Jeremy White on the “San Diego Antifa” Case
A recent chat with Jeremy White, film-maker, activist, and street medic who’s facing prison time in what has been dubbed the “San Diego Antifa” case. You’ll hear Jeremy talk about what happened on January 9th, 2021 at the Stop The Steal rally, how the police interacted with members of American Guard and Proud Boys as they assaulted passers by, the conspiracy-theory driven DA Sommers Stephan and where the case was before it resumed on March 18th, after we recorded this chat. Jeremy also worked on a horror-comedy film called “Bitch Ass“.
Fundraising on the case:
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Fundraising for Tallcan, former defendant:
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165 W Hospitality Lane,
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Doors @ 6pm / ALLAGES
$8 Suggested donation / (no one will be turned away for lack of funds)
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Featured Track:
- Comrades by Bambu from Party Worker
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Transcription
TFSR: Would you please introduce yourself with any name, preferred pronouns, location, or other information?
Jeremy White: Yes, my name is Jeremy. I go by he or they pronouns, and I’m an activist and organizer based out of Los Angeles.
TFSR: Jeremy, could you give a brief overview of what happened on January 9, 2021 at Pacific Beach in San Diego, and what what you and other folks were expecting when you showed up there. I know this is just three days after the right wing demonstrations that took place across the USA, including in DC with the attempted coup. So if you could just talk about what the era was like and what the call was for this demonstration and what you were expecting.
JW: On January 9, 2021, there was a protest by some San Diego Trump supporters, right wingers, that was planned as a Stop the Steal rally, like they were having all over the country. The thing about this one protest — it wasn’t just politically charged Trump supporters, it was members of the Proud Boys and American Guard that had also vocalized that they were going to be there.
As we know now, watching everything that happened with with the DC hearings, the Proud Boys have been proven to be a violent gang, and the American guard is a well known white supremacist group that’s always getting wrapped up in violence. I don’t think it started in San Diego. I think it started on the East coast, but it’s definitely got a stronghold here. They decided to have this rally and local anti-fascists from San Diego put together a counter-protest. People were invited from neighboring cities to come support if they could, and I was invited to come take part as a street medic, which is something I’ve been doing for years now.
We got down there, and it was kind of like any other action with these right wingers. The standard procedure: the cops securely have their backs to them, facing us with their weapons and their batons. These guys were violent from the moment we hit the ground on the boardwalk. We were shot at with a BB gun by the kid of one of the American Guard members. People brought knives and smoke grenades and different kinds of weapons, vests, things like that. And we just went through a counter-protest throughout the day. It was certainly no different than most other actions I’ve been to. I was there de-escalating, and treating people. We go home after the police call the dispersal order. I don’t even think there were arrests made that day. I could be wrong, but I don’t think there were any arrests made that day. So we’ll go home and 11 months later, at 4:30 in the morning, 12 activists from San Diego up to Los Angeles have their homes raided at the same time. And I’ve been dealing with this, in and out of court for more than two years.
TFSR: Since you were there, and you could see where the Stop the Steal folks were putting their energy, why did they go to Pacific Beach? It sounds like a pier area near the ocean. Is it near the administrative center of San Diego? Is there a federal building there? Or were they just waiting for a counter demonstration? Or just getting angry at passers by? What was that like?
JW: I think they just wanted publicity and visibility in their in their choice of location, I could be wrong. I’m not from San Diego, so I’m not super familiar with the with the lay of the land there. But like you said, it is a pier. It’s like going to Santa Monica to have a big protest. And I will say with with our experience with the Trump supporters, they love going to places like that. They would constantly gather in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Hollywood to have their hate rallies. So I think they were just looking for a very visibly public place to serve up there Kyle [Rittenhouse] salutes and whatever else they were doing that day.
TFSR: So would you talk a little bit about the the politics of San Diego? You’ve mentioned that groups like the Proud Boys or American Guard, and these are fighting clubs. One thing that they focus on is brawling with people in public places, like Western chauvinist organizations. So it kind of makes sense that they’re looking for fights, because this is what they do and this is the aesthetic that they pull together.
