury, this could help you avoid or reduce jail time. It is precisely because of the secrecy and potentially dangerous nature of the grand jury that we believe it is important for people to refuse to cooperate, in a long tradition of grand jury resisters. Just as with FBI visits, being public and transparent about grand jury subpoenas will help build a public wall of resistance and minimize distrust and fear in our communities.
In the early hours of Sept. 24, 2010, gun-toting federal agents in Chicago and Minneapolis burst into the homes of anti-war and international solidarity activists. Eventually 23 people were called before a grand jury — and subsequently refused to cooperate with the government’s witchhunt. Their case gained national support because of their resistant stance.
If you are targeted by a grand jury, seek out a movement lawyer immediately to make a plan. It’s important to have representation that understands grand juries as political, and that you have movement interests, and not just personal ones. If you don’t already have a lawyer in mind, try contacting the National Lawyers Guild.6 Once you understand your legal situation, make a plan to inform organizations in your network, and consider going completely public.
If you are approached or targeted by law enforcement about the political activity of yourself or someone else, the first step should be to talk to your organization and get legal counsel from a movement lawyer (see above.) The second step should be to make a plan to communicate with allied organizations and consider going public about how you were approached and your commitment to resist cooperation. Political repression relies on secrecy, fear, and isolation. Keeping information about being approached or targeted to yourself will mean you have a much smaller support base. It can also cause distrust and ruptures between organizations, as it deprives other activists and organizations from the ability to prepare to defend themselves.
While it has the potential to cause serious harm, political repression can also be used to build support for our movements. Many campaigns to resist grand juries or defend political prisoners have been successful at building mass resistance, and there are many lessons we can learn from them. Here are a few:
Some of our most important leaders of color from the 50s, 60s, and 70s were imprisoned or killed for their political activity. Several, like Leonard Peltier and many former members of the Black Panther Party, endured nearly 50 years in prison before being released. From Palestine to Colombia, political imprisonment with very harsh conditions such as solitary confinement is common, often with U.S. political, economic, and military support. Guaranteeing strong support and defense for those who are politically persecuted empowers people to take the risks necessary to build our collective resistance.
The state creates and relies on racist narratives about Black, Indigenous, Latino, Arab and Muslim people being dangerous in order to condemn and criminalize political activists and their communities generally.
It’s important to use any access we have to the media or the public to publicly defend targeted individuals and groups, to question the dominant narrative, and to explicitly name the racism of the attacks and the media coverage. Exposing the tactics of state repression can build more support and help make our movements stronger.
In the same vein, we must offer support to current and future political prisoners. In addition to fighting for their freedom, there are many ways to support people—raising bail, attending court hearings, writing support letters, visiting, corresponding with them, and sending commissary money while they are in jail or prison. Supporting their loved ones is also a critical piece of community support for targeted activists. This includes financial assistance, help with childcare, assisting with prison visiting, offering emotional support, and helping children and partners deal with the stigma of having an incarcerated parent.
One of COINTELPRO’s key strategies was to create and exacerbate conflict and distrust between individuals and organizations. They used many tactics to do this: infiltrators who were sent to stir things up, spread rumors and incite conflict; fake communications that sparked distrust; “snitch jacketing” or making people look like informants. The real results of this interference was that organizations broke up, coalitions collapsed, and people were left more vulnerable to arrest and violence. Creating a strong, principled movement culture is our best defense against this.
Anyone involved in organizing knows that it’s messy. Mistakes are made, harm is caused, real political differences exist. We organize in a context where we urgently need structural change, and grassroots racial and economic justice forces have far less power than we need to create what we dream. Many people in movements have survived a lot of trauma, which can inform our work in positive ways, and also can impact our behavior in ways that make working together harder. And many people in movements act out privilege based on their experiences of class, race, gender and/or ability that creates toxic culture. All of our organizations are imperfect. All of our organizations act out the dynamics of oppression and privilege that we are steeped in, though some do better than others at creating the transformative culture we yearn for.
Some parts of movement culture can foster a belief that the best way to fight for liberation is to critique, ostracize and tear down other people and organizations because they are not perfectly living out their values. This is amplified in people who have been through formal higher education, which often values criticism over all else. When you combine these tendencies with the sense of entitlement that comes with race and/or class privilege, it can often produce activists who are very skilled at criticizing people and organizations, and less skilled at navigating conflict, finding positive value and working toward personal and organizational change. In addition to hurting organizations and the people in them, this kind of culture creates organizations that are unwelcoming, keeping our movements small.
