Greetings troublemakers... welcome to Trouble.
My name is not important.
Whether you see them as punitive sites of enforced isolation
set up to protect the public and deter criminal behaviour,
or oppressive and entirely illegitimate institutions
that need to be abolished and systematically razed to the ground...
everyone pretty much agrees that jail is a horrible place
that you wanna avoid if at all possible.
Alongside police and the courts,
prison forms one pillar of
the brutal apparatus of state control
often called the criminal justice system.
And as if this three-part system wasn't
intimidating enough on its own,
it forms only one part of the broader prison-industrial-complex
-- a sprawling, self-propelled conveyor belt of human misery,
whose primary beneficiaries include politicians, lobbyists,
correctional workers’ unions (that is, prison guards, or screws),
probation officers, construction companies, and private contractors.
Whenever we take meaningful action that breaks the rules
set out by the powers-that-be,
there's a chance that we will be subjected to a gauntlet of punishment
that begins with our violent arrest,
continues through legal proceedings
that are often lengthy and definitely stressful,
and could potentially end with us serving long prison sentences.
This is a pretty daunting thing to come to terms with.
But if we hope to be successful in our efforts,
it's important for each of us to be aware of the risks
involved in the actions we take.
Whether you prefer working in a small affinity group,
or as part of a larger network, be proactive,
and take the necessary steps to prepare for the repression you might face.
Without being properly prepared,
we risk being set against one another,
isolated and paralyzed into inaction,
which is exactly what our enemies want.
With that in mind, over the next thirty minutes
we'll share the voices of a number of individuals
who are helping people navigate complicated legal situations,
offering crucial support to jailed comrades,
building infrastructure for collective defence
... and making a whole lot of trouble!
The political climate in the US right now
is really bad for the radical left,
and very dangerous for us as well.
Not only are we facing the state repression that we've been so used to,
we're also facing increasing threats from the right,
whether that is alt-right trolls and doxxing
and live-streamers at protests and rallies
outing people to be targeted online,
or it's ultra-violent and murderous actions
such as in Portland most recently.
There's also the threats from the police,
who are working very clearly and very blatantly
with the far-right in order to target
radical left organizers and activists.
So I think we're at a time right now
where the stakes are really high for people.
There is really widespread resistance,
not only to the Trump administration
but to a rise in white supremacist organizing and fascism across the country.
There's a lot of resistance that's going on
to police murder, police violence...
also to extraction projects.
And so I think that as resistance is growing,
the repression that's coming from the government is increasing as well.
Since the election,
there have been hundreds of new felony defendants across the country
ranging from everything that's happening over at Standing Rock,
to the inauguration in DC.
May Day in different places
there was a good number of felony arrests as well.
When people are arrested in political situations,
it seems to be that the charges are becoming much higher
than a lot of us are used to...
with J20 being a really good example of that.
On January 20th 2017,
during an anti-capitalist, anti-fascist march in Washington DC,
over 200 people, myself included
were assaulted with chemical weapons,
surrounded and trapped using a technique known as kettling
and arrested.
We were all charged with one count of felony rioting,
which later became eight or more felonies
including engaging in a riot,
inciting a riot,
conspiracy to riot
and several counts of property damage.
The sum of these charges carries a maximum sentence
of 75 years in prison.
To put this clearly, we are facing the rest of our lives
behind bars for going to a protest.
Conspiracy charges are one of the prosecutors'
favourite tools because they're basically a thought crime.
So it's a way of the prosecutors to put blanket charges on people
and make them all responsible for actions
that maybe only one person took.
Basically they're saying that
200 people were equally responsible
for breaking a handful of windows.
We see conspiracy charges being used
to really brutal effect in the so-called War on Terror,
which is mostly targeted against Arab Muslims here in the US.
We see a lot of conspiracy charges in the so-called War on Drugs
targeted against both inner-city populations
as well as a lot of rural populations.
Mass arrest and prosecution is nothing new.
What sets our legal cases apart
is that the state has charged so many protestors
with so many serious felonies.
This is the first political arrest of the Trump presidency.
This case is about giving the government more power
to criminalize and shut down protest.
