We Live in Fearful Times. Our Safety Comes Through Preparing Together.

“Part of my work as a community safety and security practitioner is about offering tools for people to feel and move through fear so that we can continue to keep more of us in this fight,” says Che Johnson-Long. In this episode of “Movement Memos,” Che and I discuss safety planning and practical actions that individuals and organizations can take right now to create as much safety as possible in our lives and our movements.

Music by Son Monarcas, Pulsed and Curved Mirror

TRANSCRIPT

Note: This transcript was originally published in Truthout. It has been reprinted here with permission.

Kelly Hayes: Welcome to “Movement Memos,” a Truthout podcast about organizing, solidarity, and the work of making change. I’m your host, writer and organizer, Kelly hayes. Today, we are talking about movement security and safety planning in these perilous times. I know many of us are feeling deeply unsafe right now, so I wanted to have a practical conversation about what we can do to create as much safety in our lives and movements as we can. We will be hearing from Che Johnson-Long. Che is the Community Safety Education Coordinator at Vision Change Win. She has also organized with the Racial Justice Action Center, the Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative, and the Safe OUTside the System Collective of the Audre Lorde Project. She comes from a long line of blues singers and calls Atlanta, Georgia, home.

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[musical interlude]

KH: Che Johnson-Long, welcome to “Movement Memos.”

Che Johnson-Long: Hi.

KH: How are you doing today, friend?

CJL: I feel surprisingly hopeful. I feel really grateful for spring in Atlanta, and I feel like I could use a 27-hour nap.

KH: A 27-hour nap sounds amazing. I think I want one of those, too. These are busy times, and I think many of us could use a nap.

I know this is an especially hectic time for you, as someone that people look to for advice around safety and security — which are really widespread concerns right now. But before we get into a deep dive about what’s unfolding right now, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your work?

CJL: Yeah, my name is Che Johnson-Long. My pronouns are she/her. I am an abolitionist organizer. I am a somatics practitioner, and I’m a community safety and security practitioner and trainer. I run the programmatic offerings of Vision Change Win’s community safety work, which means that I support left movement groups through navigating safety threats, threats that can include threats from the state, police, law enforcement, the right, and sometimes even safety threats from within our communities. I train groups, I offer rapid response support. I also run a Security School that’s a 10-month training program for community organizing groups.

Yeah, what else to say? I am a sci-fi nerd. I believe strongly that sugar does not belong on grits and I’m willing to debate that. Yeah, I think that’s me.

KH: Well, we love sci-fi nerds around here, and I don’t have a strong position around grits.

CJL: The podcast is done.

KH: Yeah, I think that about covers it.

[Laughter]

But just to briefly address safety, since I have you here… in your role as someone who helps groups and organizations operate as safely as they can, what kind of threats and concerns are you seeing and hearing about right now? What are folks who are concerned for their safety grappling with?

CJL: Yeah, there’s a ton of emerging threats to organizations, to individuals and to dissent in general. I say emerging because some of these threats are not new to this political moment, but they’ve either ramped up or they have been accompanied by so many new threats that they can feel new. Namely, I think there’s just been a huge uptick in the right wing targeting left movement groups who support a free and liberated Palestine, Black-led groups and trans-led groups. There’s been a number of right-wing think tanks who have put out reports quite literally naming these groups and putting a target on them.

We’re seeing repression at the federal level with H.R. 9495, which is a bill that the second part of which would allow for the Treasury Secretary and the President to basically claim that a non-profit is “a terrorist supporting organization,” and that claim could then remove that group’s 501(c)(3) tax status. I think threats like H.R. 9495 are important for us to track because I think they point to an emerging trend of creating new ways for the government to label an organization as a terrorist group or supporting terrorism. That’s really scary because they could very, very immediately change a group’s tax status, make it really difficult for them to receive grants [and] have staff.

I think there’s also a lot of threats to groups who are doing any kind of mutual aid or collective care work. We’ve been seeing a lot of financial deplatforming happening. Namely this is happening with bail fund groups, but it’s not exclusive to bail funds. We’re seeing groups who receive donations through PayPal or other financial institutions get a notice from PayPal or other banks saying that they simply won’t house their money. And in some cases, those groups are also then seeing their funds frozen, which then makes it really difficult for groups to continue doing their work.

And especially for bail funds, I think it’s especially scary because these groups rely on many small donations to get people out of jail. And the existence of bail funds, I think is part of a political ecosystem that allows people to feel more confident about showing up to protests, knowing that if there are arrests and if they happen to be one of those people arrested, that there’s an organized group of people whose role it is to get them out of jail. And so without those bail funds, I imagine that it would chill a lot of the protests and mass protests that we’re seeing.

