Community Safety: Practical Tips, Political Grounding

Whitney Maxey: What are the most important things for the Left to consider in regards to community safety?

Che Johnson-Long: We have to be intentional about community safety being braided into the fabric of the work that is happening. Community safety, when done well, compliments the organizing work.

It’s important that we resist the urge to comply or appear to be less threatening by doing less important or impactful work. We should be just as audacious with campaign demands as we were last year. But in order to maximize the potential of our work, we’ll need stronger coalitions that we are building but don’t have yet.

It’s easy to become reactive in a tumultuous political moment. We will need sustained rigor in this fight against a fascist regime because things will likely get worse over the next four years. Collective care is important (i.e., resourcing ourselves together) because it allows us to sustain ourselves for the long haul and not to leave behind people with disabilities and people with children (i.e., the ones who can get left behind first when we move at an unsustainable pace). 

Also, we need to reserve our resources. Protests can be powerful tools for organizing. However, when we overuse them, we aren’t building our base or power. There are many ways to put pressure on those in power, and we must use all of our tools both for sustainability and for efficacy. We need to be strategic with the use of protests and remember it is one tactic of many; and we want to use it mindfully so as not to burn people out and to be more effective and impactful.

Can you say a bit more about how community safety complements the organizing work?

Discussing likely safety threats a group might experience can often build deeper trust between leaders. Building safety structures can retain members who might otherwise be scared away from organizing in this political climate. Building an organizational safety team can motivate members to make bolder, more audacious and effective campaign tactics. The increased rigor required to maintain a safety plan can lead to increased rigor in other elements of organizing, like more rigorous basebuilding, leadership development, and political education.

What are the most prominent threats to Left organizations you are seeing in your work at Vision Change Win? What threats do you predict will arrive in the coming months?

There are two categories of threats that I’m seeing. The first are threats to organizations and their ability to have a thriving, robust infrastructure. Language from HR 9495, which passed the House in Fall 2024 but died in the Senate, was incorporated into this year’s budget bill.  It would allow the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, and Trump to declare a group a “terrorist organization” and to revoke the C3 legal status of any non-profit that they claim supports a terrorist organization, without a transparent evidentiary standard or without cause. While pro-Palestine groups could be targeted first, it is conceivable that Black, immigrant, trans rights, and other groups that are explicitly or implicitly carrying out work antithetical to MAGA’s agenda could be targeted. Since C3 status enables many organizations to most easily receive significant donor funds and grants, losing the legal status would negatively impact staffing, among other things, which would significantly reduce or cut an organization’s programming and operations. [Editor’s note: The language from HR 9495 was removed from the budget bill on May 18, but there is no guarantee it will not be put back, and we should remain alert.]

Another dimension of this threat is financial deplatforming. This practice involves banks and other financial platforms (e.g., PayPal) refusing to house the funds of groups that do certain work, especially Black liberation groups and bail funds. For example, when a bail fund loses the ability to receive donations because a financial institution has decided to no longer house its funds, people can stay in jail longer after being arrested in a mass protest. This can deter people from showing up to protests for fear of being in jail for weeks. We’ve seen this deplatforming in Atlanta with the Stop Cop City protests. 

While HR 9495 is meant to target non-profits, the Left should realize that the financial deplatforming will have broader impacts, because it is about attacking any organization or collective’s ability to have any meaningful resources. Smaller and informal groups such as bail funds, mutual aid groups, and parenting collectives should be especially aware of this threat because they are likely to be targeted.

The second threat is stifling the right to protest and free speech. One tool being used by MAGA and elites are SLAPP lawsuits, Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. These target protestors and groups that protest by tying them up in lengthy and expensive litigation that is meant to drain their resources and energy. The liability of people and organizations that promote certain causes is increasing despite 35 states having some sort of anti-SLAPP laws. Greenpeace has been fighting a SLAPP lawsuit since 2016 that was brought by the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners. If Greenpeace does not ultimately prevail, it could result in them having to pay $660 million in damages to Energy Transfer. Energy Transfer filed a federal RICO suit prior to the SLAPP lawsuit, but that failed.

What’s happening to Greenpeace is indicative of what I anticipate will be more SLAPP and frivolous RICO lawsuits against the Left, or the perceived left movements.

Many on the Left are navigating fear and anxiety in the face of mounting and ongoing state repression. What advice do you have about navigating fear and anxiety?

