The online tools that fueled “No Kings” and Trump’s resistance

Wilson, who had participated in political protests in the past but had never been involved in the organization, joined the group’s discord channel to help plan.

“Not even in my unbridled dreams I thought that my first protest that I organized with another group of Pennsylvani would have 200 people who would show up,” says Wilson to Wired. “So the next, I think we had 300 or 400, so I am optimistic right now. The trick will be to keep this energy.”

Like Wilson, many of the 311,000 subscribers at the Sumddit and the 17,000 members of the group’s discord have no experience in the organization of protests. However, they felt they had to do it.

“Democracy must be defended and it is up to us as members of the community to get up and do that job, because no one else will do it for us,” says Wilson.

Group 50501 also uses a wide variety of other online platforms to coordinate their efforts, including encrypted messaging apps such as Signal and Matrix, which the smaller subgroups use for sensitive conversations. Platforms like Mobilize.us Allow participants to share information on the next protests, while the state -level groups devise ideas for signs and songs on shared Google documents.

“Everyone is able to use different strategies to communicate, so it’s everywhere,” says TJ Demetrioau, public affairs officer for a subgroup 50501 for veterans. “If you are involved in a couple of different groups, it can be confused.”

Discord is the main platform for the planning and assignment of voluntary positions within local groups, but also acts as a place where the community can vent. Following the group’s protests on March 4, many members met on the group’s discord’s discord server to look at Trump’s address at a joint congress session.

The “general chat” channel was quickly full of anger, not for what Trump said, but to the response of the democrats in the room, who had decided the best way to face Trump was wear pink blouses AND Raise small signs that no one could see.

“I don’t take you around, they keep signs instead of whistles,” wrote an incredulous member. “Powers of fuck without spin,” added another, after no other democratic came to defense of the representative at the Green of Texas, who was removed from the Trump tackling room.

“Well, I’m glad you live everyone because saint shit was a weak demonstration from dems with their bitch = ass [sic] Paddles and pink shirts and blue ties, “wrote another member.

Although the group has had many successes, some combat has unfortunately become a distraction.

In April, the person who published the original post of 50501, known online as evolved mushrooms, completely blocked Sumdddit, claiming that some national groups were trying to take control of the 50501 group for their ends. According to a post since then canceled on Reddit, the mushrooms believed that someone had tried to present brand applications for the name 50501. A member of the leading group of 50501 subsequently stated in a Place of Reddit that there was an attempt to mark the name and create an entity 501c4, but that this was made by “a separate and independent group of three people entirely not linked to the largest group 50501.