People have asked about HK lessons for Portland, and I point them all to @zeynep, who in her free time from epidemiology studies this stuff for a living. But one lesson I remember clearly is simple: what's the plan for when someone throws a molotov cocktail for real?

Right now people are making fun of Portland police for what looks like a transparently bogus claim about finding molotov cocktails. But eventually someone is going to throw one. The first reaction will be to say it's a police provocateur, with lots of pixel-by-pixel analysis

But what if someone goes ahead and does it? What if it hurts someone, either on the throwing side (I saw way too many bad arms in HK) or among the police? Possible answers include unity despite disagreement over tactics (the HK solution), or declaring the use of them off-limits

The important thing is to have this conversation before events get ahead of you. In any group of young, excited people there will be jerks and people who in the moment take things too far. How to handle them and set boundaries is a really hard question in decentralized protest

I still don't really understand how they pulled this off in Hong Kong. But a huge amount of the protesters' energy went into managing this divide between the peaceful faction and the "brave fighters". Their sustained ability to compromise was one of the most remarkable successes

Anyway, just read @zeynep's book. It's like a how-to manual for this stuff. Sustained protests are pretty boring so you will have lots of time to read it! Free CC version at bottom! https://www.twitterandteargas.org/ 

Everyone wants to talk about fun tactics, like what's the right size traffic cone to use for tear gas, but the weak link of any Portland-style protest, like in 99% of human endeavors, is governance and asshole management

There's also tons of HK people on Twitter and the wider internet who can talk about this. But I'm not pointing to them because basically the entire population is in legal jeopardy for the sustained protests of last year.

Just remember how the Women's March ended, the biggest (by numbers) protest movement in American history. What was supposed to be the great hope of the Resistance collapsed almost instantly due to organizational and internecine issues that had nothing to do with outside pressure

If you want a recent eyewitness history of the Hong Kong protests in the hopes of applying lessons from there, I recommend @antd's City on Fire https://www.amazon.com/City-Fire-fight-Hong-Kong-ebook/dp/B07YM45KNB