I know you said you’re not from San Diego, but you’re close enough to the region. Could you give an overview of the politics of the town? I know it’s a big military town; there’s a lot of naval installations. It’s right near the border with Mexico, so I’m sure there’s a lot of angry white people that are politicized around that sort of stuff.
JW: Yeah, exactly. That hit the nail on the head. I’ve been going to San Diego most of my life. I grew up in Los Angeles. So economically it just seems like a nice little beach town, but then when you get into politically, there’s a lot more right wing ideology out there, like you said about the border.
I don’t know the stats on this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of border patrol agents live down there because it’s so close. And definitely a strong showing of right wing political support that we could see. San Diego up into Orange County was very pro-Trump as well.
TFSR: That definitely tracks. So you said 11 months later, 4:30 AM, knock on the door. Can you talk about what the arrest was like?
JW: It was brutal. I had just been getting to know the next door neighbors. We just moved into the place and we were up late — probably 2:30 by a time I went to bed — and I go to sleep and it felt like 15 minutes later, there’s pounding on my door and a megaphone and I was so disoriented. I threw on a bathrobe and started rushing down the stairs, slipped on the stairs, got to the door, still tying my bathrobe shut when I opened the door, and there’s an AR-15 and like 15 cops with a megaphone and a strobe light pointing at my face. It was pretty horrifying.
They didn’t announce who they were there for. They never at any point said names of anybody. They just said occupants of the address. I was the first one out. Without even having my robe tied, they made me walk towards them, and then turn around and get down and all that. It was early December and it was very cold. My roommates and I were brought outside and just held for about an hour on the concrete with no shoes on. And then finally they brought me in and said we have a warrant, search warrant for basically everything you own — every electronic, any bit of gear, any black clothing. They took stuff that had nothing to do with protests. They took personal art off my wall that they said was Antifa art, which is really funny. I hope to see that in court. They took my squid game masks that I made for cosplay for Halloween in the year before and filed it as evidence.
But yeah, we got through a few hours of been searching, and then they hauled me off to San Diego. Then I started to see people fall into this holding room, and it was apparent that this was a mass operation, like they hit 12 people at the same time.
It was so early in the morning that nobody could call each other down to respond, as they do, and then we just started slowly finding out about it, while in jail trying to get calls out to figure out what was going on. It was very scary.
TFSR: Yeah, that sounds really frightening, especially if you’re not being told what what the hell’s going on. Antifa art, huh?
JW: Apparently. What’s funny is I have a ton of anti-fascist art in my house. I make and support local artists who are leftists, so I have a lot of great leftist art. This was not that! It’s my film design logo that I made for myself, and I made a little tiny painting of it, and they said that this is some kind of antifa related artwork. So that was really funny.
TFSR: Well, apparently they’re art critics. Well, could you could you go rattle off some of the names of agencies that were involved in this?
JW: Yeah, it was a multi-jurisdictional multi-agency task force between San Diego PD, LAPD and LA sheriffs, so I had representatives from all those fine organizations inside of my living room, threatening and bullying and it’s crazy. I still walk through there sometimes and can feel the energy.
I remember that the thing that I said to them as they finally took me off. They’d let me get dressed in front of like, 10 cops inside my living room, stripped me down naked and made me get dressed so I can go to jail, and then they were taking me out to the car. And the entire block is cop cars, 30 cop cars from end to end, and that was just for me. I didn’t even know at this point that there were 11 other people and I told him right before he put me in the car, “you know, we could have health care, but we have this instead.” And at that point I didn’t even know the scope of it.
Once we got locked up, I started hearing the cops from San Diego talking about all the overtime they’re racking up and chuckling with each other about how they’re making money. It’s surreal.
TFSR: Yeah, it’s a good thing they’re union jobs. God, that sucks. So would you talk a bit about the so-called San Diego Antifa case? What’s alleged and who stands accused? And then I’d like to get into particular charges that you were facing initially.
JW: Yeah. The San Diego Antifa case has been brought forward by the DA of San Diego, Summer, Stefan. I didn’t know anything about her until this case, and then you start looking into it, and she’s got alarming ties to local groups like the American Guard, hard right political donors down in San Diego. Her biggest donor is the father of that kid who just got indicted on January 6 riots, a well known internet influencer that started stirring the pot for January 6, and he’s been wrapped up in the lawsuit now.