Initially it was just answering questions
about knowing your rights
and advising people about risks and consequences of actions...
and when we had our first mass arrest,
then it became a much more intense situation.
Over the course of a year there were over 800 people who were arrested,
with really varying levels of charges.
Early on it was things like criminal trespass.
Y'know, as people were going to work sites
and attempting to disrupt the work that was happening on the pipeline itself.
And as those months dragged on,
as more and more people were getting arrested,
the charges then increased quite a bit.
One of the things that the special prosecutor
Ladd Erickson has said,
in a motion, he writes:
there's no relevance to any testimony or evidence
regarding historical treaty, tribal sovereignty,
the merits of the Dakota Access Pipeline, climate change,
sacred sites, corporate power, corporate media
or any other social or political cause.
Meaning he is attempting to discredit the resistance efforts
of the water protectors
and the merits of the power of prayer
and the responsibility to protect our first medicine...
our water.
There's also seven people who are facing federal charges,
Red Fawn Fallis being one of them,
who is facing upwards of 25 years in federal prison.
And she is currently still being held in custody pre-trial,
so she'll be awaiting trial
while still in the custody of the US marshals
up there in North Dakota.
There's also six other people who are facing federal charges.
And all of those people are facing the same charges of
Civil Disorder and Use of Fire in a Civil Disorder.
So these people are facing up to fifteen years
in federal prison.
All seven of those people are Indigenous water protectors.
While the people who are facing state charges
come from a wide array of identities,
it seems that the federal repression matrix
is really centered on Indigenous people,
their resistance and their assertion of their own sovereignty
over their lands and their waters.
Due process is not going to be delivered to these water protectors
by the way the trials have been set up.
There is a continuing grand jury that was convened
to investigate the activities of water protectors.
They've been used historically as a means of political repression.
As a way of shutting down resistance.
Of starting to tear communities apart by spreading paranoia,
suspicion, getting people to self-isolate.
One of the most clear wins that we have
in regards to the movement defence work
that's happening at Standing Rock
is around this grand jury.
We found out about the grand jury,
we very quickly organized,
not only with the person who'd been subpoenaed,
but also spreading - within the same day –
information and resources throughout the camp.
And then also put together a month-long tour
to reach water protectors across the country as well.
The US Attorney's Office, the FBI, the ATF, the JTTF,
and other federal law enforcement bodies had a really clear vision
of how that grand jury process was gonna unfold for them.
And I think that we fucked it up for them.
And I think we did a really good job of it.
Many people who've never had a first-hand experience
being a defendant in the criminal justice system
tend to have a pretty skewed idea of what to expect going into it.
And given the way that the legal process is generally depicted
in movies, in TV shows
and sensationalist corporate media accounts,
it’s understandable that when people think of court proceedings,
they usually imagine two sharply-dressed lawyers
squaring off in a courtroom,
each arguing the merits of their position in front of a stern judge
and an undecided and apprehensive jury.
-I hereby order Ruben Carter released from prison. - <<Applause>>
In fact, the whole process is less like a John Grisham novel,
and more like something dreamt up by Franz Kafka.
If you are privileged enough to make bail,
which, by the way, most people aren't....
then you can look forward to a long stretch of time
when your legal case will severely impact your life.
This might be months...
or if you wanna actually take the charges to trial, years.
Either way, you’re looking at a steady stream of
seemingly pointless court appearances,
plus regular meetings with your lawyer.
More often than not, the process is entirely confusing,
stressful and expensive.
If you have co-defendants,
get used to not communicating with them unless your lawyers are present...
even if they're your partner, your close friend or your comrade.
If you're lucky, your lawyer will respect your agency,
and might even be sympathetic to your politics.
If you have the support of some solid comrades,
you might even be able to come up with a way
of advancing your struggle through the court proceedings themselves.
And who knows... the charges might even get dropped out of the blue.
Sometimes for reasons nobody can really explain.
In very kind of basic terms,
a legal defence would be what somebody is saying
in response to the state's allegations of them having broken a law.
So if somebody is charged with destroying property
such as breaking a window,
a legal defence could be 'not guilty',
as in that person did not do that.
Political defence, in contrast, would be about
looking at the political climate and figuring out
what are the different leverage points that can be used
to bring the politics of the case
or the politics of the movement that's being targeted
into the forefront.
