Tag: protest

So, what is going on in Portland, Oregon?

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Yesterday, Josh Campbell of CNN, tweeted he was headed to Portland, Oregon, to “sort out what in the world is happening there.”  As if there hasn’t been plenty of local media journalists, live-streamers, and freelancers covering what is happening in Portland every single day since protests began in the city after the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020.

The truth is, there has been excellent coverage, and that’s why Portland is once again in the national spotlight.  Unfortunately so far, most of that coverage seems to have received little attention outside of social media until footage of federal officers grabbing a protester off the street gained traction.

That footage is extremely disturbing and certainly demands national attention.  We are at a point where anyone exercising their First Amendment rights can be detained by armed individuals who do not identify themselves, loaded into unmarked vehicles, and whisked away with no explanation.  But the truth is, we’ve been slipping down this slope for quite some time, and what’s been happening in Portland is just another taste of what could happen anywhere in the US.

There have been several lawsuits filed by journalists against the Portland Police Bureau even before the federal officers moved in.  Since the events of July 15th, there have been additional lawsuits filed against federal agencies.

Oregon’s Attorney General, Ellen Rosenblum, filed a lawsuit on July 17, 2020, against the United States Department of Homeland Security, the United States Marshals Service, the United States Customs and Border Protection, and the Federal Protection Service, alleging they have violated Oregonians’ civil rights.

Rosenblum’s statement says, “these tactics must stop.  They not only make it impossible for people to assert their First Amendment rights to protest peacefully.  They also create a more volatile situation on our streets.  We are today asking the federal court to stop the federal police from secretly stopping and forcibly grabbing Oregonians off our streets…”

The ACLU has also filed multiple lawsuits against federal agencies for actions around the country.  Acting interim executive director of the ACLU of Oregon, Jann Carson, says, “what is happening now in Portland should concern everyone in the United States. Usually when we see people in unmarked cars forcibly grab someone off the street we call it kidnapping. The actions of the militarized federal officers are flat-out unconstitutional and will not go unanswered.”

There’s little doubt protests will continue, in Portland and around the country.  Time will tell what comes of them, and these lawsuits, and what the lasting effects on freedom will be in this country.

 

**If you want good, solid, local coverage of what is happening daily in the protests in Portland, as well as good sources for updates on the various related lawsuits, I have compiled a list of journalists and freelance live-streamers on Twitter you can check out here.  Many of them have links in their bios to ways you can ‘tip’ them if you want.

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Image courtesy of Needpix.com

 

Listen

IMG_20200602_204212_016.jpgI’ve struggled with what to say since watching the footage of George Floyd dying under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.  I needed an outlet for the rage I felt, but could manage nothing more than some really bad poetry.

Since then, I’ve been watching events unfold with a range of emotions that have only made it harder to put words to paper about what’s happening in this country.  After all, it’s not my voice that matters in this fight, it’s my actions as an ally.

But there is something I want to address right now.  These protests, whether peaceful vigils and marches or more aggressive and even destructive movements, come from a deep well of justifiable rage.  People are out in the streets because they have been oppressed for far too long (since forever).  It is way past time to stop ignoring, or worse, co-opting their voices.

This isn’t some sort of new world order coup to take over the United States.  This isn’t a George Soros funded deep state operation conducted by Antifa activists.  This isn’t an underhanded plot by the Democrats to take the White House away from Donald Trump.  Stop with that shit.

Stop trying to steal the narrative.  Stop trying to co-opt an absolutely vital movement.  Stop believing that black and brown people can’t rise up and force change, not because they are driven by some sort of behind-the-scenes diabolical conspiracy to overthrow the government, but because they are legitimately more than tired of living the way they’ve had to in this country.

Just stop, and give this moment to the minority voices this nation needs to hear.  Amplify them.  If you can’t do that, then just be quiet and get out of the way.

Bathroom graffiti inspires juror in J20 trial to “Google jury nullification.”