So she’s got close ties. There’s been some quid pro quo stuff where a member of the American Guard got arrested. The sheriffs in San Diego themselves recommended prosecution and she declined, and then there’s a campaign contribution from from the guy in question. So there’s stuff like that, that we’re definitely going to bring up at trial and show the jury.
12 “antifa” anti-fascist activists. There’s no org, like everyone’s paid dues, or was on an email chain or anything like that. It’s not an organization. It’s just it’s an ideology, as we know, but 12 of us were arrested as if we were some organized criminal gang, and the actual organized criminal gang of the American Guard was like completely off the hook. The stuff they were doing that day was crazy to think about. At the end of the action after the police issued the dispersal, and all the leftists went home and started essentially avoiding being hunted by the police — as we did exactly as they asked and went back to our cars — the American Guard was free to do what they intended to that day, which is initiate violence unchecked on the community. And they did just that.
There were two people walking down an alley, the man had a shirt on. I don’t know what the shirt said, something about George Floyd or Black Lives Matter. I don’t even think he was at the protest. He was just a local that was interested. So he’s walking away, and this group attacks him, jumps him and the the female companion he had with him, jumped them and beat them up so bad that the woman pissed herself. Then they bragged about that on video afterwards. And this has all hit the desk of the DA. She’s seen it all, and she has refused to prosecute any violence that the right instituted, so it becomes a clear case of selective prosecution, and it’s incredibly politically motivated. One of the other defendants that’s still going to trial with me was the first to get arrested. I think a few months before all this happened he was arrested. I could be wrong in the exact details. But he had a court case before we ever got to court and I guess Summer Steven was straight up just quoting Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingram in court to the judge to try to make their case, and that’s unhinged in regards to Antifa being this gang.
TFSR: Yeah, so we were just talking about the violence that was conducted by some of the participants of the Stop the Steal rally that was there. And as I understand, too, members of that crowd were throwing smoke bombs at people and were shooting with BB guns and such. Is that right?
JW: There was a kid who came to the event pretty early on, if memory recalls, before the big head-to-head clash between the two sides. They were just stalking us on the boardwalk. They’d send a couple people in to harass. One of them was a minor. He was like 17-ish. He came in with a group of his friends coming in, saying ‘F*ck Antifa,” and he pulled out a BB pistol and fired it. He actually got detained and let go, and no charges were filed for him bringing a weapons to a protest. So it’s it’s clearly a one sided thing.
TFSR: Yeah, that’s incredible. Not to not to make light of it, but you can shoot your eye out with one of those, and in North Carolina, if it was a leftist, they would call that “coming armed to the terror of the people”. Misappropriation of an anti-Klan law that’s on the books.
Well, actually, you were talking about conspiracy theories and the prosecutor. But as I understand you also heard some of similar conspiracy theories touted among some of the arresting officers, right?
JW: Yeah, I was asked if I got money, or how much money I got from George Soros for protesting, as were some of the other defendants when we first got pulled into interrogation. I just laughed and told them, I’m not gonna say anything, I want a lawyer. And it was very odd to hear it in person from an authority figure like that. But I’ve had that levied against me for years now online, and even in person at protests from some of these right wingers, but to have a detective, two detectives, asking me that officially on a recorded thing was mind blowing — very surreal.
I’ve never been paid. I’ve all my whole history of activism has been grassroots. I’ve never joined any NGO or anything, because it just feels inherently flawed. So I’ve never gotten a dime for doing activism or organizing unless I was broke and needed support and put out a request for funds and people would help. It’s insane to me that they really do believe that we’re this shady, funded thing, that BLM was the same thing. It’s wild to me. They just can’t understand. I think that’s the crux of it. That’s kind of what I experienced with the gamut of political organizing from like, marching for Bernie back in the day, to marching against fascists. They just don’t understand the passion, and how we feel the need to be out there standing up for what we believe in, so we have to be paid, we must be paid, right? I think that attitude has gotten across the board.
