4 Websites To Find Peaceful Protests Near You So You Can Make Content, Fight For Your Rights
Unless you are excited about living in a US version of Putin's Russian mafia state it's time to peacefully protest in overwhelming numbers. Livestream those protests. Be the media.
“Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.” - David Robson for BBC
We are guinea pigs in the beginning stages of an information revolution on par with the invention of the printing press and the repercussions are massive. The internet has completely changed the way humanity communicates. Twenty years of social media has already upended the world order. Oligarchs and authoritarians have taken over the algorithms and used them to turn the masses against one another (See: Hank Green Populism, Media Revolutions, and Our Terrible Moment).
If you read any of the content on Public Enlightenment or watch any of my videos on social media (TikTok, Instagram, Youtube) you know that we are in the midst of what experts refer to as an administrative coup. Yet millions of Americans cheer this on. Their misreading of our national circumstance is the result of a long-running war against American minds. The right wing disinformers have won most battles already. And it shows in a nation that just re-elected a corrupt, sexually abusive conman even after he’d already attempted a violent coup.
Expert and author of How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky, recently wrote in Foreign Affairs that this administration will usher in competitive authoritarianism:
…a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition…Under competitive authoritarianism, the formal architecture of democracy, including multiparty elections, remains intact….And once in a while, incumbents lose, as they did in Malaysia in 2018 and in Poland in 2023. But the system is not democratic, because incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics. Competition is real but unfair.
Basically, Putin’s mafia state with a slightly higher index of competitive vibes.
It’s not lost on me that the MAGA folk I’ve been engaging with online recently would read the above passage and think it is a precise description of everything disinformer Mike Benz has been telling them on the Joe Rogan podcast. Such is the efficacy of the oligarch created counter-reality MAGA folks are fed on social media sites like Rumble and Truth Social and on propaganda networks made to appear as journalism like OANN, RSBN, Fox, and Newsmax.
I wrote about the above clip in a recent Public Enlightenment article:
MAGA friends, neighbors, and relatives, whether or not you want to believe that Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, is one of the world’s biggest disinformers you have to admit the “news” gathering approach outlined by Watters above is unusual. In fact, it seems like a formula for propaganda, not fact-based journalism. Imagine an MSNBC host claiming that their news product was part of an Information War against the right and they produced their programs based on George Soros retweets of social media randos that then were podcasted by Jimmy Dore and eventually became ten minute MSNBC segments.
If this is how your sources of information are operating maybe they aren’t very solid? And maybe, just maybe, they are presenting a version of events that doesn’t accord with reality?
There Can Only Be One
MAGA doesn’t understand why everyone else is in the streets. Everyone else doesn’t understand why MAGA is cheering. We’re getting two different streams of information. And only one side is getting a majority of the facts.
In only 5 minutes of scrolling TikTok Live you will likely be served a space where the host and guest speakers are earnestly discussing how awesome DOGE’s “efficiency” work is going. Those MAGA leaning folks are hooked into influencers who themselves are hooked into the propaganda pipeline. As an example:
This video is a gross misrepresentation tantamount to propaganda. The fact check for this video’s claims is here. This influencer has 1.1 million followers on Instagram alone.
Here’s another video claiming that Trump is going to split $40 billion dollars in DOGE savings amongst the American people. The MAGA-verse has been awash in similar claims that every adult will be getting $5,000 stimulus checks from Trump and Elon.
The fact check for the $5,000 stimulus claims is here.
The problem with the above influencers claim is that DOGE hasn’t even “collected” $40 billion dollars in “savings.”
On the other side, influencers who consult journalism in the public interest are telling the rest of America a different story entirely, one based in fact. This mechanical engineering student provides the receipts and is backed up by corroborated reporting on DOGE’s “wall of lies” from several newsrooms:
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Another video from the social feed of the New York Times is below. There is plenty to criticize about the Times—a commercialized, corporate outlet—with an agenda of maintaining the status quo in America. However, the reporting in this video is factual information based on one of journalism’s core functions in a democracy–exposing corruption and lies.
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If MAGA propaganda is all a person ever sees then it makes sense why they are cheering. After all, everyone agrees that government should be run efficiently.
But DOGE is, in fact, a self-enrichment scam and an administrative coup. And so the rest of America is taking to the streets.
Only one of these two realities—the one leading people to take to the streets—is based in an abundance of fact.
