Speech and Protest Won't Work. Here's What Will

Building Resistance and Winning the Hour

Yesterday, across more than 2,000 cities in the United States, people flooded the streets under the banner of “No Kings.” From Portland to Philadelphia, Denver to D.C., the protests marked a massive collective rejection of rising authoritarianism, particularly aimed at Trump’s militarized birthday celebration/Flag Day spectacle. The messaging was clear: this is not a monarchy, and we will not be subjects. The scale was stunning—millions turned out in what should have been a moment of democratic assertion.

And yet, the tanks still rolled.

The executive orders will still be signed. The surveillance apparatus will remain untouched. The pipelines will still be built. And the billionaires will still sleep soundly.

Because in the United States, as comedian and commentator Bassem Youssef said in a video I saw this week, “You can say whatever you want... but the government will still do whatever it wants.” We all feel it: the increasing futility of protest, the emptiness of “raising awareness,” the exhaustion of being perpetually outraged yet politically impotent. Watch this short exchange with Youssef below.

As you will see… I think there is something else to do besides dissent. We’ll get to that in a moment. A Substack friend of mine,

Margi Prideaux, PhD

—the voice behind

Radically Local

—shared

Jo Lorenz

blistering essay, “Is Your Book Club More Revolutionary Than Your Protest?” Lorenz maps the terrain of digital disempowerment with terrifying clarity: we are caught in a feedback loop of outrage and distraction, mistaking visibility for power and virality for impact. We scroll, we share, we scream—but nothing shifts.

This is the terminal logic of neoliberalism: freedom of speech without power over outcomes. What we’re facing is not censorship—it’s irrelevance. The system has evolved to digest dissent, metabolize protest, and convert rebellion into brand engagement.

Which is why we need a new frame—not one of expression, but one of execution. Not just resistance, but operations. Not just movements, but missions. Because if the protest didn’t work yesterday, it’s time to try something else.

1. The Collapse of Protest Politics

The protests didn’t fail because people didn’t care. They failed because the system isn’t designed to respond to protest—it’s designed to absorb it.

We’ve marched for climate action, shouted for Black lives, rallied for reproductive freedom, and now for Palestine. The result? Police budgets expanded. Fossil fuel extraction escalated. Roe fell. Gaza burns. Awareness has never been higher. Impact has rarely been lower.

This is not accidental—it’s engineered. Neoliberal governance has perfected the art of managing dissent. Dissent is not crushed; it’s commodified, converted into metrics of engagement, and sold back to us in campaign ads and NGO reports. The permitted rituals of liberal protest—march, chant, disperse—have become tools of pacification, not liberation.

And while we rally, the real decisions are being made in rooms we’ll never enter. Billionaires and bureaucrats don’t fear the signs we wave; they fear logistics, sabotage, strategic disruption. They fear what General Giáp understood in Vietnam: that power lies not in noise, but in sustained, coordinated resistance. People’s war wasn’t just a military campaign—it was a total mobilization of everyday life. Families became cells. Villages became supply lines. The war was everywhere because the people carried it in their breath.

What we need now is not another viral protest—it’s a cultural shift toward operational mentality.

That’s the terrain I want to navigate. Not how to get more people to protest, but how to think and act like insurgents, even in daily life. That means moving beyond symbolic gestures and into structured action: routines, protocols, intelligence, feedback loops.

In my life, this has taken the form of a command console—a set of tools that keeps my goals, missions, tactics, and intelligence in front of me. It’s not productivity for productivity’s sake. It’s infrastructure. Because the revolution, if it comes, will not be a single moment. It will be hour by hour, in kitchens and forests, server rooms and shelters, carried by those willing to fight the long war—not for awareness, but for autonomy.

2. The Shift to Operational Mentality

Revolutions aren’t won by slogans. They’re won by logistics.

That’s the truth at the heart of every serious resistance movement—from Giáp’s Vietnam to the underground networks of the French Resistance, or the IRA’s cell-based operations. These movements didn’t rely on the momentum of protest; they operated like living organisms—adaptable, coordinated, built for endurance.

Do we track our progress, not toward some vague “better world,” but toward tangible shifts—tasks completed, habits maintained, relationships deepened, networks fortified?

At the center of it is a simple doctrine: Win the Hour.

“Win the Hour” is how I stay out of despair, how I move when the bigger picture feels immovable. I don’t need to win the day, or the week, or the culture war. I just need to win the next sixty minutes. Sometimes I even lower the bar to winning the next five when movement feels overtaxing.

Personally that might mean preparing food. For resistance, preparing food for mutual aid. Or unplugging from the doom scroll to finish a chapter of strategy. Or getting sleep because exhaustion is counter-revolutionary. Or sending a text to check in on someone whose well-being is part of your front line. If every hour becomes an act of resistance, every day becomes a weapon.

And when the hour’s lost? We learn. We debrief. We adapt.

Part of this is tracking what worked, what failed, what we missed. It’s our feedback loop—our operational doctrine in motion. Over time, it becomes a record of resistance, not just ideas but actions. It reminds me that discipline is freedom. That autonomy isn’t a feeling—it’s a result.

And most importantly, it reminds me that I am not passive in the face of this collapsing empire. I am building something. Even if no one sees it. Even if it fails. I am training for the future that neoliberalism cannot imagine.

Because the revolution doesn’t begin when we march—it begins when we organize. When we build systems that are robust, repeatable, and rooted in reality. The old world is crumbling. The new one is being built one hour at a time.

3. Systems Thinking vs. System Reform

We are trained—culturally, educationally, emotionally—to believe in reform. We are told that if we just raise awareness, vote harder, or appeal to reason, the system will correct itself. That justice is an eventuality. That power will listen. That change is linear, incremental, and benevolent.

