February 4th - Content to Amplify
The billionaire Epstein class, ICE concentration camps, defiance spreading, and Trump's desperation
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Now on to today’s dispatch…
TL/DR; Amplify these 3 narratives (content below):
The same billionaires that are robbing us and enabling fascism have raped and tortured little girls.
ICE is terrorizing our neighbors in our streets and in concentration camps.
Americans are escalating their defiance of the fascist Trump regime.
Trump is desperately trying to stay in power by seizing control of elections, blocking people from voting, and stopping votes from being counted. But we won’t let him.
Like I’ve been saying for the past two weeks, we are at a real cultural inflection point, with new and unlikely voices speaking out against the Trump regime. This breakthrough was spurred by ICE openly murdering Americans in the streets and is being advanced by the recent dump of Epstein files, which implicates many, many rich and powerful men (across the political spectrum) in an unprecedented child torture and sex trafficking ring. With this surge of new and unlikely allies speaking out, I want to caution us against a trend that I’ve been seeing: shaming defections. Responding “This is your fault!” and “You voted for this!” might feel really good in the moment, but does it really help and is it really the best place to channel your anger? I guarantee you that there is not a single person on earth who likes hearing I told you so or having their intelligence insulted. It also does not acknowledge the very real conservative propaganda pipeline and brainwashing that people have experienced. Listen, I’m not asking you to befriend or agree with Joe Rogan or the Flagrant guys, because, yes, they absolutely enabled this (and f*ck them), but their voices and the voices of your horrified MAGA uncle are incredibly important in creating the permission structure and social proof for more people to abandon Trump and MAGA. Political scientists emphasize the importance of a big tent in encouraging the pillar defections needed to defeat authoritarianism.
“The larger and more representative a pro-democracy movement, the greater its chances of encouraging shifts in loyalty among key pillars of support to autocratic actions and regimes.” - Adam Fefer & Maria J. Stephan
So if our goal is to get out of this fascist hellhole, the very least we can do is to stop openly shaming defectors. Just save that for your private group chats instead, please. 🙏 And if you don’t want to listen to me or the authoritarianism scholars, maybe listen to Bad Bunny instead?, At the Grammy’s this weekend, he said, “The hate get more powerful with more hate. The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love. So please. We need to be different. If we fight, we have to do it with love.” As always, our friends in Minnesota are showing us how it’s done:
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TOP THREE THINGS TO AMPLIFY
1. The same billionaires that are robbing us and enabling fascism have raped and tortured little girls.
[TRIGGER WARNING: sexual assault / child abuse]
If you’ve been ingesting the drip drip of revelations coming out of the latest Epstein file dump, you likely feel very ill. What the Epstein class did to little girls and babies is sickening and a level of evil that is hard to even comprehend. First, the president of the United States is a pedophile rapist. And there are hundreds of other ultra-rich and powerful men who also raped and abused children. So as this conversation continues to dominate online, there are two things I want to flag for the narrative:
Avoid making this political. Men from across the political spectrum are in these files. This is not a political issue, this is a moral issue: it is beyond wrong to rape and abuse children. Epstein has already been fracturing MAGA, and turning this into a left vs. right issue risks making this unnecessarily partisan and muddying the conversation. Let me be clear: every single person who participated in these heinous acts should face justice, regardless of political party. Period.
Impugn the entire billionaire Epstein class. Instead of focusing exclusively on Trump/MAGA and risking this becoming a partisan issue, frame this in the context of reality: this is about power, extreme wealth, and control. The Epstein story points to the system being rigged for the ultra-rich, who play by a different set of rules. It is the same billionaires that are robbing us and hoarding wealth, while the rest of us are struggling to afford our lives. It is the same billionaires that are complicit in enabling the fascism and terror in our neighborhoods. And now we learn that these same billionaires have been part of a child sex trafficking operation that raped, abused, tortured, and murdered little girls. We need to make this link for people.