There are threats to individuals. I don’t have to say that ICE has been incredibly terrifying. The ICE raids that we’re seeing in Atlanta and Chicago, in New York City, in many places have been overwhelming to all sorts of left movement groups, but especially groups that focus on immigrant rights.

In addition to these ICE raids, in Atlanta and a lot of other places that are fighting against cop cities, we’re seeing increased police targeting. I was just talking to someone the other day who had a story that I hear repeated in many other stories, which is essentially, I was driving, I got pulled over. The cop asked me a few questions, maybe saw a stack of flyers in my backseat or saw a bumper sticker or saw something that indicated involvement or support for the movement to Stop Cop City, and then asked for my phone and presumably went through my phone and then handed it back and let me go. And I think those kinds of stories are us starting to notice and pick up on police targeting.

And then I think the last thing is just a general threat to anyone who’s dissenting. We see this all over the place, whether it’s that recent Greenpeace lawsuit, they lost a suit against a big oil company called Energy Transfer, and the suit is what’s known as a SLAPP suit. It stands for “strategic lawsuits against public participation.” And these suits are basically meant to discourage folks from protesting and groups from organizing protests. They’re meant to drag on and on and on, they’re meant to be very costly. And right now, Greenpeace, because of this loss, might owe over $600 million in damages.

These suits are frivolous, they’re absurd. Many courts have already said that they are illegal. I think over 35 states have anti-SLAPP laws that are basically meant to prevent these kinds of frivolous suits, but unfortunately, those anti-SLAPP laws aren’t everywhere. And so suits like this are meant to, of course, end organizations like Greenpeace. And I think it should be noted that even though Greenpeace is the organization targeted, Greenpeace is not the organization who mainly led a lot of the organizing against the pipeline, the DAPL pipeline. And so I imagine that these suits will continue and are meant to eventually create enough intimidation that organizations distance themselves from protests.

I think Greenpeace is a good example because they tried everything. Before the SLAPP suit, they tried a RICO federal suit and it failed. And so I just think that we’re in a political moment right now where dissent is very quickly being criminalized and the state is trying every possible avenue to criminalize that it can. I think we’ll see more of these kind of meritless RICO suits in the future. I think we’ll see more of these SLAPP suits in the future that are just meant to tie up groups in the court system for a long time or be very costly for groups.

KH: I’m glad you brought up the situation with Greenpeace because I don’t think this is on a lot of people’s radar, or that folks necessarily understand how this outcome might affect grassroots work. The idea that telling the truth about a pipeline project, or using messaging that defends a marginalized community, or holding direct action workshops, can lead to a $660 million judgement has chilling implications for grassroots organizers because grassroots folks do all of the things Greenpeace was targeted for, in this case, but don’t have the kind of money Greenpeace has had to wage a defense. That case is going to move through the appeals process, but given the right-wing capture of the Supreme Court, it’s a very daunting situation.

Which kind of describes what we’re up against in general — it’s a very daunting situation. So, in your experience, how are people adapting as our political climate becomes more overtly fascistic?

CJL: It’s a scary time. It is a scary time, and I think that people are responding like it’s a scary time. And so the question for everyone right now is how do you “do fear?”

I had this somatic coach years ago, she was wonderful and she was kind of a hard ass. And so one thing that she said to me that really stuck with me was, we were talking about bravery and what actually creates bravery in someone. And she said to me, “Bravery is not when someone doesn’t feel fear in the midst of a scary thing happening. Bravery is when someone feels fear, really actually embodied feeling of fear, and then continues to move through it and continues to take an action that leads to more liberation, more freedom.” And then she proceeded to give me a bunch of homework about practicing more embodied fear, because at the time, I was someone who really loved to disassociate from fear and just kind of check out from it.

And so I say all this to say that I think we’re seeing a lot of folks adapt to this political moment by choosing to feel fear and to move through it together anyways. And I think that is incredibly brave and I feel really inspired by all of these examples of bravery.

I don’t mean to shout y’all out too much, but I feel very much a fan girl of the organizers of Chicago right now. Y’all are holding down some incredible organizing work when it comes to dealing with the ICE raids in your city. I think that it’s probably the result of a lot of beautiful coordination and years of coalition work, but it’s inspired me.

I think about… there was a House hearing last year on antisemitism in schools, and the hearing was really meant to target schools who allowed for folks to publicly speak in support of a free and liberated Palestine. And it inspired me because it was all these public schools from New York City and Berkeley, California and Maryland I think, and these public school teachers, they were steadfast. They were clear about their allegiances to a free and liberated Palestine, to addressing actual antisemitism in their schools and to remaining anti-Zionists. And I just feel like that kind of bravery is what we need. And I think it has led to a lot of other public schools creating space for people to talk about their work and to talk about not just Palestine, but supporting trans folks, being in solidarity with the Black Liberation movement, with the movement for abolition.