TFSR: Yeah, and not only do we have to be paid, but we need to have someone giving us orders. Like when you’re pointing to this, yes, influential survivor of the Holocaust from Hungary, who does run liberal think tanks and is a billionaire. He does fund politicians; he does fund organizations. But again, as you said, being an anti-fascist does not mean you’re involved in an organization. And it’s a pretty old trope. That was a Nazi and Klan thing back in the 1930s: the idea that black folks couldn’t be organizing themselves, dumb workers couldn’t be organizing themselves in the unions without somebody trying to motivate them through pay, because they have some nefarious plan of breaking down the righteous social order of the United States or challenging natural racial separation. Whatever sort of story people are telling themselves who believe in these anti-semitic conspiracy theories, it tends to be Jewish string pullers. It definitely goes back the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion stuff, and that’s a thing that’s been repeated by Summer Stephen. As I understand, it was on a website. I think your lawyer, maybe back in November, brought a challenge in the court. Could you talk a little bit about that?
JW: Yeah, he’s he filed a motion for dismissal based on selective prosecution and really shined a light on her hard right ideologies. That was part of it . She had reposted and shared some really questionable stuff. Just her associations are super sketchy, when you think about the people that she’s getting money from, and how that manifested into this court case trying to set a national precedent for going after anti-fascist protesters as if they’re a gang. But the motion didn’t pass. I believe and my lawyer believes it will make an impact, because the judge has seen it and we can talk about these things and trial and talk to the jury about it. For me, it just seems very obvious that there’s a there’s a quid pro quo.
You know, there’s another thing that happened while we were on the ground. We didn’t find out about it until way later, but the police were on their radio to each other from the helicopter down to the ground, they were talking back and forth very clearly understanding each other, having a full-on conversation about “the Proud Boys have hijacked this protest. They’re not with the program. They’re anti-police, and we can’t control them anymore.” This was after they gave their first dispersal order. We said cool, peace, we left. And the Proud Boys, and American Guard, and other people there just decided to get more violent and unruly as the day went on. And that’s exactly what we knew would happened. So the fact that she hasn’t prosecuted any of that really speaks to who she is the person and what her political beliefs are, and how they’re clouding any semblance of justice in this situation.
TFSR: I mean, if I was a cop too I’d be pretty pissed off about that. [Laughs]
JW: Yeah, thinking these are your guys, thinking they had your back and then they give you the middle finger too. Yeah.
TFSR: Yeah, well also if you want to talk about the DA giving you the finger, like, the counter protesters have left of their own accord once they were asked to, and then you’ve got these biker-looking dudes who are still trying to make problems and are perfectly fine attacking cops, as has been seen in a lot of instances around the country as was visible in DC, Rochester and other places.
JW: Absolutely. Just three days later, they were celebrating it among themselves. Some of the people present on the day in Pacific Beach were at the capitol too and some of them that were present were at Downtown LA just three days before. They have their own J6 thing where at City Hall they were there were assaulting and attacking people that walked through. It was really ugly, and the cops were just letting them do it. Not only were they letting them do it, there was a small counter-protest of leftists across the street, and I watched this police captain, Captain Rick Stabile, lead the right-wingers into our midst, and then leave. It turned into a big brawl, and he just let it happen. Then when the right-wingers got their asses beat by the people that were there, he arrested everybody and you could just see that’s not how he thought it was gonna go. He thought these guys were going to just demolish all these these “soy boy” leftists, “antifa kids,” but it’s just crazy to me how that always goes down. I believed in cops for a long, long time, but the idea that they’re there to protect and serve anything but the ruling class and their own personal interest is so…
TFSR: … confused. [Laughs] Yeah. They even say that the officer sat back and let it happen — it’s more like he made it happen.
JW: Made it happen, yeah! We found out the day of, J6, he’s on his phone, while supposedly organizing this police response, cheering on the riots that were happening in DC on Twitter.
TFSR: Yeah, and law enforcement, obviously, often has a less than objective viewpoint of how the world operates and what’s going on in the world. And during the Trump administration, and I’m sure on either side of it, a lot of fusion centers, these information centers that send around communications between federal law enforcement and local jurisdictions, had been found to be carrying a bunch of just right wing conspiracy theories, a lot of them relating to Antifa, a lot of them relating to international funding for Black Lives Matter. So, fusion centers, because they don’t really have that much oversight from the outside, carries the far-right perspectives that are on the biased path of the cops that are running them in the first place. To get back to when you got arrested and booked, what were you initially charged with?
