Duty To Protect helps individuals develop the mindset and skills to protect themselves and others. Our primary content offering is a podcast, which is published at Odysee and Anchor / Spotify. This website serves as an auxiliary component to offer text-based resources. We snagged the “.net” extension with the longterm vision for a collaborative network to emerge. Content is categorized in one or more of the three steps: Prepare / Peacekeep / Protect, or as Good Samaritan Stories.
Good Samaritan Stories give props to individuals who look after others — often at risk to themselves — and instill the fact that each of us has the capacity to act heroically. This component is in the vein of early Kind World episodes, which recounted the often life-changing impact caused by one or more people who acted to aid a stranger.
The three steps of the Duty To Protect logo was somewhat inspired by Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. That’s not to say we believe Maslow got everything correct. We’re not all wired the same. The steps that Maslow outlined may differ in order, or not be exhaustive, for you. And, while Maslow did recognize the importance of safety and security — placing it second among needs identified — we put-forth that it is the most important. You can go without food for weeks. You can go without water for hours or days. But even a second of being insecure can be lethal.
Prepare is the foundational step. It has to do with your mindset. With your ability to critically think and to reach your own conclusions. As this relates to the concepts of safety and security it has to do with your ability to accurately determine your own threat assessment. Ultimately, this step is about discovering your internal compass so that you act true to yourself. This will translate to greater self-confidence, which will enable you to engage if needed, even if others are standing idle. This step is the building block for the subsequent steps, enabling you to cut-through the division and misinformation and arrive at internal peace and a warrior mindset.
Peacekeep — the next step — is undergirded by our interconnectedness and has as an objective the maintenance of harmony. This is where the introspection done in the Prepare step comes into action, when you are out-and-about, amongst friends and family and colleagues and strangers. You have done the deep-dive, you have cultivated your internal compass, and you are eager to add value in every situation. Should you encounter a tense situation, you remain calm and work to maintain the peace — to peacekeep — through soft skills (non physical) to resolve conflict, to de-escalate, to create win-win outcomes. By using compassion, nonviolent communication, and verbal judo, you can help reach a conclusion that is almost magical.
Protect — the third and final step — builds upon the previous two steps by adding to your toolbox the ability to protect in meatspace using physical skills. If you find yourself in a situation where violence is imminent and you cannot escape, or you come to the aid of another person who is encountering a violent threat, seconds count. You cannot afford to wait for help to arrive. You must act aligned with your integrity — your self-imposed duty to protect. If possible, you attack first, and attack hard until the threat is no more. A violent street confrontation has the potential to be lethal, it may involve multiple aggressors and weapons. It’s not the place to try a complicated move or hold, it’s the place for simple, effective strikes that you have trained to a level of unconscious competence during down time.
Check out our very first episode for more:
To Get A Bit Deeper…
Duty To Protect brings a common sense approach to the conversation of safety and security. One that recognizes the positive impact that mindful action can have for the individual and those in their immediate sphere. This focus on the individual — on their ability to think for themselves, to know and trust themselves, and to utilize skills to defuse conflict or address threats — is absent, or even counter to the mainstream narrative that has been foisted upon us.
We have been immersed in conditioning that orientates us to unthinkingly relinquish our autonomy, to negate our own abilities, and to be distrustful of others unless they possess a certain title. The mainstream view peddled by legacy media and governments presents a paradigm that in many ways is opposite of what we advocate at Duty To Protect. By extricating oneself from that constrictive mental caging one can realize their true potential. Perhaps this distinction is best gleaned through visualization:
| Question | Mainstream Paradigm | Duty To Protect Paradigm |
| What is your position in interactions? | passive, bystander, acted upon | aware, actor |
| How do you engage with new information? | reject it | entertain it, adopt or modify what is useful |
| Who is best to handle an emergency you happen across? | others, those with badges | myself if possible, others with more expertise if needed |
| How do you determine what is truthful? | defer to “experts” and “authorities” | think critically, look to primary sources, trust my intuition |
| How do you view strangers? | with suspicion or fear, as “others” | with goodwill, as brothers and sisters |
Duty To Protect encourages individuals to take responsibility for their own safety and security. But why — aren’t police there to protect us? Not so much. Despite the “serve and protect” rhetoric, courts have ruled time and again that police have no duty to protect the individual. Further, as the saying goes: Police are minutes away when seconds count. Thus, it behooves each one of us to step up our own mental, verbal, and physical protection skills. Because one moment of insecurity can be fatal. And conversely, being able to inject protection into a violent scene can be life-saving.
About the Founder
Duty To Protect was started by Pete Eyre. Pete went to undergrad and grad school for law enforcement, did dozens of ride-alongs and an internship with the St. Paul Police Department. But he really cut his teeth in the police accountability movement. As co-founder of Cop Block he saw first-hand that though many well-intentioned individuals go into the policing apparatus, the institution at its core suffers from perverse incentives. After spending years in this arena — holding meetups and know-your-rights trainings, creating video content, spearheading call floods to help those wronged, being caged for pointing-out double standards — Pete began to feel that he had become reactionary and decided to direct his energy elsewhere.
Still driven to be active in this conversation of safety and security, Pete attempted another angle. He believed that most of the people involved — police employees, police supporters, police haters, and those on the fence — shared a common goal: a safe and harmonious community. The integral question was: how can this best be achieved? Pete co-founded another endeavor called Beyond the Badge. The aim was to facilitate communication in a non-hostile space. To mitigate divisive language. To make evident the common ground. That project produced some compelling content but it was not too long-lasting.
Duty To Protect is the obvious next-step in this evolution. Whereas Cop Block sought to shine the disinfecting light of transparency into misdeeds, and Beyond The Badge sought to have a more level-headed conversation, Duty To Protect focuses on the fact that the best thing we can each do to change our own sphere (and the world) for the better, is to improve ourselves. Pete is excited to see this effort advance.
Pete has worked as a nightclub bouncer, as a framer and handyman, in the D.C. think tank world, in a Salvation Army emergency shelter, was an early adopter of crypto currency, has dipped his toe into food production, and led the security — what he likens to the harmony-maintenance-crew — at a weeklong 2,500-person event.