Dialogue Description:

In this time of increased surveillance and state repression of dissent, how can we prepare and protect ourselves, our communities, and our movements while maintaining and fortifying our resistance? What can we learn from historic precedents of state repression to inform how we act today? What patterns common to folks socialized as white and female/genderqueer/trans/queer may make us and our movements more vulnerable to state repression, and how we can interrupt these patterns?

Join us to explore principles and best practices for racial justice activists in the face of state repression.

Suggested readings/resources:

Dialogue Notes:

These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes.  Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.

WNC Dialogue 10-17 Resisting State Repression with Catalyst Project
Check-ins
– Supporting J20 Resisters and May 20 Resisters – reality of repression. Trying to use a case as an
example with the J20 resisters. Every major action since inauguration have had consequences not
faced up until now. State repression is ramping up here. How are we preparing? Our base is
feeling more afraid and less willing to take the same risks. Harder to mobilize folks. What does
that mean for the movements right now? How do we support people who are facing this? How do
we take principled risks with strategic value without burning people out?
– Have a lot to learn. In my privilege, in my age, haven’t had to look at state repression as much as
others have. State repression in recent actions.
– Impact of charges related to recent actions. How to grow infrastructure to handle shift in
repression. Recognizing how much labor goes into supporting people we take arrest. How to build
campaigns with and in addition to direct action to bring in more people? Grand juries – curious to
learn more.
– FBI announcements around ‘Black Identity Extremists’; National Lawyers Guild folks sharing out
the ways Berkeley Police and other depts have been responding to expressions of fascism. There is
more coming around repression.
– Inter-generational discussion drawing on learnings across time. Similarities and differences.
Strategies that don’t just drain resources and people. We want to a build a movement that we can
invite people into. Not that they fear. Many of the manifestations of repression are not new, and
this is also a different period in many ways. How do we connect to the river of history of
resistance. Come at this with collectivity. How to not get locked into our own individual fears. To
name them and deal with them, build connection.
– Addressing conflict, moving forwards accountability.
– How to balance active movement participation and life participation. The energy it takes to
survive. Feeling capitalism. How to keep showing up? How to juggle all the various elements?
Black and Pink – how to maintain jail clearance, and also show up to risk arrest. Fear as a tactic on
top of limiting resources – if we stop doing what we’re doing they’ve won. Hiding behind white
privilege and class privilege in the choices I make when to show up and not to. How to navigate
that fear. When is it just strategic and when is it just fear? Being a part of orgs that implode – how
to learn those lessons not just in practice. How to support relationships and not get shit done.
Dialogue
– Reading about grand juries was an eye opener. Would like to understand more of the history.
– In solidarity with Puerto Rican independence and Chicanx movements, there was a lot of grand
jury repression. Everyone refused to testify, some did jail time, up to a year because they refused.
There was a strong mutual commitment. Most recent was with the SF 8, more recent where the
government brought charges against a group of men who were in their 60s in the Black Panther
Party. Brought 40 year old charges against them. Said they were responsible for the death of a cop.
They were living in all different cities, dragged them out of bed early in the morning. They
refused to testify in the grand jury. These were people who were very active in the panthers. They
were pulled out of their lives, and it was very traumatic for them and their families. There was
clear common ground among them. Their case dragged on for several years. Two of the people
already incarcerated took a plea for lesser charges others had charges dropped. There was a lot of
support in SF. There was a defense committee. People visited them in jail every week. They were
in jail for at least several months.
– With regular cases, one thing happening right now with DC Protesters, there are about 200 of
them. There are a bunch of people who have criminal defense lawyers, not movement lawyers.
They see their jobs as just getting their client off. Some of them are trying to subpoena legal
observers. May give information that will harm other defenders. Sometimes, Legal observers will
also refuse. Less commonly talked about. Because grand juries are very ominous, we more
regularly talk about it. Also important for us to remember for regular trials, impacts of movement
lawyers.
– It takes time to build a culture. Needs to happen before the activating moment. It’s also ongoing.
Hard to get people to show up for anything that is not a catastrophe or crisis. People are also

