This week, we’re sharing two segments on the episode: updates on the federal sentencing in the Prairieland Antifa terrorism case; followed by a discussion of a recent anti-Flock surveillance sabotage case in the Great Lakes region.
Prairieland Federal Sentencing Updates
First up, two members of the DFW Support Committee return to give a rundown of the sentencing in that case with people receiving decades in relation to a noise demonstration in support of detainees at the Prairieland ICE Detention facility on July 4th of 2025.
This case, framed in terms of Trump’s State Dept declaration of Antifa as a terrorist organization and his NSPM-7 memo titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” declaring the intention to prosecute those motivated to violence by views of “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
Links
- Prairieland Defendant Solidarity: https://prairielanddefendants.com
- Solidarity with Des Revol: https://freedes.net/
- Past episodes about this case: https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/category/prairieland-case/
- A chat on the impacts of the terrorism designation on antifascist organizing in Germany: https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2026/04/05/abc-dresden-on-debanking-and-us-anti-antifascist-pressure/
- The Spokane 3 case: https://spokane3support.com/timeline-key-facts-and-events
- Recent interviews on the DAMN Minneapolis Indictments on It Could Happen Here, the Outlaw Podcast and Live Like The World is Dying
Great Lakes Anti-Flock action
Then you’ll hear a guest speak about a recent court case involving two individuals in the Great Lakes region who took action against flock surveillance cameras. You’ll hear some insights into the sorts of evidence presented, the defendants experiences of incarceration and how you can send support their way as they do their bid.
You can send funds to support them at @deez_zines on venmo. If you donate $20 or more to the fundraiser, send proof of donation and an address to deez_zines@tutamail.com and you’ll be sent a thank you gift from the support team.
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Featured Track:
- TFSR by The Willows Whisper
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DFW Federal Sentencing Transcription
TFSR: So we’re joined by two members of the DFW Defense Committee, or the Prairieland Defense Committee, to speak about the recent sentencing in the federal case of the Prairieland defendants. The second round of which has just happened this week. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.
AC: We are glad to be here.
TFSR: So we have past episodes talking about the situation as the witch hunt has unfolded, and there’s lots of good info at prairielanddefendants.com that’s constantly being updated with court notes and all sorts of other stuff, statements from the defendants. But could you give listeners a quick rundown of the case in case they’re hearing about this for the first time?
AC: Sure. On July 4, 2025, a group of people held a noise demonstration at the Prairieland Detention Center. The Prairieland Detention Center is about an hour or an hour and a half south of Fort Worth, Texas, in a county called Johnson County—and then in the city limits of Alvarado, Texas. The Prairieland Detention Center is one of the many detention centers in Texas that is holding folks who have been kidnapped by ICE. So, coming off of the first round of people challenging ICE’s kidnappings and illegitimate murders, people wanted to do something to let the detainees know that they weren’t forgotten, that we were thinking about them. Building on the tradition of noise demos that have been happening for a long time. People do noise demos often on New Year’s Eve at jails, so they went out to Prairieland to do a noise demo.
They set off some fireworks outside of the property lines, and then somebody on their own accord did some vandalization, and then the detention center called the police. Police Officer Gross showed up. Within six seconds of showing up, he already had his weapon drawn and was shooting at the back of a protester who was fleeing. Another one of the protesters that was there fired suppressive fire on the ground in order to interrupt what was happening. It seems very possible that a ricochet or something else happened, and the police officer was shot in the shoulder. At that point, everyone who had been present at the protest was arrested, even if they were blocks away walking to their car. Then there was a wider set of people that were arrested, and all of those people arrested constitute the Prairieland defendants.
There are 22 people in total now. There is the initial 11 that were arrested on July 4, and then there was a manhunt for Benjamin “Champagne” Song, and through that process, there was a number of other people who were arrested. In February and March, 9 of the 11 arrested had a federal trial on a range of charges from riot to use of explosives. They’re claiming that the fireworks are “explosives”. The biggest thing that people have been focusing on is a charge of material support of terrorism, the basis for which was attempted murder. Some people were also tried on attempted murder. The other underlying charge for the material support of terrorism was the vandalism that happened. Then there was a smaller set of people who had attempted murder charges and discharge of a weapon.
The trial happened. We have called it a show trial. I don’t want to get into the depths of the trial because once we get going, it goes really deep, but I encourage people to listen to earlier Final Straw episodes about it. There’s a lot of improprieties with the trial, including a mistrial, and at the end of the trial the defendants were found guilty. All of them were found guilty of the riot charge, the material support of terrorism, and the use and carry of explosives. The only person found guilty of attempted murder was Champagne Song, and the only person found guilty of the use of a weapon was Champagne Song. Actually, several defendants were found not guilty on the attempted murder charges.
In our reading, this verdict is really political and is about this group of people’s beliefs. One of the things that happened is that the defense attorneys decided to not mount a defense. They decided to rest instead of mounting a defense, which was a decision they made without the support of the defense committee, and that had a pretty disastrous impact for people. However the interesting thing, if you look at the charges and you look at what was found guilty and not, the whole idea behind this from the government is that this was an ambush, a terrorist act to kill ICE agents–which, an Alvaredo police officer are not an ICE agent, and he wasn’t even on the scene. They were all found not guilty, aside from Benjamin Song, who has said that he shot the gun. So it’s clear the jury was not buying the ambush idea, and they were not buying that this was some sort of pre-planned attack by this group of people. But it does seem like they did buy the state’s narrative that this was an “antifa cell” that was dangerous and that going out and doing a noise demo, dressing in black, having first aid kits, all these sorts of things are potentially things that we should criminalize. That’s some of the takeaway from the verdict.
The way federal things work is that there is a period of time between when people get found guilty and their sentencing. In state cases, people get very confused about this. In state cases, the sentencing happens very quickly, often right after the trial. In federal cases, that’s not the case because they have a whole process that they go through. It’s called the Pre-Sentencing Report, in which a probation officer looks at all your records and comes up with a certain amount of points that you should have towards your sentencing, which then determines what kind of sentence you should get. Very early on, once these pre-sentencing reports came out, it was really clear to us that the deck was going to be stacked against everyone. Everyone’s reports came back completely maxed.