JW: I don’t even remember. It was five felonies. I think it was multiple assault felonies, conspiracy to riot. I think there may have been committing a riot as well, but it was a lot. It was very overwhelming. I had this public defender that hadn’t even looked at Discovery, hadn’t filed a single motion, had done no work on the case, and was trying to get me to plead to all five felonies, and I’m so glad that I didn’t go with that. I mean, I never would have. I’m a fighter; I’ve been doing this a long time. But just a month or two later, the grand jury indictment came down and it was dropped to two. So luckily, nobody took those initial charges, because I think they all reduced a bit, which as you know, grand jury indictments are the easiest thing to get, because it’s just it’s the prosecution with the grand jury. There’s no oversight really, they get to just pitch and plug in their heads whatever concepts and ideas they want, and there’s no defense there to argue it.
Even still, the charges were reduced from five felonies down to two. The felonies I’m facing right now are felony assault, and felony conspiracy to commit a riot, and those charges are completely ludicrous. I never touched anyone that day. I didn’t lay my hands on anyone that day. I didn’t institute violence on the guy they’re saying I assaulted. If you look at the video, which I finally got to do a year and a half into this case, what they’re saying is that I pointed at a guy, and then he got jumped as if I said, “That guy. Get him,” and then the crowd responded.
That’s ridiculous for many reasons. First off, I was there as a medic, clearly marked as a medic, and I was from out of town and had no power, control, sway, understanding the lay of the land, or who was here. I was just there to help. So the idea that I would be able to just point and they would do my bidding is ridiculous. They obviously think that I’m the ringleader of Antifa in Los Angeles or Southern California or whatever it is. That could not be further from the case. In that George Floyd, Breonna Taylor summer that we went through, I was super focused on stepping back, not taking the lead on anything, as a white guy who was there to support. I’m just there to support and there was no shots being called by me at any point in time. I was literally just there doing community mutual aid and defense during all those tumultuous times. So that’s the assault charge. What I was actually doing on the video, which I finally got to see, is I was pointing down an alleyway because one of the American Guard guys had just thrown a smoke grenade over the police line right at us. The police were getting edgier, and we know when they see smoke, they start to freak out. They can’t see any more. It doesn’t matter who threw it. So I was pointing down an alley toward an egress point in case people wanted to get out of that situation, but they’re saying I pointed at this guy. The other charges, conspiracy, which like I said, it’s been two years, and I still don’t know most of the names of the other defendants. I had no relationship, really, with any of them, especially people in San Diego. It was just showing up to a protest thing. I didn’t conspire and we didn’t commit a riot. There wasn’t a riot, because nobody was arrested for rioting. It’s very, very much just grasping at straws, and throwing everything at the wall and seeing what will stick with my case. So we’re fighting. We’re going to trial this month, and we’re going to fight it to the end.
TFSR: And this is like total speculation, but I wonder if they’re operating, not in good faith, under the conspiracy theory that on January 6 in DC, Antifa were the people that were doing the violence and that were doing the riot. Obviously, if there’s a line of cops between two crowds of people, and they can see them fighting with each other, and they can see the politics and probably know some of the individuals in the crowd that are agitating, that are attacking bystanders and stuff, they’re going to know that’s not true. But who knows, in the wild world of the DA, what she actually believes besides what Summer Stephen has said.
JW: Yeah, she probably thinks we’re all shapeshifting alien protesters, I don’t know. I have no clue how deep the conspiracy goes in the minds of the people that are prosecuting this, but it doesn’t feel like any semblance of justice. I’ve heard the judge say in court that this just sounds like a bar fight. Like, why are we doing this? What is this about? We’re coming back for two years, pushing the trial. It’s going because they won’t drop the charges, because they really need this win, and I’m just not willing to give it to him, and neither are the other defendants that have held on. And it’s heartbreaking: most of the ones who pled out were because they had public defendants that weren’t doing anything for them, just like I did. I got lucky. I got in contact with an amazing lawyer that has been working this case pro bono for more than a year, and I would not be talking to you right now if that wasn’t the case. It’s really heartbreaking that these other individuals were scared and threatened by the system enough that they took charges that are completely unjust.