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Katie Aguilera

On Thursday, May 31, 2018, a juror sent a note to Judge Kimberley Knowles in a Washington D.C. superior court room informing Knowles that she had googled jury nullification after seeing the words “Google jury nullification” written in a bathroom stall at the courthouse.  She googled it, read about it, told the other jurors about it and then informed the judge of her actions.

This trial is the second of many planned for protesters arrested on January 20, 2017 during protests in Washington D.C. in which police officers were injured, windows were broken, and a limousine was destroyed.  Four defendants who allegedly participated in property damage that occurred during the Inauguration Day protests are currently on trial.  They are Michael Basillas, Seth Cadman, Anthony Felice, and Cathseigh Webber.

Six defendants faced felony charges in November 2017 but the jury in that trial acquitted them of all charges December 21, 2017.  In that trial, the prosecution made no effort to prove that the six defendants were guilty of any of the property damage, stating instead that “though there is no evidence the defendants caused any of the damage directly, the government considers the entire group of protesters to be responsible.”

The admission by the juror of googling jury nullification in this current trial comes after several major developments involving all the related cases, which are frequently referred to as the J20 cases.  On May 23, 2018, Chief Judge Robert Morin ruled “that the US Attorney had illegally withheld evidence from protester defendants.”  In what constitutes a Brady violation, the judge agreed with the defense that the prosecution had withheld potentially exculpatory evidence, specifically the fact that a highly questionable video created by Project Veritas and used as evidence against all the accused protesters was heavily edited.

The prosecution had previously declared that there was only very limited editing to hide the identity of the person filming the video and the identity of an undercover officer attending the meeting the video filmed.  However, it was later revealed that there was significant editing to the video, with several important parts having been removed.

According to a motion for sanctions and dismissal filed by the defense in a related trial scheduled to begin June 4, 2018, a portion of video that was edited out actually showed an undercover officer stating, “I was talking with one of the organizers from the IWW [Industrial Workers of the World] and I don’t think they know anything about any of the upper echelon stuff.”  The defense argues the following in that motion:

“This is exculpatory evidence to the defense. The government plans to argue that Mr. Petrohilos and everyone else at that meeting were intending to plan a violent protest. What better exculpatory evidence for the Defense than the words from the person sent to capture a nefarious meeting stating right after the meeting, ‘I don’t think they know anything’. This evidence is clearly exculpatory and but for the Court compelling its production, Defense would have never received it.”

Such Brady violations could arguably be considered cause for a mistrial for these cases but Judge Knowles has opted not to do so in this trial.  Numerous other cases have been dismissed and felony charges against some defendants have been dropped after Judge Morin’s ruling.

On May 31, 2018, Chief Judge Morin also ruled “that the US Attorney had misled him by not admitting the existence of 69 additional pieces of evidence provided by the far-right “entrapment” group Project Veritas” according to Unicorn Riot, an independent website that has covered these cases extensively.

And then came the admission of the bathroom graffiti inspired google search the day before the case went into jury deliberation.  Neither the defense or the prosecution protested this development and the judge proceeded with the scheduled deliberation.  Jury deliberation is expected to continue on Monday, June 4, 2018.

These trials present an interesting opportunity to exercise the right of jury nullification.  As Ryan J. Reilly, Huffington Post senior justice reporter, tweeted on May 31, 2018: “Jury nullification would be particularly powerful in this trial, as government alleges that three of the defendants engaged in some form of destruction. Unlike first case, jurors might want to convict on misdemeanors but not make them felons or expose them to lengthy sentences.”

This is a good reminder that jury nullification has been used in the past to acquit people charged for protest and dissent.  I wrote back in 2016 that “in today’s highly charged climate of political activism against war, police brutality, etcetera, combined with the prevalence of mandatory minimum sentences and increasingly over-reaching laws, the importance of knowing and understanding the right of US jurors to practice jury nullification cannot be understated.  It is critical that US citizens remember that the United States was founded on the principle of government that serves the people. A jury of peers, fully apprised of their rights and responsibilities as jurors, is one of the greatest protections of that principle.”