We’re talking about a group of people who have no prior criminal histories. For several people, this was their first protest. Normally you would look at the group of defendants and say these are folks with families, they had full-time jobs, they are parts of communities, they do not have prior convictions. All of these factors would normally bring people’s sentencing points down. They did not, because they chose to include a terrorist enhancement charge, so everybody’s sentence points for the PSR were maxed. When we saw that, we knew that the likelihood of them getting any sort of leniency was not going to happen. We didn’t expect it anyways. One of the options is that the judge can decide for all of the sentences for the charges to either happen at the same time—so you can serve your time for the riot and the material support of terrorism at the same time—or they can be stacked after each other. We knew that was going to be one of the main factors, and given how hostile the judge has been, given what the Trump administration has said about this case, we knew as a committee and the defendants knew, that there was no way that they were going to get any leniency. We fully expected them to be getting the 50-60 year sentences that they got.
TFSR: You mentioned that for a lot of these people, this was their first protest. The state was asserting that people had a pre-existing plan to conduct an ambush, and so applied these terrorism enhancements. In my understanding because of past coverage of prosecutions of leftists around the country, they were focussed primarily on the fact that at least one of the people, Champagne, has been a member or a participant in actions like community armed self-defense actions, which is what I think the state was pointing to when they were saying the North Texas antifa terror cell–the John Brown Gun Club in that region, correct?
E: I don’t think that’s quite accurate. I think that this “North Texas antifa cell” brand, or whatever term that the government invented, when the indictment dropped in November, this was the first time that word had ever been noted in public. That was a complete fabrication by the government. Early on, what they articulated it as was this very confusing sort of coalition of the Socialist Rifle Association and the Emma Goldman Book Club, which was a long-running monthly gathering where people met and read a zine together. What I think was important about that definition is that it followed the vagueness and the political nature of antifa as a term laid out in the NPSM-7, the antifa domestic terrorist designation, where it’s a catch-all term for the far left. So they didn’t even attempt to claim an organizational affinity, organizational unity, or a clear identity of these people. For them, a network of people doing left-wing activities counted as a cell, and those activities being anti-fascist are terroristic in nature. It is actually really important to realize that the federal government’s use of this antifa term doesn’t require it to be an organization, or even to have one single organization underlying it. They’re using it in a much more nebulous, creative way that was on full display in this case.
TFSR: That’s perfect. I’m glad that you brought in the national security memo and the implications of this, because some media commentators and definitely legal workers have caught up on this. The implications are that these people didn’t have to have a pre-existing relationship with each other, didn’t have to all be on the same page, and didn’t even have to be physically at the event—just had to have relationships. It is literally criminalizing relationships and a political perspective, not only that but tacking the terrorism enhancement and terrorism-style charges. The language to it, which is a huge trigger for a lot of people is they think “9/11. Okay, get them.”
So, this is a part of a wider attack by the federal government through certain judges in a very friendly-to-them jurisdiction against leftist or oppositional grassroots social movements. Secondly, you had mentioned explosives, that being what they named fireworks in this case. This was Fourth of July, this was Texas. Like New Year’s Eve noise demos, people bring fireworks, but you can see the videos on some of the social media from the support committee where it’s clear that it’s going off across the road or a space away. It’s not being directed at an individual, it’s not directed at a building and causing damage. It was shown that there was no damage from that. The vandalism was a little bit of spray painting and some car tires getting slashed in the parking lot, right?
AC: Yeah, and a camera got broken.
TFSR: Yeah, it’s not anti-personnel stuff. It’s not undermining the stability of the building by Viet Cong-style tunneling underneath the building.
AC: No, it’s like nothing. It’s like a Saturday night in downtown Dallas
TFSR: If it was a sports game.
E: Yeah totally. We’ve probably come across this in previous episodes, but I think the thing that people should know is that the proceedings in the court, the facts that came out during trial, pretty universally lined up with the interpretation of this as a pretty normal demo. In fact, I would describe it as a kind of boring demo. It was small, they set off some fireworks, they were there for like an hour. The shooting aspect of it was abnormal, and to some extent that created political cover for the government to create this fantasy narrative around it. But when people look at it and think “I don’t know, that situation seems complicated,” they should know that in trial, the evidence that came out, that is was a normal demo. You can look at our notes and the transcript will be out pretty soon. These people didn’t do anything crazy. The story is the goverment’s response.
AC: In fact, a number of people showed up late, stood around, left before the shooting ever happened, before the police really ever got there. And they have been tied into this conspiracy. The other piece that we hit on earlier is that a number of defendants have never met each other. These are different social groups and different bodies of people, and that’s so normal at a demo. You may show up to a demo and you don’t know half of the people.
TFSR: The commonality being a concern about the mass incarceration and deportation of people’s neighbors and loved ones.
E: And this is a legal front. This is very similar to the way they prosecuted the Spokane 3, where in Spokane, people were found guilty on conspiracy charges to impede an officer or something. But the conspiracy they argued in court didn’t require people to have had prior conversation. That merely spontaneously deciding to participate in a collective action itself was a conspiracy, and they were found guilty on that. This is a theory where what we’re seeing is that the federal government is poking in different areas, trying different things to see what sticks and see where they can make headway.
AC: Like you said earlier, this stuff lands differently here than what’s going to happen with the Minnesota case, because it’s really clear that in Minnesota, they’re going after those 15 people and Prairieland is the blueprint for that. Absolutely, Minnesota is a different political climate on the ground. However, Washington is supposed to be a progressive state, and the Spokane 3 were found guilty because not all of Washington is Seattle, not all of Oregon is Portland, and New York is not just New York City. Honestly, if the defendants had been in Dallas, this would have been a very different conversation than Fort Worth, which is like a 45-minute drive. The level of locality matters, but the other piece is that they’re going to use this in as many places as they can now to see how far they can get. If people haven’t looked at the indictment on the Minnesota 15, it’s worth looking at.
E: They’re attempting to criminalize what I would call very normal organizing activities. So if you look at that indictment, there’s all this discussion of, “Oh, can I use your space to build some stuff for an action? Let’s have a meeting at this spot. Leave your phone at the door.” Things that are very normal, good organizing practices, and they’re attempting to criminalize them and call them a criminal conspiracy.
TFSR: It looked like from the videos that I saw with Champagne that the gun was drawn because there was the assumption that the officer was going to use lethal force against someone who was walking away. Champagne intervened to lay suppressive fire near to their own feet, in comparison to how far they were from the officer. Did the officer let off any rounds?
