There’s a growing tension around one of the core strategic dilemmas facing the pro-democracy movement right now. People are legitimately fearful, yet the imperative to show up and publicly resist authoritarian overreach requires us to overcome that fear, recognizing that conditions will grow worse if we don’t remain in the fight, and the climate of fear could become paralyzing, winning the day for aspiring tyrants.
Why Visibility Is Strategically Essential
Mass Participation Creates Protection: Historical authoritarian research shows that broad-based, visible resistance is harder to suppress than underground activity. When movements retreat into secrecy, they become easier to isolate and eliminate. Successful democratic resistance requires “civic mobilization” and “early intervention” through visible mass action.
Transparency Builds Legitimacy: Open, peaceful, transparent organizing maintains moral authority and makes authoritarian overreach more politically costly. Secret organizing can be more easily framed as instances of dangerous conspiracy.
Network Effects Matter: Large, visible actions create momentum that attracts broader participation, including from people who might otherwise stay home. The goal is making democratic resistance feel inevitable rather than isolated.
International Attention: Visible mass resistance generates international media coverage and diplomatic pressure can constrain authoritarian behavior. Underground resistance is invisible to international observers.
Strategic Framework for Proceeding
Graduated Exposure Strategy
Public Core, Protected Periphery:
Maintain highly visible public organizing with known leaders taking calculated risks
Create multiple layers of participation allowing different comfort levels
Protect most vulnerable participants through security protocols
Enable anonymous participation in mass actions while maintaining visible leadership
Risk Stratification:
High-visibility leaders: Accept surveillance risk for maximum impact
Core organizers: Balance visibility with operational security needs
Mass participants: Provide multiple ways to participate with varying exposure levels
Support networks: Enable behind-scenes participation for those who can’t be public
Operational Security Within Transparency
Smart Digital Practices:
Use Signal for sensitive organizing conversations
Maintain public social media presence while protecting operational details
Create multiple communication channels for different security levels
Assume all Action Network registrations are monitored but proceed anyway
Legal Protection Infrastructure:
Mass legal observer networks at all public actions
Rapid response legal support for anyone targeted
Know Your Rights trainings emphasizing legal protections for political speech
Constitutional challenges prepared for any prosecution attempts
Building Protective Scale
The Numbers Game:
Focus on making actions so large that mass prosecution becomes impossible
Create multiple simultaneous actions to overwhelm surveillance capacity
Build broad coalitions including mainstream organizations that are harder to target
Generate participation from people in protected categories (clergy, veterans, etc.)
Addressing the Psychological Dimension
Normalize Democratic Resistance
Historical Framing: Every successful resistance movement faced surveillance and persecution. The Civil Rights Movement operated under FBI surveillance but succeeded through visibility, not secrecy.
Collective Courage Building: Create spaces for people to process fear together and make collective decisions about acceptable risk levels.
Skill Building: Provide training in both digital security and civil disobedience to help people feel more confident and prepared.
Risk Assessment Education
Help People Make Informed Choices:
Realistic assessment of actual prosecution likelihood versus fear levels
Understanding of legal protections for political speech and association
Clear information about what surveillance can and cannot do
Practical security measures that reduce risk without eliminating participation
Practical Recommendations
For Event Organizers
Multiple Participation Pathways:
Public registration for those comfortable being visible
Anonymous sign-up options using secure forms
Last-minute participation opportunities that don’t require advance registration
Support roles that don’t require public identification
Security-Conscious Planning:
Assume all digital communications are monitored but proceed with public organizing
Use encrypted communications for sensitive operational details
Create clear security protocols for protecting participant information
Build legal support infrastructure before actions, not after
For Participants
Graduated Engagement Strategy:
Start with lower-risk public activities to build confidence
Gradually increase involvement as comfort and security skills develop
Connect with others making similar risk assessments
Focus on building long-term sustainable participation rather than all-or-nothing choices
Digital Security Basics:
Use encrypted messaging for sensitive conversations
Maintain public social media presence to normalize political engagement
Understand that privacy tools provide protection but not invisibility
Accept some surveillance risk as the price of effective resistance
The Strategic Imperative
Visibility Creates Political Costs: Authoritarian tactics work by making the opposition feel isolated and powerless, but “when an authoritarian regime attacks everyone at once, it creates a potential for broad-based solidarity” that requires visible coordination to realize.
Underground Resistance Is Insufficient: Secret organizing cannot generate the mass mobilization necessary to make authoritarianism ungovernable. The movement needs millions of visible participants, not thousands of secret ones.
Time-Sensitive Window: The longer the movement waits to build visible resistance, the more normalized surveillance and persecution become. Early, visible resistance is more effective than later underground resistance.
Recommended Approach
Immediate Actions
Proceed with public organizing while improving security practices
Build legal support infrastructure for anyone who gets targeted
Create multiple ways for people to participate based on their risk tolerance
Focus on making actions large enough that mass prosecution becomes impossible
Medium-term Strategy
Normalize political resistance through sustained visible action
Build broad coalitions that make targeting politically costly
Generate international attention that constrains authoritarian behavior
Create crisis moments that force officials to choose sides publicly
Bottom Line
Yes, proceed with public organizing. The risks of retreat into secrecy are greater than the risks of visible resistance. But proceed strategically:
Accept that surveillance is happening and focus on making targeting politically costly
Build legal protection infrastructure for inevitable targeting attempts
Create participation pathways for different risk tolerance levels
Emphasize that mass visible resistance is historically more effective than underground organizing
Remember that democracy dies in isolation more than surveillance
The goal is not perfect security—it’s effective resistance at scale. Historical evidence shows that visible, mass, sustained resistance is what stops authoritarian consolidation, even under surveillance. The movement that retreats into secrecy to avoid persecution ends up isolated and easier to eliminate than the movement that accepts surveillance risk to build unstoppable mass power.
The paper trail fear is understandable and rational. The response should be better security practices and legal support, not retreat from public organizing.