A note to the MODS: Maybe this post as it is doesn’t comply with all the rules of the sub. I appeal to your conscience and good judgement. Given the seriousness of the topic and the urgency of the moment, please consider either opening an exception, or letting the post stay up just long enough so the members can get informed, and hopefully they’ll come up with their own original versions of this, in ways more attuned with the sub. Also please don’t blindly ban me, I’m not trying to disrespect this community (it’s quite the contrary!) And if possible, help spread it too!

The author of this document: Doran Schrantz is an expert civil and political organizer from Minnesota. Last winter during ICE’s besiege and unconstitutional mass violations, her network decisively helped organizing Minnesota’s civil society in record time under huge pressure, including organizing the first general strike in 46 years.

TLDR, Key takeaways:

• The Trump administration is unleashing total chaos during these next months around the midterm elections, and the resilience of organized civil society will be challenged in unprecedented ways.
• Saving the elections is absolutely necessary in order to stop Trump’s fascist agenda to fully materialize.
• Lawsuits and judges are important, but they won’t be nearly enough. Civil society must organize and prepare.
• These local organized groups exist, they are trying to organize people and save the elections. Every person needs to know they can reach out to them. Please find one of these groups and help them anyway you can.
• Don’t let the huge flow of scandals flooding the media distract you from this fundamental action - join those who are fighting back.

Secondary goal: Put this in front of every person. After reading the post and the document, copy-paste it, or make your own version, your own summary, and share this EVERYWHERE you can, throughout Reddit and beyond. This is the time for doing it, please do it.

________________________________________________________

Act Free to Be Free: A State and Local Pro-Democracy Framework

- A Civil Society framework for Election Defense in 2026

Link: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28490455-act-free-to-be-free/

Executive Summary

Democracy is not something you have. It is something you practice. The Constitution does not protect itself; civil society protects it, by acting as if it applies, out loud, in public, under pressure.

Anyone paying attention knows that Donald Trump is not preparing to lose the 2026 midterms. He is preparing to disrupt and sabotage them, and his administration has been laying the groundwork for months.

The harder problem is this: most of us (organizers, elected officials, legal advocates, pro-democracy funders) are still preparing for a normal election. We are running election programs. We are testing messages. We are mobilizing voters. These are not wrong things to do. They are profoundly insufficient for the threat we are actually facing.

There is also something harder to name, a kind of collective avoidance. An unwillingness to fully believe our own eyes. Many Americans have internalized a story about ourselves that says we are immune from this kind of thing. We are not. And the next six months will matter enormously for how far down the abyss we go.

In 2020, Trump tried to overturn the results of the election and was stopped by Pence, by Republican secretaries of state, by a Congress that (barely) played its constitutional role, and by localized grassroots formations that could intervene in real time on the ground. Those guardrails held. They are gone now. His administration is loyal to him alone. Congress has abdicated. J.D. Vance will not save us.

The only authentic bulwark against an authoritarian consolidating power is a multi-sector, constitutionally grounded, multi-racial, broad-based mobilization of civil society, ready for the best and prepared for the worst. We know this works because we did it in Minnesota. When ICE and CBP occupied our communities for two and a half months, we acted free to be free. Tens of thousands of trained constitutional legal observers documented every encounter. Mutual aid networks sustained people through the crisis. Small businesses invoked their Fourth Amendment rights and refused warrantless entry. Local law enforcement mostly stood aside rather than collaborate. And when called, 50 to 70 percent of the general population showed up, not because they were activists, but because they understood what was being taken from them and chose to act.

That mobilization repelled 3,500 ICE/CBP agents, gave our Governor room to fight, gave our AG’s lawsuits political standing, and won the national media narrative, not because any single actor or sector was powerful enough alone, but because all of it together created a reality the Trump Administration could not overcome.

This framework to prepare and unleash a civil society response to election sabotage is not a program. It is a strategic analysis, a way of understanding the threat and the architecture of response, designed to support operational playbooks driven by in-state organizing and pro-democracy infrastructure. The question is whether we will build it before the crisis hits, rather than scrambling to respond when it inevitably will.

________________________________________________________

The document is only 12 pages long but it has its breadth and depth.

This is the general structure of the rest of the document. Hopefully something catches your eye if you're still hesitant.