AC: The officer definitely did. One of the rounds hit Champagne’s gun. Pittman said this in sentencing. The discovery is under seal, so normally in these cases we would get to see a lot more. When you mount a defense, you get to see a lot more of the evidence, and we have a small amount of the evidence that was presented at trial, and people are pouring over it. There are a lot of questions around the timeline of the shooting. There are some questions in terms of, whether Gross shot first or not, given some of the sounds, the ballistics, and all these sorts of things. Normally, when you mount a defense, you would have a ballistics expert and you would lay all of this out in court, and that didn’t happen. Now the committee and other people that support the defendants are trying to do that work to and to try and understand the facts of what happened with the evidence that was presented. I would say that it’s not totally clear, but Gross did shoot, and it seems very possible that Gross shot first. Gross shot enough to hit Champagne’s gun and make a dent. It does seem really clear that probably Champagne saved Nathan Baumann’s life with the suppressive fire.
E: Nathan Baumann was the person who was running away, who had done most, if not all, of the graffiti. And Baumann cooperated and testified at trial. Baumann received only the smallest sentence. Only 22 months. Less than two years. Baumann is the person who did the vandalism that is the underlying crime for the material support of terrorism.
AC: Baumann is from College Station and has no relationship to any of the people. Ken Klippenstein, on his website,was able to get a portion of the transcript. The trascript from the trial isn’t public yet. He was focusing on Kyle Shideler, who’s the antifa expert. However, the beginning of the transcript is Nathan Baumann’s testimony, and I would highly recommend people go read it. From the start, you’re like, “This kid is just saying whatever the F he wants to say,” because maybe that’s what his lawyers, who they basically maybe found on TV, told him to do. There’s a lot of questions around him. I think he goes by a different last name, and some people in his community have come forward. There was an allegation of abuse against him by a former partner. There are a lot of questions about him, but he was not really connected to anyone.
What is said in the testimony is that he went to a May Day march and met someone in black bloc. They had a conversation, and he got signed up to a Signal announcement list where the flyer for this noise demo went out. Because this was a normal noise demo and people publicized it through mostly Signal, he just showed up of his own accord with some spray paint and did his thing. He had no relational ties to anyone, which I think is something significant for the movement to think about. One of the challenges this poses as things move forward and people act in bold and courageous ways because of the times that we’re in, people need to stop things like kidnappings and the other kinds of things that are going on. Folks are going to come out of the woodwork to take this bold and courageous action, and they may not be connected to people. So, what does support look like so that folks don’t decide, because they’re not in a community or because they’re not connected, that it’s in their best interest to go against everyone else? That’s kind of an instance of what happened here in this situation.
So Judge Pittman on the stand basically patted him on the head and said, “Oh, this poor kid was caught up in this antifa cell, clearly he’s not antifa,” even though he signed in his plea agreement that he’s a part of antifa as a part of his facts. When you start looking at the factual statements and what people said on the stand, you’re like, “Wait a minute, there’s a lot of discrepancies.” We would call that perjury.
E: Maybe this is a good transition to talking about sentencing. We have to really understand that the sentences are political. They were meted down for political purposes as a political act. The message to be sent, which Judge O’Connor—who was a second judge brought in for sentencing— basically said on the stand, is that they are trying to “discourage people to identify with this ideology” or these beliefs. So Nathan Baumann, being someone who was young and not connected, they saw it differently because they weren’t punishing the act. These sentences are not related to the acts for which they are found guilty. These sentences are based on the politics of the people involved, and they are punishing their politics. Nathan Baumann, not being very engaged in the politics, got a lighter sentence. And the people who were engaged in the politics, like Champagne or Liz or Ines, those people got the maximum.
The other example is Des. People have heard about this, 30 years for zines. Des is Maricela’s partner or spouse and was moving a box of his own stuff from his parents’ house to a friend’s house. They arrested him and claimed that he was trying to conceal evidence, and he was found guilty and now sentenced to 30 years. He was not at the demonstration, he was not involved in the planning of the demonstration, he’s just Maricela’s spouse, and he had a box of zines that he was moving from one house to another. The punishment there is the politics. They don’t believe that someone should be allowed to move this box of zines because of the content of the zines.
TFSR: Let’s talk about sentencing. You mentioned Baumann’s sentencing. However you want to approach it, there were two rounds of sentencing in this.
AC: Yes. There are two sets of sentences that happened. There are the folks that were a part of the federal trial, and then there’s the people who pled. Of those who pled, we have sort of two groups of peoplE: those who did not cooperate, who did not testify, and have not given interviews, and then the group of people who did cooperate and testified at the trial against the Prairieland defendants. The people who went to trial, who were all found guilty of various charges, their sentences were maxed. We have Des, who we just talked about, who got 30 years for the two charges he had related to moving this box of zines, which they claim was him concealing evidence—which was not what it was. Then we have Savannah, Liz, Inez, Meagan, Autumn, and Zachary Evetts who received 50 years. Maricela Rueda received 70 years because she was also added to the charges with Des, so she had two extra charges. Champagne Song received 100 years. These are crazy sentences; these sentences are higher than most people get for murder. Many of these folks are in their 30s and 40s, and it is, in essence, a life sentence for them. Liz and Inez are 40 or 41 now, which would mean that they would get out when they’re 91 years old potentially. Liz said it best when she said, “Way to give me a life sentence without saying that it’s life.” Inez was actually sentenced this week, but Inez is a part of this federal trial group.
Then you have the non-cooperating plea deal folks. We have two folks: Joy “Rowan” Gibson and Rebecca Morgan. Rowan Gibson was actually at the protest, and Rebecca Morgan is a part of what we call the manhunt cases, the set of cases around them attempting to find Champagne. Both of them were given the max of their plea deals, which was 15 years. This is significant because Rebecca Morgan several weeks ago suffered what constitutes a heart attack at Wichita County Jail. She was not breathing for an extended period of time, and they had to defibrillate her several times. She then was taken to the hospital. They refused to give any information to her mother, her family, whatsoever, or even her lawyer. At some point, she showed back up at the jail, so she is not receiving adequate medical treatment for the heart condition they have discovered she has, and yet she was still given 15 years, and her lawyer did bring this up.
Then we have the set of cooperators. We have Lynette Sharp and John Phillip Thomas, who received nine years. Seth Sykes received six years. Nathan received 22 months. Susan Kitt has not been sentenced yet; she’s also a cooperator, but her lawyer asked for a continuance, so I think she’s going to be sentenced later on the 6th of July, and we expect that probably she will get somewhere between the six and nine years. We talked a little bit about Baumann’s sentencing. It’s notable to us that the non-cooperating plea folks got significantly higher sentences than the folks who cooperated. Nine years is still a lot of time, but compared to the two other folks who were not cooperating who got 15, it is less, and all of these folks that cooperated testified at trial. When the transcript comes out, everyone can go and see their testimonies and see what they said about the people they claimed to be their friends and community. The levels of betrayal and the feelings that come out of that, people have that about this situation.
