#disruptj20

[atrophy-angelxx]

6 years ago today.

This arrest and subsequent court case changed the trajectory of my life completely. Fuck MPD and fuck the US Marshalls, they abused so many of us that were arrested. We were all also later doxxed by the cops releasing all our info to far right outlets which led to many death threats.

The J20 protests and court case were a wild time. If anyone wants more info there is a short documentary that I’ll link here.

[youthincare]

MAY 31 2018 - THINKPROGRESS: J20 CHARGES DROP

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Prosecutors dropped charges on Thursday against a half-dozen people the government has sought to imprison for decades for their roles in planning a 2017 anti-Trump march.

The judge in the case, visibly angry on the bench as prosecutors could not explain why their colleagues had lied to him about evidence in their possession months earlier, dismissed one of the charges with prejudice. Prosecutors can still pursue misdemeanor rioting and property damage charges if they wish, but are forbidden from charging a conspiracy to riot — the most serious felony among the several counts levied against the marchers.

Government lawyers have pursued felony charges against everyone they could connect to the Inauguration Day march branded as #DisruptJ20, generating dozens of separate group trials that sprawled out over nearly a year and a half.

Their case relied heavily on videos provided by the right-wing hoax group Project Veritas. Prosecutors now stand accused of hiding some 69 separate video and audio recordings provided by that group from defense counsel, including material the lawyers say would have helped their clients.

“They have offered no explanation why they did not apprise the court of the existence of these videos,” Chief Judge Robert Morin said.

[radicalgraff]

“Defend J20! Protest is not a crime”

Solidarity mural for the many comrades facing various charges for participating in the anti-Trump inauguration protests.

Check out: “Seven Things You Can Do to Support the J20 Defendants.”

[fuckyeahanarchistposters]

The J20 Case: What You Need to Know

On January 20, 2017 (J20), President Donald Trump was inaugurated with all of the typical fanfare and political opposition that we have come to expect on Inauguration Day. In a stark contrast to previous years and even other contemporary protests, the Trump administration has chosen to aggressively pursue and prosecute over 200 people for these protests,, signaling a new era of political repression.

MASS ARRESTS

Designated a National Special Security Event, as presidential inaugurations have been since the turn of the century, the state response to political protest that day was under the command of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and overseen by the FBI and US Secret Service. It was estimated that as much as $200 million was spent on security, including the purchase of massive amounts of weaponry and ammunition.

That morning, among many other political actions opposing the new adminstration taking place in DC, hundreds of protesters gathered in Logan Circle for an anti-capitalist and anti-fascist march. Within a half hour, a few windows of corporate storefronts were broken and, instead of making individualized arrests, police moved in to “kettle” – indiscriminately surround and detain – anyone in the streets at the time.

Those trapped in the MPD kettle included protesters, journalists, medics, and bystanders. MPD arrested 234 people, charging them all with felony riot. A later, superseding indictment from the US Attorney’s Office charged the more than 200 defendants with eight felonies each, including rioting, incitement to riot, conspiracy to riot, four counts of destruction of property, and assault on a police officer. These charges are levied against all of the defendants, even though, as Natasha Lennard wrote in an April 2017 article for Esquire, “[N]o one—neither the police nor the government—suggests that that most or even many of the arrestees directly engaged in property destruction or violence.”

If convicted, each J20 defendant faces more than 70 years in federal prison. Notably, neo-Nazi James Alex Fields Jr. who killed antifa activist Heather Heyer in August in Charlottesville is facing less prison time than each J20 defendant.

At no time in the past 20 years have so many people been charged with this many felonies. This represents a troubling departure from historic prosecutions where property damage or “black bloc” activity is involved. The state is using extremely harsh legal measures to signal a new level of intolerance to protest and may represent a new norm for political repression in the US.

POLICE MISCONDUCT

In addition to these unusual and serious felony charges, the J20 event stands out as an egregious example of police misconduct. For example, when the police want to break up a political protest, law enforcement is typically required to make a “dispersal order” which allows folks to leave the area before being arrested. However, on J20, before any dispersal order was given, dozens of people were subjected to a violent attack when police indiscriminately deployed chemical and projectile weapons, including Stinger Grenades, which blast rubber pellets and chemical agents over a 50-foot radius. After the mass detention of the group, many were made to wait for hours without food, water, or toilets before being transported to the local jail.

