Nah. It sounds like they wear their hair short and wash their faces. Very suspicious.

Well the first reply I received said that the security they saw looked like a "diverse group of college kids."

Which would make sense for New Orleans activists, and why I specified what the group I saw looked like. There's no one size fits all for what an activist looks like, however,

A. I have worked alongside several New Orleans activists groups providing medical care in different neighborhoods in the city. I find it hard to believe that every single one of the "local New Orleans activists" in the group I saw huddled, just happened to be 100% white, mainly men, all in their early to late 30s and 40s.

I know we have to watch what we say these days, but just to make sure nobody thinks I'm being "racist against clean cut white men" I am pointing that out as a white woman in my 30s who also doesn't look like the average New Orleans activist.

These guys looked like law enforcement. More specifically, given they were all in pretty good shape, the age range they were, and all had the same close cropped hair, they looked like Feds. Not like big muscular bouncer types. Like very stereotypical feds or state-federal partners.

Given that other fusion centers were known to be planning surveillance for No Kings in other states, perhaps they could have been from one of the state agencies in the picture below who partner with DHS and the FBI via our state fusion center:

B. I've also done medical and de-escalation training. Maybe they also did some very intense special security training for this event, but it seems weird to have trained bystanders using teams of security detail to follow a protester around.

Feds have always conducted concerning levels of surveillance at government protests, even during normal times. I'm not sure why it would be so far fetched now to suggest there was something suspicious about a group of people that looked like Feds, were definitely not participating in the actual protest, and literally huddled together to talk about putting a surveillance detail on a protester.

However, I would love to hear from others about the rallies and marches held in other anchor cities. I saw some video from Chicago of their march, and I'm not sure if the people leading the march in yellow vests were coincidental or also activists who received the training, but they didn't look like Feds.

Powered off isn’t enough. Take recent iPhones for example, even when “off” they remain in a low power state, phoning home periodically to report location and see if “lost mode” has been turned on.

Bring a burner, or nothing at all.

But also maybe let people know they might just follow you home from a protest and physically surveil you for an undetermined amount of time afterwards.

I'm not sure that the organizers actually provided the security. I think just as easily the state could have intervened and said if you want to have a rally this is who you're going to have to use as security.

The whole thing was so different this time. Like it seemed like so many additional people and groups were involved, but it was way less organic.

Last time we just marched through the quarter. It was kinda disorganized, but it was really simple and it was great.

This time they had everyone just meet on a big green lawn and stand in one place together in a pretty random spot in the city. They had a local musician play literally one song at the beginning, and then a bunch random people gave speeches about some things, but honestly the speaker set up was so bad you couldn't hear anything being said even right up on the stage.

Since it was on a Greenway that runs through the city, I thought we would be still be marching but we just all stood around not really able to hear anything being said on the tiny stage. It was odd. Not sure if it was just a too many cooks kind of situation, or that was all the city would allow, but it felt way more contained and less authentic. That's kind of how a lot of things in this city have been feeling over the last year. More uniform, less freedom of expression, less of what makes the city a great place to be. Kind of like it's being slowly invaded by an outside force that wants to turn it into something bland and docile.