“Philadelphia Three” Political Prisoner Khalif Miller Languishes Pre-Trial in Federal Prison

  • August 31, 2022 1:03 am

from Unicorn Riot

By Niko Georgiades and Dan Feidt, Unicorn Riot August 30, 2022

Philadelphia, PA – Federal inmate in the Bureau of Prisons, Khalif Miller, says his rights are being violated while in prison awaiting trial on federal arson charges from the 2020 anti-police uprisings. Miller said he hadn’t had an attorney visit for his first 19 months incarcerated, that he was stabbed 10 times and almost killed in an attack, and has caught COVID-19 twice in prison while awaiting trial as part of a what he says was political targeting by former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain.

Miller was arrested on October 28, 2020, and charged along with three others, Carlos Matchett of Atlantic City and Anthony Smith, a prominent activist, for allegedly throwing flaming materials into a police car near Philadelphia’s City Hall on May 30, 2020, during the George Floyd Uprising.

Miller has dubbed them the “Philadelphia Three” and the federal government say they conspired together to burn the cop car. Yet, Miller said he’s never even “met nor spoken” to the other co-defendants of the alleged conspiracy and said he was simply taking a picture from atop the police car when it was set aflame.

“The same photo that should’ve set me free, the federal government used to create an elaborate plot in which I have become a political prisoner that I’ve termed the “PHILADELPHIA THREE”, because there are two other people that I’ve never met nor spoken with who the federal government has roped together and charged us with arson and conspiracy all in their endless effort to dismantle and alter the progress of the “BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT.”

Khalif Miller

Miller wrote to Unicorn Riot from his prison cell and called for support by sharing his story, writing him, and donating for legal support (full letter below with address). Miller is one of over 300 people across the United States who were federally charged during the height of the anti-police and anti-racist uprising of mid 2020. (This wave of prosecutions contradicts claims by supporters of January 6 riot defendants, who often falsely claim the government has declined to serious prosecute nearly anyone for rioting in 2020.)

Miller, a father and business owner, was only 25 years old when he was arrested.

Khalif Miller in 2016 (L, M) and 2018 – via social media

The Philadelphia Three were indicted (pdf) on October 20, 2020, after a grand jury charged them with obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder and two counts of arson. If convicted, they face a mandatory minimum of seven years in prison with a maximum of 65 years, with three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $750,000.

Guilty Plea, Arson Charges Dropped, and Sentencing for Woman Who Set Police Cars on Fire

After the massive uprisings against anti-Blackness and police terror across the country in 2020, dozens of cities were left with millions of dollars in property damage. The federal government then levied arson charges and a rare 1960s vintage civil disorder charge in attempts to punish protesters with long federal prison sentences. For more on the recent use of civil disorder charges, see our 2020 report on an Illinois man charged with civil disorder by the feds for participating in the uprising in Minneapolis.

In Philadelphia, there were several other high-profile arson cases from activity on May 30, 2020. Directly related to the Philadelphia Three was the case of Lore Elisabeth Blumenthal, a 32-year-old white massage therapist. Wearing a bandana over her face along with goggles, Blumenthal was seen in photographs throwing flaming material toward a police car. Authorities traced the t-shirt she was wearing to an Etsy review and arrested Blumenthal within days.

Image of Lore Blumenthal with flaming material directed toward a police car – Khalif Miller is seen standing on a police car in the distance – image taken on May 30, 2020 – source: U.S. District Court

In March 2022, Blumenthal pled guilty to two counts of interfering with law enforcement officers during a civil disorder in connection with what the feds state was “arson of two” police vehicles, the same vehicles the Philadelphia Three are charged for. Her arson charges were dropped in the plea deal. She was subsequently sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison.

In a key photograph, Miller is visible in the background standing on the police car, while Blumenthal is the right foreground with the flaming material in her hand. Miller is being charged with arson for the vehicles, yet, he maintains his innocence:

“As the protest started to take a turn, I was taking photos when suddenly mid-photo chaos erupted and the car that I was standing on (a government official vehicle) erupted into flames as it was firebombed. Eventually every vehicle in the area received the same fate.”