When we think about this a little more abstractly, why do we encourage people to assert their Fifth Amendment rights, to assert their rights to maintain silence? In part, it’s a safety thing for you. With the amount of FBI raids happening these days, I think one of the things that’s worth people understanding is there’s something called a 1001 count, which is if you lie to a federal agent, it is a 5-7 year sentence. When I say lie, you don’t have to straight up lie. If federal agents come to your apartment that you share with someone they’re looking for, and they ask you if this person lives here, and you say, “I don’t know,” and then they come back with a piece of mail that has the address for your apartment and that person’s name, you have just under the law lied to a federal agent. They can now charge you with a 1001 count and sentence you to potential federal prison for 5-7 years. This was a significant tactic used in the Green Scare to turn people from their communities. It is also notoriously the reason why Martha Stewart went to jail; she did not go to jail for insider trading, she went to jail because she lied to a federal agent. One of the reasons why we talk about the importance of all community members asserting their Fifth Amendment right is because it is a protection for you and for your community. It is scary when a federal agent is at your door, and you might make a mistake that has a long-lasting impact on you, your friends, and your loved ones. Asserting that Fifth Amendment right and having the time to get a lawyer and to understand the situation is just a safer way to deal with these kinds of situations, so we just want to remind people of that because it seems really relevant to our case.
E: If you have questions, or you were knocked, or you’re worried you’re going to be knocked, the National Lawyers Guild has a federal defense hotline that we can make sure gets in the show notes. That’s a really good resource for you to just find out your rights and maybe get connected to legal counsel if necessary. Also, it’s important to say that people make mistakes. You can get knocked and get scared because they’re there to scare you. These are professional manipulators, that’s what the feds are. And you can say some things that you wish you hadn’t said, or you can say anything and wish you’d said nothing. That’s a mistake and that’s a problem, but hiding it is even more of a problem. You don’t compound the mistake by saying, “Oh, I’m just going to pretend that didn’t happen and not tell anybody,” and keep that secret. You should say it. You should tell people, and if you’re honest and forthright, and if you didn’t do anything crazy like say, “He’s right over there, go get him,” then your community will probably understand and appreciate your honesty. It will help everyone else remain safe if we understand the actual risks that are being posed in our communities. Being public, talking about your experiences with the FBI, and making an accounting of what was asked of you and what you said is really important.
AC: It is really important, especially as we move into more situations with a mix of people engaging in bold and courageous activity right now. In our case, some people were experienced and some people were not. For people who do not know these things yet, if you make a mistake, you have the opportunity to take responsibility and to still provide safety and protection for your community by coming forward, by telling other people, by making an account of what happened, and by sharing that so that other people can know the activity that’s arising in their community.
TFSR: Right, that’ll help with your defense with your lawyers, and that’ll help with transparency among people in the movement with you. Oftentimes, when looking at the question of informants in federal cases and looking back at the Green Scare, there were definitely disproportionate sentences for people that refused to participate, refused to talk to authorities, and refused to snitch. Some people don’t like “snitch,” because it assumes that there’s some knowledge that you have that you’re hiding, but cooperating with the prosecution against co-defendants, and letting them break the collectivity is that. Oftentimes, people get harsher sentences if they refuse to do that, and the other people may get a lighter sentence, but they’re losing that trust and they’re losing that support moving forward from people. In some cases, they’ll lose family ties, best friends, and partners.
When appeals come up on this, there are going to be a lot less people screaming for support for appeals, for commissary, and for writing letters to the people who decided to turn state’s witness or to cooperate. Why am I going to write to someone who I think might just turn my letters over to a federal judge and say, “This person is a supporter of the antifa terror movement”? That’s the thing, and you have to live with yourself once you’ve made that decision, too.
AC: Another thing that people don’t realize is when you sign a plea deal to cooperate, one of the things that happens is they drop charges as a part of that plea deal, but they can bring your charges back if you don’t continue to be a useful asset to them. If you cooperate once, you are on the hook to cooperate forever. That’s something worth thinking about, because sometimes people think, “Oh, it’s just this one time,” and no, it’s not one time. If you’re having conversations with folks who have made that choice, it is a direct line to the powers that are enforcing the law through that process. Having clear-eyed vision around the engagement of people who have chosen that path is important.
Like you said, one of the positive things that has happened is that a number of powerhouse lawyers from across the country have stood up to take the appellate cases of the federal defendants for pro bono. People who are not going to be a part of the good-old-boy network of this courthouse, people who are not going to be cowed because of the judge and be worried about their reputation in the same way as some of the trial lawyers currently are. Standing strong, people see that and people want to support that. Actually, in a lot of ways, the sentencing really shook people even more than the guilty verdict, and even more resources and people have come forward to support the defendants than ever before. Specifically, they are wanting to support the defendants who are going to continue their fight and who are continuing to stand strong. So I think that’s another piece too.
There are a lot of reasons that go into taking pleas, and pleas are really complicated. One of the things I think people don’t realize is you can’t appeal a plea. Once you take a plea, you can appeal your sentence on the plea, but you can’t appeal the actual plea, so the people who have taken these pleas basically are done with that part of the legal process for the federal side of things. We can talk about all the state stuff, because all the state stuff is moving and that’s a whole other conversation. But I think you will continue to have a robust support network if people know that you are continuing to fight and you’re standing strong, and that can really help you do your time. I think about Marius Mason right now, who is one of those folks who stood really strong and has had really powerful support behind him, and now he’s out. We took part in a Freedom Tree activity in solidarity with Marius and other anarchist prisoners. So I think that’s something for folks to think about. You want that support as you continue in the legal process because it can be really hard and isolating.
TFSR: With Marius’ case, who I was thinking about was Frank Ambrose. He’s on the hook still because he pled out and wore a wire in addition. When I think about Marius’ case, it’s a fucking tragedy because he was in for so long. Luckily, Eric McDavid was able to get out from a similar length sentence of 10 years in because a federal prosecutor had a moment of conscience and pointed to some evidence that had been suppressed from the defense. I don’t have a lot of hope for federal prosecutors having an ounce of humanity inside of them, but maybe moving forward there’s room for some Brady violations to get called on for what’s been withheld from the defense.
E: We don’t know what’s going to happen and we can’t guarantee anything, yadda yadda yadda. But there is a lot of reason to believe that our friends are not going to serve these full sentences, and that very much includes the appeals and the legal process, which include things like Brady violations. There are so many irregularities in the proceedings of this case; there are a lot of things that are very strange and unusual, and lawyers continuously are like, “Woah, I’ve never seen that happen before.”
