According to Wednesday’s report by The Movement for Black Lives, the federal government targeted Black Lives Matter protesters with heavy-handed criminal prosecutions to try to discredit and discourage the global movement.
Experts and leaders of the movement said that the federal government’s prosecution of protesters in the last year is a continuation of a century-old practice to suppress Black social movements through surveillance tactics and other methods.
The report stated that “the empirical data and findings in the report largely confirm what Black organizers long knew intellectually, intuitively and from lived experiences about the federal government’s disparate police and prosecution of racial injustice protests and related activities.”
The report was shared first with The Associated Press. It argues that as protests increased in summer 2020, so did the police presence, federal agent deployment, and prosecution of those involved.
Titled “Struggle For Power: The Ongoing Persecution of Black Movement By The U.S. Government,” the report details how policing has been used historically as a major tool to deter Black people from engaging in their right to protest and weaken efforts to draw attention to issues impacting Black Americans. It also made a comparison with how the government used Counterintelligence Program methods to “disrupt” the work of Black Panther Party and other organizations fighting to liberate Black people.
“We want you to see how the U.S. government continues to persecute Black people by surveillance, criminalizing protests and using the criminal legal systems to stop people from protesting and punish them for participating in protests by trying to curtail their First Amendment rights,” Amara Enyia is The Movement for Black Lives’ policy researcher coordinator.
Enyia stated that “it is undeniable” that racism plays an important role. It is structurally embedded in the fabric of the country and its institutions, which makes it so difficult to eradicate. It is based on institutions designed around racism and devaluing Black people and Black lives.
The report was published in partnership by the Creating Law Enforcement Responsibility Clinic at City University of New York School of Law. It calls for amnesty for all those who participated in the nationwide protests.
M4BL is also known as the group. It is asking for reparations from government, which include an acknowledgement and an apology for long-standing targeting of Black movements “in support Black life and Black liberation.”
This report also highlights the striking differences in the government’s handling of COVID-19 protests, which were against local government shut downs, and mask mandates during the pandemic. The report analyzes 326 criminal cases brought by U.S. federal authorities in connection to protests following Floyd’s death and the killings of Black Americans by the police, which spans the period of May 31, 2020 to Oct. 25, 2020.
The report’s key finding was that protesters were encouraged to file federal charges because of top-down directives by former President Donald Trump as well as former Attorney General William Barr. M4BL and the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility Clinic, also known under CLEAR, discovered that there were state-level charges that could have been filed against defendants in 92.6%.
88% of federal criminal cases that could have been brought against similar state charges were more severe than those involving the same or similar conduct.
“We witnessed U.S. attorney general Bill Barr change overnight from expressing some degree of sympathy for racial injustice protesters to labeling them radical and violent agitators without absolutely no basis for such characterization,” Ramzi Kassem (creator of CLEAR), said that Barr and Trump used the arrests, prosecutions, and “hostile rhetoric” directed at protesters. “All of it was very transparently designed to disrupt a Black-led movement in support of social justice, which was occurring both spontaneously as well as in an organized manner across the country.
Only 27% of defendants had race data, which is 89 percent. Of that total, 52% were Black. 91% of the Black defendants were identified as male.
According to the report, “The current proportion of Black defendants in America compared with the proportion of Black Americans in the United States indicates that Black defendants are dramatically overrepresented.”
72 cases (22.1%) involved mandatory minimum sentences. The remaining 67 cases (or 20.6%) involved charges that defendants “have attempted, conspired or aided in abetted an underpinning crime without actually committing the underlying crime.”
Portland, Oregon led the charge for protest-related activities, accounting for 29% of federal charges. Chicago, Las Vegas, Washington, D.C., Minneapolis and others followed.
Richard Wallace, the founder of Equity and Transformation in Chicago said that he witnessed excessively aggressive policing from law enforcement officers. They made accusations of looting and rioting against peaceful protesters. Wallace expressed concern for those charged.
“Coming from Chicago where Fred Hampton (Black Panther Party leader), was killed, and where Martin Luther King visited and stated that this was one of the most segregated places he ever saw,” Wallace said. Wallace’s organization, also known by EAT, was started by and for formerly incarcerated or marginalized Black people. It focuses on those who work in the informal economy.
“What we saw across the country and in Illinois was this reverberation Black power. He stated that the state was determined to eliminate that right at all cost, and that it would do so in every way possible.
It also raised concerns about the involvement in Joint Terrorism Task Forces. The report found 20 cases which explicitly referenced task force involvement. According to the report, the government exaggerated the danger of violence from protesters.
Makia Green is a liberation activist and co-conductor for Harriet’s Wildest Dreams in Washington D.C. and fully supports the findings of the report and calls on the government to take action. Green believes that President Joe Biden must fulfill his campaign promises of supporting Black Americans, addressing the root causes behind white supremacy, and pushing for amnesty to protesters. Green stated that Congress must also support legislation to reform the criminal justice system.
Green stated that activists, regardless of the way they are depicted, are people who believe in a better world where people can be safe and aren’t afraid to be killed by the police. Although there are attempts to stop our movement, it is a reflection of our supporters, our allies and the people who came out on the streets last year about how powerful and beautiful this movement is.