It’s important for us to understand our individual responses to repression. The feelings of fear, anxiety, and overwhelm are legitimate. We must learn to identify the tendencies or unconscious ways we respond to these feelings that are rooted in how we responded when we’ve had to survive scary situations in our past. 

When we hear about safety threats (e.g., arrests) some of us may immediately go into fight; we want to seek out confrontation. Some of us may go into flight; we’re thinking about exit plans. We have to have enough practice to get to know ourselves because our trauma responses can inform our individual and organizational safety planning. We can’t respond to threats that are happening in 2025 as if they are the threats of the past. Additionally, trauma responses can be the proverbial hammer that sees everything as a nail. We have to keep expanding and building new tools to access choice in the midst of extreme stress and chaos. 

Sometimes groups can disagree about community safety practices (e.g., whether to continue or stop using Google Drive because Google often cooperates with US intelligence agencies). Legitimate disagreements can be colored by personal trauma responses. For example, some might approach the disagreement with judgement, condescension, or impatience instead of consideration and strategic care. We cannot safety plan well when we’re in trauma responses. We have to safety plan by grounding ourselves in a risk assessment which involves looking critically at a safety threat(s) impacting the organization and ourselves. 

A risk assessment has three key aspects:

• Determine likelihood. The Trump regime is “flooding the zone,” an old fascist tactic of saturating the media, our attention, and our communities with many different safety threats even though some of them may never happen. This tactic is meant to have us respond in a frenzy to the loudest and scariest threat, rather than having a sober assessment of the likelihood of threats that could happen to our group and what the impact could be. This resource can help determine likelihood.
• Identify trends in safety threats. What are the trends we are seeing or hearing in safety threats? To answer, we can search for key terms in national news media, talk to large organizations or other relevant institutions, and watch/listen to the national and local news media to help get a more grounded assessment. This includes being able to delineate between threats that are national in scope and ones that are manifesting in your organization’s state, city or town. Assessing safety trends can include talking with groups that may have expertise on specific kinds of safety threats even if your group doesn’t have strong political alignment with them (more on this later). We have to be willing to expand our networks when thinking about the approach to identifying safety threats.

• Investigate history of safety threats. Most groups more than five years old tend not to do a great job of documenting safety threats that happen over time. Because of this, we can tend to respond to old threats that are cycling back around as if they are new threats. Talk to organizers that were in your group before you in order to learn about safety threats that preceded your time and what learnings they have.

Once you’ve completed the risk assessment, you can think about how this will impact your organization by answering key questions: Would this cause us to shutter our doors? Would this be a minor, moderate, or major inconvenience? 

What types of things should the Left be doing to prepare and strengthen itself in the face of increased political crackdowns?

Groups should have an organizational safety plan that includes ways to address threats as they are happening.

Steps in creating a safety plan include:

• Discussing likely threats. Groups should have a conversation about likely threats that are backed up by research and conversations with others. 

• Inventorying resources. Organizations should have an inventory of skills and resources in their ecosystem to address likely threats. (This could involve taking a survey to find people who can read a legal warrant, asking who is CPR-certified in member meetings, etc.).

• Assigning a group responsible for implementation. Most organizations will create a small team or partner with other organizations in order to intervene on safety threats. 

• Preparing through training. This should all accompany training that people get to be equipped to navigate responding during a threat. 

This may seem daunting to do for the first time in the midst of other work your organization is doing. A good starting point is a conversation about likely safety threats. This conversation can sometimes lead to talking about interventions and identifying resources to help make them. 

What should those who are new to Left movement organizing do to protect themselves?

Whether you’re new to organizing or not, address individual vulnerabilities where you can. In Atlanta we’ve seen an increase in police targeting organizers that are fighting Cop City. The targeting can be subtle or blatant. A blatant example is the police raids and RICO cases against the 61 Stop Cop City organizers. A subtle example is people being pulled over in traffic stops and cops searching their Signal threads that contain information on months of planning. 

For some people, addressing vulnerabilities means paying unpaid parking tickets or making sure registration tags are up to date if you have the resources to do so. It may mean you have a team of people that you check-in with before, during, and after protests. Or perhaps it is buying a burner phone that you take to protests instead of your personal phone. These vulnerabilities can be targeted by law enforcement but they are the type of vulnerabilities that we have the power to address now.

