I'd stop short of saying "solution" but they can be of some help. There are still surveillance methods that work against them, maybe not to decrypt the actual messages, but to monitor who is talking to who and maybe jam the communications. When you say "protest" etc., do you mean you're part of some big mob in the streets and you want portable gizmos to communicate with other people who are also protesting? Or do you mean you're all sitting at home coordinating something and the wired internet works?

Almost anything you do that's scalable across lots of users and likely to be replicated, will also be targeted by surveillance. So the trick is to do something one-off that nobody else is doing and that isn't figured into systematic monitoring. So that means concocting something unique or obscure, that only you and a few of your friends know about.

Generally maintaining security in something like this is difficult and paranoia-inducing and you end up feeling like you're in Spy vs Spy cartoon if you remember those. The only real solution is to get rid of the surveillance regime.