The MAGA Regime Fears Professionals Who Know Their Rights

Inside The Firewall’s April 28 Organizing Call — and How We’re Quietly Building a Professional Resistance Network

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

— Alice Walker

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

— Frederick Douglass

The Threat They Fear Most

On Monday night, the Firewall Network met.

We didn’t meet in the streets. We met on Zoom. Across sectors. We showed up not with slogans, but with spreadsheets. Contracts. Policy binders. We showed up as professionals. And that, more than anything, is what they fear.

This was our fourth organizing call, but our first deep dive into the concrete actions we can take. We split into professional Hubs — Education, HR, Public Service, Healthcare, Law, Tech, Media, Faith, Nonprofit. We talked tactics. We wrote templates. We started sketching the blueprint for what the regime never expected: resistance from within.

The real battlefield isn’t Congress. It isn’t Twitter. It’s your Slack channel. Your file cabinet. Your next team meeting.

Welcome to the next phase of The Firewall.

Strategy Unveiled: The Rise of the Hubs

We are building a national infrastructure for decentralized resistance.

Each professional Hub is a tactical unit with tools, language, and targets shaped by the threats in their own sector. This movement doesn’t live in one place. It doesn’t wave one flag. It moves through systems that were designed to contain us — and now, we are using those same systems to resist.

Our thesis is simple: every workplace is a front line. Every profession holds tools that can be turned

.Dignity in darkness is not passivity. It is power. Liberation begins with naming the system that dehumanizes you. This is what we are doing. And here is how it begins.

Dispatches from the Front

Healthcare

• The shift has begun away from Slack and Teams toward encrypted channels like Signal and Proton Mail. AI tools inside workplace comms are no longer HIPAA compliant. Professionals are adapting.

• One participant shared a prototype for a Healthcare Rights Card (like the “Red Cards” that have been developed for immigrants to assert their rights, but professional sector-specific):

  • Front:

    • I have the right to deliver care without discrimination.

    • I have the duty to protect patient confidentiality.

    • I have the right to refuse participation in actions that harm patients based on immigration status, race, gender, or belief.

  • Back:

    • I choose to exercise my rights and obligations.

    • I will refuse unlawful data sharing.

    • I will protect access to care.

    • I will document any efforts to weaponize healthcare against vulnerable groups.

• Policy channels inside clinics and hospitals are being contemplated to track laws and directives that undermine access to care.

• There is a growing call to educate patients directly about their privacy rights under HIPAA and beyond.

Care is not neutral. It is resistance.

Education

• The biggest question was how to act without getting fired. Teachers are reviewing employment handbooks and union contracts, especially around limitations like "Prohibition on Soliciting and Distribution."

• The model of using QR codes that link to websites was highlighted as a tool for safely distributing organizing material under administrative radar.

• There was concern about ICE involvement in schools. But there was also resolve. The quiet refusal has begun.

The classroom is contested territory. Teaching is never apolitical.

Legal

• There was strong consensus on the need to increase public understanding of immigration bonds and the mass incarceration system, particularly around local jails. Most people held in immigration detention today were apprehended internally, often by local police. This represents a large shift from prior administrations, when most people in immigration detention were arrested while crossing the border.

• Some attorneys are starting to draft and circulate know-your-rights materials for immigrants, and exploring ways to make immigration practices, such as bonds, more transparent to impacted communities.

• There was interest in expanding awareness around intellectual property rights.

The law is a language of both power and subjugation. But it is also a weapon of defense.

Media

• The media professionals on the call noted that mainstream coverage of recent protests is largely absent. One participant recounted being at the Capitol steps with Members of Congress, clergy, and activists — and no one from the national press showed up.

• Participants emphasized the need for constant, in-house fact-checking mechanisms at media outlets. Others discussed strategies for promoting independent journalists.

• Countering Propaganda: Participants shared a tactical guide for confronting disinformation in real time. Key strategies include:

  • Call out logical fallacies like confusing correlation with causation.

  • Publicly demand evidence and highlight when none is provided.

  • Name the tactic for what it is: propaganda, not legitimate debate.

  • Expose emotional baiting, ridicule, and repetition as manipulation tools.

  • Shift the burden of proof back: “Show causality, not coincidence.”

  • Situate the lie within the broader pattern of disinformation and psychological control.

  • Maintain composure while dismantling the argument:

    • “Serious people deal in facts and proof — not manufactured outrage.”

    • “Repeating a false claim louder doesn’t make it true.”

    • “Confusing correlation with causation isn't analysis — it's propaganda.”

The blood of democracy beats where truth is spoken, not where it's sanitized.

Nonprofit

• HR was the focus. Participants called on nonprofits to ask: What are you doing to protect your employees' data?

• There was alarming discussion about the so-called “Doge” (which stands for “Department of Government Efficiency,” even though it’s not a governmental department, and definitely not efficient) attempting to use federal funding as a pretext to surveil nonprofit operations.

• One participant noted the so-called Doge had demolished the U.S. Institute of Peace. Another said Vera Institute was targeted but refused to comply.

Government money has always come with strings. Resistance begins with saying no.

The Tactic They Never Expected

Refusal.

They expected violence. They expected vandalism. They prepared for mobs and slogans and Molotovs.

What they didn’t expect was a school counselor whispering resistance in a hallway. A paralegal tracking bond abuses. A fact-checker refusing to clear propaganda. A nonprofit HR manager saying, "You can't have that data."

This is what they can’t predict. This is what we will scale.

Refusing domination is an act of love. Truth is the strongest force on earth.

Calls to Action: Join a Hub. Show Up on May 1st.

If you're reading this, you belong in a Hub.

There is a role for you. Not later. Now.

Find your place. Lawyers. Teachers. Nurses. Engineers. Organizers. Writers. If you work, you resist. If you breathe, you belong.

Join us at the next Firewall Network Organizing Meeting on Monday, May 5, 2025 at 7pm ET / 6pm CT / 4pm PT:

Until then:

• Talk to your coworkers.

• Review your policies.

• Reflect on your professional rights & responsibilities.

• Use encrypted channels.

• Share the resources below.

• Show up for Mayday: Maydaystrong.org

Tools & Resources

• Red Cards (Immigrant Rights): ILRC Red Cards

• Know Your Rights (General): ACLU

• FOIA Request Form (DOGE): Download Here

• Protest calendars: WomensMarch.com, Indivisible.org, Fiftyfifty.one