Politically, I think this is important because the Trump administration is a very different political order than we’re used to in this country. It’s a lot more chaotic, rash, and “boots first.” It’s a lot less careful in terms of the way it constructs its counterinsurgency. That’s not to say that it’s fine, good, and safer, because actually that makes it more dangerous in a lot of regards. But it does mean that to the extent to which we are still able to use some of these legal systems that rely on the norms that have existed for decades in this country, the political fight between these more radical elements of the Trump coalition and the more conservative elements of the right wing, is a lever which offers some reason for hope. One of the things I like to point out is that there’s the term “conservative” in the legal field, and people often call Clarence Thomas, Alito, or someone a conservative judge. People would call Mark Pittman a conservative judge because he’s on the right wing, but the way that he actually runs his courtroom is out of line with the mainline norms of the judiciary and the federal system, and that is not conservative, that’s radical. Not to say radical is a bad word.
TFSR: One might even call him a revolutionary conservative or a “Conservative Revolution”ary.
E: A revolutionary conservative, exactly. Supporting the defendants now through fundraising, through getting the word out, and through building a movement is actually promising. There’s a real chance that we’re going to bring our friends home before the end of these sentences because the political coalition and the political regime we’re facing is a lot more brittle and fragile essentially than it projects, especially now while it’s trying to establish its authority and power. Through popular activity and the power of people that we know how to use, through that we can make them change their policy, or we can actually stop them from consolidating their power. Now is the time to act, now is the time to be brave and courageous, as my comrade is saying, and doing that is what’s going to bring the Prairieland defendants home.
TFSR: So, what are the next steps? It sounds like there’s one more person remaining to be sentenced in the federal case, and then the state cases begin. If you could briefly go through that. Also, are the same lawyers moving forward with the state cases?
AC: State case rundown: there are 22 people, and 20 of them have state charges. Des does not have state charges, and Thomas does not have state charges that we know. Dario Sanchez’ trial, that was supposed to be the same week of sentencing, has been postponed. He has a motion to quash for two of his charges, and that’s being considered. Janette Goering was recently released on bond after a bond reduction hearing, which is great. We expect another defendant, Lucy Folks, whose bond was also reduced, to be released soon on bond as well. Their state cases are moving forward towards trial. Then there are three people who were indicted in March who were bonded out: Melania Estes, Andrew Smith, and Steven Reyna. It seems like they were arrested in September and were bonded out at the time. Actually, their bonds have helped make the argument for the more recent bonds getting reduced. A set of these folks all have a status hearing coming up in July, and their cases are also moving forward. They have some tentative trial dates set. It’s worth noting that Dario has had three trial dates set, and none of those dates have happened.
So, there’s that run of folks who are on the state cases, and then everyone else, aside from Des and Thomas, have state charges, and those charges are moving forward. The last we’ve heard is that the prosecutors have directly stated that they intend to move the cases forward, and all of the defendants that have been sentenced have been put into county custody, so everybody’s back in Johnson County Jail and everyone has been moved into county custody because their state cases are moving forward. I think 11 people have state terrorism charges and aggravated assault, and then there’s a whole set of support of terrorism and hindering prosecution charges, so that’s going to be simultaneous while the appeal for the nine happens from the federal trial. Everyone is going to be fighting their state charges, so we have so much more to go.
In terms of the lawyer situation, most of the defendants have decided to retain new appellate lawyers. I think, as we alluded to earlier, the decision to not mount a defense was extremely devastating to the outcome of this trial. It was not done with consent from the larger collective of people doing legal support. It seems like there was a lot of finagling amongst the lawyers to make that happen, and it really showed a lack of understanding of the politics of the case, the context of the case, and the time that we’re in. That broke an amount of trust between the defendants and lawyers, and thankfully, a number of really experienced, well- funded, and much more aligned lawyers have stepped forward to take the appellate cases for free.
In terms of the state case, the majority of defendants do not have the same state lawyer and federal lawyer, so we are working on lawyers on the state level. This may or may not be a surprise to people, but it is extremely difficult to get state lawyers for this case. We have been working on getting state lawyers starting on July 5 and trying to find state lawyers that are aligned with people’s desires on how they want to fight their cases. We are looking for lawyers at the state level who are not a part of a good-old-boy network, who are willing to challenge the norms of those systems, because what we’re finding is that mainstream lawyers are not doing the kinds of legal work that we think the case needs.
We have been extremely lucky that the National Lawyers Guild national organization has been supporting us, and through that, the People’s Law Collective has taken one of the state cases. Xavier de Janon has taken one of the state cases. We have a really skilled local lawyer, Frank Sellers, and his partner at his law firm who have taken Janet and Dario’s cases, and George Lobb, who is an aligned lawyer from Austin, has Maricela’s case. We are building a state team of lawyers right now. It’s complicated because out-of-state lawyers can get involved in the state case, but they have to pro hac in, which means they have to have a local counsel to work with. So, if you are an out-of-state lawyer and you want to help fight the state cases, talk to us. But we’re still going to have to find legal counsel for people to basically sponsor out-of-state lawyers. That is one of the next big steps for us, which is finalizing our state legal team.
Given how the federal trial went, we’re being a little more intentional than we were previously. The reality is that we’re not going to be able to use any public defenders, so we are going to have to use all private lawyers, which means we’ll have to basically pay for every state lawyer that we retain at this point, and the costs of that are expensive. We’re talking to a lawyer right now that is $50,000. We have luckily gotten a huge boost in terms of money from the sentencing, but we honestly still nee way more money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, to get adequate lawyers to fight the terrorism charges. That’s the next step we’re at in the state case. The state lawyers that are already on are filing motions to quash, are filing motions for discovery, and are doing really great work challenging the charges in the case even before we get anywhere near trial, which is a really successful and strategically smart way to deal with cases like these.
TFSR: Right. So, if you just inherited a lot of money, if you are a Hungarian hedge fund runner and you are known for supporting progressive causes around the world, send money.
AC: It really seems like in the state of Texa everybody has been saying, “Oh, they’re going to drop the state charges.” And we’ve been like, “Y’all don’t understand, Texas is vindictive, and small-town Texas is even more vindictive.” So I think if you’re like, “Man, I’m really hating the Texas GOP,” this is a great way to make an intervention.
E: Ken Paxton, human being. Ken Paxton is the person who could drop the charges.
AC: He can’t anymore, he’s not the Attorney General. I know, but he could.
TFSR: Also, not a human being.