Khalif Miller letter to Unicorn Riot

Federal judge questions push to imprison trans activist found with a Molotov cocktail at 2020 protest

  • August 20, 2022 1:47 am

from Mainstream Media

A federal judge on Thursday questioned prosecutors’ push to imprison a trans activist who was arrested after a New Year’s Eve 2020 protest outside the Federal Detention Center in Center City.

Philadelphia police officers found Josie Robotin, 26, of Willow Grove, carrying a backpack filled with what they described as a Molotov cocktail, several firecrackers, lighters, and a container filled with flammable liquid near the demonstration, which had been organized to protest for the rights of trans prisoners.

She was federally charged with possession of an unregistered destructive device and later pleaded guilty to that crime.

But at her sentencing hearing Thursday, U.S. District Judge John R. Padova credited her story that she brought the incendiaries not to use at the protest but rather for a bonfire she and her friends planned to attend later that night to celebrate the New Year’s holiday.

He sentenced her to a day in prison — or time served — far less than the two years prosecutors were seeking.

“Isn’t it fair to say we have a defendant who was engaged at the time in a fair exercise of freedom of speech?” the judge asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Vineet Gauri before announcing his decision. He wondered aloud whether Robotin and her crime were “the time, the place, the person to make an example of.”

Robotin’s sentence is only the latest in a string of cases arising from the 2020 protest movement in Philadelphia in which federal judges have imposed sentences far less punitive than those sought by the government.

Last month, Lore-Elisabeth Blumenthal, a Philadelphia-area massage therapist, was sentenced to 2½ years in prison for setting police cars ablaze during protests over the police killing of George Floyd. The government had asked for four.

That same month, another defendant charged with torching police cars during the demonstration — Ayoub Tabri, 25, of Arlington, Va. — received a prison sentence of 364 days. Prosecutors had pushed for three to four years.

But Padova was the first judge in those cases to explicitly question whether the Justice Department’s stance was overly harsh toward the defendant exercising their right to protest.

He noted prosecutors had presented no evidence that Robotin had planned to commit any crime with the incendiary device in her backpack.

Gauri, the prosecutor, stressed that Robotin had pleaded guilty and stressed that the Molotov cocktail she was carrying could very well have proved more dangerous than a gun.

“This is a destructive device,” he said. “It’s designed to inflict serious injury and casualties. It’s not designed for bonfires and parties.”

But ultimately, Gauri offered little pushback, acknowledging that the Justice Department had taken a “holistic view” of protest cases around the country when deciding on sentencing recommendations for the Philadelphia defendants.

In all, former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain charged six people with federal arson charges tied to the 2020 demonstrations, vowing to pursue the mandatory minimum sentence of at least seven years in each case — part of a wider Trump-era Justice Department strategy to crack down on property destruction tied to the protests.

But since Trump and McSwain left office, prosecutors have extended deals to many of the defendants, offering to drop the arson count if they pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of obstructing law enforcement during a civil disorder. That crime is punishable by up to five years.

In Robotin’s case, she hadn’t been charged with arson or accused of starting a fire, her attorney Marni Jo Snyder noted Thursday.

“My client was participating in the exercise of freedom of speech in the right way,” she said, adding later: “No one at that protest at the FDC tried to set anything on fire.”

Still, Robotin was arrested on Dec. 31, 2020, along with six others as part of what Philadelphia police described at the time as a “large group of 40 to 50 unruly antifa protesters” who broke windows and spray-painted buildings on the streets around the detention center.

The crowd set off fireworks, painted buildings with slogans such as “ACAB” — an abbreviation for All Cops Are Bastards — and smashed a Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office vehicle parked nearby.

But police investigators later walked back their claim that those charged had direct ties to antifa — a loose network of far-left groups often accused of an array of antigovernment misdeeds — saying instead that the vandalism and destruction that night appeared antifa-inspired.

Addressing the judge Thursday, Snyder sought to separate Robotin from the vandals. Aside from the unused incendiary device Robotin was carrying, the lawyer noted, prosecutors had presented no evidence that she had been involved in any of the other crimes that occurred after the protest.

Robotin, meanwhile, said the events of 2020 — from the pandemic to Floyd’s death, to a rise in bias-related crimes — had served as a “powder keg” that prompted her presence at the protest outside the FDC that night.

Still, she told the judge, she was not trying to minimize the crime to which she had pleaded guilty.