And at the same time, I do think that some people are adapting to our political moment by avoiding fear, which I get it. I have a lot of empathy for the desire to not want to feel the immense, sometimes overwhelming fear, but I think that avoiding fear means avoiding the news. It means sometimes avoiding the movement. I think avoiding fear in this moment can often be the thing that leads to isolation, that leads to people saying things like, Oh, I’m going to sit this one out. And unfortunately, I think that this moment is very critical and we actually just need all of us inside of our left movement. We need stronger base building strategies so that there are more of us.

And so part of my work as a community safety and security practitioner is also about offering tools for people to feel and move through fear so that we can continue to keep more of us in this fight.

KH: Well, I appreciate the Chicago shout out. We are very proud of the work that’s happening here, and I hope more people will join those efforts.

I also want to say that I really relate to what you were saying about the distinction between not feeling something, and really feeling it, and allowing yourself to move through it. I am thinking about how, when I was younger, I did not have a healthy relationship with fear. In my early and mid-twenties especially, but for many years, I was not afraid in situations when I should have been. Trauma had really turned all of that off in me, which was helpful in some situations, and deeply unhelpful in others, because I took a lot of unnecessary risks in my life. In organizing, when I started to find myself in a position where other people took my actions and choices seriously, and might follow along, and do what I was doing, I had to reevaluate my actions. I had to think about what risks I was willing to create for other people. And in that way, I think my regard for other people helped me make better and more grounded decisions for myself, as well, because I started thinking about what would happen to us, instead of just disregarding what would happen to me.

As I have gotten a little older and a little more in touch with my mortality, and also done a lot of healing, I no longer have the problem of not being afraid when I ought to be. Now, I am thoroughly afraid of many things that I think it’s really normal and healthy to be afraid of. And I am okay with that. I don’t actually like that refrain from Dune that some people are fond of, about how “fear is the mindkiller,” because as someone who lacked fear when I should have had it, I know it has the power to keep me safe. I know fear can be like pain — sometimes it’s just warning us that there’s a problem, and we need to stop something, attend to something, or do something differently. But like pain, fear can become excessive, and it can take over our lives. At that point, it needs to be managed. I think we’re at our weakest when we are ruled by our fears and resentments. So, for me, it’s about not letting my fear govern me.

Because I think our fears, as you said, have the potential to immobilize us, and also the potential to compromise our values, if we allow that. So, much like grief, I think it’s important that we not hide from fear. We need to own it, discuss it, and talk about what’s grounded in something immediate, that needs to be attended to, and what’s probably not as pressing right now, even though it’s coming from a real place — and what we can and can’t do about these things.

I think one of the greatest dangers we face right now comes from fear and what it will bring out in us. I think the impulse to hunker down and to try to protect ourselves is a real one, and that it leads to people acting outside their values, abandoning people and breaking solidarity. And those actions are what really make the ugliest outcomes we’re afraid of more likely to happen in the long run.

CJL: Yes, I just want to say, now is the time to be bold and audacious. And I understand that move towards wanting to hide or be small, I have a lot of empathy for it. I think all of us have lots of practice of doing that in our lives, and this is not the time for small. This is the time for big, this is the time for actually more audacious campaign tactics and strategies and coalitions than what we’ve seen in the past.

KH: Thank you for that. I completely agree. And I think that to help people move through their fears, we need to give people tools, so they feel empowered to create as much safety as they can and reduce some of the harm and risks they and their communities might face. I know that’s what you’re doing in your work, and I have such a profound appreciation for that.

Can you talk a bit about what safety planning might look like for different groups and individuals right now? What kind of scenarios should people be looking at and how can we have these conversations without throwing ourselves into panic mode?

CJL: What a great question. I think it’s important for us to start with examining what is panic mode? How does panic mode happen? So I’m going to start by talking about what safety planning is not. We all have different ways that we respond to pressure or to safety threats. We all have ways that we have navigated or survived harm as individuals, and maybe that way has been to hide or to run away or to fight your way out. Maybe that way has been to negotiate or to appease. And I think that those ways are really smart. I think that those ways have saved us, and in some cases have been the reason that many of us are still alive.

