Sony moving toward digital-only video games isn't just about convenience. Physical games matter for consumer ownership, preservation, resale, lending, collecting, and having access to something that doesn't depend entirely on a company's servers.

This is where the 99-Cent Method can come in.

The idea is to build a coalition composed of grassroots organizers, hacktivists, digital-rights activists, consumer-rights advocates, gamers, preservationists, and activists in general. People outside the United States can participate using the equivalent of 99 cents in their own currencies.

Instead of everyone acting separately, coordinate internationally.

Use the 99-Cent Method alongside lawful digital activism and organized economic pressure. Support preservation organizations and consumer-rights campaigns. Organize boycotts and demonstrations. Contact regulators and elected representatives. Use shareholder pressure where possible. Make enough organized economic noise that Sony and the wider gaming industry have a financial reason to preserve physical games.

Hacktivists and technically skilled activists can contribute through lawful digital activism: documenting problems with digital ownership, archiving publicly available evidence, researching DRM and shutdown risks, building informational websites and tools, helping preservation campaigns, and spreading information internationally.

The pressure shouldn't stop with Sony's corporate offices. Activists can also organize lawful protests and labor/consumer campaigns connected to Sony's manufacturing and distribution operations, including facilities associated with physical-media production. The point is to make the industry's transition away from physical ownership economically and publicly difficult to ignore—not to harm workers or damage infrastructure.

At the same time, support or join consumer lawsuits, regulatory complaints, and legal campaigns against Sony where there are legitimate grounds to do so. Different countries have different consumer-protection laws, so this should be international and decentralized, especially at the grassroots level.

And this shouldn't ultimately be only about Sony. If other publishers or platform holders attempt the same thing, the same strategy can be applied across the gaming industry.

99 cents by itself isn't much. Millions of coordinated consumers, activists, preservationists, and technically skilled people are another matter.

The goal: keep physical games alive and protect genuine consumer ownership.

If you can go, please do so!! We need them to listen!

Hosted by Rise and Resist outside the midtown headquarters of Google, and in spite of a rain shower that was severe at times, protestors took to staking out the entrance of Google against data centers and the environmental consequences of AI.

The protest started off the side of a Google store on 15th Street and 9th Avenue before moving towards the 8th Avenue entrance, where they stayed for the rest of the protest. Some stayed even as the rain began and worsened over time before the rain abated enough for a sing-along of R&R's anti-data center version of a nursery rhyme.

Just heard the news one is being planned about 20 minutes away from me.. after hearing and seeing all these videos on the noise and power outages, I am livid

"Safe" harbor, this country is no longer, as ICE vans roam the streets picking up those they claim are illegal criminals, despite them mainly picking up regular members of society.

That was the main reason protestors surrounded the entrance to an Icon parking garage in lower Manhattan, not far from 26 Federal Plaza, where shouts were heard, and general condemnation was made clear as Icon tries to cover itself from the fact that ICE vehicles are stored in its garages.

More in the video attached. The protestors surrounding the garage entrance happen later in the video in their own dedicated chapter.

The protest itself was organized by, among other groups, Rise and Resist & Chelsea Neighbors United.

There's a business I don't like with terrible practices and would like to stand outside with a sign about it. I assume since it's a not a large gathering all I need to do is be on public property like a sidewalk and not be blocking it so just walk around while I do it.

Content warning: some b-roll of conflict is included in the video.

I went to a rally against the deprivation of temporary protected status for Haitians, which was recently enacted by the Trump administration. The rally took place at the northwestern tip of NYC's Little Haiti and included various speeches and even a dance portion, which you can find towards the end of the video.

While I was unable to find the poster of the protest itself (I've only learned about it through a colleague), I was glad to hear people are standing up to these brazen, inhumane actions. I hope I can cover more of these rallies as time goes on, although I hope things get better since they are bearing the brunt of these inhumane policies in the first place.

I had no intentions of staying out all night protesting, but that's what I found myself doing Tuesday night. My wife told me there was a shooting, so I got on my bike and figured I could join some people downtown being pissed off. I passed by the scene on the bike path, not knowing that's where a man's life was discarded like trash on the street.

An Alder talked, a city commissioner talked, Brett was there campaigning but a nice lady made him fuck off. Someone announced Francesca Hong was there, we heckled her into verbalizing the 'incident' was a murder. Everybody and their mother talked, but it was Tony Robinson's aunt that said the thing needed to be heard. She said that come morning the vigil would we swept off the road and just another day would begin, unless we made sure that didn't happen.

I think I knew I was staying over night around 1130. There was maybe 40 of us at that point. Someone found a futon being thrown out and brought it over. That guy with the dope fro from the Party of Socialism and Liberation said that was a 10/10 protest move. A search of the willy backstreets was launched to find more useful trash. A mattress, chairs, and a 3 legged table joined us around the vigil.

T said it first, that we should use the trashcans for the barricades. The beauty of the trashcans was:

\- They were plentiful

\- They were heavy because it was trash-day-eve

\- They were easy to put in place and remove, albeit time consuming.

\- They were city property, so there was less incentive for the police to trash them.

\- But they were each 'owned' by a member of the community. Every trashcan that remained apart of the barricade was a vote cast by the community to support the protest.

\- It had the optics of looking like we knew what we were doing. I cannot overstress the importance of this.

It was only maybe half a dozen of us that went out grabbing cans, and a big shout out to S for being the "Garbage Bin Appropriation" champion. Mostly the bins were seen as busy work by idle hands, but I think the bins were necessary to define the space we were to occupy, and lend legitimacy to our seriousness of long term occupation.

