On January 20th, hundreds of demonstrators came to DC to protest Trump’s inauguration. During the course of their demonstration, several windows were broken. The demonstrators were then kettled and arrested. Hundreds of the demonstrators face felony charges, carrying sentences of up to 75 years.
There are hundreds of demonstrators who have been accused, and approximately 5 broken windows. This means that there are hundreds of accused who did not damage property.
Imagine you are one of the demonstrators. You spend several hours marching with comrades. You observe a comrade breaking a window. You think, I could leave the protest right now, because suddenly the protest is violent and therefore illegitimate. But then again, you remember, I spent 8 hours (and a nontrivial amount of money) traveling here. So, Why let all of that go to waste because a fellow demonstrator (or for all I know, an agent provocateur) destroyed property?
If any of these (not-property-damaging) demonstrators get convicted, this will set a precedent. The precedent will say, “If you are at a protest, and someone damages property, you have to leave or else you can go to jail for 75 years”.
This precedent is Extremely Bad for lots of reasons. In particular, this precedent would make it really easy for the government to shut down any protests it doesn’t like. They could simply sprinkle in a few agents provocateur to smash windows, and then imprison (for 75 years) any of the protestors foolish enough to keep demonstrating. If you know anything about the history of the FBI and its infiltration/suppression of leftists (and activist POC groups), this is actually a pretty mild thing for them to do.
I can’t overstate how much of a threat this is to Freedom of Speech. Typically, we are extremely sensitive to the “Slippery Slope” argument regarding the 1st Amendment. We tell one another “the university has to let R*chard Sp*ncer speak, or else we’re on our way to Authoritarianism!”. IMHO, if you think the alt-right should be allowed to speak on college campuses, and you’re also okay with 75-year sentences for property-destruction, you have some soul searching to do.
I want to note that direct action, protest, and political organizing (outside of the 2-party system), are very important parts of democracy. Stonewall was an important part of winning LGBT rights. The Civil Rights Movement and the Labor Movement both relied heavily on direct action. Today, groups like BLM are using direct action. It is an important complement to winning electoral victories, especially when it comes to groups who are systematically disenfranchised. It’s scary to imagine an alternate history where all of these folks were too intimidated to do their organizing; how many of their victories would we still be able to enjoy?
I also want to note that the government is very aware of the necessity and importance of direct action and political organizing. Targets of COINTELPRO include the Black Panther Part, SDS, the American Indian Movement, the NAACP, the National Lawyers Guild Women’s Rights organizations, and protestors of the Vietnam War. Many of these groups are (or were) performing direct action, and organizing in ways which the state saw as a threat. Why would they have killed Fred Hampton if he and the BPP weren’t making real change?
The J20 charges, along with the FBI’s history of infiltrating and destroying activist groups, are a pretty clear indicator that the government is really hostile to a certain type of activist. At the next march I go to, I’m definitely going to obscure my face. It’s not hard for me to imagine a situation where a comrade tips over a newspaper dispenser at a protest, and I wind up facing a 75-year charge, because a computer was able to recognize my face from photos that ended up on social media.
I’ll close by noting that the black bloc protestors are largely made up of able-bodied white comrades who are willing to use their privilege and put their bodies on the line. They know that the state will go (comparatively) easy on them, and they exploit this fact by engaging in tactics that many marginalized folks would be afraid to participate in. I think we should applaud those people who are willing to make good use of their White Privilege. We should be all the more impressed by the folks from marginalized groups who, despite the Special Treatment they receive from the state, engage in these tactics.