E: The sentient slug, Ken Paxton.
AC: If you’re a go-get-em lawyer who has movement values and understands the stakes of this case, legit please come talk to us. We will figure out a way for you to come fight the state case. That’s where we’re at: we want that kind of support on the state level that we’re now getting on the federal level. We don’t want to get into a situation where people are found guilty at the state level and then we get this attention. We would really like to have that support going into the state trial, because it’s a funny place, Johnson County. That’s what I’m going to say. If people haven’t heard, the sheriff of Johnson County is on trial right now for witness tampering, sexual harassment, aggravated perjury, I don’t remember what else.
E: And the stuff that came out during that trial is egregious, in a way that the stuff that came out during the Prairieland trial is not egregious. Telling someone to go smash the hard drives to prevent the evidence from getting obtained is a lot different from moving a box of zines from your parents’ house to a friend’s house.
TFSR: To reiterate what’s already been said, this is a precedent, a model that is being applied in different communities. Even if it wasn’t possible to bring similar charges with indictments in the Chicago area around ICE protests, even if it doesn’t end up sticking with the Minneapolis indictments because of the venue in which it’s taking place, if it comes to Louisiana, if it comes to Stockton, California, or if it comes to Kansas, it’s going to be bad wherever it is. Even if you don’t like the fact that guns were a part of this, that’s one person, whether or not you like the choice that they made in that instance.
E: Within their legal rights.
TFSR: And their legal rights. But there’s also a bunch of people that weren’t even there when that happened, didn’t even show up at the protest at all, and did not participate in that. It’s got all of these other “choose your own adventure” ways to care about this where it’s not going to hurt your feels. This is important to fight against and push back against.
We’ve mentioned that if you’re a lawyer or if you have money, those are ways that you can support the pushback. Our local radical bookstore, Firestorm, got a mention in the UK Guardian about their work sending out packets of zines as a fundraiser for the Prairieland case, and got inundated. They had to call out community support to get people to show up, and they ran out of paper. It’s pretty amazing.
They decided to take some of the zines that were being discussed, or some of the zines that were accused of being in the box, and make those more available to people, amd promote people having reading groups around those. Not only to get some good spicy reading but also to bring up the case and the question of “Why does the government get to decide if I read this or not?” People are having honky-tonk nights or dance parties to fundraise for this, or having group discussions at their churches or synagogues. Do you have any other ideas besides just sending in money, ways to make a fundraiser into a community event, or do you want to tell a little bit about what’s available at the website for more resources on the case?
AC: I have a couple of things. One, this is probably not timely enough, but July 4 solidarity noise demos.
E: Just to say on noise demos, I think noise demos are cool and noise demos are good. Noise demos are not illegal, and even if they were, I would still support them. Noise demos are something that people should be doing;. It’s a beautiful way to show solidarity with people in really bad situations. I think one of the dark gifts of this case is actually publicizing what a noise demo is and what they’re for. Holding noise demos is a great way to show solidarity with the Prairieland defendants.
Holding a noise demo at a jail is not going to change Ken Paxton’s mind or something, but the idea of building a movement against rising authoritarianism, against ICE, and a movement for freedom and community self-determination. Building a movement and using the case as a way to build that movement is part of what’s going to bring our friends home. People should do that movement-building work and hold not just our case, but all the other repression cases close in their heart and close in that work. Have it on the tip of your tongue and talk about it as you’re doing other organizing work, so that we know that as we win, we can build our own power to keep the people who have been victims of this repressive regime safe and eventually bring them home as we change things.
AC: That’s what I was going to say. There are a number of cases happening across the US right now, and I think people getting involved in the support efforts for other cases and continuing to push the movement against ICE are ways that we create an ecology in which our friends can come home. We just have to strengthen ourselves as well. Give us money, talk about the case, but also do the work in your community. Look around: are there political prisoners sitting in your jails that nobody is talking about? Talk about them.
I think the thing about the kind of work is there are so many ways for people to get involved in it. One of the emotional things about it is that getting involved in this kind of support work can help you work through the fear and anxiety that may be holding you back right now, because I think there is a lot of fear and anxiety. Also, it helps you understand what the process is and be prepared for what may be coming.
That would be another thing I think. Prairieland has extended into Minnesota and all these other places. Now we’re seeing sort of the framework pop up, and people should just think about what preparedness means as the intensity of things increases. Do you have a plan for people to take care of your pets? If something were to happen, who would step into your life? Having some of those conversations right now is something that is really helpful, because the more prepared we are and stronger we are, the better we’re going to be able to fight not just the Prairieland case, but all of the cases that will be coming in the future. The more of these cases that the state loses, the stronger the ability for us to bring our friends home.
TFSR: Remember, J20 shut them up for a long time in a lot of ways, or the resistance at the airports stopped a lot of the deportations back in the first Trump administration for a bit,at least. It challenged their ability to do that. Popular support is rich. Thank you both so much for having this conversation and for the work that you’re doing, and good luck to all of us, I guess.
E: Yeah, thank you very much. AC: Thank you.
. … . ..
Great Lakes Surveillance Sabotage
GLF: I’m speaking on behalf of a jail support group for two people who are locked up related to the destruction of multiple Flock cameras in the Great Lakes region. “They” pronouns are fine.
TFSR: Can you talk about the general circumstances of what happened? Also, listeners are going to notice that we’re being vague during this conversation, so if you wouldn’t mind talking a little bit about why the vaguery, that’d be helpful.
GLF: Sure. I’ll start with why vague, because then maybe that makes it easier for listening to the rest of the story. The defendants have decided that they don’t want to be public about who they are for this case. Obviously, the state knows who they are, but this is just for any non-state actors who might be interested in figuring out who they are.
Somewhere in the Great Lakes region, there were multiple Flock cameras that were destroyed, and then a communique was put out about that action. It pointed to another action in solidarity with that action, and then quite a while later, warrants were issued. People found out about the warrants. The warrants were for felony malicious destruction of property. The two people who were being charged with that opted to plea down to a misdemeanor because they carry different maximum sentences: five years for the felony versus one year for the misdemeanor. They pled down to misdemeanor in this jurisdiction. Plea deals don’t come with sentencing agreements, so they had to do a sentencing interview and then had no clue what the sentencing was going to be. Of course, when they took the plea deal, the prosecutor was not seeking jail time. Then, when they did the sentencing interview, the recommendation that was given to the judge included some jail time, which was actually wildly different for both of the two defendants. At the sentencing, the judge gave them both a lot more jail time than was even recommended.
