Well said, there are desperately needed activities and roles at all levels of time commitment and monetary investment.

For anyone looking to actually counter this fascist uprising, I’d recommend finding something and specializing in it. At this stage, selecting the class of “random barely trained person with crappy AR” is probably not the most useful skill tree to be in.

Things that are painfully under explored in descending order of importance and also ascending order of difficulty:

• Logistics and organizing: get time with Food Not Bombs or similar, network at anarchist bookstores, network at targeted protests (usually ICE facilities), build a vetted network of like minded people IRL.
• Counter surveillance: watch court cases, figure out what types of evidence are being presented, learn how to do FOIA requests and the tricks for getting them to be accepted (hide/obfuscate your intent). Are the cops leaning hard on any new technologies? How effective are they at getting convictions?
• SIGINT: buy a $40 RTL-SDR, maybe get a ham license, learn where the bands are and what people are doing on them. If you can code, try automating signal detection, the APIs are straight forward. Learn how to identify police radio transmissions and decode them (hint: unit IDs are not encrypted). Learn how to detect chuds on baofengs. Skill up to systems that can transmit like the ADALM-Pluto or Pluto+ (~$250) and learn to…uh…leverage that capability in creative ways.
• Drone ISR: learn how to build a drone that’s not broadcasting its ID or operator location to the cops unlike DJI. Learn how to encrypt the command and telemetry links (hint: PrivacyLRS). Learn how to downlink encrypted video (hint: OpenHD)
• Long range precision: if you’re already into guns and have access to long distance ranges, learn to shoot at 600m+ beyond the effective range of most rifles. Learn to reload precision rounds correctly. Learn how police perform urban sniper operations (if you see anything about buying replacement window screen material you’re on the right track). Learn how to build camouflage systems (similarly, you’re in the right place if you’re learning to sew).

They’re a good group but they have a rep of being very (only?) beginner focused and extremely avoidant of anything that would get them on anyone’s radar. MISRA might be a mild exception but they’re more ideologically focused in a way many would find annoying. At the moment you won’t really find many legit leftist militias because both the liberals and the right have made it their mission to harass any such org to the greatest extent of their imagination, all while fostering RWNJ militias.

I like his stuff but all of his examples are kinda incoherent. If you’re going to be doing anything in the upper tiers with that kind of gear it’s probably for some sort of purposeful action or to defend some position. If you’re just wandering around at the grocery store in a PC you’re needlessly going to attract attention. If everyone is panicking and going crazy you should be acting like the most average boring person in the world until you have an opening to help fix things.

It should be noted for the record, if you ever have to use your duress code, do it before you hand the device over, don’t offer it up to them, and SHUT THE FUCK UP.

If you have time, turn the phone back on and you’ll get a “recovery” screen asking to do a factory reset. Select this and let it boot back to the setup screen then turn it off again. It’s now in a state where, if you remembered to shut the fuck up, they’ll have a much harder time proving that you destroyed evidence and didn’t just hand over a device you hadn’t setup yet, as is a somewhat common (good) practice with border crossings.

As with all things you may have to depend on, ideally you should test this flow. Carefully make a backup, verify the backup integrity, then use the duress pin ensuring that everything works the way you expected.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7oM0IB-IiM