How do we stay in relationship and remain accountable to each other through all this?
We encourage you to read Maurice Mitchell’s essay, Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy and Durable Power in a Time of Crisis, in which he reflects on some of the main dynamics that hold back our movements and offers concrete solutions to these problems.
Organizations whose members are frequently targeted by the state, or those who participate in a lot of direct action, often have methods of keeping information and plans secure. Sometimes, white activists and organizations do not take these protocols seriously because our privilege has shielded us from the most vicious and stealthy tactics of the state. It’s very important that white activists and organizations are not a “weak link” in security practices, especially when doing something that could be criminalized. If you’re not clear about what information is okay to share with whom, or which method of communication should be used, ask for clarification. Once you are clear, make sure you follow all aspects of security that are being asked. Here are a few examples:
“Snitch jacketing” is a widely-used FBI tactic of planting evidence, spreading rumors, or cutting plea deals that make certain people look like informants, in order to sow distrust and isolation. While we strongly believe in the power of intuition, it’s important that within our movements we only respond to people’s actions, since we can’t ever know someone’s true intentions. If someone is acting disruptive, being unaccountable, provoking conflict, spreading rumors, or repeatedly trying to get us to escalate tactics in a way that you haven’t agreed on, confront the behavior and hold the person accountable to changing. If you or your group are conflict avoidant, actively consider the consequences of not addressing problematic behavior directly and all of the ways it can undermine your organizing whether or not the person is an agent of the state. If after repeated feedback someone is unable or unwilling to change, consider asking them to leave the group. If you’re just feeling a weird vibe, remember that some people are just awkward.
Many of COINTELPRO’s tactics created and exploited distrust between people and organizations. We have to extend trust and be worthy of trust by being accountable to each other, our politics, and our best selves.
What if we treated our fragile, messy alliances as if our lives depended on them? What if we understood that working through political differences is a core part of our struggle, and that the way to do that is by actively working together and figuring it out in practice? What if we prioritized building relationships as much as our task list? What if our organizations were more proactively addressing internal dynamics of racism, classism, patriarchy, heterosexism, transphobia, and ableism? What if we assumed that people who have acted against their own values are capable of change when they receive direct feedback and support? What if we assumed there was truth in the feedback we receive, and made active efforts to repair and rebuild? What if we all worked hard every day under the idea of “high impact, low ego?”
While these are movement-wide questions, some particular issues come up for organizers with race and class organizers and majority-white organizations. White socialization, especially when it’s combined with class and/or male privilege, can lead to arrogance, self-righteousness, individualism, and a propensity to bow out when the going gets tough (or when we get critical feedback). We often value our own ideas and leadership above the visions, strategies, and tactics used by communities of color. In practice, this can mean pursuing short-term reforms while betraying a long-term vision for liberation. It can mean duplicating or co-opting organizing that already exists in order to gain funding or legitimacy. (For more, see “White Privilege in Social Justice Movements” in the resources section below.) It can take many years to change these behaviors, but we must change them. White activists and majority-white organizations must become trustworthy.
Seek feedback regularly, especially where privilege might prevent you from seeing the whole picture. Do what you say you’ll do when you say you’ll do it, and communicate when you can’t. Be honest and generous. And when you mess up, own it, repair it, and get back on the horse. If you haven’t screwed up, you’re not risking enough. The stakes are high and we need to support each other to grow braver and more effective so we can build the kind of strong, broad movements that can open up a future with safety, dignity, and justice for everyone.
This assessment is intended to help you identify next steps in preparing yourself and your organizations to face political repression. This may be brand new, and you may feel like you are starting from the beginning. You may already have discussed some of these concerns and need to hone some of your practices.
Choose the 3 most important questions for your organization to discuss at an upcoming meeting.
As an individual:
Your organization -
CATALYST PROJECT CURRICULUM
COMMUNITY DEFENSE IN THE TRUMP ERA
INTERACTIONS WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT/ KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
LEGAL INFORMATION, EMERGENCY PLANNING FOR PEOPLE AT RISK OF DEPORTATION
GRAND JURY RESISTANCE
DIGITAL SECURITY
CREATING RESILIENT ORGANIZATIONS
HISTORY OF COINTELPRO/GOVERNMENT REPRESSION