One of the reasons he gave for that was pointing back to this communique, because in the communique, it talked about that other action that the state was really mad about, and it also talked about some political beliefs vaguely, like the surveillance state is bad. They were sentenced to 90 days in jail and 120 days in jail separately. The person who’s doing the 120 days has been in segregation because she’s trans, which has been an uphill battle in terms of advocating for her. Initially, they were treating it as if she was in for disciplinary segregation or suicide watch, which both are horrible. It’s all horrible reasons to put anyone in jail, especially to put them in segregation. Their default was treating her as if she had no privileges, almost no phone access, etc. Through tons of calling in and advocating for her, she’s in a much better position now, but initially, it was just extremely rough.
TFSR: Thank you for that, and I’m really sorry to hear that. For listeners that are unfamiliar with this, being put into solitary and often associating mental health concerns or personal safety for folks that are gender non-conforming, trans, or non-binary is a pretty normal thing in jails and prisons across the country. Because, like, jails are screwed up, and also everything is gendered, and we live in a cis-heterosexist society. Whether it’s said to be for the person’s safety or for punishment, non-cis people who end up in prison and jail end up getting isolated and punished in ways that are expressed as not punishment, but “for their own safety.”
GLF: Oh, yeah, totally. The jails and prison systems are designed to uphold the status quo, and the status quo is anti-trans, so yeah, of course they’re going to be like that.
TFSR: Which is not me saying “Why get angry about it?” clearly, but yeah. You mentioned that this action and this communique discussed Flock cameras, and you mentioned the phrase “security state.” For listeners, this airs on the radio, so there probably are people out there who are unfamiliar with this technology. Do you want me to give a little introduction to what Flock is, or do you want to say some things about those ALPR cameras, which is better?
GLF: I can try. Flock cameras get a lot of attention lately because they’re an automatic license plate reader. They also can make fingerprints of your car, and they can see pedestrians and bicyclists; they’re just getting more and more advanced and even more gross. The special feature about Flock, when it was initially coming out, is that it doesn’t just look at license plates; it also looks at dents in the car, roof racks, and stickers, all the different features. Now it’s a lot more integrated, and almost any camera can be an ALPR.
The license plate readers are more ubiquitous than just Flock. Flock is unique and gross, but I don’t want to overstate how unique and gross it is because all cameras should be considered, because all cameras are eyeballs of the state. That came up specifically in this case multiple times. One was that a vehicle that did not have license plates was identified by Flock using the other features of the vehicle. So basically the fingerprint of the vehicle was used to identify the owner of the vehicle. Cameras that were not Flock cameras were also used in this case. I just want to emphasize that cameras in general are a problem, where I think sometimes we focus too much just on Flock, but it’s getting a lot more integrated now.
TFSR: Yeah, and that integration is an important part of this technology. Sometimes Flocks are contracted by private entities like corporations. For instance, Lowe’s and Home Depot have them at most, if not all, of their stores. They can be on private property or they can be on public lands. Whether or not that’s legal in your area is a point of concern that some organizing has come around. Counties will put them on state roads and then people will sue the counties to remove them, which brings up a whole contract issue with Flock in that they’ve signed up to have this technology and pay for it for a certain amount of time.
The other thing is the word “integration.” What’s really creepy about this technology is that when someone puts up a Flock camera, it’s not like there’s AI sitting inside of the camera itself. These little black cameras usually have a solar panel right next to them sitting on poles that a lot of people are seeing more and more of around the country. It’s that it feeds that information back into a larger database accessible from other individuals, corporations, or especially law enforcement agencies that have access to a database of collected information from those cameras. So they can cross-reference something from a camera in one city to something in another state if they want to. The state argues this is good for instance if there’s an Amber Alert and a child is missing. They can track a car crossing a lot of different roads past these cameras and be able to track down the child that’s missing.
That would be one argument that the state gives as to the importance of this, but it has also shown to be technology that individual cops have used to start stalking their ex-partners, mostly ex-girlfriends, or current partners, whatever, and this has led to violent instances. Or ICE decides to use Flock from a law enforcement agency that maybe doesn’t directly work with ICE. Their cameras are still feeding into this database, or ICE gets access through a friendly cop, and then they’re able to kidnap and break up communities by tracking people throughout the country using it. Like you said, it’s ubiquitous, and it’s really frightening technology, just to editorialize.
GLF: Yeah, totally, and thanks for saying all that stuff, too. I kind of take it for granted that they’re evil, but I understand that a lot of people aren’t on that, so that’s really helpful background.
TFSR: Can we talk a little bit about the communique? So when people take an action, do a thing, oftentimes they’ll want to explain it to a wider audience so they can get ahead of any negative counter-spin from the opposition. People say, “Hey, I did this thing, or someone did this thing for this reason.” Oftentimes, that’s also about sharing and spreading a sentiment of resistance, like, here’s why resistance is good or why it was resisted in this way. It helps explaining what might be a complicated thing. But in this instance, my understanding is the communique that was released actually helped to lead the police to the activists involved. I wonder if you could talk about that, and talk about your understanding of the upsides and downsides of that sort of public transparency about actions.
GLF: Totally. I’ll start with some upsides about communiques. I think culturally they can be really good. They can get people excited. A lot of times events aren’t going to be in the news, so sometimes it’s the only way that anyone else who wasn’t there is going to find out about something that happened, for better or worse. I think they also can share a lot of helpful how-tos or things that worked for some people, so maybe it would work for others. There are definitely valid reasons to do a communique, and then there are also reasons to consider why maybe not to.
In this particular situation, I would say that there are three things that the communique did to hurt the case. One, I don’t know that we could really know for sure how much longevity it would have had otherwise, but the state is saying they did not know that the Flocks were down and they learned it from the communique. Another reason that the communique hurt in this case was that since this communique pointed to another action that the state is very mad about, the state looked at what they know about those people who have been charged in that other situation. They looked through that network map, and that was able to help them identify who they thought might have done the Flock cameras.
The third thing that the communique did to hurt this situation—which people might argue that, you might have to speak your mind or whatever—is that it made the judge really mad. He brought up the communique in sentencing over and over again, and he used that to justify why it should be so much more time than was being recommended. He used it to justify why they couldn’t do probation. Even though in the law it says that restitution is punishment, he used it to justify why they had to pay restitution and go to jail as part of their punishment because of the political views that were expressed in the communique.
