I went through "active bystander training" meant to stop you from freezing up in a crisis so you can take action to help others. The idea is to counter the "bystander effect" where you freeze up assuming someone else is going to help.

There's an exercise in it where you imagine you first think of a scenario where you would need to take action, think of what that action would be, then imagine you are in that scenario & picture yourself taking action

In DBT we call this same exercise "Coping ahead." While in DBT it's applied for "what will I do if I have a panic attack on the train" in Active Bystander training it's used for "What will I do if I see someone else having a panic attack on the train" or "What will I do if I see someone being harassed on the train"

There is a learned helplessness in our society; we are all watching ICE, fascism, ethnic cleansing, environmental disaster, and we are docile bystanders

Everyone is exhausted by the alarmism going on right now but honestly it's deserved. We ARE in an emergency situation and our inaction will be looked back upon as shameful by the people of the future, if any are still around.

So let's apply this exercise

If you're white, I want you to imagine that you are seeing ICE asking someone for documents. I want you to imagine yourself getting in the way. See yourself getting in that officer's face and telling him off. Use your "I want to talk to your manager" voice. Tell him he has no right. Interrogate him on who he thinks he is. Make it impossible for him to do his job,

If you're white, I want you to imagine you are seeing someone be taken by ICE. I want you to see yourself getting in the way. Physically stopping ICE from doing this. Blockading the truck. Standing there. Tackling the officer. Would you stand by and watch SS take someone in germany? NO! Could you live with yourself if you did nothing? Will there be consequences to you for doing this? Yes. Do those consequences outweigh the life of this person if you do nothing? No

And you probably have this inner wall. This line. It says "What if I lost my job" "What if I go to prison" and it probably even says "If I go to prison or lose my job I won't be able to play the new smash brothers in December" and I want you to imagine a scale and on one side put Smash Brothers and on the other side put Ethnic Cleansing and I want you to reeaaallly think about what's more important

Because, in fact, you'll be fine. You will be fine if you can't play the new video game. There are plenty of old video games. You already have some video games. Be willing to give up something like that. If you *really* want to stop ICE, if you *really* want socialism or communism or anarchism, you can't keep sitting around hoping someone else will do it and you can't keep thinking about only stuff you can do which will not have consequences.

In the active bystander training, it was actually me who said "If I'm wrong about this person being predatory at a party, I'm concerned it will hurt my reputation and I won't be invited back to these parties and then I can't be there if a REAL predator is there"

and the instructor looked me straight in the eyes with a deadpan face and said "So you're taking a risk whenever you intervene, but what's worse. someone being assaulted or you not being invited to parties"

The fact of the matter is, anything that's actually a threat to the fascists and capitalists is going to be risky to you. There is no action you can take with maximum impact on Them but little impact no You.

If it can't have negative consequences on you, it won't have negative consequences on the fascists.

A lot of the teenagers who participated in walk-outs for gun violence (a totally astroturfed campaign btw) were SUPER concerned about it hurting their college entrance prospects

And, really, this tame symbolic action? You'll be fine. But a lot of them sought out even tamer actions so they wouldn't suffer any consequences at all.

And you have to ask, what do you really care about then?

I see adults being even worse about this

Also, and this part I KNOW is gonna be controversial, but fellow white trans people? We overstate the degree to which we are extra vulnerable to police violence.

Like, when I got arrested, yeah I got treated worse than the other white people I was arrested with, but the cis straight people of color were treated worse than me. Especially if you're like, middle class working in tech, you have plenty of white privilege you can wield.

Some addendums:

The only reason I specified "white people" is because I think it's extremely not my place to tell people of color to put themselves in harm's way when they likely would be in greater danger than me doing the same action. If you're a person of color you know your level of risk better than I do and have to weigh that risk yourself. "Cope ahead" is still probably a useful skill even if you're not gonna tackle an ICE officer.

The main point point of this thread is to provide a useful skill to counter paralysis, whatever specific action you decide you're going to take in that scenario, and to get you to stop thinking "What will happen to ME if *I* do this" and to start thinking "What will happen to THEM if I *don't* do this"

and also some tough love that like, the cops only know what they see and what you tell them and more than anything what they see is if you're white or not. they don't know anything that isn't markedly visible and most stuff on our like privilege checklists don't matter at all to them if you're white. A white ace pansexual demigender furry person isn't at greater risk than a cis, allosexual, straight, non-furry black person.