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Title: We Are All Legal Workers Author: CrimethInc. Date: May 5, 2009 Language: en Topics: RNC 2008, legal system, prisoner support, law, Justice, Rolling Thunder Source: Retrieved on 9th November 2020 from https://crimethinc.com/2009/05/05/we-are-all-legal-workers-legal-support-at-the-rnc-and-after
Ever since the Seattle WTO protests, legal collectives have sought to
counteract state repression by supporting participants in mass
mobilizations. Even outside those contexts, legal workers can serve a
valuable role wherever people face police harassment or arrest.
Unfortunately, it’s notoriously hard to recruit people for legal
support; it isn’t portrayed as sexy, it takes a lot of work, and many
people wrongly fear that it requires special training.
The RNC legal effort started with a small group of determined people;
most had no previous experience with legal work. Some had met at the
poorly attended legal breakout session at the first pRe-NC, where they
agreed that there was a need for more legal resources in the radical
community and discussed organizing legal support structures for the RNC
and beyond. The challenge of doing legal support for such a large
mobilization was daunting; even the group’s most experienced legal
workers had never attempted anything near that scale. Ultimately, they
pulled it off, with a lot of help from others who had done that work
before.
In January 2008, they formed Coldsnap Legal Collective with the
intention of setting up a jail support hotline, composing materials and
trainings, and preparing legal support infrastructures for the
convention. After speaking with legal workers from around the country,
they also decided to organize a jail vigil and street team.
Months before the RNC, Coldsnap began offering trainings locally and
regionally, teaching people solidarity tactics, their legal rights, and
how to interact with police. These evolved from dry, self-prepared
lectures to participatory role-plays drawing on materials[1] from more
established legal collectives.
Coldsnap called the first national RNC legal support meeting to coincide
with the second pRe-NC in May 2008. The more experienced national legal
workers wanted Coldsnap to provide direction for the effort; to help,
they offered support, resources, and access to pre-existing networks.
They put on “trainers’ trainings,” established a database,[2] and
arrived weeks in advance of the RNC to help set up the office and other
structures.
One of the purposes of legal collectives is to bridge the gap between
activists and the legal community, between whom there is often mutual
distrust. Coldsnap’s attempt to navigate these relationships produced
mixed results. Lawyers regarded Coldsnap with suspicion on account of
their unprofessional appearance and lack of law licenses; this did not
stop them from making dire predictions about what would happen at the
RNC, which were poorly received by many radicals when Coldsnap passed
them on. Though the lawyers, legal workers, and activists all needed
each other to be effective, communication was difficult and continued to
be throughout the subsequent events.
Originally, Coldsnap intended to create a decentralized model of legal
support, encouraging every affinity group to have its own legal support
structure in place. They hoped that doing so would dismantle the
perceived hierarchy of knowledge connected to legal work. This did not
occur; most affinity groups did not make viable legal support plans for
themselves, and Coldsnap ultimately did legal support for almost
everyone.
Utilizing a web service that forwarded a single number to multiple
phones, Coldsnap established a 24-hour hotline in spring of 2008,
providing jail support for local events and encouraging everyone to
memorize the number or write it on their bodies. For the convention,
they set up shop in an office of NLG lawyers. The office included six
phone lines connected to the hotline number and multiple computers
sharing the central database. The hope was that occupying a legal office
would protect against raids and subpoenas, due to attorney-client
privilege issues.
The jail support hotline was connected to the office on August 29, hours
before the convergence space was raided; from then on, people staffed
the space 24 hours a day. Legal workers were busy that whole weekend
dealing with house raids, detainments, and arrests, as well as making
last-minute preparations for the convention. Coldsnap sent
representatives to the weekend spokescouncils, giving updates, helping
affinity groups get connected to the legal support structure, and
forming a jail solidarity plan in which arrestees would give the name
Jesse Sparkles rather than their real names and refuse to be separated
on account of gender or severity of charge.
