Escalation isn’t a failure mode. It’s a strategy. The goal is not order — it’s justification. Not stability — but spectacle. Not safety — but consent for emergency powers.
When the state wants broader authority, it doesn’t wait for chaos. It helps create conditions where chaos becomes plausible, then points at the mess and says, See? This is why we need extraordinary measures.
Our job is not to be quiet.
Our job is to be undeniable without being usable.
Many organizers, frontline communities, and movements have been doing versions of this work for decades — often under far greater risk than people like me. What follows isn’t about inventing resistance from scratch. It’s about naming the patterns, surfacing the logic, and offering shared language and structure that can help make existing work harder to dismiss and easier to defend.
This is how we fight power that wants us to overreact.
1. Control the Optics (because Rights live and die on Perception)
Emergency powers live and die on images.
Burning cars. Masked crowds. Shattered glass. A single punch on loop. That becomes the justification slideshow. And in the current age of AI, it often doesn’t even matter if the images are real.
This is not respectability politics. It’s narrative terrain. It’s about denying the state the visuals it needs to sell militarization.
Many movements already do this instinctively. Naming it makes it easier to defend internally and explain externally.
Practices that help:
- Trained protest marshals
- De-escalation teams embedded in crowds
- Rapid isolation of people attempting to provoke property destruction or violence
- Clear internal norms about what helps and what hands them a gift
- Documentation teams focused on state behavior, not crowd chaos
This is terrain. Treat it like terrain.
2. Force Daylight. Power hates Receipts.
Escalatory power thrives in fog. Our collective leverage comes from turning fog into paperwork.
This is where movements often win — not in the street moment, but in the slow, grinding exposure afterward.
Practices that shift power:
- FOIA requests
- Body cam and internal policy demands
- Inspector General complaints
- Civil rights lawsuits
- Subpoenas and discovery
- Independent autopsies and expert reviews
- Media pressure tied to documents, not vibes
COINTELPRO wasn’t ended by rage.
It was ended by proof.
Receipts turn “necessary force” into “documented abuse.”
3. Decentralize Pressure so there’s no Single Throat to Choke
Big centralized confrontations are easy to frame as insurrection. Distributed pressure is harder to contain and harder to narrate away.
Power is good at cracking skulls.
It is bad at managing friction everywhere at once.
Forms of distributed pressure:
- City and state non-cooperation policies
- Sanctuary policies
- Universities, hospitals, and NGOs refusing collaboration
- Labor pressure and professional organization statements
- Faith organizations providing institutional cover
- Local governments creating procedural slowdowns
Power hates friction more than it fears slogans.
4. Shift the Battlefield to Process and Legitimacy
Moral outrage is justified — but process violations are harder to spin.
“Due process.”
“Chain of command.”
“Policy violations.”
“Unauthorized use of force.”
“Failure to follow escalation protocol.”
This isn’t lawyer brain. It’s legitimacy warfare.
Ways to strengthen this frame:
- Center rights and procedures in demands
- Demand written justifications
- Demand timelines
- Demand command responsibility
- Demand policy citations
When they have to explain themselves in procedural language, emergency powers start looking like admissions of failure.
5. Name the Trap before They Spring It
One of the most underused tools is pre-framing.
Say it early and often:
- “They are escalating to justify emergency powers.”
- “This is about manufacturing consent for militarization.”
- “This is about creating chaos to claim control.”
This isn’t rhetorical flourish. It changes how future actions are interpreted.
When extraordinary authority gets invoked, it reads as confirmation — not rescue.
6. Starve the Rage Economy
They want rage because rage shortens attention spans and produces mistakes.
Anger is justified.
Strategy is required.
Rage is a renewable resource for the state. They can wait us out.
Practices that protect movements:
- Rotating leadership to prevent burnout
- Clear internal communication
- Deliberate pacing
- Support systems for activists
- Guardrails against impulsive escalation
The goal is sustainability, not catharsis.
