Vigil

Organizing a weekly vigil can be a great way to give yourself a regular task that will bring people together and help educate the public at the same time.

In this age of anti-social media, most people seem to spend inordinate amounts of time arguing with trolls in comment threads, at the expense of so many actually useful potential activities.

One of those tried-and-true useful things you can do is find a couple other like-minded people and start up a weekly vigil together.  A handful of friends and I have been doing one in Portland, Oregon at 12th and Hawthorne SE since August, 2025.

A weekly vigil can be many different things, week to week.  At the root, it’s a chance for people to get together, in the real world, in a physical space, on a predictable basis.

When it’s a regular thing it’s easier for people to spread the word about it.  Gathering in a physical space and actually interacting with people (even if a lot of the people you may be interacting with are driving cars through a busy intersection and honking in support) is important, for so many reasons that I think we increasingly don’t need to explain, as growing numbers of people come to understand the down sides of Big Tech.  Unlike spending time on social media, gathering in physical locations can really build community.

If you invest in a good 10’x3′ banner that you string between two trees or poles in a prominent location, this will help a lot for taking over the space visually, and letting folks around you know in a clear way what you’re doing there.  In addition to a banner, finding artists who might help you with making a giant puppet or other such big artistic thing like that, that can be seen clearly by a passing car and by pedestrians, can be very powerful.

Taking over the audio space is also very impactful.  One thing you can do as a default, if nothing else is happening audio-wise, is play recorded music through a battery-powered speaker.  I have a Bose S1 on a speaker stand that’s perfect for both recorded or live music.  Your weekly vigil can always become more of a protest rally with speakers and live performers on occasion, and if you invest in something like a Bose S1 you have that kind of flexibility from week to week without any problem.

Here’s a playlist of anti-imperialist songs that I update constantly, and use at our vigil, that are great for blasting through a speaker, when there’s no live music or speakers happening.

If your vigil is in front of a US military base somewhere, or at a military recruitment center, this playlist will have potential as a counter-recruitment tool.