So your political defence is really based off of:
“what are your goals politically for your movement?”
whereas a legal defence is based off of:
“what are your goals...
to have the least harm through the legal system as possible?”
Whether it is throwing down against racist cops,
or locking down against earth-destroying machines,
if you get arrested it's not just you that's on trial
... it's your struggle too.
A successful defence campaign draws on both legal and political tactics
to mitigate the potential repercussions the case can have
on individuals and the movement at large.
Your legal defence is based off of the confines of the legal system
and the goal of defence is to get you off of charges.
To make sure that you're acquitted at trial,
or you negotiate a plea that's favourable to you
and avoid going to trial if that might be the best thing
in your particular legal situation.
Whereas a political defence can sometimes actually
butt up against that normal legal defence.
There's different costs that can be involved.
There's also a lot that can be gained
through taking a political approach.
This approach moves away from the realm
of what is deemed legal by lawmakers
and steps into the larger realm of ethics, morality,
and liberation from all forms of oppression.
It can also include defendants deciding that
they're not going to cooperate with the proceedings against them.
Notably different Puerto Rican independence fighters
and some Black Liberation Army soldiers back in the 70s and 80s
decided that they were taking a Prisoner of War approach to their cases,
so they rejected the legitimacy of the US government
to file and press charges against them,
and refused to cooperate in the proceedings at all.
Those prisoners of war were convicted despite their lack of participation,
and many of them sentenced to decades in prison,
a good number of who are still serving that time.
It can also mean trying to put pressure onto the legal system itself.
Calling campaigns, reaching out to the prosecutor's office, or the judge.
Writing letters to the judge from people all over the country
or all over the world about this particular defendant
or group of co-defendants.
Over the last number of years
there have been a number of successful uses of political defence.
Most of those are also unfortunately, also mixed victories
where we were able to win in certain respects and lose in other respects.
An example that comes to mind is the Cece McDonald case in Minnesota.
Cece is a Black trans woman who was attacked
while walking to the grocery store late one night.
And in the fight that ensued,
one of the attackers was stabbed near the heart
and died on the scene.
He was later found to have a swastika tattoo on his chest
which he received while involved in white supremacist gangs in prison.
Cece was the only one who was charged in that incident at first,
and she was initially facing 20 years on a murder charge.
After a certain amount of time in her case
she was offered a plea agreement to around ten years.
And she rejected that,
so the prosecutors added on a higher level murder charge
that upped the amount of time she was facing to 40 years.
I was involved in her defence committee
and we were able to get a lot of support and solidarity for her
from across the country and across the world
and helped expose that prosecution for being a continuation of
the racist transphobic attack against Cece
that the white supremacists in the streets had begun,
by attacking Cece and her friends.
As a result of that pressure campaign,
in combination with her defence that her legal team was working on,
she was able to accept a plea agreement
to a lower-level felony charge of involuntary manslaughter.
She had to serve about an additional year of prison time,
and she's been released for a number of years now
and has been involved in a lot of public organizing,
public speaking and pursuit of justice for trans people,
particularly Black trans women.
Because of the large numbers of trans folks,
and Black trans women in particular,
who are assaulted, targeted and murdered in the streets.
The legal system is meant to really individualize people
and to isolate you from one another.
And it's good at doing it.
And so the more that we can
maintain communication with one another,
the more that we can maintain our solidarity with one another.
There are plenty of people who are charged criminally
that'll fold on somebody else in order to save their own self.
But if that's something that is absolutely against
your values and your politics,
you need to find an attorney who also is gonna uphold
those same values and politics
and not push you to do something
just because it might be better for your individual case.
So if you have co-defendants,
you wanna make sure that your plea agreement,
or any statement of facts that you have to sign
aren't going to harm or incriminate other people
if they're y'know, known co-defendants
– especially if they're not known co-defendants.
Y'know, if the state doesn't know something
we wanna keep it that way.
It is important that we understand the implications
and consequences of snitching
and do our best to ensure that all defendants
feel supported and do not buckle under the state's pressure
and coercion to comply with their demands.