“My intention was to hand out firecrackers to partygoers [at the planned bonfire later that night] and to use what was described in the report as an incendiary device to light logs that would not light on fire on their own,” she said. “In hindsight, I can see how alarming that would be [for officers] to find.”

When it came time to impose his time-served sentence, Padova said he’d been persuaded that Robotin had learned her lesson and that he was impressed by her record of activism and volunteering in the trans community.

He responded: “I know that you don’t believe you’re being blessed for that criminal conduct. You have pleaded guilty to a very serious crime. Fortunately, no one was hurt.”

Of the seven protesters arrested that night, only Robotin was charged with a federal crime. The others faced state charges. Their cases have all since been dismissed, withdrawn, or resolved in plea deals resulting in only a court-imposed fine.

Monday July 25th: Letter-writing for Lore-Elisabeth Blumenthal

  • July 25, 2022 1:43 am

from Philly ABC

lore.jpg

A notorious Trump lackey targeted Lore in June 2020 to be a scapegoat for the demonstrations that empowered Philadelphians against constant police brutality. Lore is known for providing essential, life-sustaining services to the most vulnerable Philadelphians as a care worker. She supports community members who live with HIV and chronic illnesses to access medical and critical care, often at her own expense. She provides regular outcalls to elders and clients who cannot leave their homes as a professional massage therapist. She is the irreplaceable rock of support to her family. Over the last two years, Lore has become a vital source for health information and care to the women hidden in the Bureau of Prisons’ Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia.

Join us online as we answer the call from her family and friends to send letters or postcards of support, share all your hope, well wishes, and your good news. Her support site also includes instructions on how to send photos and books .

If you are unable to make it, please drop Lore a line at:

Lore-Elisabeth Blumenthal
#70002-066
FDC Philadelphia
PO Box 562
Philadelphia, PA 19105

We will also be sending birthday cards to U.S.-held political prisoners with birthdays in August: Daniel Hale (the 1st), Eric King (the 2nd), Bill Dunne (the 3rd), Hanif Bey (the 16th) and Ronald Reed (the 31st).

Big Brick Energy: A Multi-City Study of the 2020 George Floyd Uprising

  • July 24, 2022 1:53 am

from Its Going Down

A critical overview and analysis from Unity and Struggle on the George Floyd rebellion. Check out a booklet version here.

by: Ever, Lamont and Chino
photos: Lorie Shaull, Creative Commons

Introduction

The 2020 George Floyd uprising was a major event by whatever measure you use. It deepened the generational Black revolt that began with Black Lives Matter in 2014. It marked the most profound challenge to racial capitalist rule since the 2008 financial crisis. It saw the National Guard deployed to multiple U.S. cities for the first time since the 1960s, and by one estimate, it was the costliest wave of civil unrest in the postwar period.(1) The uprising was rich with lessons, and it will shape a generation of us who moved in the streets.

But rigorous analysis of the uprising remains limited. Many of us haven’t had time to reflect on it deeply: individuals and organizations have had to navigate state repression, sectarian infighting, interpersonal harm shaped by gender and race, and all kinds of tragedies stemming from the ongoing pandemic. More often, clusters of friends and comrades have drawn conclusions from local experience, and lefty commentators have produced think pieces that draw single themes out of the uprising, or spin it to fit their dogma.

Big Brick Energy takes a step beyond anecdotes and hot takes. For a year, members of Unity and Struggle studied the uprising by interviewing fifteen comrades in five cities, compiling news coverage from the same cities, and surveying official reports from local governments and police departments in seventeen cities nationwide. (For more on our methods, see Appendix A.) We drew out common dynamics across locations, identified tactics and strategies that the movement and the ruling class used, explored what worked or didn’t, and highlighted important challenges and questions that a future uprising will likely encounter.

Generally, the uprising involved a common sequence of moments unfolding at different speeds and intensities, based on national trends and local turning points. When the rebellion erupted, it decisively defeated the police and paralyzed the local ruling class, usually for several days. People launched waves of protests and looting, and improvised tactics from community self-defense groups to small autonomous zones. Different factions of the state (and white mobs or fascists) reacted in conflicting ways, but eventually settled on a mix of repression and cooptation that was able to contain the unrest. The movement was channeled into nonviolent protest and legislative reforms, which yielded much shallower gains than most of us hoped for.

