TNR - They Say They're Protesters. The DOJ Says They're Terrorists. [View all]
In another life, Dario Sanchez taught computer science at a Dallas-area middle school. Now, he stays offline as much as possible, for fear that his court-mandated spyware may perceive some activitya YouTube thumbnail, a Google searchas violent, thus breaking his bond agreement. Hes subject to random alcohol and drug tests, though he doesnt even drink coffee. He wears long socks to dull the chafe from his ankle monitor.
Sanchez is one of 18 defendants in a vast government case surrounding a July 4 protest outside the Prairieland Detention Center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Alvarado, Texas, a small city near Fort Worth. A police officer was shot at the protest. But, like more than a third of the other defendants, Sanchez wasnt even there. Participants and supporters say that the event was intended as a noise demonstration, and that they lit fireworks to show solidarity with the facilitys 1,000-plus detainees. The indictments have so far claimed that the protesters provided material support for terrorism, categorizing the fireworks as explosives. Five are charged with multiple counts of attempted murder.
This case is the first of its kind since President Donald Trump, in the wake of Charlie Kirks assassination, signed a new national security presidential memorandum, NSPM-7, that instructs federal law enforcement to investigate anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity, a staggeringly broad set of motivations justifying police action to disrupt and disband left-wing groups before a crime occurs. After the Alvarado protest, federal officials were unusually quick to circulate mug shots and term the protest a planned ambush, levying the defendants ties to an anarchist book club and a local chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association, a nonprofit gun club, to claim that they belong to an antifa cell and pull more and more people into the investigations dragnet.
To Xavier T. de Janon, the director of mass defense for the National Lawyers Guild, the implications of this case are alarming. If you attend a demonstration that becomes volatile due to an action taken by someone in the crowdor, for that matter, someone in law enforcementyou could now find yourself on trial for something you had little to do with. Even if you arent present, as was the case with Sanchez, you run the risk of facing potentially life-ruining federal charges. If Prairieland sets the precedent, de Janon said, the state could just accuse you of anything and say you conspired to do [it]. The trial, in other words, could shape the future of protest under the second Trump administrationand the future of American civil liberties.
https://newrepublic.com/article/204190/texas-antifa-protest-case-doj-free-speech-test
That is the benefit of criminalizing an "organization" (Antifa) with no formal membership, no leader, and nor organization - you can prosecute ANYONE for supporting it.
ON Edit: At least the Chicago 7 had to be present at their demonstrations.