Anti-Trump protesters risk 60 years in jail. Is dissent a crime?

Nov. 23, 2017
One effect of this would be that if these people are convicted, even of a trivial crime, they will lose their right to vote.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/22/donald-trump-administration-punishing-dissent-protesters

Yael Bromberg and Eirik Cheverud
Wednesday 22 November 2017

On the morning of President Trump’s inauguration, police trapped and arrested more than 230 people. Some were anti-Trump demonstrators; some were not. The next day, federal prosecutors charged them all with “felony rioting”, a nonexistent crime in Washington DC. The prosecution then launched a sweeping investigation into the defendants’ lives, demanding vast amounts of online information through secret warrants.

Prosecutors eventually dropped a few defendants, like journalists and legal observers, but simultaneously increased the charges against everyone else. The most recent indictment collectively charged more than 200 people with felony rioting, felony incitement to riot, conspiracy to riot, and five property-damage crimes – all from broken windows.

Each defendant is facing over 60 years in prison.

The prosecution next obtained warrants focused on anti-Trump organizers. One sought a list of all visitors to a website that organizers used to promote Inauguration Day protests. A second sought information on all Facebook friends and related communications of two organizers, the host of a coalition Facebook page, and those who simply “liked” that page.
US government demands details on all visitors to anti-Trump protest website
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Despite legal challenges, a court recently decided to enforce the warrants, requiring only that personally identifiable information be redacted for “irrelevant” material. This unprecedented prosecution follows a drastic change in local law enforcement’s response to protest.

The DC Office of Police Complaints issued a report critical of the mass arrest, noting the departure from standard operating procedure and the likelihood that police lacked individualized probable cause to arrest everyone. This is exactly the type of action new policies and statutes enacted in DC were meant to avoid, following a 2002 mass arrest that caused the District to pay over $10m in settlements.

Compare this crackdown with the government’s response to the pre-planned, armed violence and rioting by white supremacists and private militia groups in Charlottesville, Virginia.

There was no sweeping online dragnet to identify organizers who conspired to plan, promote, and carry out violence in Charlottesville – violence against people, not property.

Nor were all the participants in Charlottesville rounded up and charged with felony conspiracy to commit rioting – or charged as accessories to Heather Heyer’s murder. Instead, federal prosecutors have done little to nothing.

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How do prosecutors decide when to dust off the rioting statutes and whom to charge? Apparently, the reasons for the alleged rioting are important.

Sports riots are “people letting off steam”. Riots by white supremacists evidently occur with no criminal consequences. And why should law enforcement behave differently? Neither scenario threatens the state itself.

When people stand in opposition to the government, like the demonstrators did on 20 January, the analysis changes; suddenly conduct becomes “rioting”, deserving of a lifetime in prison.

•••••

Trials for the inauguration protesters begin mid-November and will continue for a year. As media ramps up coverage, do not forget what these trials are about – not rioting, not broken windows, but punishing dissent.