TFSR: Yeah. I know that in Georgia with Stop Cop City, they’re trying to make the argument with their RICO indictments that anyone who answers a call to come to a thing must be connected somehow. And at least there’s some degree in the Georgia case, as much as the state is fighting against it, for people to try to get together for collective defense. But that doesn’t seem like that’s really been able to be pursued in the San Diego case, which just talks about the disunity between the individuals, as opposed to pre-existing strong relationships, or Big Daddy Soros money coming in.
JW: Oh, absolutely. I’ve been an organizer for a long time. Everything from political to grassroots mutual aid and humanitarian work stuff like that. And this was not organized, there was no organization behind it. It was fly by the seat of your pants, just people wanting to go out there and stand up against the police state, the fascists that were feeling emboldened more and more to come out and enact violence on communities. It’s just crazy to me that we’ve glorified World War 2 and fighting the Nazis. We still do it to this day. I just figured, anti fascist: fascist bad. Why wouldn’t everyone be anti-fascist? I’s very, very telling, through everything going on in the world right now, how fascism takes root, how it can be supported by people you’d never think it would be supported by, and how easy it is. It’s the frog in boiling water not realizing it’s being cooked. Those of us that have been keeping our eyes out, we’ve seen the water boiling, we’ve been yelling and shouting it for years now. But for most of the people in this country, I feel like they don’t understand just how bad it is. New York has National Guard on the subways. Los Angeles, California, they’re implementing crazy laws like the surveillance state getting access to 10,000 cameras throughout the city, including personal doorbell cameras and things like that, which is terrifying. So yeah, fascism is here for sure.
TFSR: Yeah, it did happen here.
JW: Yeah, it did happen here. I love that.
TFSR: So you’ve talked about how you showed up as a medic to help de-escalate and to help people that were injured because everyone knew at this point what groups like American Guard and Proud Boys, what their modus operandi is. You’re fighting this in part because this is BS and you don’t want to catch some felonies for something that you didn’t do, but I wonder if you could talk about your fears or views on the implications of the conspiracy charges in this case.
JW: Terrifying. Some of the overt charges for conspiracy are wearing all black or saying ACAB. We were in a Signal chat together, an organizing chat that I was just added to. I didn’t put it together. Anyone who knows Signal you don’t even have to accept those if they have your number; they can just add you to a chat and make you an admin so I don’t even know when this chat was put together. I wasn’t involved in organizing it like I said. I was invited down just to medic and that’s what I went there to do, and that’s what I did. So it’s really scary. It’s scary that we’re seeing it already. Stop Cop City, the Justice 8 here in LA as well. There are these politically motivated cases where they’re going after us with conspiracy charges, RICO charges. And as much as I love seeing the Proud Boys get their comeuppance after January 6, it was kind of a little scary for me to watch them. And not that they aren’t a gang. Like you said before, they’re a fight club. You have to go initiate violence on someone to be a part of the Proud Boys, and that’s just them. Who knows for groups that are avowed white supremacist neo Nazis, like the American Guard and RAM.
TFSR: The Trump administration including their DOJ was attempting to approach leftist and anti-racist and/or like black liberation, or black civil rights even, organizations as terrorist organizations. And it’s not just the Trump administration. The bureaucracy that is still in power in the FBI is still using terms like black identity extremists, or anti-government extremists for anti-authoritarians or anarchists. It’s like the state seems to want to create these umbrellas that you’re talking about where everyone wears black or everyone’s has ACAB or everyone who does that, therefore, must have been inducted to some group and can be treated as a class of people. And it’s scary. It’s what they tried to do with J20. It’s what they’re trying to do in Georgia. It’s on an international scale. It’s what Germany has been trying to do in the Lena E case. It’s what’s happening with the Budapest anti-fascist defendants. International governments working with each other and then attempting to charge organized conspiracies where it doesn’t take organized conspiracies. It just people concerned about fascists taking the streets and attacking people.
JW: It harkens back to Germany doing that in the 30s to socialists and social democrats and leftists. Those are the first people they went after. And it’s not surprising that they’re starting to do those kind of roundups, as it were. I remember being called a climate terrorist by Obama for being at Standing Rock.