Every weekday morning in my Tiktok livestreams, I attempt to bridge the divides created for all of us by the billionaires who own the means of communication. I do the work with live fact checks and a commitment to finding agreement across our differences. We are all victims of the 24/7 propaganda effort raging at all times in our media-saturated world.
So fight back. Fight for the minds of your fellow Americans. Be the media at a protest near you.
4 Websites To Find Protests And Other Means Of Resistance
You may have heard some buzz about nationwide protests occurring on April 5th. From The Washington Informer:
More than 600 events are planned across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and cities around the globe as participants demand that Trump and his billionaire friend Elon Musk, director of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), take their hands off critical programs that middle- and working-class families rely on.
But you don’t have to wait ‘til then. Here is a list of 3 websites where you can find a protest near you today, tomorrow, and the next day.
Build The Resistance is the effort of grassroots organizers. They list actions taking place nearly every day. Go hear to find an April 5 protest near you. From Wikipedia:
50501 (short for "50 protests, 50 states, 1 movement") is a political action organization founded to protest the policies and actions of the second Donald Trump administration in the United States.[3][4] The group organized a nationwide demonstration on February 5, 2025,[5][6] another nationwide "No Kings on Presidents Day" demonstration on February 17 (Presidents' Day),[7] and a third demonstration on March 4, 2025.[8][9] Thousands of people participated by gathering outside state capitol buildings and city halls during these protests.[10][7]
A similar, peaceful grassroots movement focused on undermining Elon Musk and exposing his scam. I really hope MAGA folks are reading this and understand that none of the people at these peaceful protests condone the vandalism being conducted by randos. If you are committed to peaceful protest you are at these events. If you are committed to vandalism you are doing bad stuff by cover of night. Let’s not conflate the two. This is American’s exercising their rights, equipped with legitimate grievances.
The "Tesla Takedown" is a grassroots protest movement that arose in early 2025 targeting Tesla, Inc. and its CEO, Elon Musk.[1] Protesters have organized nonviolent demonstrations at Tesla stores across the United States, Canada, and Europe and urged the public to divest from Tesla by selling their vehicles and shares of Tesla stock. The decentralized movement's goal is to economically impact Musk and challenge his political influence peacefully.[2][3]
This may be the most comprehensive website aggregator of protest actions. From the website:
The Big List of Protests ("the BLOP") is a community-driven project to help people find and share information about protests, rallies, and other events in the United States.
Posted events are provided by site users who upload flyer images. The BLOP periodically scans its inbox for new flyers and performs sophisticated image recognition to extract event details in order to create event listings. This process is not perfect and may result in incorrect or incomplete information. Always verify event details with the event organizer.
And here’s a Reddit thread full of all kinds of actions you can take. Be a democracy hero and do them all.
Don’t just protest. Take all the civic action available to you while you can. This is an all hands on deck scenario to save what remains of our democracy.
Be The Media
Americans are swimming in a toxic sea of disinformation and propaganda. The only path forward is to spread fact-based information that aligns with democratic values every single day. A livestream of a protest IS information. It is raw reporting.
When you head to a protest come prepared with a fully charged phone. Maybe invest in a gimbal. Show your fellow Americans what it looks like to be engaged in this critical time. It is important that Americans not yet in the streets see you modeling peaceful, civic action.
Let’s fill every social media feed with a nonstop stream of Americans standing up for the rights and protections of everyone.
Ok, gotta run. Off to a protest (Literally).
For The Extra Cautious
As of this writing, it’s my belief that as long as you are an American citizen peacefully protesting you have relatively little to worry about in terms of fascist incursions upon your liberty. But if you are extra worried about your privacy and safety in the face of rising authoritarianism, here’s a helpful article from The Verge about what precautions you can take to prevent your phone from being used to track you at a protest.
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Here’s to healthier information,
Brian
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I livestream about media, democracy, love, and joy on TikTok. You can also see my content on Youtube, Instagram and Bluesky (here and here). Every like, follow, repost, and subscribe helps me continue the work of changing our information ecosystem to one in which we all achieve healthier outcomes.
Live-streaming the protests on 4/5 risks exposing protestors to meta data scans and future harassment or worse from the burgeoning police state that our country is becoming. I take this advice with a big grain of salt and advise protecting your fellow protesters by NOT live-streaming. Agree 100% with your post otherwise.
Opening quote reminded me of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from "Strength to Love," Violence brings only temporary victories; violence, by creating many more social problems that it solves, never brings permanent peace. I am convinced that that if we succumb to the temptation to use violence in our struggle for freedom, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to them will be a never-ending reign of chaos."