Non-cooperation agreements are meant to establish trust
and solidarity between co-defendants
and make it clear that defendants will refuse to help the state
in its efforts to prosecute us.
In the case of J20,
over half of the defendants have agreed to points of unity,
which include a non-cooperation agreement,
refusing to snitch on each other or otherwise cooperate with the state
in targeting and isolating their co-defendants.
This agreement also includes a commitment
to sharing resources and working together
for our collective defence.
There are people facing charges from all over the country.
And people that maybe didn't know each other before,
and communities that weren't necessarily very well connected to one another,
are better connected now.
And so while the state thinks they can use things like this to tear us apart,
it's actually an opportunity for us to grow stronger
if we are willing to be bold.
The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky once wrote
that if you want to understand a society,
you should look inside its prisons.
As a former prisoner himself,
he understood that the ways in which power operates
in a given society determine who the state locks up,
under what conditions, and for what ends.
Take, for example, the United States.
Its lofty modern day position atop the global economy
has its roots in the nation's lucrative plantation system,
built through the unpaid labour of generations of enslaved Africans.
Slavery in the US never really went away.... it just transformed.
Like, there is literally an 'except' in the 13th Amendment.
Look at it.
Neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude,
except as punishment for crime,
shall exist within the United States.
Today it is manifested in the country's system of mass incarceration,
in which one out of every three Black males
is imprisoned at some point in their lifetime,
and prisoners of all races are forced to work for almost no money,
helping to pad the profit margins of an array of wealthy companies,
from McDonalds to Verizon.
The US prison system is a byproduct of a specific society
with a specific history,
as are prisons everywhere else.
But no matter where they’re located,
prisons have at least one thing in common.
Namely... they're full of people who have plenty of reasons
to hate the state.
The history of the Anarchist Black Cross begins in Russia
in the period of 1900 to 1905,
to support the comrades that were being persecuted and jailed
in the context of the struggle against the Czar.
Here in Mexico, the first one was established in the mid 90’s.
The way in which we decide which comrades to support
mainly it has to do with affinity.
If there’s an anarchist comrade who is jailed,
regardless if they are “guilty” or “innocent”,
if they did it or not,
for us that’s not relevant.
What’s important is that it’s an anarchist comrade
who is in prison.
One of them is Fernando Barcenas,
a youth who has been imprisoned for three years,
accused of having burned a Coca Cola Christmas tree.
The work that we do with jailed comrades
includes keeping up with how they are doing inside,
physically and emotionally.
Visiting them to establish a relationship based in solidarity.
This is done with the intent of stopping the destruction of personality
that prison tends to achieve.
We try to maintain a channel of communication
through letter writing.
Some of the actions that have been done from inside prison,
and that we have supported,
have been for example, hunger strikes.
For example, a coordinated hunger strike
from different prisons
by four anarchist comrades
who were in separate jails.
The objective of the hunger strike was to denounce
the existence of prison themselves,
and the social function of prisons
as part of the disciplinary regime
of society in general.
We also try to support small organizing projects
that deal more with everyday life inside prison.
There was one collective that was focused on this,
facilitating music workshops, creative writing workshops
and also workshops on health care,
on music, and some other things
that have had results.
There’s a newspaper of chronicles.
They even recorded a punk album.
We are the “La Fuga” (jailbreak) coordinating committee.
We have been around since 2015
and we began as a coordinating collective
between small groups and individuals
that have an anti-prison and anti-systemic perspective.
Mainly we organize awareness-building actions
- especially street actions like marches, and assemblies
in different places.
Days of awareness.
This can be in city squares, universities, or in high schools.
The days of actions are mainly in the streets and in public places.
We also mobilize against state terror.
This has to do with principle of international solidarity,
and we have protested at different embassies
to bring awareness to prisoners,
but also state terrorism and repression.
We have a horizontal structure,
flexible, and by affinity.
Our operation is dynamic.
There are no pre-determined functions,
instead it has to do with the initiative of each individual
and what each wants to bring to the table for a specific action.
We just facilitate the coordination of desires
more than a set structure.
The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee
is a committee of the IWW.
It was inspired by George Jackson's call
for a prison labour union back in the day
- he's an old Black Panther prisoner
who was assassinated by the guards in California –
and by recent struggles and uprisings.