Within this story there are many variations and nuances, and lessons to be learned. Below we draw out aspects of the uprising that carry implications for our tactics, strategy, and race politics.

Kristian Williams @ Wooden Shoe (In-Person Event)

  • July 1, 2022 1:22 am

from AK Press

No image description available.
On Sunday, July 3 at 7pm, join Kristian Williams for a book launch event at Wooden Shoe Books to celebrate the release of Gang Politics: Revolution, Repression, and Crime.
Registration not required!

In Gang Politics, Kristian Williams examines our society’s understanding of social and political violence, what gets romanticized, misunderstood, or muddled. He explores the complex intersections between “gangs” of all sorts—cops and criminals, Proud Boys and Antifa, Panthers and skinheads—arguing that government and criminality are intimately related, often sharing critical features. As society becomes more polarized and conflict more common, Williams’s analysis is a crucial corrective to our usual ideas about the role violence might or should play in our social struggles.

Kristian Williams is the author of six books, including Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America. Williams has been actively writing and leading discourse on anarchism in historical and present-day contexts, social inequalities, and critiques on police and political force since the 1990s. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Stop Cop City East Coast Tour Philadelphia

  • June 30, 2022 1:33 am

from Twitter

#StopCopCity info night and talk in Philly 7/1 @ 7:30pm. Screening of Riotsville USA at 9pm. Greys Ferry Skatepark.

Defend The Atlanta Forest Info Night + Screening Of Riotsville U.S.A

  • June 24, 2022 1:54 am

from Instagram

No image description available.
[Stop Cop City
July 1st
@grays ferry skatepark
7:30pm talk // 9pm film]

Diaries of a Terrorist: Poetry and Abolition with Christopher Soto and others

  • April 29, 2022 1:43 am

from Making World Books

A luminous poetry reading demanding the abolition of police & prisons—with Christopher Soto, Airea D Mathews, and Denice Frohman.

This debut poetry collection demands the abolition of policing and human caging. In Diaries of a Terrorist, Christopher Soto uses the “we” pronoun to emphasize that police violence happens not only to individuals, but to whole communities. His poetics open the imagination towards possibilities of existence beyond the status quo. Soto asks, “Who do we call terrorist—and why”? These political surrealist poems shift between gut-wrenching vulnerability, laugh-aloud humor, and unapologetic queer punk raunchiness. Diaries of a Terrorist is groundbreaking in its ability to speak—from a local to a global scale—about one of the most important issues of our time.

Christopher Soto will be joined for a reading by Airea D Matthews, and Denice Frohman for the launch of their debut poetry collection, which demands the abolition of policing and human caging.

Cohosted by our friends at Scalawag Magazine.

Advance registration is requested.

[May  5 6:00 PM 7:30 PM 210 South 45th Street]

Monday April 25th: Letter-writing for Xinachtli

  • April 23, 2022 1:23 am

from Philly ABC

xinachtli-letter-writing.jpg

Philly ABC is back at it this month with another monthly letter-writing event for political prisoners. This event will be online – join from anywhere! We hope to return to outdoor in-person events next month.

This month we will be checking in with Xinachtli, a Chicano-Mexicano anarchist political prisoner serving a 50-year sentence after being targeted for his Chicano rights and anti-police brutality activism.

In 1976 he was falsely accused of murder, for which he narrowly escaped the death penalty, destined instead to serve a life sentence. He was released after media highlighted his unfair trial and proof of his innocence, but then later suffered a brutal beating at the hands of several police officers.

In 1996 Xinachtli became the target of the most massive police manhunt in recent West Texas history after disarming a sheriff who tried to shoot him on a warantless arrest, and fled to a nearby mountain. For days Xinachtli eluded police helicopters, bloodhound tracking dogs, armed vigilante groups, and other state and federal police agencies before they surrounded him after returning to his mother’s house to eat and change clothes.

Without identifying themselves, police began shooting indiscriminately at the house, at cars parked in front, and at the public street lights. To back them off their murderous intent, Xinachtli returned fire in self-defense but never shot nor injured anyone. During the police barrage, Sgt. Curtis Hines was shot in the left hand by a ricocheting police bullet.

