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Meteor Blades's avatar

Thank you, Emily. For those of us long involved (on climate and other issues), what you have described here is all too often ignored, to our detriment.

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Julie Gabrielli's avatar

Excellent work. It’s critical to note the parallel patterns at work here.

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Gregg Servheen's avatar

Emily, This story comes at a perfect time. It needs to be spread far and wide. Nice piece of journalism! Well done!

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Emily Atkin's avatar

Thank you Gregg! Big props to Alleen and Drilled for doing the leg work

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Colin's avatar

Thank you Emily! Keep up the great work!! 🤓

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Terrance Ó Domhnaill's avatar

We are starting to see shades of 1971, and other major protests. Trump wants absolute loyalty with no dissenters allowed. Either foreign or domestic. He is and will continue to use whatever methods they can get with for as long as they can to suppress protestors. It will only get worse as time goes on until they are stopped by public opinion and protestors. Let's just hope he doesn't permanently damage the country before then.

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Joseph Mangano's avatar

It's truly disgusting to me how Trump and his cohorts will focus on the supposed "lawlessness" of these mostly peaceful protests and, in the same breath, turn a blind eye to the politically motivated attacks of this past weekend that left a Minnesota lawmaker and her spouse dead. The latter is real domestic terrorism, and the nature of the double standard is thereby clear.

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Brett White's avatar

This is the first I’ve heard about government infiltration of the standing rock protests, and I’m shocked by the information provided in your references. I know the US has a long history of using the government to thwart domestic activism, but seeing the same techniques used today is really disheartening. Thank you for bringing this to our attention!

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Emily Atkin's avatar

The evidence is really strong! It’s absolutely wild. I’m glad the references were useful.

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Marshall Kirkpatrick's avatar

Yay for history in the service of movements to build a better future! May a gazillion historically-grounded perspectives bloom all over, such a service. And the opposite: a-historical organizing, just seems absurdly irresponsible, I think, when you ponder it in those terms.

I just read this historical analysis from last week that folks here might appreciate as well, came to mind after reading this post: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/jun/10/how-does-woke-start-winning-again Another example of putting current organizing into historical context with other previous campaigns.

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William's avatar

Great piece. I don't see how considering the response to the ICE protests we maintain this protesting environment where Trump just responds at the edges. I don't see how it doesn't devolve into a massive violent crackdown at some point in the near future.

It has been 5 months since Trump was sworn in and we still have (at least) 3.5 years to go and it already feels like an eternity.

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