I think trading your trombone lessons for puppet making is cool. I traded a giant turnip and a jar of pickled beets for some of my neighbour’s candied ginger last week.

Since you asked for ideas about organizing and what your fabulous ‘microscopic beans’ group might get up to:

Maybe talk to your community of regulars about being willing to mobilize in some way. Like, who wants basic disaster training. Maybe one of you knows first aid and can teach the rest. Those community meals you have could turn into bringing food to war refugees or families of stolen migrant workers out every Monday morning at the embassy (or wherever they protest regularly in your area). You can make one of your meetings about media literacy, and spotting propaganda, or if you’re all already savvy, you could create a fabulous Introduction to Propaganda Techniques performance and bring it to a mall or public square.

Poster/sticker campaigns telling people which media are Feeding them nazi shit are really helpful atm. No idea what your jam session might make out of an action like that, but artists jailbreak people’s programming in nifty ways no one expects. You could have everyone learn Jesse Welles’ War Isn’t Murder song and flash mob it somewhere.

Also, and this is where I know NOTHING about you, so apologies if it’s too personal or presumptuous.

I remember the G20 up here in Toronto really well. I remember them putting up those barricades all over downtown, telling locals not to go outside in our own neighbourhoods, them rounding up people the nights before protests, getting kettled and on. That shit is absolutely traumatizing, and you’re right: all bets are off when it comes to safety at protests where you are. Your safety is solely in the hands of the protester next to you, as theirs is in yours, just like always. My advice is to ask your group if anyone else feels traumatized by past protests in a similar way. Maybe the number is higher than you think. Maybe they want to talk about like, feelings and stuff. Maybe you can make something out of that (tactics, actions), or maybe it’s just a conversation. Either way, win-win.

“Damn Harris running for President did this! Dems really need to get back to their working class roots!” - MAGA, 2026

It’s the groove. And it’s in the heart.

TIL - Elon’s maternal grandpappy (born Yankee, raised Canuk, moved to South Africa for the apartheid in 1940) was a chiropractor. He and Palmer were good pals, and he graduated from Palmer’s school in Iowa in the 1920s. Went on to create and put himself in charge of a bunch of chiropractic regulatory bodies.

All the racist and nation-destabilizing shit he tried to accomplish through political appointment (of himself, ofc) failed. Last thing he published afaik was an anti-vax, anti-fluoride “it’s an international conspiracy of teh jews” diatribe.

[edit for wiki link]

Spot on. Waiting for their favourite influencer, pastor, etc to tell them to believe something else.

In theatre it’s called “suspension of disbelief.” You know what’s happening on stage isn’t really happening, but you agree to just go with it and exist in the show’s reality for an hour or so. Not meant to be a permanent state of consciousness.