Additionally, crew up. We are stronger and more impactful when we move as units. Whether you join a mutual aid group or a base-building organization, or form a practice group after attending a training on deescalation for an upcoming protest, we need people to organize through a group. Just showing up to events or protests is not enough because it doesn’t translate into power. We need the people-power that comes with people consistently organizing and identifying themselves within a group.

Finally, study. Vision Change Win has a “Get in Formation Toolkit”; Muslims for Just Futures has a Community Resource Hub that includes a toolkit on bail funds and mutual aid basics. There are several toolkits on ICE raids, ICE chasers, and Know Your Rights. All of us should pick where to start deepening our political education and skill- building.

What are the biggest obstacles to the Left taking safety and security seriously? Where are the internal gaps? 

We need to prioritize strategic coalition building. The 2024 elections were heartbreaking and highlighted wedges that have now widened. We need a united Left that can work with others across political differences in order to survive and beat fascism. 

Sometimes the Left can view coalitions, networks, and alliances as long-term vehicles that require near-perfect political or values alignment. When it comes to keeping each other safe, we don’t need to have deep alignment with everyone or even like each other in order to protect one another. We need enough agreement on how to move, warn each other, and construct a safety plan. For example, organizations in Atlanta share information on ICE raids they think are coming. The Left here recognizes that an organization doesn’t have to be abolitionist in order to have valuable information on these raids. We need to step out of our sectors because when we do we can learn new information that can inform our safety planning.

Furthermore, funders don’t always encourage organizations to see safety as a part of their organizing work. This, coupled with groups already lacking capacity, can lead to organizations deprioritizing safety. The reality is everything we do from event planning to base building should have safety considerations, and funders should provide resources for increasing safety infrastructure so groups see this as critical work.

Can you offer some examples of community safety victories that the Left can learn from?

Chicago coalitions’ ability to interrupt and, in some cases, block the onslaught of ICE raids in early March was beautiful, elegant, and inspiring. That type of coordination is only possible because of years of coalition building that have, as a part of their overall work, prepared them to enact rapid response plans that allow for greater impact and nimbleness. 

Last year there was a MAGA-led House hearing on public schools that was really about trying to suppress pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist protests. But the school leaders of New York City, Berkeley, and Maryland were steadfast, clear, and did not cave to the pressure. This type of willingness to protect political dissent and participation allows for community safety that can go beyond organizations. This is in contrast to some higher education institutions (e.g., Columbia) that are caving to the fascists by cracking down on protests and protestors.

I train a parenting collective in Atlanta that started meeting in response to Stop Cop City protests. These are popping up in different places. They are some of the most inspiring because they can pool resources and do real-time safety planning together. Additionally, they can oftentimes have a deeper impact on the neighborhood level than national organizations like Vision Change Win. They are very accessible and are built to share material needs that people have (e.g. child care and food) and thus can sustain themselves longer.

What gives you inspiration and ideas about how we can fortify ourselves moving forward?

Many of my movement mentors started organizing in the aftermath of 9/11. In New York City, audacious antiwar coalitions incorporated safety planning for Muslim, Arab, and Black communities with multiracial and cross-class groups that existed before them. Among other things, this enabled groups that were working against police brutality, especially Black groups, to have a lot of their work protected post-9/11.

I am inspired by how organizations rebuild after a major safety threat. For example, Women with a Vision, a Black women’s reproductive justice group in New Orleans, was firebombed in 2012 right after a major campaign victory. Instead of walking away they rebuilt with a level of safety infrastructure that groups throughout the South can now build on. They worked to evolve the thinking and practices of the mainstream reproductive justice movement for Black women and for organizers in the South to prevent and respond to threats and to strengthen office safety.

The Highlander Center in rural Tennessee is an almost 100-year-old organization, and served as an incubator for the civil rights movement of the 1960s. In 2019 Highlander was set on fire and it was devastating. It was their third location (having had to move previously in part because of threats against the organization and state repression). They chose to be transparent about what happened and built a robust, on-site 24/7 security team after loss and trauma. That team now trains other groups in the South and is a part of Vision Change Win’s programming. They are able to offer lessons that may have prevented safety threats like this from happening to other groups.

What inspires me is fortifying ourselves after devastation. This is a devastating moment. It is scary. However, there is a lot that can be built from devastation, despite fear.

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Featured image by Kimmie Dearest