And so while I have a lot of gratitude for these ways that we each individually have dealt with and moved through harm, trauma, abuse, violence, pressure, these ways, and sometimes people might refer to these as trauma responses, these trauma responses are not very adaptive. They’re kind of one-trick ponies. And they do not know how to read a calendar or a clock. And so they’re often responding in a present moment as if it were the past, as if it were that time where you got out or that time where you survived that thing. And so they’ll look at a current pressure or a current safety threat in 2025 and they’ll respond as if it’s 2009 or 1988 or 2023. And because they don’t read a clock or they don’t understand time very well, they can sometimes misread what’s needed in a moment. And so I think it’s important for us to just start by saying that it’s often from this place if we allow for our trauma responses to lead us and if we allow for them to be the only tools in our toolbox, that is what can create panic mode.

And so in order to understand this political moment and to not safety plan from our trauma responses or go immediately into panic mode, I think we also have to be able to look at what’s happening in our political landscape and understand some of the intention behind what the right is doing. I think namely the news is just a shit-show right now. There’s this term “flooding the zone” that I hear everywhere, and I think this term is meant to refer to the news media being flooded with all sorts of scary things. Some of them are legitimate scary things that are actually happening and being implemented and some of them are just empty threats, but it’s hard to tell the difference. And I think that the right means to overwhelm us with this tactic. I think the right means to activate our trauma responses and send us into a frenzy by overwhelming us.

And so one of the ways that we can push back against that frenzy and create safety plans for a more grounded place is through what we call a risk assessment. And a risk assessment is just a fancy way of saying, how can we ground our safety planning in what’s likely and what will likely make a big impact on us? So a risk assessment is looking to answer those two questions. What is likely to happen to me or to happen to my organization in our part of the world given our identities and our work? And then what might make a big impact on us being able to do what we do?

Risk assessments can happen in a lot of ways, but I like to start by just thinking about it as a research project. When we’re looking at this question of what’s likely, we can often start by looking at the national level, understanding what sorts of threats are we hearing about often in national news media, what threats are we hearing about repeatedly across regions? I think understanding what’s trending at the national level can help us to sometimes predict safety threats that might be happening at a different region of this country, but eventually it might make its way to us. I think that the national level gives us a little bit of a predictive sense or even just a sense of what are people talking about?

But I don’t think it’s smart to stop there, because in Atlanta, the political conditions here are very different than they are in Milwaukee, than they are in Miami, than they are in Durham. And so then I want to go and talk to coalition partners. I want to talk to the people in Atlanta who are out in the streets often, who do a lot of base building often, and I want to ask them about threats that I’m concerned about.

So for example, a few summers ago we had a really beautiful summer of action in the movement to Stop Cop City and the summer was filled with a lot of barbecues and just protests in Southwest Atlanta and more activity in parts of Atlanta that don’t often see protests and barbecues and Stop Cop City-related stuff. And so as we were planning all these events, we were hearing rumors about cops showing up to different events and disrupting, and so we wanted to get a sense of is this a likely threat for our events coming up?

And so using this kind of risk assessment tool, we started by looking at the national level. Of course, the movement to Stop Cop Cities started in Atlanta, but it’s national now because unfortunately Cop Cities are starting to be built in many states, and so we talked to a lot of partners in other states to get a sense of how their week of actions had gone. And they said, yeah, actually it’s interesting because the cops are showing up more to our fliered events that say things like family friendly that are hosted in parks than they are to our big protests. And we thought that was really strange, and so we said, okay, that’s good information for us to have.

Then we went around and talked to people in Atlanta, people who are part of the movement to Stop Cop City and people who are not. We talked to people who just throw barbecues, people in neighborhoods, people part of neighborhood planning units, to get a sense of what police presence was like at their events. We talked to folks who are intentionally not a part of our movement who maybe have political disagreement with us. And we talked to them because they know our communities well. And so for us, it’s important that we build coalition across different kinds of groups and especially groups who have a strong understanding of the neighborhood, knowing that we don’t have to have perfect political alignment with some groups in order to build safety together.

So as we talked to some of these groups, they said, no, we haven’t seen increased police presence, but we have heard about police presence increasing at these parks specifically, so you should check out those places. We followed that line of questioning, always being sure to be clear with people that we are looking into an unverified threat. We’re worried about this thing, we don’t know if it’ll happen, and so we’re curious about it, just to avoid that rumor mill or to avoid information getting away from us and then becoming misinformation.

And then lastly, I think a lot of groups who are older than five years old tend to do great organizing, but sometimes struggle with documenting state threats over time. And so what can happen in a lot of organizations is they experience sort of cycles or seasons of the same threats coming back around, but because they’re not tracking those threats over time, it can feel like a brand new threat and so then safety planning starts all over again.

