On January 20, 2017, the nation's capital was flooded with people seeking to make their voices heard as Trump assumed the nation's highest office. In the morning, J20 protesters (so dubbed by the date of the action) targeted 11 checkpoints into the official inauguration rally and blocked some of them by linking arms and refusing Trump supporters entry. There was a "Festival of Resistance" and a number of other demonstrations throughout the city. The anti-capitalist march, however, which saw the arrest of 234 people, dominated the narrative of the day.
"They're my friends. I mean, I live in Maryland, so these are people that I know, they're people that I care about," Chelsea Manning, who once faced 35 years in prison prior to her pardon by former President Barack Obama for blowing the whistle on US troops' extrajudicial killings in Iraq, told Sputnik News.
Trials in the cases began in late November 2017. The first trial group contained six defendants, including citizen journalist Alexei Wood and two protest medics. Prosecutor Jennifer Kerkhoff of the US Attorney's Office argued that while the government did not have any evidence linking any of the defendants to specific acts of property destruction, jurists should still find the protesters guilty in the conspiracy case. She argued that evidence such as protesters' use of masks and black clothing was meant to abett vandalism by allowing offenders to be reabsorbed into the protest and that this evidenced the conspiracy case. Data, including messages and phone call records, were extracted from defendants' cellphones after the arrests, and were also used to prove prior knowledge and support the conspiracy charge.
After all six of the defendants in the first trial group were found not guilty on all charges on December 21, 2017, and the US Attorney's Office postponed the rest. Then, on January 18, 2018, the US Attorney's Office dismissed charges against 129 defendants without prejudice. The phrase "without prejudice" means that the government did not make a determination as to whether the defendant is guilty or innocent, but is merely saying that it is not interested in prosecuting them at that time. Those defendants are instead able to try to seal their cases, which would leave the government unable to re-open the charges.
"When that happened, we showed that solidarity, specifically, wins; that the mass defense of various activists allowed us to kind of stand up to state repression," Petrohilos told Sputnik News. While the defendants are legally represented by their own public defender, a team of legal activists quickly coalesced to support the overarching legal strategy to which many defendants wanted to adhere.
According to "Drop J20," a Twitter account run by activists in DC connected with the J20 movement, the US Attorney's Office is reevaluating its case ahead of Monday's trial after a ruling that attending a protest while dressed in black does not necessarily constitute participation in a conspiracy. Activists believe the ruling could have big implications going forward.
"What I think the cases end up representing is suppression of dissent in the United States. We're seeing waves of felony charges, not just here, but in Michigan, in St Louis and in Washington, DC," Petrohilos told Sputnik News. "What we're seeing is anti-fascist protesters — and Black Lives Matter protesters as well — facing the brunt of political repression in the United States. Meanwhile neo-Nazis are openly calling for violence and have acted on that violence, specifically in Charlottesville."
After the trials of these four defendants, trials for the remaining 54 will continue in successive groups. Petrohilos won't see his day in court until two more groups have been tried.
"We need to, as people, stand together in solidarity with these people," Manning told Sputnik News. "It's one of the reasons I've been so much for dealing with support for prisoners. Prisoner support is a very important way — because we can't forget [them] — we can't have people go out and protest and then go to jail and have them be left behind."
"They're still a part of a political movement," Manning said.
By Alexander Rubinstein, Sputniknews.com writer
DISCLOSURE: I was arrested while covering the anti-capitalist march on January 20, 2017. My felony rioting charge, which carried a 10 year sentence, was dropped prior to the superseding indictment, and was sealed based on a ruling of my actual innocence on November 21, 2017.