Introduction

It is evident that the United States of America is careening with frightful velocity into a transformation, if not outright collapse, of unclear destination but dismaying magnitude. Many people are frightened, appalled, and infuriated, but are unclear how to resist or defend against this onslaught of guided and intentional entropy through conventional measures.

As a nation, most of middle America has spent generations pleasantly ensconced within the comforting bounds of domestic tranquility, and lack the tools, habits, and communal infrastructure to casually discuss, much less mount, an effective defense against rising domestic fascism.

Not all Americans have been so fortunate; Black Americans are deeply familiar with life under an oppressor’s heel, as are Native Americans, LGBT communities, and many other marginalized minorities. It is largely middle-class white America which has never had to fight for their simple right to exist, to walk through town without fear of reprisal or harassment. What had felt a deserved safety and comfort — the earned fruits of civility, education and productive life, some might have thought — is now exposed as weakness, unpreparedness and disarray.

Times change. The wheel has turned, and is veritably coming off the axel. Many people are belatedly realizing their lack of entrenched community, locations to assemble, opportunities for training, and sources of instruction in uncomfortable new skills. A nation of non-preppers feels a sudden need to prepare, and as disorganized individuals we are geese in a barrel.

What we lack, as individuals, is organization, information and communication. We need a group we can join, or at least occasionally attend and learn from, to teach us what we do not know, provide space to meet and train in new techniques, and community with whom we can discuss our concerns, taking courage and reassurance from our neighbors that our eyes do not deceive us, that our worst suspicions are in fact playing out before us, and that our years of safety are past: the war for civilization and civility has come home to us.

A Personal Discourse

Like so many others watching the continuing clusterfuck unfold in Washington, I felt powerless to push-back against rising authoritarianism, and feared the crescendoing clamor of jackboots echoing up the halls of history. What could I do, what could any of us do, alone, to slow the crushing onslaught of historical momentum and societal free-fall?

Nothing. As individuals, scattered and alone, there is little any of us can do except survive, treading madly to keep our own heads above water, at best reaching out to help a struggling friend or neighbor find a door to cling atop.

But we are not alone. There are millions of us — hundreds of millions, as I choose to believe. Together we have the collective intelligence, will and determination to pull together and rise above this ill tide — as long as we join hands and pool our resources, our time, our knowledge and our convictions.

So I tried to envision the sort of organization and community I wanted to join — what kind of people might have already bonded for this purpose, how might they advertise themselves, what terms should I search to find them. I didn’t come up with a lot.

And it struck me. Like so many others, I was passively waiting for someone else to light the first candle. That is how we all go down in the darkness.

So here I am lighting my own candle, and holding it high for all to see. This is not a movement I wish to lead, it is a community I wish to join, and I am hoping you will wish to join with me.

We cannot wait for the lifeboat. We are the lifeboat.

Charter

Beliefs

Positions

• We believe that all human life has value, that no ethnicity or race or religion has supremacy over others.
• We believe that questions of gender and sexuality are entirely left to consenting adult individuals, and that acts of hatred, violence or discrimination based on gender and sex should be met with non-violent but locked-arm resistance.
• We believe that where someone was born, or where their parents were born, should not exclude them from basic services, education, right to work, or simple kindness, wherever they may find themselves.
  …that’s it, really. If we had a rallying cry, it would be “Don’t be assholes!” It shouldn’t have to be said, but here we are.

Violence

• We believe that violence should never be the first response in disagreement, and should always be the last recourse in defense of one’s own or another’s safety and protection.

• However, we believe that occurrences of political, racial and social violence are on the rise, and that oftimes violence may only be rebuffed and ended with matching violence.

• We seek never to open physical hostilities upon others, but feel obligated to prepare for violent outbreaks when they arise, in defense of our own and our neighbors’ well-being.

• With regard to the 2nd Amendment and firearms in particular, we acknowledge living in a nation of historically high gun ownership, and that regardless of our personal preferences and safety considerations, the emergent clash of civilizations is unlikely to be won through chants and prayer alone. Guns were required to forge this country, at tremendous cost including spillage of incalculable innocent and native blood. For all those lives paid in blood and tears, if we wish to preserve what striated good emerged from that brutal legacy, we will likely have to shed more blood today in its preservation. In some cases, our own.

Allies

The Triangle Progressive Militia is willingly allied with all groups who seek to resist and push-back against the ongoing wave of nationalism and authoritarianism, including in no particular order:

• The American Civil Liberties Union
• Black Lives Matter
• The Democratic Party of America
• The Communist Party of America
• The Libertarian Party of America, for those members appropriately appalled at the current regime
• The Green Party of America, saving only Jill Stein who can rot in hell
• The Anarchist Party of America, if there is one
• The Satanic Temple, whose legal challenges and shenanigans we cheer with a full-throated roar.
  I’ve nothing against the Church of Satan, but for clarity, this is not them.

Nomenclature

“Militia” is going to set some people off, and probably invite all manner of unwelcome investigation. It feels accurate to what I want to say, but I am open to alternatives.

• Triangle Progressive Militia (TPM)
• Triangle Anti-Fascism League (TAFL)
• Raleigh-Triangle Progressives (RTP)
• Raleigh Democrats United (RDU)
• North Carolinians for Sanity (NCS)
• Make Our Triangle Sane Again (MOTSA)
• …

Logistics

Location

Part of the group’s purpose is to give people a place to learn to shoot and discuss practical defensive options, away from the typically-conservative “2A” gun-culture which typically permeates traditional gun ranges and venues.

There are laws regarding where people can shoot in North Carolina, and not everyone lives on land convenient for use as a shared range. Some do, however, and one purpose of the group is to help bring together communities looking to build their own “safe ranges” for practice and training.

Communications

Digital communications, though ubiquitous and convenient, are uniquely susceptible to sniffing, recording, and tracking. We should all be familiar with the PRISM system exposed by Edward Snowden back in the halcyon days of 2013. It should be self-evident that Elon Musk, or another like him, will soon enough have their claws into it, feeding intercepted packet data into Nvidia-powered AI engines capable of picking out cleartext or even artfully encoded codespeak exchanged through public channels.

While the eternal battle waged between blue-team hackers and cryptographers on the one hand, and red-team hackers and cryptanalysts on the other, will never entirely vanquish rebellion or piracy — ”You can’t kill the signal, Mal” — it is clear that governments and corporations have tremendous power, processing, and reach. In olde times, simple lack of manpower curtailed government overreach, but recent advances in AI allow nearly infinite resources to be scaled to the digital surveillance problem: all you have to do is throw money at it, and let’s face it they have all the money.

Regrettably, one must assume that technically savvy authoritarian governments can now read and intercept pretty much anything they like in terms of digital packet data (email, SMS, Facebook…yes even Google Docs).
What that means for resistance movements is certainly worth a discussion, but not one to be held here.

Distributed Structure

Cellular networks are cool, kids.