Xinachtli surrendered and was charged with two counts of aggravated assault; one count for disarming the sheriff and one count for Sgt. Hines’ wound. His elderly mother was charged with “hindering apprehension” and jailed.

Prior to his incarceration, Xinachtli also advocated for human rights of framed and political prisoners, and he continues to help other prisoners assert their legal rights. Join us as we show Xinachtli some love and get the latest updates on the struggle to free him. His birthday is also May 12th if you are writing from home and want to send him birthday greetings.

We will also be sending birthday greetings to the other U.S.-held political prisoner with a birthday in May: Kojo Bomani Sababu (the 27th).

[6:30-8PM]

Banks Attacked in Solidarity with Atlanta Forest Defenders

  • March 28, 2022 1:23 am

from Scenes from the Atlanta Forest

This month we sabotaged card slots of Wells Fargo and Bank Of America in Center City, Philadelphia. This attack was done in solidarity and complicity with those disrupting the construction of a police training grounds in Atlanta. Cops in Atlanta want to cut down a forest to build a mock city to practice squashing uprisings. In response, individuals are occupying, protesting, and sabotaging. People have started staying in the forest and fucking with the construction. The Atlanta Police Foundation is being funded by Wells Fargo and Bank Of America. We are excited to hear about construction workers being chased out and construction vehicles being messed up.

As proponents of self-directed revolt we decided to target the banks contributing to building the cop city. We hope that by communicating our action others feel encouraged or inspired to attack and disrupt the social order in their own context. While it would be preferable if the police project in Atlanta collapsed, for us destruction is an end in itself. We take pleasure in disrupting capital.

Our sabotage involved collecting plastic cards, which we cut into thirds. The purpose of this was to prevent the cards from easily being removed. Before going out we wiped down the pieces with gloves on and dressed anonymously. We inserted the pieces into atm and door card readers after putting a strip of super glue onto them. One benefit of this action is that it fucks up the machine without making a lot of noise or seeming out of place. We feel this is relevant to point out because the cop city is an example of the police preparing for mass unrest and we feel it is strategic to be able to act discreetly in light of increasing policing and surveillance.

Fuck cops
Fuck banks and money
Solidarity and complicity with the feral anarchists in Atlanta
Death to civilization
Long live anarchy
Chaos forever

A Philly protester charged with setting cop cars ablaze during 2020 demonstrations has pleaded guilty

  • March 19, 2022 1:20 am

from Mainstream Media

A Philadelphia woman charged with torching police cars during the 2020 racial injustice protests in Philadelphia has struck an agreement with federal prosecutors that will spare her the seven-year minimum sentence she would have faced had she been convicted on arson charges.

Lore-Elisabeth Blumenthal, 35, pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts of a lesser offense — obstructing law enforcement during a civil disorder — each of which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Her attorney Paul J. Hetznecker called the deal “appropriate” after condemning the previous arson charges — and the harsh sentence they carried — as a ”political decision” and an overreaction to crimes he argued should have been pursued in state court.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to say whether the deal signaled a wider reevaluation of its stance on protest-related cases. In all, five other defendants are still facing federal arson counts in Philadelphia for setting squad cars ablaze during the heated protests that erupted May 30, 2020, outside City Hall after the police killing of George Floyd.

At the time of the arrests, Attorney General William Barr had urged federal prosecutors across the country to pursue stiff federal penalties against defendants who committed violence and property destruction during the unrest that roiled the country that spring.

Blumenthal’s case became a cause célèbre on both sides of the debate surrounding protests and policing.

Prosecutors described her as a danger to the community who put hundreds of lives at risk by setting fire to cars that could have exploded and endangered packed crowds of peaceful protesters nearby. Left-wing groups labeled her a “political prisoner” jailed for an act of dissent in response to police brutality. They vandalized the Federal Detention Center in Center City, where Blumenthal has been incarcerated since her arrest, calling for her release.

But Blumenthal — a massage therapist with a peace sign tattooed on her wrist — appeared to fit neither the profile of the violent firebrand nor the political martyr that she’s been made out to be as she stood meekly in court Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Barclay Surrick.

Hands clasped behind her back, she spoke slowly and deliberately as the judge ran her through a series of questions to make sure she understood the consequences of her guilty plea. She paused to shout “I love you” to her brother and mother seated in the courtroom gallery, as U.S. Marshals led her back to prison.

