By Alliance President Terry Gips
There’s a new and relatively unknown potential threat to our constitutionally-protected right to peaceful protest that you should know about.
In a powerful article, Wired Magazine has helped uncover the fact that the Trump Administration’s Department of Homeland Security issued bulletins last month to police departments across the country warning them that actions by people recording a protest or even riding a bike or a skateboard during one are possible “threats”.
This is a further escalation of President Trump’s previously expressed warnings to protestors that, “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came,” CNN reported based on Trump’s March 4 Truth Social post. Trump added, “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests.”
Even Trump’s defenders acknowledge it’s not entirely clear how he intends to define “illegal protest”, CNN stated and the White House didn’t respond to its requests for specifics on what protests it would classify as illegal.
This is taking place amidst a swift move “from liberal democracy toward some form of authoritarianism” according to a survey of more than 500 political scientists, reported NPR.
The widely-respected Brookings Institution has emphasized that, “Protest is a cornerstone of American democracy. It’s a fundamental right, a powerful tradition, and an indicator of a healthy democracy.” Sadly, that constitutionally protected right is now being challenged.
DHS Labels Peaceful Protest Plans as “Violent”
“The Department of Homeland Security is urging local police to consider a wide range of protest activity as violent tactics, including mundane acts like riding a bike or livestreaming a police encounter,” WIRED reports.
Wired explained the DHS threat bulletin, saying “Protesters on bicycles, skateboards, or even ‘on foot’ are framed as potential ‘scouts’ conducting reconnaissance or searching for ‘items to be used as weapons.’ Livestreaming is listed alongside ‘doxxing’ as a ‘tactic’ for ‘threatening’ police. Online posters are cast as ideological recruiters — or as participants in ‘surveillance sharing.’”
Threat bulletins issued during last month’s “No Kings” protests warn that the US government’s aggressive immigration raids are almost certain to accelerate domestic unrest, with DHS saying there’s a “high likeliness” more Americans will soon turn against the agency, which could trigger confrontations near federal sites,” shared WIRED.
WIRED continued, “The bulletins — first obtained by the national security nonprofit Property of the People through public records requests — warn that officers could face assaults with fireworks and improvised weapons: paint-filled fire extinguishers, smoke grenades, and projectiles like bottles and rocks.”
“Fusion Centers” Promulgate Unverified Bias Against Peaceful Protest
“Threat bulletins” are warnings that can come from DHS or “fusion centers,” which were established after the 9/11 attacks. They promote information sharing at the federal level between agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Department of Justice, and state, local, and tribal law enforcement, explains Wikipedia.
“Fusion centers…play a central role in how police understand protest movements. The intelligence they produce is rapidly disseminated and draws heavily on open-source data,” said WIRED.
WIRED points out that the problem is that their bulletins “often reflect broad, risk-averse assumptions and includes fragmentary and unverified information. In the absence of concrete threats, bulletins often turn to ideological language and social media activity as evidence of emerging risks, even when tied to lawful expression.”
“DHS’s risk-based approach reflects a broader shift in US law enforcement shaped by post-9/11 security priorities — one that elevates perceived intent over demonstrable wrongdoing and uses behavior cues, affiliations, and other potentially predictive indicators to justify early intervention and expanded surveillance,” warned WIRED.
Rising Concerns about Law Enforcement Discovering Danger…Everywhere
WIRED points out, “Social movement scholars widely recognize the introduction of preemptive protest policing as a departure from late-20th century approaches that prioritized de-escalation, communication, and facilitation.”
“In its place, authorities have increasingly emphasized control of demonstrations through early intervention, surveillance, and disruption — monitoring organizers, restricting public space, and responding proactively based on perceived risks rather than actual conduct.”
Vera Eidelman, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, says the government has no business treating constitutionally protected activities — like observing or documenting police — as threats.
“The DHS report repeatedly conflates basic protest, organizing, and journalism with terroristic violence, thereby justifying ever more authoritarian measures by law enforcement,” says Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People. “It should be sobering, if unsurprising, that the Trump regime’s response to mass criticism of its police state tactics is to escalate those tactics.”
“Fusion centers, funded through DHS grants, have increasingly issued bulletins flagging protest slogans, references to police brutality, and solidarity events as signs of possible violence — disseminating these assessments to law enforcement absent clear evidence of criminal intent.”
Threat alerts — unclassified and routinely accessible to the press —are being used by law enforcement to shape public perception of protests before they begin, laying the groundwork to legitimize aggressive police responses.
Unverified DHS warnings about domestic terrorists infiltrating demonstrations in 2020, publicly echoed by the agency’s acting secretary on Twitter, were widely circulated and amplified in media coverage. The purpose is to gain public support for the increasingly violent police actions.
Keep Doing Nonviolent Protest — They Are Effective
Despite these threatening shifts in law enforcement attitudes, it is still important to peacefully protest. Last month’s massive “No Kings” protests were largely peaceful.
One of the many examples of successful peaceful protests was in San Diego. “The San Diego event had all the ingredients of a successful protest,” according to Amita Sharma of KPBS 65. “It had a purpose. It drew big crowds. Eighty thousand people attended, the largest in the city’s history.”
Sharma continued, “It was diverse. Veterans, families, politicians and civil rights groups participated. And while effective civil disobedience sometimes can and does lead to physical clashes, these protests were peaceful.”
Wendy Gelernter of Take Action San Diego said the “protest’s success and the organizers’ intent to self-regulate potential clashes was not by chance. Not only did we train our own people in de-escalation and have a special group of volunteer peacekeepers, who were wearing yellow vests and circulating through the crowd, we had legal advisers, again all volunteers.”
Please continue to peacefully protest and pressure the government to stop seeing your actions as threats.
Well done…clear descriptions of this accelerating, memancing trend of the Trump administration! We need to facilitate allies willing to protest in any and all modes to slow or eliminate this sinestor, “take down” of our demoncies ways and means to legally monitor, as well as protect constitutionally allowable tactics toward influencing their tactical and ideological anti-authoritarian so threatening now to our experimental democracy!