The police misconduct on J20 was egregious enough that the Mayor’s Office of Police Complaints (OPC) issued a report that criticized the MPD for violating its own Standard Operating Procedures for Handling First Amendment Assemblies as well as misuse of chemical agents, failure to provide proper dispersal orders, and making questionable arrests. As a follow-up to this report, the OPC began an independent investigation in October into MPD misconduct on Inauguration Day. More than 10 years ago DC Police Chief Peter Newsham and the MPD were sued for conducting an unconstitutional mass arrest of political activists.

In March, after refusing to turn over communication and documentation related to the police response on J20, Newsham and the MPD were sued by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, claiming that police “are standing in willful disobedience of their lawful obligations to disclose information” even where such information disclosures is mandated by law.

Seeking to push back against widespread police misconduct, the DC chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in June against the District of Columbia, the MPD and Newsham himself, accusing the police of committing several human rights violations including the use of sexual assault against arrested protestors as a punitive measure.

INVASIVE INVESTIGATION TACTICS

The J20 cases are unprecedented not only for the number of people charged with felonies and for the quantity of felony charges levied against each defendant, but also for the extremely invasive investigation tactics of the prosecution.

In August, the Department of Justice issued a warrant seeking private information on as many as 1.3 million visitors to DisruptJ20.org, the website used as a clearinghouse of information in advance of the Inauguration Day protests. Judge Robert Morin ruled that the web-hosting company DreamHost did not have to comply with the government’s request for IP addresses and other private data, but the judge ruled that DreamHost must turn over website communications to prosecutors in an effort to search for incriminating evidence against organizers of the protests.

CURRENT STATUS OF THE DEFENDANTS

Most of the J20 defendants have chosen to work together collectively on their legal defense and have agreed to ‘points of unity’ which include not cooperating with the state or testifying against any of their co-defendants. Approximately twenty defendants have taken non-cooperating, no-jail plea bargains, but many have refused and the vast majority has decided to take their cases to trial.

One defendant—Dane Powell—who took a plea in April for rioting and assault on a police officer was sentenced in July to 36 months in prison but was required to serve only four months. Powell has remained resolute while incarcerated and is clear about his politics and the reasons why he was out on the streets that day.

Defendants and their supporters established the website DefendJ20Resistance.org to build public support and have also mounted political campaigns to drop the chargesand garner support for an independent police investigation.

In September, Judge Lynn Leibovitz, a former federal prosecutor, denied a motion to dismiss the charges against J20 defendants, paving the way for the first trials on November 15 and December 11, 2017, with additional trials to be held through the fall of 2018.

Also in September, the government dropped its demand that Facebook not tell its users about search warrants it issued for the accounts of three political organizers allegedly involved in planning for #DisruptJ20. The three organizers are fighting the warrants in court.

Update: On November 1, Judge Leibovitz issued an order reducing the ‘riot’ and ‘conspiracy to riot’ charges from felonies to misdemeanors. Each defendant is still charged with at least six felonies and two misdemeanors and faces as much as 60 years in prison.

MORE INFORMATION

The defendants’ support website: http://defendj20resistance.org/

Recent and notable media:

The Prosecution of Inauguration-Day Protesters Is a Threat to Dissent, Oct 20, 2017, The Nation https://www.thenation.com/article/the-prosecution-of-inauguration-day-protesters-is-a-threat-to-dissent/

How the Government Is Turning Protesters Into Felons, April 12, 2017, Esquire http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a54391/how-the-government-is-turning-protesters-into-felons/

Know Your Rights: We limit our resistance to fascism by relying on liberal conceptions of human rights, June 18, 2017, The New Inquiry https://thenewinquiry.com/know-your-rights/

The Whimper of Democracy, May 31, 2017, The Baffler https://thebaffler.com/the-poverty-of-theory/whimper-of-democracy-alvarez

Document Shows D.C. Police Threw More Than 70 Grenades at Inauguration Protesters, undated, The Real News http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=20169

[progressivemillennial]

An opportunity to check in on J20 one year later, the history of backlash against dissent and systemic dismantling of left movements in America, and the challenges facing protests in America today from Abby Martin

[septictankie]

This is truly dystopian: DOJ is demanding a web host release all info it has about the inauguration protest website DisruptJ20.org

[palestinianliberator]

The US Department of Justice is attempting to force the host of a website involved in the planning of anti-Trump protests into disclosing information regarding all 1.3 million visitors to the site, including IP addresses, names, photos, and all relevant info related to them.

