Protect Our Activists
Activist Protection Resources List
About the Activist Protection Resources List
This is a collaborative page listing resources in different categories for protecting activists from risks they are exposed to in the course of their work. We welcome suggestions for reliable resources, as we build this new list.
While POA itself focuses on enhancing understanding of the activist experience in reality and fiction, as part of the broader effort to create a more supportive and loving climate for our first responders against injustice, we want to recognize the many entities who protect activists on the ground in a wide range of situations. We hope this list will help activists connect with these resources, some of which have been around for many decades while others are emerging in the thick of 2020 popular uprisings and activism.
Descriptions are quotes and/or our paraphrases of descriptions on their websites, and graphics used are logos or other identifier graphics they have published.
These resources are not reviewed or evaluated here, but by sharing them we are indicating that activists we know find them useful and reliable in the categories indicated.
Protections for People engaging in Mass Demonstrations
Defending Rights and Dissent
The National Lawyers Guild
The National Lawyers Guild helps to support social justice movements on the ground as well as provide solidarity to international struggles. The Guild is best known for defending the rights of protesters through Mass Defense and Legal Observer Programs, which have been providing legal support for movements for social justice for 50 years. Guild lawyers, law students, and legal workers observe police actions during protests, provide Know Your Rights trainings, track arrestees through the legal system, and provide free attorneys for protest-related cases.
Movement for Black Lives
The Movement for Black Lives is an ecosystem of individuals and organizations creating a shared vision and policy agenda to win rights, recognition, and resources for Black people. In doing so, the movement makes it possible for Black people, and therefore everyone, to live healthy and fruitful lives. M4BL’s Resources page includes specific guidance for safety at protests and related situations.
American Civil Liberties Union-District of Columbia
Nationally, and through its local chapters, the ACLU educates the public through Know Your Rights trainings and materials, appearances on radio and television, social media activity, and meetings with community groups, advocating in particular for freedom of expression and association, which are basic to the right to protest injustice.
American Friends Service Committee
Among the work of the AFSC are its guide on preparing, staying safer, and being effective when protesting. Its materials on the do’s and don’ts of safely intervening on behalf of targeted people when witnessing supremacist and other forms of harassment and violence can also be useful for activists in facing attacks, particularly against activists targeted by multiple oppressions.
Shutdown DC
To encourage safe, sensible and prepared participation in demonstrations to uphold 2020 election results, protest attempts to overturn them, and other aspects of the current movement for social transformation, Shutdown DC offers a series of trainings on knowing your rights in the streets, direct action training, protest photography training, de-escalation training and other ways for activists to be prepared to keep one another safe.
Witness.org
Witness.org helps identify critical situations and work with frontline human rights defenders affected by them the basics of video production, safe and ethical filming techniques, and advocacy strategies. Witness.org helps activists use video ethically, safely and effectively.
Alliance for Global Justice
Witness.org helps identify critical situations and work with frontline human rights defenders affected by them the basics of video production, safe and ethical filming techniques, and advocacy strategies. Witness.org helps activists use video ethically, safely and effectively.
Online Security
Equality Labs
Equality Labs is a feminist digital security, technology, political organizing startup dedicated to progressive power-building. EL provides practical tools–phone safety, anti-doxxing guide, etc.–for communities to make new interventions in longstanding systems of oppression and advocate for themselves.
Activist Protection in Elections
Participating in elections, and particularly taking leadership in ensuring people’s right to participate, have long carried great risks, as those holding economic, political and military power (including police) attempt to use them to influence electoral outcomes regardless of popular will. We can learn much from election defenders throughout history and around the world. Here are a few resources in the US.
FRONT LINE ACTIVIST PROTECTORS
These are activists and activist organizations who directly place themselves between people struggling for their rights and the “forces of the Beast,” namely, oppressive entities at any level–private corporation, local police force, national military–seeking to deprive them of these rights.
Some defenders have this specific task as their focus; other times this is one function among many in a social justice organization/movement.
Speaking Out
A four part guide to defending voting rights, including ways to be prepared for different scenarios and to take safe, concerted action, written by a group of researchers, organizers, and activists based on their understanding of how people-powered movements have protected freedom and democracy around the world.
Defending Rights and Dissent
DRD protects activists’ by exposing patterns of government repression, offering training, tools and resources to challenge, holding accountable and defending activists from police and state repression, raising consciousness about unconstitutional, illegal, unethical and undemocratic government tactics targeting movements and individual activists, and highlighting stories of resistance by grassroots activists and movements.
Political Prisoners
The Jericho Movement
Jericho advocates for recognition that political prisoners exist in the U.S. and calling for nationwide amnesty for all political prisoners. Their projects include locating and building the case for amnesty for individual prisoners, as well as education, legal defense and fighting for quality medical care for political prisoners.
The Jericho Movement
Jericho advocates for recognition that political prisoners exist in the U.S. and calling for nationwide amnesty for all political prisoners. Their projects include locating and building the case for amnesty for individual prisoners, as well as education, legal defense and fighting for quality medical care for political prisoners.
Activist Community Protection
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
Jericho advocates for recognition that political prisoners exist in the U.S. and calling for nationwide amnesty for all political prisoners. Their projects include locating and building the case for amnesty for individual prisoners, as well as education, legal defense and fighting for quality medical care for political prisoners.