TFSR: Congratulations. [Laughs]
JW: Thank you. You know, it’s crazy to think that there’s one party that fascism claims allegiance to because they work so well hand in hand with one another. One is just more overt, and the other one’s a little more gentle. But at the end of the day, it’s just that ratchet effect over and over and over.
TFSR: Yeah. So I know this is this is like a different jurisdiction and neither of us are lawyers. This is a different jurisdiction from where you’re being charged, but it is the same federal district I’m pretty sure, Southern California Federal District, but in the last couple of weeks, Robert Rundo, who was one of the founders of the Rise Above Movement, the inspiration for a lot of the active clubs that have been popping up white supremacist, fight clubs and training groups that are this an updated skinhead movement of sorts, but with maybe more overtly fascist politics, was extradited from Romania. He was brought to court to face charges for 2017 violence that he committed as a member of Rise Above Movement in Southern California, I think in Huntington Beach, and federal district judge Cormac J. Carney decided not to pursue it, saying that there was a bias in federal prosecution of anti-fascists, that anti-fascists were not being charged with violence. So these people that are all over film and promote beating the crap out of anyone they don’t like in the streets, like Rob Rundo, get away in this case. As I understand the feds have re-detained him near the border with Mexico, and are going to try to enter appealing. He’s obviously a flight risk.
Anyway, besides Robert Rundo, which he’s done it before, they had to, like grab him in Europe where he was “in hiding,” but I don’t know if there were 11 people in this case, and 8 people have taken pleas so far and been prosecuted on these bogus charges, it’s quite clear that the US “justice system” is not laying low on giving charges to anti-fascists. A month and a half ago, I talked to supporters of Alex Stokes in New York, who defended himself and people around him from Proud Boy and other alt-right violence in the streets on January 16 2021. And he is facing more than two decades inside, like a comparable charge to Enrique Tario.
But I wonder, do you think that there might be room for a challenge in this case to say if Rundo gets away, it’s clear that there’s a bias about far right people that are documented doing violence, and all the other people that were at this rally that beat up those bystanders aren’t getting aren’t getting convicted of anything?
JW: Yeah, whose identities have all been confirmed. All that information has been sent to the DA, so there’s nothing, no charges brought for that. We’ll have to see if the Round case has any bearing on this. At the end of the day, it’s all up to the judge and how he feels, if he wants to consider it. It is a weirdly twisted inversion of what we’re going on here. I know their argument was that the leftists instituted a bunch of violence in that case, and none of them were arrested. Except for we’re not this violent group. We’re not a fight club. It’s not even “we,” it’s just the left. I didn’t know of any groups, while I was doing my organizing, that were like we’re planning to go out and mess up fash, and you get your stripes or whatever, if you go beat up a Proud Boy. That’s just not how we operated. For me, I went out and saw people half my size getting brutalized, time and again, by the police, by these right wing protesters just ganging up on them and beating the crap out of them. And that was part of why I was inspired to go out and stand up against them and be there and use my size and my experience. Anyway, the Rundo case, sorry. So my lawyer and I have discussed the Rundo case. I believe he’s filing a motion to dismiss based on that. I just don’t know if it’s been done yet, what the outcome will be obviously, but we’ll see. It would be very interesting if we were able to use something so politically charged towards the right to help us in this case as well. So let’s see how it goes.
TFSR: And like, three way fight over here. Not to say that strengthening the courts ability to convict people is is ever going to work in the way of actual justice or defending people, but it’s interesting to see. So what are the next steps in your case? You’ve got a hearing, as I understand on the 18th. You’ve been doing some fundraising events. If you wouldn’t mind talking about what’s up next in court and how people can support your struggle.
JW: Yeah, we are set for trial on the 18th. I don’t know if that’s going to be the actual date or not. I know that there are possibly a couple of motions for continuance on the table. It’s the weekend so we’ll see what happens. But assuming those don’t get granted, then we’ll be in trial on the 18th. The judge has already called 300 jurors forward for jury selection, so it’s very real right now. It’s surreal to me, because this has been on the horizon for two years, and it keeps going, keeps pushing, and I just try to live my life. There’s some blessed weeks where I’ve been able to forget about this whole thing, because the next court case was so far down the road, and I could just do my job and live my life. And now it’s just very, very real. It’s overwhelming.
