Pig Spying on Refuse Fascism, LA, Hits the Press

July 22, 2019 | revcom.us

 

We received this correspondence from a comrade in LA who sent it as they were building for the July 21 Evening of Conscience in Support of the #Freeway9 and #UCLA5 Defendants—“It’s right to sound the alarm against fascism!” We will have more reporting on these important cases as the week progresses.

A front page of the LA Times broke the story this week about the LAPD spying on Refuse Fascism, and it was picked up and further elaborated in the Guardian newspaper, which has reverberated through local LA news and national blogs like the Daily Kos and the Daily Beast. The media coverage has put a national spotlight on LAPD spying and the use of informants—who conducted surveillance and recorded meetings of Refuse Fascism in the fall of 2017. This came to light during the discovery process of a trial of two members of Refuse Fascism for two protests on the 101 Freeway—as they were calling for massive mobilization into the streets in nonviolent political resistance to drive out a fascist regime that came to power with the inauguration of Donald Trump and Mike Pence. The prosecutors moved to suppress this surveillance in the trial—which despite this ended in a hung jury and mistrial. Aggressively moving to continue to prosecute and send a message meant to chill the kind of protest they most fear—the retrial of Refuse Fascism begins this Monday.

The transcript of the surveillance—which proved that this police investigation was done without cause—is being read at an evening of conscience and culture to raise funds and support for Refuse Fascism by the former civil rights attorney and chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace (ICUJP) Steven Rhode—being livestreamed by Refuse Fascism.

This story that was broken on the eve of this new trial has highlighted a glaring contradiction. At the time the LAPD was investigating Refuse Fascism—there was a string of violent incidents by right-wing fascist organizations. From the driving of a car at high speeds into a group of counter-demonstrators by a white supremacist in Charlottesville that resulted in the death of Heather Heyer—to an independent activist and journalist who was stabbed filming neo-Nazis calling for a white nation in Sacramento, California. Sacramento police did not treat the journalist like a victim. Instead they monitored his Facebook page and sought to bring six charges against him, including conspiracy, rioting, assault and unlawful assembly. “His presence at the protest—along with his use of the black power fist and ‘social media posts expressing his ideals’—were proof that he had violated the rights of neo-Nazis, police wrote in a report.” (Guardian)

As the Guardian coverage pointed out, the LAPD spying falls “into a pattern of police agencies viewing anti-fascist organizing as terrorism, while overlooking the far more deadly and frequent violence perpetrated by white supremacists and other far-right militants… The LAPD did not conduct a similar spying operation on far-right groups while it targeted Refuse Fascism, according to the Los Angeles Times.”

Right now in 2019 when openly white supremacist and fascist celebration of the mass atrocities being carried out by the border patrol are taking place on Facebook and police in New Orleans are calling for the assassination of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—and being fanned by the president of the United States in his calls to "Send Them Back"—Ted Cruz is introducing a Senate resolution backed up by the former chief of the NYPD (Kerik) to designate the Antifa as a “terrorist organization” and utilizing right-wing activists to open investigations against groups like Refuse Fascism, to conduct internet mis-information barrages and dirty tricks that would put Refuse Fascism in this same "terrorist" category.

This is fascism being bolted into place. It’s the very reason why Refuse Fascism, when they alone called this regime what it is, FASCIST—was right to call for the Trump/Pence Regime to be driven from power by massive nonviolent mobilization in the streets day after day until this demand is met. And why the LA Chapter of Refuse Fascism went onto the 101 freeway to call for this in 2017 and 2018, and there is every reason that the call to drive out this regime has to be taken up now! The example and reality of this road to stop and prevent this regime from inflicting further atrocities and putting the very possibility of a future for humanity in the balance, is being demonstrated all over the world—from Algeria, to the Sudan, from Hong Kong to Puerto Rico. Isn’t it time people stop thinking like Americans and started thinking about humanity, and acting with the whole world in mind?