On September 1, the office was at maximum capacity. There were
volunteers answering the phones and entering data, two information
coordinators, one person handling media, and one person sending out
reports via Twitter. Lawyers were constantly in conferences in the other
room. The hotline received thousands of calls; information on police
actions and arrests was verified and publicized, and arrestees spoke to
caring people who listened to their stories, took down their
information, and gave their loved ones updates and reassurance. A
non-stop vigil outside the jail provided arrestees clean clothes, food,
and hugs upon release. Legal observers were alerted of unfolding events
and dispatched to the streets from a separate location; between
missions, they dropped off reports at the office. The atmosphere was
both exciting and exhausting—no one had slept, everything was happening
at once, and not all the news was good. At times, tempers ran high. At
one point on September 1, the lawyers became particularly irritated when
an anarchist legal worker posted “black bloc make total destroy
everywhere!” over the Coldsnap Twitter feed, fearing it might pose
problems for future legal efforts.
Things did not improve from there. On the third day of the convention, a
day still known to many legal workers as “Black Wednesday,” several
things happened at once. The affidavits in the RNC 8 case were released
to the press, with a number of Coldsnap members listed as members of the
Welcoming Committee. Police came to the building housing the legal
office, claiming to be responding to a hostage situation involving the
videographers upstairs; then the landlord showed up, demanding an
explanation and threatening eviction. The lawyers responded by banning
everyone allegedly involved with the WC from the office and barring them
from participating in RNC legal work, citing safety concerns. The
blacklisted people, however, were the Coldsnap collective members
responsible for bottomlining the office, which left out-of-town legal
workers saddled with all the responsibility and confused arrestees
calling a place where no one had any context for them. The fact that the
banned legal workers were the ones most immediately connected to the
anarchist community meant that the remaining legal effort lacked ties to
that community—precisely the population most in need of support.
By the end of the week, the police had arrested 818 protesters, downtown
St. Paul had become a full-on police state, and almost everyone was
exhausted, in jail, or both. Not everything had gone as planned. The
street team was a literal bust, as members were immediately singled out
and targeted for arrest. The jail solidarity plan did not get the
desired results: the police brutalized arrestees rather than meeting
their demands, and the separated and demoralized Sparkles eventually
gave their real names. In the office, processing the massive quantities
of information that came in proved significantly more difficult than
anticipated; volunteers struggled with the data entry backlog for months
afterward. And although the banned Coldsnap members were eventually
allowed to participate again, relations between legal workers and
lawyers remained strained for some time.
The first meeting of RNC arrestees and supporters, two days after the
end of the convention, evolved into CRASS (Community RNC Arrestee
Support Structure), a spokescouncil of working groups dedicated to
helping arrestees through the court process. CRASS provided a travel
fund for arrestees,[3] helped them file civil suits, and called protests
and press conferences to put pressure on city officials. Coldsnap got a
new office and continued to staff the hotline and conduct trainings, but
the majority of direct arrestee support came to be handled by CRASS.
This was consistent with Coldsnap’s original goal of arrestees handling
their own support, although it occurred differently than first imagined.
CRASS devised strategies for court solidarity that achieved concrete
victories.[4] These included packing courtrooms, standing up when
defendants’ names were called and wearing clothing expressing support;
writing letters to judges regarding sentencing; and speaking on
defendants’ behalf as character witnesses. Courtwatch volunteers
attended every single hearing, maintaining contact with arrestees and
taking notes to update the database. Supporters organized call-in days,
letter-writing campaigns, and other forms of pressure to drop charges,
including crashing city officials’ events. Fighting charges largely led
to prosecutors dropping them, if they weren’t dismissed before trial.
The first felony arrestee to be sentenced was given a stay of
disposition rather than jail time, and the judge specifically cited the
supporters packing the courtroom as one of the reasons; subsequent
felony defendants were also given less jail time because of similarly
visible support.