Title: Act Free to Be Free: A State and Local Pro-Democracy Framework - A Civil Society Framework for Election Defense in 2026

1. Executive Summary
2. What Is the Evidence of Their Strategy?
   2.1. A Unified Strategy, Not Disconnected Actions
   2.2. The Documented Tactics and What They’re Actually For
   2.2.1. Ballot seizures: manufacturing the evidence base
   2.2.2. Voter roll demands: seizing control of who gets to vote.
   2.2.3. Loyalists and deniers installed in key positions
   2.2.4. The Maduro play: cultivating a foreign witness
   2.2.5. ICE at the polls: named, planned, and previewed
   2.2.6. Defunding election observers
   2.2.7. The pre-emptive fraud narrative.
   2.2.8. The racial logic underneath the strategy.
   2.3. The Goal Is Not to Win the Election. The Goal Is a Power Grab.
3. Organizing States to Meet the Moment: Unleashing a Civil Society Strategy
4. Step 1: Know Your State
   4.1. The Macro Threat Landscape
   4.2. State-Specific Threat Mapping
   4.3. Power Analysis of the Machinery
5. Step 2: Deterrence, Extracting a Political Cost Every Time
   5.1. Mode A: Proactive Pre-emption, Show Up Ahead of Time
   5.1.1. Georgia’s model
   5.1.2. Minnesota’s model
   5.2. Mode B: Rapid Response, Multi-Track, Simultaneous, Pre-Built
   5.2.1. Legal
   5.2.2. Political
   5.2.3. Press and Public
   5.2.4. Tactical/Operational
   5.2.5. Grassroots Deployment
6. Step 3: Build State Capacity
   6.1. Track A: A State Democracy Nerve Center
   6.2. Track B: Mass Training of Grassroots Leaders
   6.2.1. Political education
   6.2.2. Tactical preparation
7. Step 4: Fight Back in Real Time
   7.1. Courts
   7.2. Field
   7.3. Mainstream media
   7.4. Social and digital
   7.5. Institutional
   7.6. Non-compliance
8. Step 5: Mass Mobilization and Strategic Non-Compliance, When the Rubicon Is Crossed
   8.1. The Minnesota Proof of Concept
   8.2. What This Step Requires
   8.2.1. Sustained physical presence at sites of high symbolism
   8.2.2. General strikes and economic non-compliance
   8.2.3. Nonviolent strategic direct action
   8.2.4. Pre-built municipal and state infrastructure
   8.3. The Through Line
9. Sources and Citations

________________________________________________________

Hesitant still? Here I compiled a selection of summarized citations. You should really read them.

https://www.reddit.com/user/JrSoftDev/comments/1vyz8ic/act_free_to_be_free_highlights/

Reading the whole document is much better, all the important details are there.

________________________________________________________

Final notes:

• We are 10 weeks away from the Midterm elections.
• These 12 pages are one of the most important reads you will be doing this year. Yes, it’s that crucial. Read 1 page or 2 per day if needed, but please read it!
• As you’re reading it, understand your role in all this - reach out to these groups, go find them, they need your help.
• Finally, take this document with you, adapt it, summarize it in your own way, take chunks of it, slash it, do as you please - and share it as much as possible.

“Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

From when our government wasn't run by fascists.

I want to make this very clear before you read this.

Palantir is the service provider to ICE for this effort. The data is not going to be owned, accessed, or used by the Palantir company - only the tenant, in this case ICE, will have access.

I only say this because so many people will blame Palantir when the focus should ALWAYS be in the agencies hiring Palantir.

Wawa at 7124 Ritchie Hwy, Glen Burnie, MD 21061. Three blacked out SUVs and six officers surrounded a man in his white van. Kidnapped him after breaking his windows. Just alerting those who like to stay informed of these activities.

Posted in r/Maryland for more visibility, but was removed. Sad panda.

He did this interview prior to taking action.

I saw this comment on r/50501 and wanted to bring it here for opinions.

>The 50501 has run its course. Those that are saying protesting didn't do anything are sadly mistaken. With the volume of people who showed up in the streets it has promoted enough awareness that we might have a chance at midterms. Remember when we were jumping up and down for support from the media, the famous and the previous administration? We've seen more in the news that cover the truth, actors and artists openly refusing this administration and finally Obama and Biden speaking up. The best we can do now is stop using services and products that feed the oligarchy and starve them out. I fear this may be a much bigger hurdle than getting rump out of office.

