A far-left anarchist group called ShutdownDC has issued a guide for its adherents to follow in order to shut the country down in the days after Election Day.
“We can assume that there will be mass confusion about what actually happened on election day and the following ballot counting period. We know Republicans will lie, manipulate, red bait, and antifa-bait their base. And we also know that the president will use the power available to him to influence the election in his favor. An attempted coup is possible–and perhaps probable. In the end, the actual electorate might be split, half truly believing that Trump was elected legally, and half knowing that he was not.”
“It is in this muddied context of legal and political wrangling that we must take action. We cannot wait to see how the chips fall. That will only ensure more power for the violent white supremacist machine that is the Trump administration and its supporters.”
Reading just a few pages of the guide shows that the goal of these groups is not to protest any particular result of the election, but to begin an insurrection and bring the entire country to a halt.
“Can you shut down the entire downtown area or shut down a single highway? Should you pressure your target by going to their headquarters or by occupying a space that disrupts commerce and publicly forcing a reaction from them?”
“What goods are being produced in your region, and how do they move? The other way to think about shutting down business as usual is to think about how goods and people move. Your region might have a system of highways and rails and ports. You might even be able to find out how things move by looking at your local Port Authority Website, if there is one. If there isn’t, search for ‘logistics hubs’ in your city.”
“As you start to plan, think about what it would take to shut things down, and remember to build in redundancy. One highway blockade can be cleared, but multiple ones are more challenging. Encampments outside homes combined with street blockades build in a kind of protection that if one tactic does not work, another one might.”
“Thousands of people plugging up major highways is an effective and highly accessible way to disrupt the movement of capital,” the guide reads in its summation. “Encampments outside the mansions of violent and repressive leaders is also another accessible tactic. Keep things simple, and well organized; lead marching crowds to more strategic places…And remind people we’re in this for the long haul; we lose if we go home after a couple of hours. We will actually have to shut things down, not just say we want to shut things down.”
Read the document in its entirety here.
Photo by Carlos Felipe Pardo via Flickr