I think people need to be more comfortable with illegalism and I’m not kidding. Of course the more legal something is, the safer and easier it is to do, but the more people who disregard the law, the harder it is to enforce. There are plenty of laws on the books that people just ignore and are never or rarely policed.
Becoming more comfortable with little illegal activities makes you more comfortable with bigger more important illegal activities. Additionally, it is crucial to build a wall of silence. Nobody talks everybody walks.
People who give out food without a permit, hold a march without a permit, grow a garden without a permit, are more likely to be people you could turn to to work with on preventing an eviction, or keeping people out of cop hands, or helping your friend Jane get crucial healthcare when it’s not legal in your state.
Communities comfortable with these acts won’t call the cops, and then nobody knows that it’s happening.
People have got to shift from both the idea that lawful = good/ illegal = bad, and that the illegality of something means that’s the end of it, and the only fight left is to make it legal again.
Absolutely the most dangerous thing about liberals from an organizing perspective is their moralism about law and what they deem the acceptable ways of breaking them for political purposes. In my experience this is a good example of how "apolitical"/lumpen people are very often more prepared to support us than "progressives."