And so for us, the movement to Stop Cop City has been a part of and has sort of been fed by many different movements in Atlanta against police violence. And so we talked to police violence groups that predated our movement to get a sense of what it’s looked like in the past in Atlanta when there’s been a big campaign against police violence or against police spending. What happened? And talking to those kind of long-time organizers in Atlanta was really helpful, because then they were able to talk to us about seasonal trends that they saw. When a campaign in Atlanta picks up steam like the campaign to reclassify marijuana possession in (I think that was 2017), talking to them and getting a sense of what happened when your campaign became popular enough to get to the national level? How did cops respond to your events? Those organizers helped us to fill in some of the gaps and to answer that question, is this likely?

And the answer ended up being yes, it is likely. But in addition to answering that question, we also got a ton of advice we heard from people who said, when the cops showed up to our barbecue in 2012 or in 2017, here’s what we did that did not work and you shouldn’t do this again, and here’s what we did that did work. And so we were able to pick up a number of tactics that we just didn’t have to spend a lot of time planning or coming up with ourselves, and that was a really big gift.

The second part of a risk assessment is again, just asking yourself what’s the impact that this safety threat might have on our work? For us, the impact was pretty big because we were looking to have these events in a part of Atlanta that hadn’t seen a lot of Stop Cop City events in the past few years, and we didn’t want to scare people off in neighborhoods that maybe had a lot of people showing up to these events for the first time. And so it really informed how we did safety for these events, the ways that we navigated the cops and the ways that we were able to create a buffer for folks who might’ve been newer to our events.

A risk assessment is important to do because again, it just helps you to ground what is likely. There are so many safety threats in the news, there are so many safety threats that we hear about constantly, they’re not all likely. And they might be likely for Atlanta folks, but they’re not likely for folks in Milwaukee. Or they might be likely for a certain kind of organizing group and not for another. And we just don’t have time or resources to waste developing safety plans for things that aren’t likely to happen. And so again, just grounding in that risk assessment allows for us to really focus our energy on what we think is most likely to happen.

KH: I really appreciate the process you described around determining what is likely, because my work requires me to consume so much bad news, and so many horror stories, that my imagination is all over the place — and I think that’s something a lot of people can relate to, right now. It’s so easy to be haunted, or to just feel overtaken by nightmare scenarios. Our fears can seize upon our psyches in ways that can distort our sense of what’s imminent or likely, and requires immediate action, what’s possible, and may require long-term action, and what’s probably not going to happen.

What are some baseline moves that individual activists can make to create more safety in their lives during this time?

CJL: Going back to that story about people in Atlanta being pulled over and then the cop asking for them to turn over their phone – many of those pullovers were for all sorts of different excuses and the state will find lots of excuses to target us. They will find the organizer with unpaid parking tickets, they will find the organizer who owes back taxes, they will find the folks with expired registration tags. And so one of the small ways that individuals can reduce their vulnerability to these sorts of safety threats is by figuring out where you can reduce your personal vulnerabilities.

This is going to be different for everybody. For some folks, it might mean actually paying those unpaid parking tickets because that might be the thing that gets somebody caught up. Or it might mean making sure that your tags are up to date. For some folks where that’s possible, I think reducing those vulnerabilities actually protects our movement, but for other folks that might not be possible. And so I encourage folks to consider, is it paying my unpaid parking tickets or is it making sure that whenever I go to a protest, I text two friends to let them know when I’m leaving and when I’m coming back?

For some folks, it might mean not bringing your personal phone to the protest anymore, but instead bringing a low-data or a burner phone with fewer contacts and fewer sensitive information. For some folks it might be really upping their personal digital security. I can’t tell you how many Signal threads I’m on, Signal groups I’m on and nobody has set their disappearing messages. And so all of our very sensitive information that we’re communicating about on Signal is vulnerable because people are storing it for longer than it’s needed. And so these are the kinds of personal practices that can not just protect individual people, but that can also prevent really sensitive information from falling into the wrong hands.

I think it’s also important that folks do their own work to recognize and understand how your fear response might take over. I think that the fear response that we all hold is probably in a normal time, is maybe on 3, but for a lot of us it’s on 10. And so what that can mean in a coalition meeting or in a planning meeting is that sometimes we can come with safety concerns and we’ll come with these valid concerns, but we’ll share them in a way that can actually feel like more of a fight.

For example, I’m in this group, coalition group, and right now the group is concerned about how we document stuff and the group wants to move a lot of our documentation off of Google Drive. And there’s one person in the group who is very, very adamant about this, for valid reasons. There was another organization that’s a part of a coalition of ours who was just subpoenaed and Google just turned over all their information. And so they have valid reasons for wanting this safety practice, but the way that they bring it to meetings is like a strong embodied fight. It’s like, if we don’t do this, then we’re just asking for them to come for us. It’s like that kind of vibe. And there are other folks in the group who I think probably have a strong appease in them. And so instead of picking a practice, they’ll say, I just think we need to just agree, we need to figure out how to agree, without addressing the root issues.