Federal agents have said they identified Blumenthal from surveillance photos and video of the chaotic scene that unfolded outside City Hall that day.

They showed a woman, dressed in a blue shirt and wearing flame-retardant gloves, grabbing a burning piece of police barricade that had already been used to set one squad car on fire and tossing it into a police SUV parked nearby.

More photos taken by amateur photographers at the scene helped them zoom in on the woman’s distinctive peace-sign tattoo and T-shirt she was wearing with the slogan “Keep the immigrants, deport the racists.”

Making Worlds Seminar: Abolitionist Alternatives to Police and Prisons By Any Other Name

  • March 12, 2022 1:01 am

from Instagram

Photo by Making Worlds in Making Worlds Bookstore. May be an image of text that says 'FRIDAY MARCH 18 4PM- 6PM ABOLITIONIST SEMINAR ON POLICE AND PRISONS WITH VICTORIA LAW BY ANY OTHER NAME LIMITED SPACE RESERVE NOW'.

Please join us on Friday, March 18th at Making Worlds for a community seminar on abolitionist alternatives to police and prison, and how we can shift narratives beyond reforms, with author and activist Victoria Law. We will explore histories and examples of police and prison narratives that use reforms to extend their powers to punish, and to subject more and more people to their control.

Victoria is author and co-author of two recent books that we will be using as the basis of our seminar, Prisons Make Us Safer: And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration and Prison By Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms.

Advance registration required at: https://bit.ly/3MBKmY1

[March 18 4-6pm at 410 South 45th Street]

Former Black Panther Russell “Maroon” Shoatz Freed From Prison After 49 Years

  • October 27, 2021 1:13 am

from Truthout

Russell "Maroon" Shoatz is pictured after his release from solitary confinement.

Russell “Maroon” Shoatz, the Black liberationist long respected as a political prisoner and freedom fighter by friends and supporters, was granted a medical transfer on Monday to leave a Pennsylvania prison for treatment and hospice after five decades of imprisonment.

A former member of the Black Panther Party and a soldier in the Black Liberation Army, Shoatz organized inside prisons for decades to abolish life sentences without parole, inspiring activists and attorneys to take up the cause.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is now considering whether a legal challenge to the state’s practice of denying parole hearings to people serving life sentences for certain second-degree murder convictions can proceed. All life sentences in Pennsylvania excluded the possibility of parole, and the state has the highest per-capita rate of people serving life sentences in the nation and the world, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The 78-year-old Shoatz, who remains highly influential within the Black liberation and prison abolition movements, is reportedly terminally ill after being diagnosed with cancer. In social media posts, activists and family members who spent years fighting for his release celebrated on Monday after a judge in Philadelphia agreed to transfer Shoatz from a prison to a hospital.

In 2014, Shoatz was released from solitary confinement after spending 22 consecutive years in “the hole” and later won a $99,000 legal settlement. Supporters say the solitary confinement amounted to retaliation against Shoatz’s efforts to organize other “lifers” and abolish what activists now call “death by incarceration,” or life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Shoatz, who is considered both a political prisoner and prisoner of war by supporters, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison after a 1970 attack on a Philadelphia police station.

As they are today, tensions over racist police violence were running high in Philadelphia during the summer of 1970, when Police Chief Frank Rizzo ordered a crackdown on Black liberation groups ahead a national convention of the Black Panther Party. Anger boiled over after police once again killed an unarmed Black youth, and police were attacked in retaliation, leaving one officer injured and another dead. The attack prompted a raid on the Black Panther headquarters and the arrest of multiple activists.

Shoatz went underground but was arrested and convicted of murder two years later; supporters have said he was falsely accused. Shoatz escaped prison with other Black liberationists twice before being hunted by authorities and captured again. The liberationists were called the New African Political Prisoners of War.

Shoatz spent much of his life resisting solitary confinement, inspiring activists in the free world and working for the liberation of people sentenced to die in prison. Shoatz’s supporters say he is now free to rejoin his family during the final stage of his life.

