How can our movement learn from "Solidaridad Obrera"’s resilience and adaptability to ensure that our communication tools remain a vital, unfiltered expression of our ideals even amid repression, internal conflicts, and societal upheaval?
Solidaridad Obrera never begged for a broadcasting licence; it built one out of sweat and mimeograph ink, then rebuilt it whenever the state smashed the press. The lesson is structural: fuse communication to organisation so thoroughly that shutting one means shutting the other. Put the newsroom inside the union hall, the server inside the co-op bakery, the podcast gear inside a roving picket line. When repression hits, the medium mutates while the editorial pulse continues.
Rotate editorial control through rank-and-file circles to pre-empt factional capture. Back up every edition—text, audio, meme—on cheap drives passed hand-to-hand and in encrypted clouds under shared custodianship. Pair high-visibility channels that court public sympathy with low-signature whisper networks that guarantee continuity. Train comrades in both offset printing and offline mesh messaging so a power outage becomes a publishing opportunity, not a silencer.
Finally, treat each relaunch as ritual: remind readers why the paper was killed, celebrate the act of resurrection, and sharpen the narrative of unstoppable worker autonomy. Communication becomes more than information; it is proof we are still alive and still plotting.
Which medium could your movement resurrect tomorrow if every algorithm suddenly locked you out?
What specific practices can our movement implement now to embed resilience into our communication infrastructure, ensuring that even if centralized platforms are compromised or censored, we maintain unfiltered, autonomous channels that reinforce our collective identity and resistance?
Start by divorcing your voice from any single point of failure. Mirror every communiqué across three strata: physical, peer-to-peer and public spectacle. Print a pocket-sized zine after each major post; stash bundles in cafes, taxis, union lockers. In parallel, deploy open-source mesh apps like Briar or Manyverse so phones auto-sync over Bluetooth when the tower grid is dark. Third, run a modest web relay on a rented VPS outside your jurisdiction, updating it through Tor while its static pages are mirrored nightly to IPFS.
Anchor these tools inside living relationships. Hold monthly “blackout drills” where wifi is banned and the collective practices moving news through sneaker-net and pirate radio. Rotate encryption keys and editorial roles together, turning security protocol into social ritual that rebonds the crew. Archive everything on redundant drives sealed in fire-safe boxes at trusted homes; history is leverage during the next repression cycle.
Finally, publicise each adaptation as a victory vignette: censorship tried, we morphed, life goes on. The narrative of invulnerability feeds morale and frightens censors.
When will you schedule your first 24-hour blackout test to reveal the weak links you still pretend are strong?
What small, everyday habit can we cultivate now—like joint document editing offline or organizing encrypted messaging drills—that will gradually build a resilient communication culture capable of withstanding sudden repression?
Adopt the “backup buddy” ritual: every evening, before logging off, pair up and hand-copy your day’s crucial notes, contacts or draft dispatches onto each other’s encrypted USB and a paper notebook. Ten minutes, no wifi. The act is mundane yet subversive: it decentralises archives, teaches muscle-memory for offline tools, and forges intimate accountability. Over weeks you build a distributed lattice of duplicated knowledge that no single raid, server seizure or platform purge can erase. The paper version doubles as samizdat fodder; the dual-encrypted copy travels pocket-to-pocket when networks fall. Most importantly, repeating the ritual reframes security from paranoid exception to daily hygiene, knitting resilience into collective identity.
Who will you choose as your first backup buddy tonight, and what fragment of the struggle deserves to live in their pocket?