And all of these different ways I think are coming from a lot of people’s fear responses. And so I think the more that we can each kind of understand our fear response ground in a risk assessment and have empathy and love and care for other people’s fear responses, the easier some of these conversations are going to be about safety practices, because they’re not easy conversations to begin with, and so we really need to show up with our best selves.

The last thing I’ll say is to just not isolate. Everyone needs to be in a group right now. Everyone. I don’t care if it’s a local mutual aid group, if it’s a base building organization, if it’s national, if it’s your neighbors on your block, but we all need to be in a group. And if you can’t find the group that’s right for you, then start a group, because that’s what allows for us to coordinate with each other better and to be able to consolidate power.

KH: I agree so much that we all need to be in a group right now, and I know some people don’t love hearing that, but it’s really true. We all need to find our people and fortify our relationships right now. The creation of safety begins with our willingness to look out for each other and to make plans about how we’re going to show up for each other. There is no safety in isolation. We are at our most vulnerable when we are on our own.

So, for people who have found their people, what are some actions that groups and organizations can take right now to create more safety for their members?

CJL: Every left movement organization needs to have some basic safety protocols right now. These protocols should include some of the most common safety threats that we’re seeing, like what happens if ICE shows up to your organization? What happens if someone in your group goes missing or you don’t hear from them for a while? And what happens if your group is targeted in a public way, meaning there’s a social media post about your group or the group is talked about in some way that might draw attention to your group? Those are just three likely threats that a lot of groups are starting to plan around, but I encourage groups to first start by just going back to that risk assessment tool and getting critical about what are the likely threats for my organization given what we do, given who our opponents are, given our identities and our location.

I think once groups have that list of likely threats and they go through that risk assessment, then it’s important to start building an inventory of what existing resources and skills do you have to address the threat. An inventory is also just a great way to build morale in an organization. I like to do inventories in fun ways, so I discourage people from sending out a very boring survey and encourage folks to get creative with how you get a sense of what you already have.

There was an organization recently that I worked with that was doing an inventory. They were looking to decrease their reliance on the state, and so they wanted to increase their medical knowledge so that there were fewer moments where they needed to call 911, because in their city calling 911 brought both an ambulance and the cops. And so there were all of these different skills that they wanted to inventory to get a sense of who knows how to do this, who’s trained in CPR, who’s trained in Stop the Bleed, et cetera. And they developed this highly competitive bingo game where every meeting that they had, they would have different skills on a bingo card. Have you been CPR trained and certified within the past six months? Have you been to a Stop the Bleed training? Have you facilitated a training around respiratory health?

And it was great. I think when groups can create those sorts of fun games or engagement, it’s a friendly way to get folks thinking about the safety skills that exist in their crew, and it helps you to understand what do you have on deck and then what do you need. From there, just starting to go through each of those safety threats and developing a plan. How do we want to intervene in this threat? How do we want to prevent it? What skills might be needed in order to intervene well and do we have those skills?

I think when people are thinking through those questions around intervention, it’ll often bring up training needs. They’ll say, we really want to decrease the police presence in our block, but one barrier to that is us being able to deal with respiratory emergencies, people who have asthma, in a timely fashion. And so it will then naturally create, well, we need a training. And so figuring out where the training gaps are that would actually increase your group’s skill. A big one right now is how do I read a legal warrant? I think every group should be in that kind of conversation.

Vision Change Win is one of many groups that’s available to support some of those training gaps, namely around safety and security, but I also encourage folks to kind of think outside the box. I’ve been really pleased recently with the number of street medics in Atlanta who’ve been doing different kinds of trainings related to heat stroke and heat exposure that have really helped us to navigate some of the medical emergencies that show up during protests much faster than we would otherwise. There’s also just a huge retired nurse and RN community inside of our left ecosystem here, and so it’s been really fun to learn from elders here about different skills that have been really useful to deal with these emergencies during protests.

The last thing to consider when you’re building these safety protocols is that training should happen regularly. So if you’re building up a protocol, for example, around the cops showing up to your space with a warrant, you want to make sure that you have skill, someone knows how to read a legal warrant, how to recognize when a warrant isn’t legal. You might want to identify the people in your group that would answer the door, maybe the people who would let folks know that the cops are here but it’s being handled. But you might realize that as you’re building up this practice, that oh, three of the people who knew how to read a legal warrant are about to be on maternity leave. And so having regular training can help you to identify when you might have gaps inside a plan.