7. Make Legitimacy our Weapon
The state has force.
We have credibility.
That means:
- Calm documentation
- Victim-centered narratives
- Relentless fact-checking
- Process framing
- Consistent messaging
You win by making their story unbelievable.
Once legitimacy cracks, force looks like weakness, not strength.
8. Use History as Pattern Recognition, not Trivia
This strategy has a long résumé:
- Palmer Raids
- Japanese American internment
- COINTELPRO
- Kent State
- Post-9/11 emergency expansions
Every time:
Define threats broadly → escalate force → use escalation to justify more power.
The trap is not new.
Pattern recognition is a defensive asset.
9. What Tends to Help Them (even when it feels righteous)
This isn’t about purity. It’s about effect.
- Riot footage becomes propaganda
- Provocateurs defining tone becomes narrative capture
- Centering only the loudest voices narrows coalition
- Confusing intensity with effectiveness burns people out
- Mistaking visibility for leverage overestimates impact
Spectacle is their oxygen.
From Strategy to Daily Action: What Regular People Can Actually Do
A lot of us are asking the same question: What can I actually do that helps?
No single action fixes this. But collective, sustained pressure absolutely matters. These aren’t replacements for organizing — they’re ways everyday people can support, reinforce, and amplify the work that movements and communities are already doing.
1. Speak Out
Silence is part of how fear works.
Making it clear where you stand matters because courage is contagious. The goal isn’t just to send a message upward — it’s to signal sideways. To let other people know they’re not alone, that resistance is normal, that saying “no” is shared.
Solidarity isn’t abstract. It’s visible.
2. Show Up in Public
If you can get to protests or public actions, it matters.
Not because it magically changes policy overnight, but because it’s a visible refusal to acquiesce. It tells neighbors, coworkers, and institutions that compliance isn’t universal.
Visibility also changes how repression is perceived. It’s harder to isolate and demonize when people see that dissent is widespread.
3. Contact Representatives (even When It Feels Pointless)
Public pressure works — not because elected officials grow a conscience, but because they fear political cost.
Calls, emails, and public pressure contribute to that cost. We’ve seen time and again that backlash makes institutions nervous. It changes corporate behavior. It forces walk-backs. It creates fractures.
They answer to us — even when they pretend they don’t.
4. Apply Economic Pressure
Boycotts. Consumer choices. Public pressure on companies collaborating with abusive policy.
It’s not about purity. It’s about consequences.
Economic friction makes collaboration more expensive. That changes behavior over time, especially when combined with public accountability.
5. Throw Sand in the Gears
There are legal and procedural ways to make repression more costly:
- FOIA requests
- Regulatory complaints
- Public records requests
- Refusal of voluntary cooperation
- Lawful non-cooperation where possible
Bureaucracy cuts both ways. Friction matters.
6. Fund the Work
Legal defense. Mutual aid. Civil rights orgs. Community funds.
Most of us aren’t wealthy. But small, sustained contributions add up. $5–20 from a lot of people is real infrastructure.
7. Support Independent Journalism
Narrative is a battlefield.
Supporting journalists and outlets that aren’t owned by billionaires or aligned with power structures helps keep documentation alive. Even views, shares, and subscriptions matter.
Bonus: Take Care of Yourself
Burnout is a tactic — even when no one intends it to be.
Rest is not betrayal. Joy is not frivolous. You cannot fight effectively if you are exhausted, isolated, or emotionally hollowed out.
Sustainability is part of resistance.
The Core Principle
Don’t be governable by their narrative.
Make them operate in daylight.
Make them justify every step.
Make escalation look thin, forced, and manufactured.
If they invoke emergency powers anyway, the groundwork we’ve laid determines whether the public sees necessity — or naked power.
That difference is everything.
The Bottom Line
The trap is rage without strategy.
The answer is outrage with discipline.
Not silence.
Not submission.
Pressure. Process. Exposure. Friction. Time.
That’s how we resist without becoming the excuse.