TFSR: I’m also curious, what evidence led to prosecution, and what can we learn from this regarding integrated public-private sources of surveillance? You’ve pointed to the body cam integrated into the searches and the research that the police did in this case. You’ve got the car fingerprint where even when the car’s license plates weren’t on it, it was still identifiable when cross-referenced with other existing footage. I wonder if you want to talk a little bit about some of the phone evidence they were presenting in the case. Also I think it’s important just to say that they were able to build the case based on these bits of information they pulled together. They didn’t necessarily say everything they had because they didn’t need to in order to make the argument. They just pulled together the evidence they wanted to reference. There might have been other sources of information that we’re not aware of from the case, right?
GLF: Yeah, definitely. I think the discovery had a lot more detailed information than what I’m presenting here, but I think my main goal is to speak about things that the audience might be able to integrate into their own decision-making.
TFSR: Could you talk a little bit about the phone, if nothing else?
GLF: About the phone, another part of the evidence given in the discovery was that there was SIM cell phone geolocation. So the phone was not brought on the action, but I guess, by omission, the state said since that phone was not on during the time of the action, they used that actually as evidence that the person was there, even though it didn’t have any location data.
Another aspect of the phone being off was that the prosecution argued that it showed thorough planning and a political seriousness, so that played into the whole persona about them not being able to be rehabilitated that the judge used for sentencing. Also, SIM location information was used across state lines and far away from the action. Even though the phone was turned off in the area, the state used the known locations to generate potential routes, and then they used those potential routes to get private security footage or, like, closed-circuit TV footage. Then they were able to use that footage to help them identify the people. And that was very easily obtained from non-state entities. So any idea that people might have that it’s an extra step for them to subpoena to get camera footage, or that the gas station or whoever would have to give up camera footage, that is just not relevant. It’s an extra step that’s maybe one piece of paperwork; it’s easy for them to do. The SIM location data helped them much more efficiently narrow down where they might want to get other camera footage from.
The last thing on the phone is that they used SMS information. So, the SMS wasn’t talking about anything criminal; it wasn’t even on the topic of the action. It was very benign SMS messages, and the state had easy access to them and used that to say that the person was in the region of the Flock camera destruction at the time of the Flock camera destruction.
TFSR: Was that gotten from the phone company, or off of someone’s device, or was that intercepted in some other way, with like a Stingray-type thing?
GLF: It was definitely not obtained from the device, and it wasn’t a Stingray either. It wasn’t intercepted live. It was obtained through the phone company, I don’t know how they usually do those things.
TFSR: Since the Patriot Act, but probably before that, major phone carriers have had agreements with the government that they’ll hand over as much information as is requested and probably more to intelligence agencies and police departments. So that’s pretty normal. It’s good to note that if there is going to be metadata on any message sent. Every message has a time of production, is sent from one place, and has a recipient and a reply to information in it. No matter what kind of message you’re sending that info is going to have that, even if it’s encrypted. Phone carriers are going to have that. But if it’s unencrypted information–like if it’s not Signal, or encrypted WhatsApp, encrypted Telegram, or Delta Chat—the carriers are going to have access to the content of that information. It’s probably going to be saved in some buffer somewhere that they can recall and present to law enforcement.
Can you talk about the motivations expressed by the judge? As I understand, he basically said during sentencing that any sort of activity to stop these cameras is an attack on public safety. Going back to the example with Flock cameras of the arguments people make that if a child goes missing, an Amber Alert, this could be used to track down the child, because you know, “the child” is the reason every law gets created. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what the judge said during sentencing, beyond just saying these people have no remorse for their activity and that they were politically serious. What was the judge saying about the role of the surveillance state and its tools in his concept of public safety?
GLF: In the sentencing multiple times the prosecutor and the judge were going back and forth talking about how important the Flock cameras are. Like you were talking about the Amber Alert, they kept bringing up a kidnapping that started out of the state but was caught within the state because of Flock cameras, is what they claim. The prosecutor went so far as to say that these cameras are a part of our community, as if they’re people.
In sentencing, there’s four aspects that the judge uses to figure out how much and what kind of sentencing to do. He said that one aspect, which is remorse or reform or rehabilitation, did not apply in this case at all. Even though there were tons of character letters sent in. Both of the defense attorneys made really strong arguments for why these two people are well-loved members of their communities, and the judge was not entertaining any of that, he was saying that probation was completely off the table. He kept referring back to the communique, like solidarity with these other people and “down with the security state,” or whatever it said, those sentiments. The other criteria used to decide sentencing is punishment. He said definitely these people need to be punished to deter others. He wanted to use these high sentences to deter other people who might want to destroy Flock cameras from doing so, and to protect the public. Because like you were saying, the judge thinks that Flock cameras are part of the public safety landscape. So if people harm the Flock cameras, they’re harming the community and enabling violent crimes, or whatever it is they’re saying the Flock cameras are preventing. That’s the big argument, and that’s the appeal of the cameras in general: the fear of each other, I guess. So that was definitely present in the sentencing.
TFSR: You mentioned, I think, 90 days and 120 days, and the person that’s on the 120 days is trans and is being kept in solitary confinement with a lot of other pressures on them at the moment. Can you talk about some of the other elements of sentencing, and how people can offer support to the folks?
GLF: One of the defendants is being held in solitary confinement and is trans, which they hate. It’s been very hard for her to be respected as a human, I would say, especially with their mail rules. This particular jail doesn’t allow any books. Phone calls have been really difficult because she basically has to ask over and over and over again if she can use the phone. Email is really hard because of where the kiosk is located; it’s as if the guards can look over her shoulder the whole time. She’s in segregation and also has really limited contact with people besides basically the corrections officers. She was only given permission to go to recreation every few days, and she’s able to communicate with one other person in there who’s not a CO, who is a minor. The way this jail takes care of minors is they put them in solitary confinement, so that person is going to be in there until he turns 18 in similar conditions and without as much outside support.
The support group who’s helping these two people has been fundraising to help pay for the fees. There is tons of fees. They had thousands of dollars in restitution to pay to Flock, they also have thousands of dollars of court fees, and of course, lawyer fees. Commissary is really expensive. People have to pay to use the phone, pay for postage. They’re even being charged to be held in solitary confinement and charged for prescription medication. The support group has been doing a lot of fundraising to help pay for jail, and has even had enough of a cushion to be able to help out the friend who’s a minor when he’s asked for it, which has been really awesome. We’re still doing fundraising if anyone has money they could send over, and we’re doing it via Venmo. The venmo is @Deez_Zines. Any amount helps, and it’s amazingly appreciated.
TFSR: Thank you so much for having this conversation and for supporting these folks.
GLF: Yeah, of course, thank you. Thanks for talking about it on your show.