Other forms of legal work and support also achieved concrete results. In
the immediate aftermath of the RNC, when police were visiting and
threatening former WC members, legal workers called a community meeting
to discuss the situation and brief the dozens of attendees on their
rights; as a result, no one talked to the authorities, and the latter
gave up their intimidation campaign shortly after. For many months, the
Felony Working Group, an offshoot of CRASS, met weekly to share updates
on cases and brainstorm ways to support those facing felony charges.
Supporters produced propaganda, raised funds via secret cafés,[5]
attended and transcribed each other’s court dates, and offered each
other emotional support.
Some of the felony defendants, such as the MK3 and the RNC 8, have their
own support structures. Immediately after the RNC, the remains of the
RNC WC coalesced into the Friends of the RNC 8; the Friends maintain a
website and produce support material geared toward the radical
community, as well as organizing events and coordinate national support
and fundraising. In January 2009, the support structure of the RNC 8
expanded to include the RNC 8 Defense Committee, an umbrella group that
works on political pressure campaigns with CRASS and other groups,
including efforts to defeat the Minnesota PATRIOT Act.
Prosecutors continue to persecute RNC defendants. New felony cases are
still being filed, and new charges have been added to existing cases in
a dubiously legal attempt to coerce guilty pleas from the accused. The
RNC 8 started out with one felony charge, which later got raised to
four; they are facing two as of this writing, their terrorism charges
having been dropped as a direct result of political pressure from their
supporters. Another arrestee started out with two felony charges before
the prosecutor increased the number to six and threatened to add six
more. It is clear that this fight is far from over.
People in the Twin Cities are still dealing with the aftermath of the
RNC. The networks and friendships created during the mobilization have
helped mobilize important support for those facing felony charges; many
of the accused have moved to the Twin Cities for the duration of their
cases, bringing new energy with them. At the same time, lasting trauma
and the fear and tedium of long court cases with potentially serious
consequences have taken their toll on many people’s mental health,
especially through the bleak Minnesota winter. Constant meetings, court
dates, and pending cases have sapped energy from the local radical
community; they have also distracted organizers from their work, a
situation that will only get worse if the latter end up in prison.
Police tactics are intended to maintain isolation, silence, and fear.
Mutual aid and solidarity strengthen our communities and discourage
repression. When people are familiar with the legal system and confident
that they will be supported, they are less likely to be cowed by threats
or fall for trickery. Many participants in the RNC protests expressed
that the legal support available to them helped them feel more empowered
to take action; others reported that knowing they were supported kept
them from cooperating with the state. Cross-movement solidarity has also
proved invaluable. For example, two members of the RNC 8 had been
members of EWOK! (Earth Warriors Are Okay!), a group dedicated to
supporting earth and animal liberation prisoners; consequently, the 8
received support and resources from those EWOK had supported.
We can no longer afford to leave legal work to the experts. This is more
important than ever in light of the repressive response to the RNC
protests. Whether or not we organize or participate in mass
mobilizations, anarchists will continue to be charged with felonies; in
addition to keeping the potential consequences of our actions in mind
and mentally preparing ourselves for worst-case scenarios, we must plan
and be equipped for legal support. In an age when anarchist organizing
attracts federal attention and multi-million-dollar security budgets,
all of us are at risk. The safety and security of our communities depend
on our ability to respond and support one another.
Like it or not—these days, we are all legal workers.
[1] Many of these can be found at midnightspecial.net.
[2] The database began with affinity group support forms; it has enabled
legal workers to track arrestees through the system, providing a record
of the details of arrests, instances of police brutality, and other
important information.
[3] The travel fund, along with locals’ willingness to host out-of-town
defendants, has helped people come back to fight their charges. This in
turn helps with court solidarity, which can involve defendants
coordinating and fighting their charges together, as well as people
coming out in support.
[4] It also gave a community of militantly unemployed people a 9–5
weekday schedule.
[5] Secret Cafés are a way to fundraise, socialize and build community;
the idea is to turn an ordinary (or extraordinary!) space into a
temporary restaurant with sliding-scale food and entertainment.