FBI Raids Home of Philly Proud Boy’s Vice President Aaron Whallon Wolkind

  • October 13, 2021 1:50 am

from Philly Antifa

From The Inquirer:

Aaron Whallon Wolkind, Vice President of Philly Proud Boys, despite living in Delaware.

“The FBI raided the home of the vice president of the Proud Boys’ Philadelphia chapter on Friday, seizing his computer, phone, and other electronics to gather information on the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol, his lawyer said Monday.

Aaron Whallon Wolkind, 37, woke up around 4 a.m. Friday to more than a dozen federal agents, dressed in riot gear and accompanied by an armored vehicle and battering ram, swarming his Newark, Del., home, and ordering through a loudspeaker that he exit with his hands in the air, his lawyer Jonathon Moseley wrote in a court filing…

Wolkind was not in D.C. during the Jan. 6 riot, Moseley said. He believes the search and seizure was to gather information in the case against Zach Rehl, the self-described president of the Philadelphia Proud Boys, whom Moseley also represents. Rehl was arrested in March on charges he conspired with other leading members of the organization to attack the Capitol and has been in custody in Philadelphia pending trial since.”

( click link for full story)

Wolkind is a longtime Proud Boy who participated with Rehl, Richard Schwetz and other PB’s/assorted racists who attacked Anti-Racists at the Columbus Statue in Marconi Plaza in the summer of 2020. Wolkind has been at nearly every Proud Boys demo in Pennsylvania since the group’s founding.

Zach Rehl continues to be held at FDC Philadelphia awaiting trial.

 

Looking Critically at the Brooklyn Center Riot: An Interview from Anathema

  • August 19, 2021 1:03 am

from It’s Going Down

Originally published in Anathema, an anarchist publication from Philadelphia, the following interview talks about the realities of the Brooklyn Center riot that kicked off in the wake of the police murder of Daunte Wright in the spring of 2021. 

This interview was conducted two months ago, which was already two months after the events this spring in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. The riot in Brooklyn Center took place in the context of the Derek Chauvin trial, almost a year after he murdered George Floyd. This interview was an attempt to reflect on one participant’s experience of the events in Brooklyn Center and consider what they tell us about how things might unfold in the future. For many of us, the George Floyd uprising has weighed heavily on our minds as we try to imagine next steps to take. What became clear to me in this interview was that between the George Floyd uprising and the Brooklyn Center riot — despite the direct influence and geographic proximity — was an expanse.

Although the Brooklyn Center riot was an outgrowth of the George Floyd uprising, it was also a reminder that the previous summer’s events would not be repeated. Now, after a relatively quiet summer, it seems all the more important to be looking toward the future rather than fixating our gaze on last summer’s uprising. In this interview, we explore some of the developments and unique characteristics of uprisings in the aftermath of the George Floyd uprising.

You were in Brooklyn Center in April. Can you describe what happened?

Yes, there was a police murder: Daunte Wright, 20 years old. He was basically trying to flee the scene where he got stopped. There was two nights of rioting — I am going to say rioting. Some people want to say “it’s not a riot, it’s a rebellion.” I am just going to say it was a riot.

People were throwing stuff at the cops. There was looting by car in the Brooklyn Center area, also in Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs. The first night the neighboring police station got shot up; someone shot the front doors of it. Someone else shot at a cop — maybe 3 days after it started.

All throughout people were calling for the burning down of the police precinct (that was the focal point of the riot). They never succeeded. People tried. The police set up a gate. It was similar to what happened in Portland at the courthouse. But they didn’t actually breach the gate.

After the first two days of looting, arson, street fighting, and property destruction, there was basically a week of confrontational protests in front of the police precinct.

From what you witnessed, what have been the most significant changes since last year?

What’s been happening since the fall of last year, the police have been really ready for riots. So, when people engage in riot tactics, they need to outmaneuver the police. It can’t be this kind of frontal assault the way it happened in Minneapolis at the 3rd precinct.

That started with the Breonna Taylor revolt of late September. There isn’t 1000s of people in the street fighting the cops. That’s not happening.

Also, in Brooklyn Center, you would see people in black bloc or this “frontliner” aesthetic trying to stop young, mostly Black kids from setting things on fire and building barricades.

Wait — what would motivate people to dress up in black bloc attire in order to stop riots?