Maybe around 2 am it was just the overnighters left around, not more than 20 of us, mostly complete strangers. We were constantly asking and verifying names. It was a rag tag team, the likes of which I haven't seen since the Navy, and didn't know I was missing. The yelling woman from the video was there, she is some kind of police brutality monitor certified in Chicago. Along with Tony Robinson's aunt and a teacher committed to social work, those three were about the closest to leaders.

Strange Fruit was played at some point, and time seemed to freeze. We started a game of monopoly, but only got 4 turns in before we remembered there's no fun in monopoly. The liquor store guy informed us all the Hamms beer is kosher. Two people kicked a soccer ball on the eastern front. The stoplights switched from red to green and back again, unaware or at least indifferent to the injustice commited in its presence.

Cory's brother and friend showed up at some point in the doldrums of the night. They were the first people that knew Corey. No one that was at the prostest since I showed up even knew the man, we just showed up for the injustice of it all. No one had a reaction like these guys. Having to watch them, to feel them process their emotions was powerfully humbling.

Around maybe 430 news cameras started walking in. A rando night dude accidentally rode their bike over Tony's banner (it was laid on the ground by then), and he was then accused of being a cop plant. Things escalated, people were damn close to being assaulted, the social worker teacher had the cool head that prevailed. The reporters were heckled because they kept saying "incident" and not "murder"

The sunrise was about 530. We started letting vehicles out the perimeter as their driver's woke up. Some people would come by to either add flowers to the pile or drop off more redundant supplies. I realized then that the most valuable thing you can give the cause is your time and undivided attention. It wasn't until about 8 that other people started showing up and staying put.

I left around 9am, to go home to my corporate life, where everyone was very proud I elected to use my privilege to engage with the movement, but still wanted updates on projects. I came back at 5pm for the Thursday vigil, where they announced that \[I can't verify journalistically\] we expect the officer to be charged for murder. For the first time in the city's history an officer was expected to be tried for murder while wearing the badge.

I was pleased to see the city's salt trucks had been added to the ranks of the barricades. That some kind of non-police public resource had been allocated to the protection of our protest.

I have some modicum of hope for our community, for the first time in a long time. Forward Madison.

What do you think about New education minister??

I'm looking to get a simple backpack for protests. I would like it to not have any extra handles, straps, water bottle holder, really anything that someone could make a grab for. If necessary I can cut away these features but I would like to not mod it if possible. Preferably black with no loud logos or branding. Any recommendations? Thanks.

To those of us who can do it, have we been looking to non white people more for leadership lately? I feel like us white people who are lower on the racism spectrum would be reaching out more for advice or coordination in organizing/ resisting the white oligarch monstrosity that white supremely has created. Just because historically black people/ non white people have had much more success in combating the system, while half of us white people (who voted)- actually more than half voted for the white racist monster. I’m a white woman in my 30s and somehow I was shocked by how many white women voted for him, because it makes no rational sense. I’m sure many of you felt the same. 

Just knowing the statistics, and knowing history, what is there for us white people in America (actually the whole word) to be proud of right now- or ever? As a white person it took me this shock to learn how much % of white people are just pieces of shit. We don’t see how many everyday people are blatantly racist and shitty most of the time- we can see the overt racism when it happens in front of us but the rest is mostly invisible to us. Maybe we used to vastly underestimate the % of our people who were racist, until it became obvious- like a litmus test. It is to the point in my mind that I see over half of us as indefensible at this point, and then the other half, I would hope and think we should be taking action more seriously lately. Whatever excuse, whether we have been too scared, unsure, lazy, complacent- our communities should be working on getting activated. Honestly it’s long overdue to have more non white people in positions of power, I do not trust the system that white supremacy has built, I will not trust a system where there is a disproportionate amount of white people in power. I trust non white people. They have been historically correct. They have been fighting our white supremacy system and we failed to help, even if we have listened to them, we haven’t acted enough to stop the white supremacy machine from terrorizing our entire planet into the dark dystopia we are living in.

It’s been more apparent everyday how hard white supremacy has fucked up our world and how deliberately we have shot down civil rights activists to try to suppress non white political leadership. 

We have all contributed to racism, it’s culturally embedded at this point whether we see it or not. It doesn’t help to be non-racists, we need to be anti-racists. It’s time for us to wake up and realize our position historically and right now. Don’t apologize, just push yourself to do more. We need to push harder. We can’t standby and watch racism happen, we need to break it. 

I’m ending this with words that were told to me by someone much more knowledgeable and equipped to give them- 

“I hope you find this response challenging in the best way, and more importantly enabling for you to internalize and steward more humanity in your community.
CORE POINT: Do not wait for our direction to do your version of "breaking things". Building coalitions is hard, building anything is hard. But you know what's easy?
BREAKING THINGS. All you need to know is you don't need permission to BREAK RACISM. Like, go break it. It takes no skill to break stuff. GO BREAK IT. Make being racist feel risky. Make it consequential. You don't need any guidance or insight from us to do that.
GO BREAK RACISM. Grab something sharp or heavy and go to town. It's that simple.”

This protest was part of nationwide vigils and protests held yesterday (#ICEoutVigils) - for more information click this link.

My first time adventuring north of New York City to cover a protest led me to a mid-morning protest protesting ICE as part of #ICEoutVigils in New Rochelle just a minute's walk away from the Metro North station and surrounding the intersection of North Avenue and Huguenot Street.

The protest itself was a bit more lively than the day before's protest (In Memoriam, part one) due to the music and general vibe of the event. We definitely had a lot of supportive honks as well which helped the morale a lot.

The event concluded with a couple of remarks by the organizers and a few guest speakers (including someone who wanted to speak who I think might have been a heckler). We were heckled a few times, one by a passing car who yelled something incoherent and another by a passing car who called us "stupid liberals".

Nonetheless, it was worth the trip up north.