The importance of these cases should not be ignored.  As I wrote on December 8, 2017, regarding the first J20 trial, “this idea of collective liability is what makes this trial so important, and all Americans should be paying attention.  The mere act of charging so many, with the possibility of such severe punishment, threatens to stifle legitimate protest and first amendment activity.  If exercising one’s right to peacefully protest comes with the risk of felony charges for the criminal behavior of others, many will opt to stay home.”

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Picture courtesy of Pixabay.

Protest On Trial: Six defendants arrested during Disrupt J20 protests on Inauguration Day fighting felony charges in court

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Katie Aguilera

On November 20, 2017, trial began in Washington DC superior court for six defendants arrested during the protests that took place on Inauguration Day.  More than 200 people were arrested that day after a small number of protesters clashed with police, smashed windows, and committed other acts of property destruction.  Six police were injured, and an estimated $100,000.00 in damage resulted from the violence.

The six now on trial are the first of over 200 arrested on Inauguration day who have all been charged with felonies.  Those charges include conspiracy to riot, engaging in a riot, inciting a riot, and multiple property damage charges, and come with a maximum ten-year prison sentence for each count.  Some have already pleaded guilty to lesser charges and some have had the charges dropped.  But nearly 200 people still face felony convictions, and possible 60-year sentences, if found guilty.

The prosecution in this first trial has made it clear they don’t intend to prove that any of the six defendants personally caused any property damage or injury, but rather that all who face charges are guilty because they are all collectively responsible for the actions of a few.  US Attorney Jennifer Kerkhoff said in her opening statement, “though there is no evidence the defendants caused any of the damage directly, the government considers the entire group of protesters to be responsible.”

 “The prosecution is pursuing a somewhat unusual strategy: Rather than trying to prove that any of individual defendant was personally guilty of destruction, prosecutors are arguing that all demonstrators present that day were aware and supportive of the violent intentions of the others.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Kerkhoff, in her comments, has repeatedly referred to the ‘black bloc tactics’ of the protesters as part of a message that everyone participating in the protest came with either the intention to commit violence or the knowledge that violence was part of the plan.”

Ashraf Khalil, Associated Press November 21, 2017

The government is arguing that all of the defendants conspired to cause the violence and rioting, regardless of whether they participated in any advance planning.  They argue that the defendants intended for the property destruction and violence to occur even if they didn’t cause damage themselves.  They argue that by continuing to move together down the street as some in their midst engaged in criminal behavior, everyone arrested became responsible for the resulting damage.

This idea of collective liability is what makes this trial so important, and all Americans should be paying attention.  The mere act of charging so many, with the possibility of such severe punishment, threatens to stifle legitimate protest and first amendment activity.  If exercising one’s right to peacefully protest comes with the risk of felony charges for the criminal behavior of others, many will opt to stay home.  If these six are convicted, it sets a very dangerous precedent.

Kris Hermes, an organizer of a support group for the defendants called Defend J20, is quoted in the Washington Post as saying, “what the government is saying to us is, dissent is not an acceptable form of expression in this country, and if you choose to go out on the street and express yourself, then you risk being arrested and seriously prosecuted.”

Eoin Higgins wrote in an October 25, 2017 article for the Intercept, “by charging everyone together with conspiracy counts, the government seems intent on making an example of the J20 protesters.”  He also writes, “that the government’s case does not differentiate between actors and bystanders could be an indication of future clampdowns on protest.”

There are other very important aspects of this case, such as the tactics used during the arrests, the arrests of journalists covering the protests, the methods of evidence gathering employed in the months after the arrests, etc.  But the very fact that these defendants face these charges when there is no evidence they personally caused any damage should have us all very concerned.  Any threat to an individual’s first amendment right is a threat to all of our first amendment rights.

Image courtesy of pixabay.com

A History Lesson (Part Three) The Bonus Army

Katie Aguilera

They’re better off, I can hear whoever sent them say, explaining to himself. What good were they? You can’t account for accidents or acts of God. They were well-fed, well- ‘loused, well-treated and, let us suppose, now they are well dead. But I would like to make whoever sent them there carry just one out through the mangroves, or turn one over that lay in the sun along the fill, or tie five together so they won’t float out, or smell that smell you thought you’d never smell again, with luck. But now you know there isn’t any luck when rich bastards make a war. The lack of luck goes on until all who take part in it are gone.

