First, I want to thank you for putting yourselves on the line for your country. Unlike how people so often fawn over soldiers, it isn't formulaic praise in your case - you are actually serving your country, and doing right by every conceivable standard of morality not inflected with a German accent. You stood up for America, stood up for humanity, stood up for what is right and true, and accepted with peaceful grace and dignity the violence meted out to you by institutions that were flabbergasted by your courage. You braved and continue to brave tear gas, fists, boots, bludgeons, pepper spray, sound cannons, media slander, and other petty tactics that merely serve to reaffirm your resolve in fighting to restore our democracy.
From me and everyone else who couldn't be there beside you...
Now the question is how far you intend to take it. Since you've already shown yourselves to be both courageous and conscientious in defense of freedom, no one can ask anything more than that you continue being who you are. But you have some decisions to make. The charges most of you face are not serious - trespassing, disturbing the peace, and other infractions or low-order misdemeanors that are unlikely (in the normal course of things) to yield more than a fine. That is, if you go along with the charges and, in the event of conviction, accept punishment. Therefore, the decisions before you are twofold:
1. Will you fight the charges?
2. If you fight and lose, will you refuse to pay fines and reject the limitations of probation as ordered?
Many of you have already answered Question 1 with a resounding "HELL YES!" You refuse to be treated like criminals for being proud, assertive citizens who harm no one and simply speak truth to power. Let the avalanche of Not Guilty pleas and contested tickets serve as plain notice to the judicial system that it is dealing with real men and women, and definitely not The Usual Suspects. But it's also important to be realistic about how sympathetic judges are likely to be to people who "disturb public tranquility."
So you've said your piece, eloquently and persuasively, but Judge Whatshisname is just too jaded to care - you're an "impudent, self-important nuisance" who is wasting his time when he could be dealing with the normal cadre of shady characters he is far more comfortable handling. You are ordered to pay a fine far bigger than what it would have been if you hadn't fought it, and perhaps if you have prior arrests, probation with some community service to boot.
Now you have another decision to make, and one substantially harder than the first: Do you content yourself with having taken a stand and accept the outcome, or do you stand up even higher and say, humbly...
I'm sorry, but I can't accept that. I will not pay any fine for peacefully exercising my absolute rights, especially now that those rights are under constant attack. I will not accept probationary limitations on my freedom for standing up for what is right while harming no one. If you order me to do community service, I will perform it by continuing the activities that brought me here - serving the community to the best of my ability and conscience.
Judges do not appreciate this kind of thing - they will not be impressed by your courage, because their training and professional experience does not involve dealing with people like you in situations like that. They are trained to handle litigants, defendants, and other manifestations of pure self-interest churned through an adversarial justice system - people who are kept in line only by the threat of contempt citations and other stern exercises in judicial discretion. But unlike 99.99999% of the people who come into their courtroom, you are not there to serve yourself, and not interested in the path of least resistance - nor are you some arrogant, out-of-control disputant who would respond to being smacked down. You have a Purpose far bigger than the venue in which you happen to be standing there at that moment.
Perhaps the judge stares in disbelief, and asks you to repeat yourself, daring you to confirm that you're gumming up a well-oiled judicial machine over a few dozen or hundred measely dollars. If he had any doubt before that you're an ass, that doubt is now gone - he is very unlikely to understand why you're saying this. From his perspective, you're just some arrogant punk who needs a swift lesson. He will not back down like the judge in the movie version of Gandhi. So the question is whether you back down at this point, or continue on the path you've chosen.
Many of you have spent the night in jail after being arrested, so you have a vague, limited sense of the degradation, discomfort, boredom, and disgust of incarceration - something I'm grateful to have never known personally. But if you're charged with Contempt of Court and the judge is truly incensed, you could be sentenced to spend weeks or even months in jail - up to a year, in fact, if I'm not mistaken (though I'm sure laws vary geographically). Real time in real jail surrounded by real criminals, not just a night in a holding cell with the drunks and the drugged-out zombies. If you were an ordinary peon living in the transactional reality of corporate-corrupted society, there wouldn't even be a question of your choice - paying a trivial fine vs. potentially serving time in jail.
The system counts on that transactional logic in fine-tuning its various mechanisms of petty social control, in everything from retail sales to plea bargains, because in a world of money everything has its price - and you must obey the logic of the market. If you refuse - if there is anything that you simply will not transact upon - it creates an undigestible hairball in the system. And if enough of those hairballs build up quickly enough in one place, the system either concedes and adapts or will try to crush you completely - something it cannot do if you are truly adamant, and truly, unambiguously right.
Because it is not about the minor inconvenience of the fine, but about saying the actions being fined reflect something so fundamentally just that you not only will not, but cannot willingly subject them to punishment. You have watched torturers, mass-murderers, and men of pure evil get away with crimes against humanity because they served Money, and while that goes on - while your country and your world are hostage to barbarians - you will not allow acts of kindness, justice, and the humanity you serve to be fined even a single, solitary penny simply because some corporate manager, municipal bureaucrat, or thug in a badge finds it inconvenient to deal with an assertive citizenry aware of its rights. And maybe, if you find you have reached that stage in your growth as an activist, you are perfectly ready, willing, and able to accept whatever brutal consequences are meted out because of this refusal. Not because you're so tough, but because nothing they can do to you can compare to what others have already sacrificed in the past on your behalf.
You're still a hero even if you don't choose to do any of this, but maybe by taking the greater risk and accepting the greater burden, you open up greater possibilities. One can never know what sparks inspiration in others and what falls into obscurity - the best you can do is follow your own conscience and be true to yourself. Keep it in mind, and always know that whatever you decide, it is your choice - no situation, no matter how unbalanced the leverage, can ever dictate your decisions. Knowing that, you are free wherever you go; and those who do not know it, are not free anywhere.