Remaining J20 Cases Dismissed: Takeaways for Anarchists and our Social Movements

More than seventeen months after DC police “kettled” and arrested 234 protesters, journalists, medics, legal observers, and bystanders, subsequently charging them with several riot-related felonies, the Trump administration was forced to dismiss the remaining Inauguration Day (J20) cases. On Jan. 20, 2017, thousands of people protested the inauguration of Donald Trump in Washington, DC and […]

Newsweek, “‘The Government’s Prosecution’ of Trump Inauguration Protesters ‘Should Scare the Daylights Out of Anyone Who Values Dissent,’ Says Defense Attorney”

Around the corner from the federal courthouse in downtown Washington where media crews have spent the past year recording the many comings and goings of President Donald Trump’s indicted associates, another, far less heralded legal struggle unfolded with arguably greater ramifications for American democracy than anything special counsel Robert Mueller discovers. This was the plight […]

The Intercept, “With Last Charges Against J20 Protesters Dropped, Defendants Seek Accountability for Prosecutors”

Last Friday afternoon, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia dismissed charges against the 39 remaining J20 Inauguration Day protesters under indictment, bringing a close to a year-and-a-half-long saga marked by police aggression, prosecutorial overreach, and heartening displays of solidarity by the defendants and their supporters. “I was sitting in the front row of a […]

The Washington Post, “Federal prosecutors abruptly dismiss all 39 remaining Inauguration Day rioting cases”

Federal prosecutors on Friday dismissed rioting charges against all remaining defendants arrested after destructive Inauguration Day protests in the nation’s capital, bringing to a close a controversial case that led to allegations of government overreach. Prosecutors began filing paperwork Friday afternoon to formally drop the cases against 39 people who had been awaiting trial. The […]

New Republic, “How Trump Is Creating a Propaganda State”

In this, Trump and Loesch aren’t just trying to deceive their followers. They are reinforcing and expanding on what their supporters already believe, which Jacques Ellul, a Christian anarchist who lost a university position for refusing to collaborate with France’s Vichy regime, identified as a staple of propaganda. “All propaganda must respond to a need,” […]

The Atlantic, “President Trump Pardons Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio”

Trump’s pardon of Arpaio will likely rank among the most controversial exercises of the power. Other presidents have used it to absolve pirates, participants in tax rebellions, ex-Confederates, polygamous Mormons, socialists, anarchists, rumrunners, Puerto Rican nationalists, Vietnam War draft-dodgers, and Jimmy Hoffa. But only rarely has it been used to absolve a prominent political backer—much […]