This includes both people involved in organizing the protests, as well as those who simply visited the site to read/research what was going on. The search warrant was served up by the Department of Justice as part of an investigation into people “rioting or inciting to riot”

Just an excerpt of what the US government is requesting from this website.

Meanwhile, we see literal Nazis, KKK, and white-supremacists marching openly in the streets, chanting violent and racist chants and waving Nazi flags, all in a march organized largely online..................and do we see the government bothering to get involved in finding out who all these people are? Do you expect the FBI to show up on the doorsteps of those who attending the march?

[lazermanatee]

[americanlibertypac]

Justice Department demands identity of everyone who visited anti-Trump website

An Internet hosting company is fighting a Federal search warrant demanding the identities of 1.3 million people who visited an anti-Trump website.

In a Monday blog post, DreamHost revealed the Justice Department had secured a warrant for the identities of 1.3 million visitors to “DisruptJ20.org,” a website which helped organize the often-violent protests of President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

But rather than demand Internet records of named suspects and charged defendants, the warrant asks for identifying information on all visitors to the site.

Is the warrant a justified part of a Federal investigation, or is it a violation of the First and Fourth Amendment, which protect Americans’ right to privacy and expression?

DreamHost writes:

For the past several months, DreamHost has been working with the Department of Justice to comply with legal process, including a Search Warrant (PDF) seeking information about one of our customers’ websites.

At the center of the requests is disruptj20.org, a website that organized participants of political protests against the current United States administration. While we have no insight into the affidavit for the search warrant (those records are sealed), the DOJ has recently asked DreamHost to provide all information available to us about this website, its owner, and, more importantly, its visitors…

…The request from the DOJ demands that DreamHost hand over 1.3 million visitor IP addresses — in addition to contact information, email content, and photos of thousands of people — in an effort to determine who simply visited the website. (Our customer has also been notified of the pending warrant on the account.)

That information could be used to identify any individuals who used this site to exercise and express political speech protected under the Constitution’s First Amendment. That should be enough to set alarm bells off in anyone’s mind.

This is, in our opinion, a strong example of investigatory overreach and a clear abuse of government authority.

Is this overreach by the Justice Department? Or is a justified part of a criminal investigation?

Let us know in the comments!

[radicalgraff]

Drop J20 Charges

Ann Arbor, Michigan

[fuckyeahanarchistposters]

This Kettle Won’t Settle – North Carolina Week of Solidarity, July 20th-27th                      

An international call has been put out to organize a Week of Solidarity with J20 Defendants. July 20th marks six months from the initial arrests during Donald Trump’s inauguration. In that time, what began with the mass arrest of over two hundred people and a single count of felony rioting (which is extreme in its own right) has developed into a massive federal case of state repression. A superseding indictment returned by a grand jury on April 27th filed eight felony charges against every defendant in the case: conspiracy to riot, riot, incitement to riot, and five counts of property destruction. The total maximum sentencing for all eight charges amounts to over 75 years in federal prison. This is an effort by the prosecution to coerce as many pleas as possible from co-defendants. Despite this, nearly two hundred defendants in the case have secured trial dates over the course of three status hearings this past June, and are committed to fighting these charges in court.

Here in North Carolina, our Week of Solidarity will be a platform to launch #DropJ20, a campaign targeted at US Attorney Channing Phillips to have the charges dropped. Our intention is to generate as much visibility around the case as possible, and to apply pressure on those with the power to end this political persecution!

To that end, we’ve planned several reproducible actions that can be organized in similar regions with a high density of supporters who want to get active in the case. We hope that as many defense committees and regional support crews as possible recreate this platform for their own cities, and modify them as necessary. Drop the charges against Inauguration Day protestors! This kettle will not settle

Thursday, July 20th – Coordinated Day of Beautification Actions: To kick-start the Week of Solidarity, we’re asking that as many organizations, affinity-groups and individual comrades as possible plan and coordinate a beautification action that calls attention to the J20 mass arrest, the political nature of the charges, and the #DropJ20 campaign. These can include wheat–pastings, banner-drops, projections, etc. While we hope that actions like these take place throughout the entire week of solidarity, by coordinating these autonomous actions to take place on the same day their effectiveness and visibility can be maximized. You can find a collection of flyers here.