But this is mythology, not material analysis.

As David Harvey laid out in A Brief History of Neoliberalism, the rise of neoliberal governance wasn’t a bug in the postwar order—it was a counterinsurgency against social democracy and any notion of shared power. It was a class war waged from above, reconfiguring the state as the enforcement wing of capital. Privatization, deregulation, the destruction of organized labor, financialization of everything—none of this was accidental.

It was engineered to make reform structurally impossible.

It will not voluntarily transform. It is not broken. It is working exactly as designed—to concentrate power, extract value, and devour the living planet.

To ask this system to reform is like asking a virus to heal its host.

And so we arrive at a grim but liberating conclusion: the old system will not be fixed. It will fall. The question is not whether we can save it, but whether we can survive its collapse—and whether we can build something better in its shadow.

That’s why strategic operation matters. That’s why “Win the Hour” matters. Because we are not just resisting—we are constructing parallel systems. Autonomous supply chains. Decentralized communications. Local defense networks. Mutual aid that’s not just charity, but prefiguration. These are not hobbies. They are the skeletal beginnings of the post-neoliberal, decentralized world.

We aren’t here to petition the system. We’re here to outlive it.

And that work doesn’t begin at the ballot box or the barricade. It begins at home, in your notebooks, in your routines, in your hour. Because every system we will need later must be tested now. Every doctrine must be lived. Every strategy must be practiced. There is no rehearsal. There is only the long war ahead.

4. Application: Tools of Everyday Resistance

Revolutions are not abstract. They are made of minutes and meals, conversations and coordination, rest and rigor. If we’re going to shift from symbolic protest to operational resistance, we need to build our lives like insurgents build campaigns: deliberately, iteratively, tactically.

This is where “Win the Hour” becomes more than a mantra. It becomes method.

For me, that method is anchored in some sort of strategic planning system—a personal resistance interface that functions as both strategic planner and situational report. Here’s what mine includes:

• Mission Logs: What am I trying to achieve—today, this week, this season? Not in vague terms like “resist capitalism,” but actionable, measurable goals: start a local food-share, recruit three people into a reading group, complete first draft of chapter, repair the rainwater system.

• SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures): What routines keep me grounded and effective? Morning check-ins, security hygiene, media vetting protocols, fallback plans for power outages or for burnout. These are your daily drills. Discipline is freedom.

• Intelligence & Situational Reports: What’s the terrain? Local politics, mutual aid signals, surveillance shifts, resource needs. Document everything. Track patterns. You’re building a map of the conflict zone you live in.

• After-Action Reviews: What worked, what failed, what was learned? Every hour is an experiment. Debrief with yourself. Refine your approach. Evolution is strategy.

• Mission Map: A visual representation of your resistance terrain. Tracks active campaigns, key locations (community kitchens, organizing hubs), allies and risk zones, and helps prioritize engagements. Think of it as your field intel grid.

• Supply Manifests: Inventories of what you have and what you need—food, water, communications gear, medical kits, literature, fuel. You can’t run an operation without knowing your logistical status. Your pantry is a base of operations.

• Operations Calendar: A strategic timeline of recurring actions, upcoming threats, key seasonal shifts, and planned mobilizations. Resistance without rhythm is chaos. Track time like it’s a weapon.

• Threat Assessments: Ongoing analysis of emerging risks—local repression, disinformation trends, law enforcement behavior, burnout indicators. Update regularly. Mitigate proactively.

• Mobilization Protocols: Who do you call when things go sideways? What’s your fallback plan if the grid goes down or a friend is arrested? Every resistance cell needs a simple, clear, actionable protocol for rapid response.

• Doctrine Codex: A living document of foundational principles—what you and your group believe, how you operate, and where you draw the line. These aren’t vague values; they’re distilled truths learned through struggle. Examples: “Dispersed power survives,” “Mutual aid over martyrdom,” “Culture is a vector,” “Collapse is already here.” Your codex evolves with experience, aligning practice with purpose and keeping your resistance anchored during chaos.

And none of this happens in isolation. Whether it’s a digital interface or a physical board on your wall, your planning system isn’t just for lone wolves—it’s a template that scales. Small groups can mirror the framework: shared missions, rotating intelligence roles, decentralized but coordinated objectives.

There’s no “right” format. What matters is that it’s yours—and that it helps you win the hour. I’ve used everything from Google Docs, Trello… and am currently loving Notion. I’ve designed my own personal command console there that allows me to see all of my tools in one place.

Just be smart: Don’t store passwords, sensitive financial/personal data, or confidential intelligence unless you're using an encrypted vault or platform.

For sensitive material, combine Notion (for structure and visibility) with a secure, zero‑knowledge vault (like Cryptee or Proton) for storage.

What matters most is that people start treating their lives like sites of resistance, not just reflection. Because the enemy has already done this. Capital has SOPs for psychological warfare. Empire has doctrines for neutralizing dissent. The question is: Do you?

Start small. One hour. One habit. One mission. Support a neighbor. Fix a tool. Study a supply chain. Build redundancy. Protect a vulnerable friend. It could be as simple as starting your own personal fitness program, or organizing your gear. Say no when it costs. Say yes when it counts. The hour is the unit of revolution.

And when you lose it—when you sleep in, fall apart, or freeze—that’s not failure. That’s data. That’s reconnaissance. You’re not a martyr. You’re a strategist. Debrief. Adjust. Win the next one.

The war isn’t someday. The war is now. And it’s being fought minute by minute, life by life.

Start where you are. Build what you need. Win the hour.