We put together a couple fundraisers. One is tonight, in Boyle Heights at the First Street Billiards. I know this is probably going to be aired too late, but we’ve had a really, really awesome show with burlesque performers and artists and musicians and food vendors, so we’re really excited to do some cool community engagement and solidarity work tonight. And then if anyone out there listening wants to support, I’ve got a GoFundMe up to cover court filing costs for my lawyer. He’s doing the case pro bono, but everything costs money. San Diego doesn’t have E filing. So he gets to print and FedEx everything. He needs to travel and get lodging in San Diego as do I. So if you’re on Instagram, you can go to @superpowertothepeople, and they’re helping out a lot with promoting the fundraiser and information about the trial. So there’s a there’s a pinned post there and in the bio, you can find the GoFundMe link. [editors note, this fundraiser was taken down due to pressure from Andy Ngo, however there is a new fundraiser for remaining defendants at GiveButter.com/Protest-Defense ]
TFSR: And it might not happen on the 18th, right? It’s just that that’s the next court date.
JW: Yes. Yeah, it’s supposed to be when trial is set for, but there are a couple of different continuances that are going to be entered it sounds like. It might get pushed again, we’ll see. That’s the hardest thing about this is. I was asked on a recent interview about court support, about getting people out there, and it’s so hard at San Diego.There’s been days where I’ve had people come out and support, but it turned out to just be 15 minutes in court for them to set the next date because there was a continuance. People drove down to San Diego and back to be in court for 15 minutes. So until I get really solid estimates on when it’s going to start I probably won’t put out the call for support, and by support I want to make it clear — peaceful, not disrupting, it’s very important to not to shine a bad light on this case by doing that, as much as I love disruption. It’s doesn’t gain us anything in this sense, you know?
TFSR: Yeah, for sure. That makes sense. Is there anything that I didn’t ask about that you wanted to talk about, that either you want me to ask about? Things that occurred to you that maybe you want to get out but you haven’t been asked?
JW: Well, this was a great interview. If anything, support jail support in your area. There’s a big need for it and it’s just gonna get worse. I live in Los Angeles we have we have a lot of wealthy people here, some of them well meaning that kind of want to contribute to things, and even here in LA it’s really hard to raise money for these activists and protesters who get caught up on on legal charges. So
if in any way you can support those around, they’re doing the work, it’s always much appreciated. I can say that firsthand. I’ve been arrested for using chalk at a protest and had to bail out. So just stay safe out there. Keep your head on a swivel.
TFSR: Is there any of your art out there any of the films that you’ve worked on that you want to point people to, any independent stuff?
JW: Oh, yeah! I will totally plug Bitch Ass. Really fun. It’s a 90s period film, black horror comedy. I guess you could call it. It’s not a straight up comedy. It’s a horror film. But there’s a lot of fun moments. It’s a guy who dons a mask and decides to start killing the local gang that beat him up when he was a kid, and he does so by creating kill machines based on board games, because he wanted to be a board game designer. There’s a Connect 4 that’s seven feet tall with guillotine blades above the holes, so you have to use arms and hands to score and then it cuts off your head. There’s a Jenga set that hangs you as you’re playing. It was a really cool movie, a lot of fun.
TFSR: It’s like Saw meets what the Revenge of the Nerds could have been.
JW: Or like the people under the stairs. Yeah, t’s a really fun movie. I always loved plugging that because it was a total indie passion project that we did during COVID and it actually won Best Audience Award at South by.
TFSR: Wow, congrats. That’s awesome.
JW: Yeah. Thank you. And then if you want to support my art, you can hit me up on Instagram @JWfilmdesign. I’ve been making a lot of art pieces. I’ll start posting more photos of that stuff. If anybody wants to buy some pieces, it’s very high quality leftist artwork that I make in my spare time.
TFSR: Cool. Yeah. Thanks. I’ll be sure to plug that and put that in the social posts when this goes out. JW, thanks for taking the time to chat. And good luck.
JW: Thank you. I really appreciate you