Training is also a great place to evaluate. So a risk assessment can change, we can have risks that are likely in one month that are not likely the next month. And so as we’re offering these regular trainings, it’s also important to make sure we go back to our risk assessment at least once a year, but I would recommend more often than that, to make sure that the risks that we’re planning around are still likely. Because as we all know, the political landscape is changing constantly, and so we just want to make sure that we’re responding to the right threats.

I do think that this is a political moment where I want to encourage groups to resist the urge to plan last minute. I think it’s very easy for us to say, we have to plan this last minute protest, we have to plan this last minute event, we have to respond to the moment. And I think the reality is that we are going to be in a rapid response moment for a while. And so figuring out where we can slow down also means being able to braid safety into the fabric of our work a bit more seamlessly so that safety isn’t this last minute burden. When we’re able to do that braiding well, when we’re thinking about safety from the beginning of the protest plan and not in the last few days, I think that’s when we see the most successful interventions and that’s when we’re able to do safety in a way that’s also sustainable.

I think the last thing to say is, just like I think it’s important for individuals to be in a group, I also think it’s important for groups to find the coalitions that are right for them. Whether it’s an alliance, a network, or just a partnership with one other group, I think that groups are stronger when they can communicate with other groups about safety threats. This is what allows us to predict safety threats and to intervene ahead of time. And so whatever that means for your organization, whether it means formalizing a sort of informal partnership you might have with a local group, or showing up more regularly to a coalition, or talking to a network who you’re politically aligned with about sharing safety threats with each other, I think upping the rigor around working together is what’s going to help groups to maintain safety over time.

KH: This is all such good advice. I really love what you said about last minute planning, and this is a mistake I’ve made in the past myself. When I look back at all of my organizing over the years, there are a couple of moments that really jump out at me when things went sideways, and if I am honest with myself, I knew in my gut, before doing the thing, that we didn’t have enough time to plan and prepare the way we should have. I got swept up in the urgency of the thing, or in other people’s arguments about why it had to happen right away, or maybe moved from a place of ego, thinking that we could handle it. And, you know, I learned by being humbled by my mistakes that we need to be thorough as fuck in our planning and in our preparations, and I think that’s even more true now, because the stakes are so high.

I also really appreciate what you were saying about skill inventories and making plans about how you want to intervene. It made me think about the Chicago Teachers Union’s Sanctuary Toolkit, and how teachers here are forming sanctuary teams, and taking on safety roles for scenarios when ICE might be trying to get into the building. This involves preparation, training, and probably some rehearsal, and that work makes everyone stronger and safer. CTU has also shared that toolkit publicly, and it can be adapted by teachers in other cities and states, and I hope folks will look at that, because learning from each other is so key right now.

And on that note, we have a lot to learn from Vision Change Win (VCW). VCW’s resources have been so important to me as an organizer. I refer back to the Get In Formation toolkit all the time. It’s a resource that I mention to just about every group that I work with, because I think it’s both essential reading, and an essential resource to keep handy. I’ve also gotten a lot out of the VCW workshops I’ve attended over the years. Can you talk a bit about the resources you all offer and about any upcoming workshops that folks might want to plug into?

CJL: Yeah, the Get In Formation Training Series (G.I.F.T.S.) is the first resource that I would recommend folks check out. It’s a three part training series that happens every month until we abolish prisons and police, and it’s on the second, third and fourth Wednesday of the month. We cover verbal de-escalation, safety values. We talk about building a safety team for an event or direct action and organizational safety planning. And then quarterly, we have a session on digital security.

I think G.I.F.T.S. is a great entry point. I think it is a great way to start to learn about community safety. You can complete it in one month or you can take one training every month for four months, so it’s really kind of a choose your own adventure training series. We offer Spanish interpretation quarterly, and we also offer late night sessions quarterly. And we’re about to launch recorded trainings.

The second offering is we run a 10-month Safety and Security School. It’s a cohort style, we’ll be in our sixth year this year. And the Security School is for anyone who wants to take a deeper dive into community safety work within their organization. I really love Security School, it’s a big, big commitment, but I think that it allows for groups to really, really develop strong safety practices or update existing practices. The application for Security School will drop in May. Folks should check out our website to find out more about other offerings.

There’s a risk assessment mini toolkit that I have found really helpful, especially when describing a risk assessment to a group who might not be familiar with that language. That’s available on our website. And I think more than anything, I want to keep plugging our rapid response system. Rapid response is kind of our warm line, so not quite a hotline, but it is our offering to be able to support organizations in urgent or emergent needs. We have about a 24- to 48-hour turnaround time, you can request support from going on our website. And groups reach out to us for all kinds of safety and security crises through that rapid response system, but often once they’ve developed a plan for that crisis, we’ll then move into a training program. And so whether you’re navigating a safety threat right now and you just need help now or you’re concerned about preventing a threat from impacting you, I encourage you to reach out because there’s a little bit for everybody.