Thursday, July 20th – Anarchists on the Silver Screen @ Firestorm Books & Coffee (610 Haywood Rd • Asheville, NC 28806): A movie marathon to kick off the week of solidarity with J20 defendants. We will be showing two short films and a fun full length movie – featuring the latest Trouble episode, the debut of Channel (A) – Episode 2, & What To Do In Case of Fire. It’ll be a time folx! Bring donations for defendants, your friends, and cozy pillows for an evening of riotous laughter and cinematographic subversion.

Friday, July 21nd – Letter-Writing/Call-In Party @ Northgate Park (300 West Club Blvd • Durham, NC 27704): To increase the public pressure to drop the charges, we’re organizing a letter-writing/call-in party at 6:00PM. We’ll be enjoying BBQ and writing letters to US Attorney Channing Phillips to demand that they drop the charges. We’ll also be calling in to Rochelle Howard at the Office of Police Complaints, which has funded an investigation into the misconduct and brutality of the MPD on Inauguration Day. The investigation is being delayed until October, 2017, one month before the earliest trial dates are set. This investigation has to happen now! With enough political pressure, we can make both of these goals happen!

Saturday, July 22nd – Benefit Show @ the Back House (Riverview & Clifton • Asheville, NC): A benefit house show is being held at the Back House at 6PM as a fundraiser for the NC J20 Defense Fund! Mutual Jerk, Poor Excuse and Clyde Conwell will be performing, along with a secret special guest! The night will also be a bakesale and BBQ, and folks are asked to bring $5-10 for donations!

Sunday, July 23rd – J20 Defendants Support Group: One large part of this process is dealing with the trauma, namely large amounts of stress and anxiety that comes with it. We want to support each other through this and find ways to make this journey more tolerable for all of us. To increase our resiliency against repression, we’re organizing a defendant-led support group in the park (no snitch-phones allowed!) to share our experiences with each other in a judgement-free space.

Monday, July 24th – A Feast for Friends: Despite the trauma of state repression, this case has produced a plenum of beautiful relationships and affinities; supporters have sprung out of the woodwork that have dedicated their time, lives, and emotional labor to help complete strangers endure these trying times. It’s time to return the favor! Defendants are organizing a free dinner for their defense committees, legal aids and community supporters! If defendants and supporters alike are going to make it through to the end of this process, we need to come together for more than just status hearings and legal calls, we need levity, friendship, and a good bit of fun to replenish our spirits!

Tuesday, July 25th – Benefit Show @ the Nightlight (405 1/2 W Rosemary St • Chapel Hill, NC 27516): The Nightlight presents Institute, a punk show benefit for J20 defendants! Headlining the night will be Drugcharge and Decoy, and doors open at 9PM! All money raised at this event will also be going to the NC J20 Defense Fund, and they’re also asking that folks bring $5-10 to donate as cover for the show.

Wednesday, July 26th – Resisting State Repression, A Press Conference @ Durham Central Park (501 Foster St • Durham, NC 27701): To round out the week, we’ll be holding a press conference as the Durham Central Park at 12:00PM, open to the press and to the entire community of Durham. The conference will present background and updates of the case and its development up to this point, an overview of how this case fits into a larger national tapestry of state repression and violence, and the unveiling of our #DropJ20 campaign.

[mcgama]

Nazi Richard Spencer getting punched in the face by an #antifa hero. #J20 #DisruptJ20

[black-mosquito]

In cooperation with It's Going Down, subMedia.tv and others, CrimethInc. are calling for a week of solidarity from 1st to 7th of April to support everyone targeted for standing up to the Trump regime and rising fascism. We are printing this shirts to show some solidarity to our comrades in the US with wearing that shirt.Further all surplus of this shirt will be donated to legal funds in the US to support antifascists. Shirts are available here: https://black-mosquito.org/don-t-stop-soli-t-shirt.html – also you can find more information to the campaign there.

[trylonandperisphere]

THANK YOU TO THE PROTESTERS! THANK YOU for resisting this illegitimate “president” of the United States.  THANK YOU to those of you from DC to Portland and all over the WORLD for speaking out and putting your bodies on the line. THANK YOU to #BLACKLIVESMATTER, #DISRUPTJ20 and ALL the groups blockading this repugnant sham of an “inauguration.”  THANK YOU to everyone marching in the WOMEN'S MARCHES on January 21st and beyond.  THANK YOU from all of us who wish we could be with you but cannot.   We LOVE and SUPPORT you, and promise to RESIST and PROTEST the Trump regime in any way we can. KEEP FIGHTING, and know that there are MILLIONS of people who share your beliefs behind you.