Link to the original thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/50501/s/aikn4ihTC8

I know Signal would not be able to prevent this, but what we should be able to do is wipe our own chat history or at the very minimum, when a person is kicked out of a chat the entire chat history is wiped.

This way when a protester is take into custody, the admins of the various chats (who know about the compromise) can kick the individual out knowing the chat history will be deleted.

Comments?

I am looking to be part of a larger effort to get the ALPRs out of our county. I have already received a response from the AAPD regarding the use of the camaras, and am submitting another request to another department for specifics on the contract.

It occurred to me that maybe someone has already done this work....

Here is a link to the public site for the program:

https://www.aacounty.org/police-department/real-time-information-center/automated-license-plate-reader-program

Live from Delaney Hall - 11 JUN 2026

Ten days ago I submitted my local state equivalent of a FOIA request asking for the following:

1. The complete executed contract, master service agreement, and all associated addenda, amendments, and pricing sheets between the City and Flock Safety (or its parent, subsidiary, or affiliated entities).
2. All Pole Attachment Agreements, Joint Use Agreements, or Memorandums of Understanding between the City (or the Police Department) and the owners of the utility or streetlight infrastructure (e.g., [local electric company], [state electric company], or local electric cooperatives) authorizing the attachment of surveillance hardware to those structures.
3. All Right-of-Way (ROW) Permits, Encroachment Permits, and associated engineering field surveys, structural assessments, or wind-load certifications issued by the City Public Works or Traffic Engineering Department for each specific camera installation location.
4. All electrical permits, inspection reports, and utility billing adjustments or agreements associated with hardwiring the surveillance devices into the streetlight power grid.
5. The specific data-retention policy, data-sharing logs, and lists of external state, federal, or out-of-state law enforcement agencies currently granted access to the city's ALPR database.

They have yet to respond and have until close of business today to do so before I am able to take this case to my State AG to essentially force them to comply.

I have removed identifying information, so please fill in yourself and use this as a template for reaching out to your own local government.

A brief explanation:

Points 1 and 5 are important for presenting to your fellow citizens when urging them to act by showing up to local city hall or county meetings. Many people don't understand the degree to which these cameras are used and what information they obtain and think these are just a different form of CCTV. Almost everyone I've talked to with a passing understanding of Flock cameras has drastically shifted their tune from complacency to outrage after I showed them, in Flock's own language, exactly what is collected.

Points 3, 4, and 5 are important because many of these cameras are installed illegally by your city bypassing their own permitting processes! If you can get fined or forced to tear down for improperly putting up a deck or extension on your own property by not obtaining the correct permitting, your city government should be held to the same standard.

Many people ask what they can do to help that isn't illegal like cutting cameras down or damaging them, and for those of us who have families to support and jobs we can't lose, this is the easiest answer. The initial email takes 5 minutes of your time, the follow up to your State AG takes another 5, and then maybe an evening or two to stand before city council to present your concerns.

Please ask any questions about the process and I will help if I can!

Members of the public have the opportunity to provide input on a proposed Monumental Arch at Memorial Circle on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, near Arlington National Cemetery and along the Potomac River.

When asked who the proposed 250-foot triumphal arch was being built for, President Trump pointed directly at himself and stated: "Me"

Comment here:

https://parkplanning.nps.gov/document.cfm?parkID=186&projectID=136973&documentID=151576

BLUF: I contacted the County Executive to ask if they supported the monitoring of the movement of residents and if not, then would they work to remove the Flock camaras from our country. What follows is the emailed response, do with it what you will but I think this is a serious concern.

\_\_\_\_\_

Good afternoon Mr.

We received your recent feedback regarding the use of Automated License Plate Readers in the county. The Anne Arundel County Police Department's use of ALPR cameras is strictly for legitimate law enforcement purposes and the department is committed to transparency and the protection of civil liberties. For more information please view the county website HERE and/or email [PoliceALPR@aacounty.org](mailto:PoliceALPR@aacounty.org).

Thank you for contacting this office with your feedback and concerns.

Best regards,

The Best Place
For All

Jennifer Holson
Office of the County Executive Community Engagement & Constituent Services
Office number: 410-222-1715

[www.aacounty.org\](http://www.aacounty.org)

I am adding this to my calendar to attend.