the left needs to stop being a bunch of cowards. tell the right we're coming for them. they need to be scared of us. quit living up to the stereotype of 'average liberal soyboy'.
What if the day you decide it's time you go outside to realize the day was two years ago and now half your friends are being "re-educated" and you have to hide that you ever knew the other half.
I tell people as often as I can, especially my trans and bipoc friends; now is the time. Get a couple guns (a long one and a short one) and learn how to use them. Learn some basic first aid, you really just need to know how to stabilize someone. Start networking with like-minded people in your communities. The police will not protect us, they’ve proven they’ll happily club senior citizens to the ground and shoot any protesters in the face with rubber bullets while escorting a rightwing murderer to safety. We only have soap, ballot, bullet, and jury boxes and obviously the soapbox has limited impact and the ballot box increasingly less.
Iran was a secular, liberal state until almost 1980 when they (mostly legitimately) elected an Islamist theocracy; it could happen here.