Get your Signal group chats together and get out there

Don't get doomblocked, get organized.

This was a bad week. I’m not sure I’d try to justify a claim that it was particularly bad in the scheme of an already interminable parade of bad weeks, but it was certainly bad. Maybe it was the combo of malicious executive incompetence in SignalGate with demonstrations of state power that openly aspire to fascism; the daytime abductions of students and socially mediated migrant Salvadoran prison tours with Trump officials. Maybe it was Trump assaulting the federal unions head on, or Musk’s open efforts to bribe Wisconsin voters.

Regardless, it all comports with the peculiar and predictable behavior of the ruling American oligarchy (which I took a stab at deconstructing earlier in the week), and it can all get pretty dispiriting, or worse. I got an email from a reader this week saying they felt they had to unsubscribe; while they’d continue to be a paid supporter to back the work, hearing the news of what’s happening to the country was simply too much for their mental health. I understand that fully. The onslaught is relentless. I felt like I was losing it myself more than a couple times this past week.

But there are always things we can do, and things we can do right now. And don’t stop using Signal—in fact, use it to get organized.

First, the doomscroll, in fast-forward, a reminder of the stakes:

• Video surfaced of masked federal agents abducting a student visa-holding legal resident of Massachusetts without due process, threw her in an unmarked van and shipped her to a detention center in Louisiana, where she joins another legal resident to which they have done the same.¹ (She wrote an op-ed in favor of her university divesting from Israel, he helped organize a campus protest. Neither are charged with any crimes.)

• The head of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, took a trip to El Salvador to pose in front of prisoners, some of whom are migrants that the US has shipped there, again without due process, to make some content for X.

• In an interview with Fox News, Elon Musk, his voice quivering with fear and with fury, proclaimed that Trump had assured him they were going to “go after” critics and people organizing Tesla protests. Musk is also delivering $1 million checks to quite literally buy votes in the Wisconsin Supreme Court elections, and is also continuing his campaign to break the federal government—this time, it’s Social Security, where he wants to replace the workers who administer benefits with AI.

• Thursday night, Trump signed an order to end collective bargaining for most unionized federal workers, seeking to dissolve contracts for some 700,000-1,000,000 civil servants.

And then of course there was the Houthi PC Small Group affair. A truly astonishing tale of executive imbecility for our times. Michael Waltz, Donald Trump’s national security adviser, accidentally added the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a Signal group chat along with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and many others, to plan and discuss a forthcoming bombing operation in Yemen. Without ever noticing Goldberg was present, the planned the attack, shared sensitive classified information, and celebrated its completion.

The Trump administration’s response to the story can best be described as a shrug mixed with some of the least convincing lying you’ve ever seen. Trump himself, of course, can barely be bothered to grasp what actually happened or what Signal even is, and the revelations have led to several more cases of comically bad operations security. WIRED discovered that Waltz and other top White House staffers have left sensitive information public on their Venmo accounts, and Der Speigel reports that classified details, usernames, and even passwords on easily accessible websites.

As a result, the Trump administration and even a number of bipartisan commenters questioned the security of Signal, prompting a number of experts to have to explain that, no, the problem isn’t Signal, which remains the best and easiest to use encrypted messaging app, but you—if you happen to be an idiot while using it. Signal is secure, and you can trust it, if you practice good personal security hygiene. Ie, don’t store your Signal password online, have a strong password on your phone if you have Signal on that phone (and just have a good password anyway dummy), using Signal’s nickname feature, and so on.

Ok ok ok. You get it; there’s a lot. We are being ruled by cruel vainglorious men, many of whom are so hubristic and unthinking it leads them to do very dumb things, and many others who are just quite actually dumb. They are perpetuating what can fairly be described as a terror campaign against migrants and dissidents, and an intimidation campaign backed by the weight of the state against protestors and organizers. It is bleak.

But! There is still much to be hopeful for, and at the very least to fight for. As the writer Osita Nwanevu put it on Bluesky: “We are deciding, right now, whether the aspirations we hold for this country are finished. Whether we're going to let these hoodlums and grifters throw what's left of the American idea into the garbage for their own profit and gain.”

It is easy to succumb to the doomscroll. Let’s not, if we at all can prevent it. Is there a word for wanting to do something, but feeling paralyzed by the myriad torrents of shit raining down upon us? How about doomblocked, is that something. Let’s not get doomblocked. Get on Signal—we are going to need safe, protected communications now more than ever to protest this state—and get organized.

Some places to do so:

• Tomorrow, on Saturday March 29th: Join a Tesla Takedown event for its global day of action. These are getting bigger and better attended every week, and at the last one I went to I met folks who’d never been to an organized protest before, but the march towards authoritarianism inspired them to get out in the streets. Do it. I’ll be heading to one in West LA, if you’re around, say hi. If you’re anywhere else, use this website to locate an event near you.

• The next few days: Volunteer to help do virtual phone banking in support of the Democratic Supreme Court candidate in Wisconsin—the seat that Musk is currently trying to buy.

• Tuesday, April 1st: If you’re in California, the UC labor unions are set to strike. Join a picket line and show your support.

• Anytime: Download Signal, invite your colleagues, and start talking about organizing. Don’t accidentally add any Trump administration officials.

• Anytime: Sign up to join the federal workers unions as an ally, as they organize to confront DOGE and Trump’s latest executive order to eradicate their right to bargain.

• Anytime: Follow Mariame Kaba on Bluesky for a frequently updated stream of volunteer and organizing opportunities.

• Anytime: Read Hamilton Nolan and start thinking about a general strike, for real.

• Anytime: The AI companies promoted their latest products by desecrating Studio Ghibli this week, so support the real thing by going to see a new 4K remaster of Princess Mononoke in theaters.

I am aware that this here blog can get heavy on the gloom—the nature I guess of writing about the blood in the machine—and folks have asked for more actionable solutions. Hope this helps out in that regard. One other thing you can do is pitch in here; I can only do this work with reader support. A few bucks a month, if you can. Thanks to all who do, and to everyone out there picking up the proverbial hammer.

We’ve got to get out there and make some noise, build community and tank some Tesla stock. Hammers up.

1. If you’ve been anywhere near any kind of screen over the last week, then you’ve seen the chilling video of a crew of plainclothes men and women, clad in masks, arrest a Tufts University student and load her into an unmarked van. The masked officers were ICE officials, and Rumeysa Ozturk is a Turkish national with a valid student visa. However, last year, she wrote an op-ed politely asking Tufts to comply with a student union vote to disclose its investments and divest from Israel. That was enough to make her a target of the Canary Mission, a hardline pro-Israel site that keeps tabs on students whose speech it dislikes, and now, like Mahmoud Khalil before her, Ozturk has been transported by anonymous ICE agents a thousand miles away from her home to a detention center in Louisiana. There is no warrant for her arrest, and she has not been accused of, nor charged with, a crime.