getting diversion payments. Can take money to take a class about the impact.
– Accessibility of increased risk for vulnerable populations in direct action work.
– At what point do we say we are not going to intentionally risk arrest because we cannot handle
the consequences? Is that because they have been successful in their fear campaign?
– What happens when state repression becomes about things beyond direct action? What are other
kinds of risks? Are we just responding to fear and then we’re winning?
– How do we challenge ourselves to not hide behind white privilege? How do we know what is
strategic?
– Has there been a time when people were more visionary and less guided by fear?
– Direct action can be very motivational for people. Legal repression is so much less motivating.
Only for the Black Friday 14 – they mobilized a lot of folks. There is very low turnout for people
currently facing repression. How to make those moments catalyst moments, especially when not
part of an ongoing campaign.
– In all of our movements, how can we use this struggle to fortify and motivate? Especially because
the state is using it as an example, so we need to flip the script.
– Impact of interlocking systems including private security. Many arms of the state are visible and
connected. Arming of the police by the military. Massive wall of stay back.
– This is not new, and they are developing new structures to be more integrated. More visible to
those of us who were not the primary targets.
– What risks are we able to take as we age? Newer expressions of state violence are scary for many
people.
– The coordination between different arms of the state is more developed, and militarized, new
expressions of state technology and surveillance. Tracking of people through technology is very
strong. Can’t escape being caught up, and there is harm reduction.
– Do as level headed a threat assessment as we can. Where are we in relationship to communities
that are most challenging to the state? Incoming threats, and around being weak link around those
we’re working with. What is the level of surveillance, and directly coming after. That also allows
us to consider what steps we take. How do we stay safe while building a culture that is inviting for
more people? Don’t want to hoard information. The best defense is a big broad movement of
people who have each others’ backs.
– Organizations doing research around repression, assessing the level and tools of targetting
movements.
– How useful for movement work is it for us to take high risk actions? There can be a push in
activist cultures for a number of reasons to orient towards very dramatic questions.
– The feeling like we always have to escalate can be a bit of a trap. Escalating sometimes, and other
times not. Not getting separated from the base building. We need a strong and reliable base to get
through this. Some people are not going to take arrest, others will move forward.
– During the civil rights movement, so many people were filling the jails. It was that level of
willingness to take risk that generated a huge movement. There was also huge pushback by the
state.
– Important for people to clarity about the role of the state. Important for people to resist isolation
and fragmentation. How to avoid shrinking back. To stand firm and broaden.
– Should you always be pushing to the degree that you do feel the pressure of the state?
– What groups are playing with surveillance? In what ways can we use surveillance directed at us to
subvert it? V for Vendetta as a trope. Prison and jail sentences are hard to push back on currently.
We can’t fill the prison in the same way as the height of the civil rights movement.
– We rarely know how much the state is surveilling us. We go really quickly towards escalatory
actions, which is a great strength. And, people do it in a lot of different ways in other places. They
then don’t get the same kinds of push back from the state. State pushback is not the only metric,
sometimes don’t find out til later.
– How do we resolve tensions and conflict? How do we build trust with new people? How do we
notice fear as it arises in relationship to new folks?
– All we can do is to hold people to standards of behavior. It’s not that our intuition doesn’t matter,
also we need to track it.
– If you are aligned with goals of work, and have to practice accountability to behaviors. What are
the agreements that we are asking people to be held to? A lot of us don’t have a lot of clarity
around what to do? Sexual assault? The more work we can do the front end, the more we can have

people with more skills. How do we commit to working through things with people? How to
commit to non-disposability culture. Impact is level of trust diminished as a result of people
causing harm.
– How to get into an organization – how much shared understanding is needed? How to balanace
internal and external work?
– White guilt pulling on resources related to state repression and court cases. People aren’t going to
take risks if there isn’t anybody supporting. It doesn’t serve comrades of color.
– We have to fight for our right to resist, especially if we want others to join.
– Hard to leverage legal cases when there are not ongoing campaigns.
– Patterns of repression to make examples of people in recent cases. How weave together the
overall political landscape. So important to defend the right to do that.
– ACLU freedom cities campaign as model of successful. Challenged power and didn’t involve
direct action.
– White Noise Collective is growing, ongoing and also developing through SURJ. Ongoing
workshops almost monthly. How to we prepare as an organization?
– Having agreements to talk with to other orgs – what happens if we get visits from the FBI?
Agreements to go public about it. How to build a larger sense of accountability within other
organizations.
– There have to be spaces for newly politicized white folks.
– We can pretty much count on some time in the coming year, there is going to be a harder boot
coming down on our comrades. Since we know that, we do have that to work backwards from.
When that starts, what are we going to wish we had been doing over these past months?
– What might be possible as far doing some kind of inoculation campaign about how they can be
working with their communities around grand jury resistance, and around flipping the script
around ‘Black extremists’. There are many people working to change that narrative in their
communities. Getting people ready for the conversation.
– Written resources: Vermont Workers Center working on their universal healthcare bill knowing
there was a right wing counter to it. Anti-racist inoculation on the front end around the state. Film
on COINTELPRO as an additional resource – fodder for what the actual inoculation conversations
will be able.
– Connect to Palestinian movement repression, especially at universities. Labeling people who are
resisting fascism.
– Challenging of liberal rhetoric policing tactics.
– We can’t let black bloc folks get picked off because their dissent is dramatized and alienates
liberals.
– Property destruction as a wedge. What are the pop ed materials around responding to diversity of
tactics? How to bring on useful educational tools that will meet and subvert?
Check Out
– Feeling a lot of energy around J20 resisters campaign and doing the organizing work to help base
recognize how important it is to show up. Excited about early inoculation – how to we get ready
and stay ready. How do we utilize our network, how can we bring this into our SURJ workshop,
open it up possible to WNC?
– Wants to do checklist in Catalyst handbook, how bring this into more dialogue and workshop
spaces, as well as into prisons.
– Will check in with other org.
– Grateful for conversation, and work everyone is doing. Want to engage more around concrete
support for people engaging with charges.
– Hope that there are additional support mechanisms for J20 resisters for people that can’t appear in
court. Appreciation for our movements. How to model in the bay, and to keep learning from
people outside the bay. Privilege has really limited my resilience in some ways, there is so much
that I am used to not having to deal with. Acknowledging that people live under constant state
repression all the time. How to integrate more collectivity. How much resilience we have and that
our movements tap into. It is our job to be humble and fierce, and bring the best we can.
– Powerful to reflect on the work. Thinking more about opportunities for preparing. How to push
own edge around education work and where that meets base building work. There are a lot of
people who have a lot of trust, that has happened over years. How do we leverage those

relationships – especially because they are not the same kinds of folks that show up in direct
action spaces. Reflecting about white supremacy culture showing up in fear, conflict and ego.
– Grateful for the space. Excited about inoculation workshop and to get more involved in radical
organizations. May be time to step up a little more, grateful for the push.
– Such a rich container, grateful to be present. It has moved me in different ways.