KH: VCW’s Rapid Response system is such a gift to our movements. I have been so grateful to be able to send some folks y’all’s way in moments when they were facing some very scary, very credible threats. It meant everything to me, honestly, when folks reached out with those nightmarish experiences to be able to point them toward people who I knew would give them practical advice, based on years of experience and analysis around how we address these things. I won’t get into those people’s stories, because they are not mine to tell, but I will say that when we face threats in the movement, sometimes the scariest possibilities involve our loved ones being at risk, and that can make us feel so helpless and powerless. To offer people practical guidance on how we can move from that sense of helplessness and powerlessness to doing whatever we can to create safety for ourselves and our loved ones, that’s just beautiful and essential work, and we’re all so lucky that VCW exists. Because that’s the kind of help that’s going to allow us to be as brave and strategic as we can in these times.

So, as we wrap things up, is there anything else you would like to share with or ask of the audience today?

CJL: There’s so many opportunities to collectivize practices that keep us healthy and well, or healthy and safe, and I am consistently blown away by the creativity of people in my community and all the ways that we continue to move away from individualism and into collectivism. And so I’m sure there are folks who are listening who might have a special skill. I’ve been talking to a lot of parents recently about how they’re navigating this moment. There’s a really incredible parenting collective in Atlanta that meets weekly to talk about community safety, namely for protests, but it’s expanded beyond protests to talk about safety in their neighborhood, safety against ICE raids, safety against cops. And that group just formed because someone wanted to go to a protest and just didn’t feel like they had capacity to be at the protest and care for three kids. So they reached out to a friend and the friend reached out to another friend, and before they knew it, they had a collective who was getting trained weekly.

I have friends who have been really interested in really getting clear about where there’s clean drinking water in our neighborhood and in our community in case there’s an emergency, in case our water gets shut off and we need to find access to clean drinking water. I have friends who are mechanics who are really skilled at fixing cars, and they’ve been reaching out to community members to offer a free tune up and oil change for folks so that they’re able to drive around safely. And so I just feel like no matter who you are or what you’re good at, there is a way to make that an offer to movement, and I just encourage folks to get really creative about what that offering is.

KH: Thank you so much for that. I love those examples, and I think this is a really important time for us to think expansively and creatively about what it means to create as much safety as we can. This is how we are going to move through these times effectively — by moving through our fears together, building skills, making plans, and having each other’s backs. I want to thank you, Che, for helping us learn how to do that, and thank you so much for joining me and thinking alongside me today. Your insights and your knowledge are so deeply appreciated, and it’s always good to talk to you.

CJL: Thank you. This is such an exciting opportunity, I’m such a fan of the podcast, so I am grateful to be here talking with you.

[musical interlude]

KH: Well, I am so grateful for Che and for Vision Change Win. Please remember to check the show notes of this episode for links to some of the resources we’ve discussed today.

I know many of us are grappling with our fears in these uncertain times. When I think about what’s at stake right now, I have a lot of fears, and I need to allow myself to feel them. I also need to do what I can to reduce risk and anchor myself and others, as much as possible, because I am not powerless. For me, moving through fear is a process that involves acknowledging what’s beyond my control, and examining what choices I can still make to protect myself and others, while also trying to live my values. That last part is important, because our fears can sometimes pull us away from our values, and prompt us to abandon other people, or hunker down, in the hopes that we can ride the storm out in safety, if we only look out for ourselves. That kind of mentality is what our enemies are counting on. Individualism shreds our solidarity and leaves us isolated.

I encourage everyone who is frightened right now to create or join a space to discuss those feelings with others. You might find that sharing your feelings not only helps you cope, but also opens the door to constructive conversations about what we can do to address our fears together.

Risk assessments and safety planning can empower us to create as much safety as we can in our lives and movements. Rather than becoming immobilized by fear, let’s learn together and build skills that can help us meet the moment. Let’s make space for what we’re feeling and figure out how we can be constructive together. Solidarity means making every effort to protect each other, so let’s figure out what that looks like in practice, for all of us.

I want to thank our listeners for joining us today, and remember, our best defense against cynicism is to do good, and to remember that the good we do matters. Until next time, I’ll see you in the streets.

Show Notes

• You can find resources from Vision Change Win, including their Risk Assessment Toolkit and Get In Formation Toolkit here.
• You can request support through VCW’s rapid response system here.
• You can learn more about VCW’s workshop offerings here.
• You can check out the Chicago Teachers Union’s Sanctuary School Toolkit here.
• If you want to learn more about community defense, check out Siembra NC’s Defend and Recruit Playbook.