Support hub for Prairieland Defendants
Case information
There’s a lot of lessons to learn from the Prairieland case, where pro-humanity protesters were sentenced to multiple decades in prison for a noise demonstration against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Most importantly, the empire isn’t going to play fair. The judge in this case, Mark Pittman, declared a mistrial and then personally handled jury selection to remove as many people with basic humanity (anti-ICE sentiment) as possible from the jury. A modern “hanging judge”.
Pittman, and the imperial press, also targeted black bloc dress at protests as evidence of “terrorism”. Further, this is the first time a federal court has used the “material support for terrorism” charge for a domestic organization, and the material support involved making anarchist zines and transporting them from a defendant’s house. Its important to recognize the specific targeting of political ideology affects all people with humane politics. Its made possible by the interaction with NSPM-7, which effectively codifies any opposition of the United States as terrorism. This is a time for solidarity, not sectarianism.
The empire will not make a distinction between an Anarchist, Land Back partisan, Pan-Africanist, Communist, or a particularly compassionate Social Democrat. What they’ll be forced to notice is all of those sides showing up for each other in legal defense and court support.
Even better would be community infrastructure built up to be able to safely harbor people accused so that they aren’t captured by the empire. Given the error rate of facial recognition and LLM programs, there’s a high chance the people sheltered are innocent, and all those engaged in principled struggle against the empire deserve support regardless.
On the topic of infrastructure, there’s two glaring issues that all dissidents must note: the liberal individualism expressed by the defendants who snitched and the collaborative organizational models that failed to properly support defendants.
Regarding liberal individualism, the problem here is assuming that one’s interrogator and judge are rational actors that care about things like fairness and following their own rules. In this case, people snitched without even getting an immunity deal, but a reduced sentence from 100 to 15 years.
However, the main way the charges stuck was through the confession of the snitches. The prisoner’s dilemma played out in the empire’s favor, as the confessions included poring over Signal chats, allowing the prosecution to invent whatever reality they wished around the protestors’ intent.
The facts on the ground for the Prairieland case do not support anything near the charges being levied, if any at all, and silence from all defendants could well have saved them outright. Stop Cop City’s defendants who were hit with RICO charges went free, serving as salient evidence for that approach.
However, abandoning liberal individualism is not simply a matter of switching one political position with another, as its a series of reinforced habits built up over a lifetime of being subjected to imperial policy and rhetoric.
To actually break the habit, there must be a consistent political program that addresses these individualist illusions and reinforces the collective reality. This is the empire that broke every treaty it made with indigenous nations and clawed back Reconstruction inside 20 years. Its currently using Ukraine as a proxy for war with Russia, committing genocide of the Palestinian and Sudanese people, and murdering Iranian school children. Cooperation with an entity like that will never save anyone, even if a person got an immunity deal, they’re in the “snitch pool” for life.
More immediate to the Prairieland case, the priority must be keeping trans women out of men’s jails. Conditions for people who aren’t v-coded are much more survivable than those who are, and is a good enough reason to endure the cited sleep deprivation and starvation tactics. That’s nothing compared to the perpetual rape trans women are subjected to in men’s prisons. Or Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Hold out for their sake, as well as one’s own.
There’s a reason for all the international examples, its truly all one struggle against colonization and empire. To embrace those struggles is to be a part of something much greater than one individual. That knowledge will stick in the hard times, when the empire tries to isolate.
Without that theoretical and historical underpinning, where is a person’s mind to go when they’re sleep deprived and wracked with hunger? Themselves! It looks like a 100 year vs. 15 year option, when the options actually range from 100 yrs – exoneration, but depend on others to achieve. When Vo Thi Thang confidently declared “your empire won’t last that long” while facing 20 years, it wasn’t simply that she was an exceptionally courageous individual spiting her captor, her claim had significant material backing thanks to the forces of the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong. Together, they would prove the truth of her bold claim. Vo Thi Thang would go free after Vietnam’s victory against the United States, only six years into her sentence. She would later serve as a decorated member of the Vietnamese Community Party and friend to Cuba.
This leads into the second glaring issue, the lack of support Prairieland defendants received relative to Stop Cop City. The first step in solving this issue is removing the illusion of a “peaceful” or “legal” protest.
There is no safe way to oppose a cabal of genocidal child traffickers. All street actions must have plans for preventing arrest and have funds/procedures in place for jail/court support should those prevention methods fail. Don’t got that? Hold off until that capacity is built. This does not mean requiring several million dollars set aside in escrow for an exceptional circumstance like the Prairieland case, as that’s an impractical demand for organizations that are typically municipal in scope. However, having money set aside for multiple disorderly conduct or malicious destruction of property charges + an attorney on retainer is much more achievable if several local organizations can share the load in securing such services. Its also a hit to the empire’s digital surveillance if these funds can be produced immediately without requiring electronic fundraisers, used to create the RICO charges in the aforementioned Stop Cop City case.
Between this and combatting individualism, there’s a lot that the radical divide in the imperial core needs to learn from each other. Communists and Pan-Africanists tend to have the best internationalist underpinnings, and can do a lot of good leading the education on those issues.
However, many of the more visible communist and social democrat organizations have a lot to learn about jail, court, and prison support from the Land Back movement, anarchists and more militant Pan-Africanist formations. This is exactly the type of quarrel George Jackson urges radicals to settle. Fascism is already here.
One bitter pill that needs swallowing on this front is that collaborative organizational models like the Socialist Rifle Association need to go. Between promoting gleeful Abu Ghraib guard and unrepentant Blackwater mercenary Graham Platner, and a refusal to support their members in the Prairieland case, such a model is an active hinderance.
This is the United States, lots of people know how to use guns. If any organization is going to promote left-leaning politics, provide firearm training, and sell merchandise, those funds need to be available for members facing century-long sentences. Further, the media apparatus that helps produce those funds via merchandise sales must be engaged in supporting those captives and not an open Neo-Nazi running for congress in Maine. If they aren’t doing these things, gun safety and medic training aren’t a good enough reason to keep them around.
Plenty of other people know those skills, and its going to be an uphill educational battle for both the political and practical lessons, regardless. They need to be taught in organizations that understand the nature of colonial repression and have effective countermeasures in place.
There is no peace or accommodation to be made with a cabal of genocidal child traffickers. One must be willing to do the hard work for total revolutionary victory. Those that just want a couple issues changed and/or to operate as a “legal dissident” aren’t ready to leave empire behind. Build with those who are ready, and there will be many more Vo Thi Thangs, and less Prairieland snitches.