Ernest Hemingway, Who Murdered the Vets? September 7, 1935

On July 28, 1932, the United States Army was ordered to oust thousands of US Army World War I veterans from the streets of Washington D.C.  Three tanks, 200 mounted cavalry with sabers drawn, and 300 infantrymen with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets, proceeded through the city, driving everyone from the streets.  They launched tear gas grenades at the crowds, and ignited fires in the makeshift camps the veterans and family members had erected over the previous months.  Different accounts of the event allege that at least one, possibly two babies died from tear gas inhalation during the attack, though the official investigation would later deny those claims.  Area hospitals were reportedly filled with injured people.

It was a violent attack largely condemned by Americans across the nation in the days that followed.  But it is a story that is mostly unknown to Americans today, 85 years later.

After World War I ended, many veterans returning to the states found it difficult to find employment.  The jobs they held before serving in the military were now filled by people earning higher wages than they had.  Veterans’ groups began to lobby Congress for what was then called “adjusted compensation.”  This push for additional compensation was derided by many as an effort to obtain bonuses the veterans didn’t deserve, and the veterans were often derogatorily labeled “bonus seekers.”

In 1922, Congress did consider a measure to provide additional compensation, but President Warren Harding vetoed the bill.  The veterans’ groups continued their efforts, and in 1924, Congress passed what was popularly known as the Soldier’s Bonus Act.  President Calvin Coolidge vetoed the bill, reportedly stating “patriotism which is bought and paid for is not patriotism.”  However, his veto was overridden, and the veterans were awarded bonuses.

According to this US history website, “Adjusted compensation was to be paid at the rate of $1.25 per day for time spent in foreign service and at the rate of $1 per day for domestic service.  The sum earned by veterans was not to be paid in cash, but was to be used to create a 20-year endowment; in the short term, participants were entitled to borrow up to 22.5 percent of the value of the fund.”

After the crash of 1929, and the resulting collapse of the US economy, many veterans found themselves destitute and they pushed to have the bonuses paid out immediately.  In 1932, Texas Representative, Wright Patman, introduced a bill into the US House of Representatives that would do just that.

Walter W. Waters, a former Idaho and Oregon National Guardsman, took notice of this bill and decided something should be done to bring more attention to it.  Waters was born in Burns, Oregon, and had served both in the Idaho National Guard in 1910 and the Oregon National Guard with which he went to fight in France in 1917.  He was living in Portland, Oregon when Patman’s bill was introduced, and Waters organized a march on Washington D.C. in support of the bill.  250 to 300 men from Portland joined him, and with a banner declaring “Portland Bonus March—On to Washington,” they set off in May of 1932.

The media took notice, and Waters’ group, calling themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force, was given positive coverage in newspapers and radio broadcasts across the nation.  They were popularly referred to as the “Bonus Army” and gained wide support from the public, and sympathetic authorities.  Many more veterans traveled to Washington D.C. to join in, often riding the rails to get there.  Railroad men refused to turn the illegal passengers in, and supporters donated money and food to the veterans.

The Bonus Army veterans began arriving in Washington D.C. on May 25, 1932.  Most reports state the group was as large as 20,000 men.  They began establishing camps around the city. The largest camp, by the Anacostia River, was named Camp Marks.  Veterans and family members erected shelters from scrap material, and the camp was organized like a city with named streets.  They set up a post office, a library, and their own newspaper.  Waters was strict, and the camp didn’t allow drinking, begging, weapons or fighting.  Anti-government, radical talk and Communists were also forbidden.

In spite of this strict rule, however, communists did enter the camps to argue their cause.  According to this article on Waters and the Bonus Army, the veterans “seized the communists, held trials, and sentenced them to fifteen lashes.  More than two hundred communists were expelled from Bonus Army camps.”  This article states, “rumors about communist revolutionaries soon spread throughout the city, and deeply affected the highest levels of government.  At the Justice Department, J. Edgar Hoover’s Bureau of Investigation labored to find evidence that the Bonus Army had communist roots, evidence that never existed.”  This would later be used as justification for the July 28 attack on the camps.