2. ICE is terrorizing our neighbors in our streets and in concentration camps.
The Trump regime knows they looked bad in Minnesota. It is possible that they will try to “tone it down” or do things less obviously, but we know they will continue to kidnap and traffic people. Today’s What’s Resonating? reported that the right is outpacing us on the ICE conversation, even though we had been completely owning and winning this conversation for the past month. So while the conversation around Epstein dominates, we must continue to show what ICE is doing in our communities because we know that it is mobilizing people to organize and generally moving public opinion. We cannot just move on from what they have done and continue to do to our neighbors. But one thing that is missing from focus is what is happening in the concentration camps (call them that, please). We know that people are being held in inhumane conditions, taunted, and being denied medical care. We must bring attention to this and keep the ICE drumbeat going.
Over 73,000 people are currently in ICE custody – the most ever
Aliya Rahman, the disabled woman dragged out of her car by ICE, shares her experience in the Whipple Detention Center
Children are kept isolated from families in a playpen
ICE finalizes concentration camp purchase in PA
Two cases of measles so far reported at Dilley detention center
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3. Americans are escalating their defiance of the fascist Trump regime.
The culture of defiance is spreading and Americans are exercising their noncooperation muscle, particularly focusing on the corporate enablers of ICE. 🥲 I’m so heartened by the ways in which everyday Americans are showing up! But importantly, we are also seeing defiance spreading, to institutions and electeds, which is a huge development and important to amplify to normalize.
Targeting corporate enablers
Polling shows 1 in 4 Minnesotans participated, or know someone who did, in the statewide blackout on Jan 23rd
No Housing for ICE campaign: put pressure on hotels to stop housing ICE
Calls for new Target CEO Michael Fiddelke to take a stand against ICE in MN
Families stage protest at a Target in New York
Defiance spreading
Minneapolis City Council delays liquor licenses to two hotels housing ICE
FAFO: Prosecutors from across the country will arrest ICE agents who break the law
State treasury officials say ICE crackdowns are bad for business and tax revenues
[Headline]
Federal judge blocks the Trump administration from ending legal protections for 350,000 Haitians with scathing opinion
NY AG Tish James deploys legal observers to document ICE activity
Doctor admits patient to hospital to save from ICE
BONUS: Trump is desperately trying to stay in power by seizing control of elections, blocking people from voting, and stopping votes from being counted. But we won’t let him.
It’s February of a midterm election year and Trump is universally losing – losing on approval, losing on immigration, losing on the economy, losing his supporters, and losing for being a pedophile. And he knows it. In private, he is telling the GOP that he will be impeached if they lose the midterms. So obviously, he is setting the stage to try to rig the midterm elections. We need to prime people for this, so that people are ready to flex their mass defiance muscle in defense of the election when the time comes. At the same time, don’t portray this as a done deal – we will absolutely stop him.
Trump urges Republicans to “nationalize the voting system” as he continues to make false claims about elections
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MORE CONTENT + CLIPS
Stories of Defiance
(showcase the movement to fight back from everyday people to institutions to build social proof)
Tenants in Twin Cities unionize to demand eviction moratorium
A mother runs a donation network in MN for mothers who are staying home to avoid ICE.
Over 1000 Boulder runners turn out for a “Fuck ICE” running route
Drummers host protest in downtown Minneapolis
Native dancers held a Jingle Dress healing ceremony at Alex Pretti and Renee Good’s memorial
Protester tells agent to put weapons away while children are trying to get to school
AOC in conversation with Don Lemon: “They know they can’t go after all of us.”
Lorde posts “ICE out” and donates merch earnings to Minnesota Immigration Rights Action Committee
Kerry Washington says being political is no longer optional
A collective of creators launch “Creators against ICE” to raise money for National Immigration Law Center
City of Minneapolis nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
Marjorie Taylor Greene: “MAGA was all a lie”
Protesters disrupt PG&E event to demand canceling contract with Palantir
Renee Good’s brothers give their testimony, emphasizing how ICE agents are disrupting families and communities
Minneapolis holds singing resistance marches to hotels housing ICE
ICE / Military Escalations
(show the reality of fascism and widespread impact on communities)
ICE chases bystanders in Minneapolis documenting ICE with guns
Rep. Robert Garcia reads texts from border agent who shot Marimar Martinez five times
ICE is using surveillance tech to spy on everyday people