There was a big strike in Georgia in 2010,
and then the Free Alabama Movement
were shutting prisons down left and right
and so a couple of members within the IWW
who are formerly-incarcerated got excited about
forming the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee.
We have over 800 members currently on the inside
and we have people who are coming out
and staying with the union and staying with the organizing,
and really informing it a lot.
The structure is really experimental
and the day-to-day activities vary from state to state
and different locals.
In some places we're trying to build inside branches
by connecting all the prisoners across the state.
In other places they're focusing on single communities
and single facilities, or even units.
A lot of the day-to-day activity is correspondence.
Writing and trying to facilitate communication
across the bars and the fences.
September 9th of 2016 was the largest prison strike in history.
Tens of thousands of prisoners participated all across the country
and engaged in a wide variety of different tactics and actions.
It was called for by prisoners in Alabama, Ohio and elsewhere
and how it went down was they wrote up a call to action,
which we distributed as broadly and widely as we could.
And prisoners all across the country got it.
And then at the same time we organized on the outside
to do solidarity actions and demos.
And many many facilities were shut down
because of either strikes or rumours of strikes,
as well as individual prisoners engaging in kinda
spontaneous or unexpected actions.
There were hunger strikes in Ohio and Wisconsin
and work stoppages all across Texas and the Pacific North West
and in Florida and Michigan there were a couple of actions
where prisoners kind of wilded out
and tore shit up inside their facility.
As individuals,
we all have different experiences with the legal system
and our odds of ending up in prison are shaped
by a number of factors.
Some of the most important determining factors are based on identities,
such as nationality, race, and gender, that are inscribed on us at birth.
Others are based on our personal experiences of trauma,
medical diagnoses, poverty, and class position,
which often help to determine our habits and drastically limit our options.
Some are based on the strength of our political convictions,
and our refusal to betray them.
But there's one factor that we do have control over...
and that's whether or not, when the time comes,
we have each others' backs.
The criminal justice system is designed to keep us divided,
because when we're isolated, we're weaker.
It does this through a crude mixture of fear,
self-interest and reliance on social hierarchies
formed by, and reinforced through systemic oppression.
If we are serious about building movements
capable of dismantling the ideological institutions
of white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism,
and the capitalist states they uphold,
then we need to focus on the physical institutions
where they play out.
This means building movements that can provide meaningful solidarity
to those most affected by the state's repressive apparatus,
while building up infrastructure of collective defence
that can help us weather the struggles to come.
If one wants to confront the state,
the immediate response from the state is going to be repression,
and the basic ethic of any movement has to contemplate that.
Has to contemplate the necessity to support
and include the comrades that are being persecuted.
What's actually really counter-intuitive is that
when you're facing that kind of repression,
one of your strongest tools that you have in your community
or as part of your movement,
is actually to make that shit public.
Defendants are in need of considerable support,
as each of us is facing the prospect of long legal battles,
thousands of dollars in fines,
and potentially prison sentences.
All of us have been thrown together by the state
into an incredibly stressful legal situation,
and now must figure out how to coordinate political and legal strategies
that will keep us all out of jail.
That support can manifest in tabling at an event,
doing fundraisers,
doing social media blasts to bring prominence to the case
and let people know what's happening.
Also letting people know, like what implications this case has
for people across the country.
This case is very significant in terms of being such a massive case,
and unprecedented in many ways that it happened
right on Trump's first day in the presidency.
It's not a coincidence that
they're going so hard against these defendants.
It's not a coincidence that this is a case that's trying to set the tone
for what state repression looks like under Trump.
The charges that Morton County State's Attorney's Office
has brought against water protectors...
there are over 569 pending cases in Morton and Burleigh County.
And when we're talking about that number of people,
and the insurmountable financial liability by retaining attorneys,
posting bail, getting cars out of impound,
horses that were impounded,
dogs that were impounded,
kayaks that were impounded...
not only that, but travel expenses.
We need support from people who care about this issue,
who care about destroying capitalism,
who wanna erode, and y'know, believe in the strategy
of corroding the glue that holds capitalism
white supremacy and patriarchy together
-- which is the prison system.