On June 15, 1932, the US House passed the bill sponsored by Representative Patman, to pay $2.4 billion in bonuses to veterans immediately.  It passed with a margin of 211 to 176 one day after Tennessee Congressman Edward Eslick dropped dead from a heart attack while giving a speech in favor of the bill in Congress.  The bill went before the Senate on June 17, 1932, and as many as 8,000 veterans waited at the Capitol Building for the decision.  The city police had succeeded in keeping another 10,000 veterans from entering the city by raising the Anacostia drawbridge.

It wasn’t until 9:30 that evening that the decision was announced.  The bill was defeated by a vote of 62 to 18.

In the days that followed, some of the Bonus Army veterans left the city, but many stayed, vowing to continue the protest until the bonuses were paid.  Numerous politicians, President Herbert Hoover included, grew increasingly concerned that the protests would become violent.  According to this article, “depression had settled in, the government had been fearful of the possibility of an armed insurrection against Washington.  Even before the arrival of the Bonus Army, the army had developed a plan to defend the city with tanks, machine guns, and poison gas.”  President Hoover ordered the police to evict the protestors, and on July 28, 1932, the police attempted just that.

A violent clash erupted.  One veteran was killed and three policemen were injured.  The police chief, Major Glassford, determined that the police could no longer control the situation and agreed to assistance from federal troops.  Army Chief of Staff, General Douglas MacArthur ordered the army to put its plan into action, and the US Army hit the streets in force.

General MacArthur held a press conference that night and stated, “had the President not acted today, had he permitted this thing to go on for twenty-four hours more, he would have been faced with a grave situation which would have caused a real battle.  Had he let it go on another week, I believe the institutions of our Government would have been severely threatened.”

President Hoover said, “a challenge to the authority of the United States Government has been met, swiftly and firmly.  After months of patient indulgence, the Government met over lawlessness as it always must be met if the cherished processes of self-government are to be preserved.  We cannot tolerate the abuse of Constitutional rights by those who would destroy all government, no matter who they may be.  Government cannot be coerced by mob rule.”

He would order an investigation into the events by the justice department, which ultimately concluded that, “the prompt use of the military to outnumber and overawe the disturbers prevented a calamity.”  The investigation report, submitted by Attorney General William D. Mitchell, concluded by stating, “The right to peaceably petition Congress for redress of alleged grievances does not include assemblage of disorderly thousands at the seat of the government for purposes of coercion.”

While the investigation report conceded that the Bonus Army protestors were law abiding and peaceful up until the Senate vote, it focused much attention on the numbers of protestors who had not served in the military during World War I, those that had criminal records, and those that were communists, radicals, and anti-government.  It also downplayed the actions of the police and the federal troops, and the number of injuries.  The public’s negative opinion of the attack on the Bonus Army wouldn’t change however, and the event certainly didn’t help President Hoover in his re-election bid which he lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt months later.

World War I veterans continued to lobby Congress for the bonuses in the years that followed, returning to Washington D.C. annually.  The number of transient veterans in the city was increasingly viewed as a problem and many veterans were sent to rehabilitation camps in the Florida Keys.  These were work camps for road construction projects, a way to provide jobs for the men.  Unfortunately, hundreds of the veterans were killed by the September 2, 1935 ‘Labor Day Hurricane’ when the camps were not evacuated before the storm.  Their deaths prompted Ernest Hemingway to pen his 1935 piece, Who Murdered the Vets?  Investigations into whether the deaths were the result of negligence were conducted.  One such investigation concluded that there had been negligence, but the report of that investigation was suppressed for decades.

It wouldn’t be until four years after the Bonus Army protest of 1932 and several months after the deaths in Florida that the veterans were finally successful.  3.2 million veterans were paid the bonuses in 1936.

 

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