I don’t know. I just think it’s become a popular aesthetic and people have adopted it that have never experienced revolts before. It’s weird, this group called Minnesota Freedom Fighters — it’s basically like a nonprofit. Their goal is to deescalate riots, but they all dress in black bloc and wear gas masks and have umbrellas. It’s a strange thing that’s been imported from Portland, and originally from Hong Kong and Chile. It made sense in Portland and Seattle, but then once it makes it to places like Philly and Brooklyn it gets isolated from the insurgent activities happening. It’s very bizarre.

In Brooklyn Center, it’s almost exclusively young, Black, poor and working class still out there willing to engage in insurgent tactics. And they are becoming isolated.

Brooklyn Center is 20 minutes outside of Minneapolis and it’s very suburban. That’s what made the terrain really hard for rioting to happen. It’s pretty much a residential neighborhood with apartment buildings. There were two gas stations and a strip mall — that all got fucked up.

You say it was difficult terrain. What was the rioting like in the suburbs?

It made it harder to have a sustained riot that would breach the gates since there weren’t 1000s of people there. There were isolated forms of struggle: shooting at cops, the national guard. Winston Smith is an example of this. It’s not something everyone can participate in — it’s dangerous. But it’s also what’s happening in the absence of mass uprising.

A dollar store got set on fire. That whole strip mall got fucked up and looted. There was a really interesting moment: the owner of a pizza shop was like: I will make you guys some pizza. He started making pizzas for the crowd of potential looters. And that’s how he avoided his store getting fucked up.

There were a couple of militia people with assault rifles trying to protect the dollar general and they quickly got surrounded by young people who were like: you are not going to stop us. And they just walked around them. That was a very intense moment.

There were other people who didn’t have guns who tried to protect property and they just got beat up. The people who were rioting on the first two nights were still in the minority but they were able to do things.

What changed on the third night? Were the militias and peace police more successful at stopping rioters?

I think it was that in combination with police repression: the National Guard was out there; the FBI was out there. We got stopped by people who said they were working with the FBI.

We were just leaving an area where all the stuff was happening and got stopped by like 5 different squad cars. They took pictures of us, our tattoos, our injuries. We had all this stuff in our car (gas masks, body armor), but we didn’t have anything illegal on us. So, they couldn’t actually do anything. They were gathering intelligence. They interrogated us.

Each of us got separated; there was 4 of us. We got put in a different car. They tried to scare the shit out of us saying “you are all getting booked, you are getting processed and fingerprinted, we are impounding the car.” They asked us questions about how we knew each other and how we were connected. Then they just let us go.

People like got away with so much shit last summer that people got comfortable. The terrain has changed and people can’t get away with the same kind of stuff. People weren’t as aware as they should have been

Last year, especially with the pandemic, the State was not ready. That changes what people can do. There will continue to be smaller localized uprisings with short duration, and there’s a limit they will reach very fast.

Beginning with the Breonna Taylor protests in September and confirmed by the Walter Wallace riots in October, the cops got a lot more violent. One result of it is the multi-racial dimension has diminished. Because of the repression. The first time I noticed that was when I was in Louisville in September and it was mainly young Black people out there.

Were there anarchists in the riot?

Out of any political tendency, the anarchists went the hardest, but they were still a small minority. And they weren’t relevant “as anarchists.” The starting point should be what the people in the street that are fucking shit up want to do. It hasn’t been anarchist politics that has pushed people to be confrontational with the State.

What needs to happen next is burning down every police precinct in the United States. So that’s what we push for. We don’t push for people to become anarchists.

Brooklyn Center riot was localized and several months ago. Is it relevant to people in Philly now?

There’s things to learn from it. Things are becoming more atomized, more dangerous and falling into a more general outlaw culture. The impasse experienced in Brooklyn Center is happening in Philly too. There is not a full-blown uprising; instead, you see these more diffuse forms of struggle. When the Chauvin trial concluded, in Philly there was groups of young people on dirt bikes throughout the whole city, with cops chasing after them. It was clearly a form of resistance.

Final thoughts?

People don’t care what you say you are about. It’s whether you are perceived to be part of the riot. It’s those who are loyal to the spirit of revolt and everyone else. That’s the divide. If you are just being a spectator, you might not be so welcome. More than anything, it’s what you communicate by your actions.