For us the strategy is always strong coordination,
to stay away from sectarianism,
and to be capable of establishing,
between different small groups and individuals,
the creation of potent and permanent organizations.
There is very seldom going to be a handbook to follow
or a playbook to follow that will say:
“if you do A, B & C, then you'll fully support the defendants
and they'll win at trial, and then they'll walk home free."
I would encourage people to not be intimidated by
all of the, like, legal jargon and y'know... specifics
of the legal system in and of itself.
It's complicated.
And while attorneys like to view themselves as being experts,
even attorneys aren't experts at it.
Because the state is constantly trying to
switch the way that it's utilizing its own language and rules
to its own benefit.
Situations in prisons vary state by state,
facility by facility.
So there's not one single thing to do
that can apply across the country.
Instead you gotta plug in with local organizers
and find things that are appropriate
and connect with what's going on
on the inside in the places that you're at.
A lot of times I think people get burnt out very easily,
or overwhelmed very quickly
with how much there is to learn about the criminal legal system
and can feel stalled out in their work.
And so when people are working,
or engaging in this defence work,
they need to really approach it with the idea of
entering into the unknown in order to fight a battle
that is designed for the defendants to lose
in order to figure out how to create space
to either not give the state a full victory,
or ideally to give us a victory instead.
We think that one of the best ways
to create solidarity with jailed comrades
is to not forget that they are there for fighting.
Not to forget that they are there because
they decided to face the system,
and that it’s necessary to continue the struggle
and continue fighting against the system.
It is important for people to consider that solidarity
isn't just responding to repression by raising money and awareness.
It also means continuing the struggle,
so it's important that people not be scared away
by what is happening to us.
The necessity of resistance hasn't gone away
just because 200+ people are facing felonies.
If anything, it is just further evidence
of how rotten this system is.
As a whole we're facing a lot of state repression.
We're facing a lot of threats from the right.
And we're also organizing resistance and solidarity
in really remarkably effective ways.
We can always strengthen that.
We can always come together more.
We can always get better at how
we are handling those different threats...
but there's a lot of inspiring actions happening
and a lot of inspiring organizing to bring people together
in the face of all these threats.
And hopefully we'll come out stronger
as a result of all that organizing.
The same kind of... fire that motivates people
to get out into the streets,
or to plan actions,
or drop a banner in the middle of the night,
or sabotage something,
is the same kind of fire that motivates you
to protect the people that you're in resistance with.
As resistance to nationalist reaction,
soaring inequality
and rampant resource extraction continues to gain steam,
our movements will face more waves of state repression.
Whether this ultimately strengthens our movements,
or crushes them,
will depend a great deal on our capacity to develop
the tools, resources, and infrastructure necessary
to strengthen our collective defence,
and our ability to thwart the state's efforts
to isolate our comrades
behind walls of steel and concrete.
So at this point, we’d like to remind you
that Trouble is intended to be watched in groups,
and to be used as a resource to promote discussion
and collective organizing.
If there are no local legal defence
or prisoner support initiatives in your area,
please consider getting together with some comrades,
screening this film and discussing what steps
would be involved in starting one up.
Hosting fundraisers
and letter-writing nights for political prisoners
is a great place to start.
Check out the screening kit
for this episode for more info on where to begin.
Are you interested in running regular screenings of Trouble
at your campus, infoshop, community center,
or even just at your home with friends?
Become a Trouble-Maker!
For 10 bucks a month,
we’ll hook you up with an advanced copy of the show
and a screening kit featuring additional resources
and some questions you can use to get a discussion going.
If you can’t afford to support us financially,
no worries!
You can stream and/or download all our content for free
off of our website: sub.media/trouble.
If you’ve got any suggestions for show topics,
or just wanna get in touch,
drop us a line at trouble@sub.media.
We’re excited to see that people have been
supporting our work by becoming troublemakers
and wanna send a shout out to Marvin, Noah,
Cameron, Liam, Joshua, Thomas, Johnny,
Richard, Dark, Badger, BJ, Tino, Filip, Thomas,
Maciej and Leslie.
This episode would not have been possible without the
generous support of Anda, Felipe, Whitney,
Roger & Liberation Frequency.
Now get out there, and make some trouble!