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30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

theintercept.com

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Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#421

Post by nylonstrung »

xrd wrote: post #3

Up until now these crazy cases have been rejected by the courts. But this feels like a crack in the dam. A judge actually sentenced someone to 30 years for hiding zines, zines that had been published for years. This was under the pretense hiding those zines was hiding evidence of criminality. And the criminality was worth 75 years. For someone who was at a protest where a federal agent was shot, but was not the shoot…

Insane to think they'd have gotten a small fraction of the sentence had they been distributing CSAM they produced instead

Apparently Marxist film reviews and gardening tips are more criminal than child pornography

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#422

Post by [deleted] »

TurdF3rguson wrote: post #298
s1artibartfast wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still dont see how people could have watched the videos and not seen a clear self defense angle.

It may have been self defense in the moment, but he also went out there looking for trouble and found it.

[deleted]

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#423

Post by TrackerFF »

kubafu wrote: post #401

USA is such a weird place these days. Is there a way back to sanity once this administration ends?

Here's the thing: The traditional / establishment democrats have blindly believed that you can negotiate with people like Trump, because of decorum. Establishment candidates have been more occupied with taking the moral high-road, even if that resulted in loss after loss.

There's this ingrained belief that if you just play nice with republicans, they'll play nice back. And that was valid for a long, long time. The problem is that Trump completely upended that, though he was not the start of it - he's just the natural consequence of populism and the ground that had been fertilized for years.

The reason why Trump has been allowed to hijack the republican party, is because of how the two-party system in the US works. Trump has an iron grip on a sizable number of voters, and thus the GOP had to kowtow to Trump.

Luckily Trump is MAGA, and MAGA is Trump. I fully expect that the current MAGA movement will fracture and splinter into smaller factions once Trump is out. And from the looks of it, they do not have any plan B. No front runner in sight.

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#424

Post by bluescrn »

expedition32 wrote: post #19
Ukv wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 30 year sentence was for hiding documentation [...] it wasn't just "transporting Zines" As far as I can tell, the moving of zines (he was pulled over and had a box in his car) is what's being presented as "hiding documentation" - not something beyond that. > being sought under a federal warrant Timeline seems to be that a warrant was obtained after pulling him over ("Sanchez-Estrada was then arrested on state t…

Chilling effect on demonstrations. If you attend one were someone starts shooting you become an accomplice. And ofcourse this also leaves the door open for a "false flag" incident.

Chilling effect on insurrections.

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#425

Post by anthonybsd »

Alien1Being wrote: post #419

As someone living in a non-US country, I get the impression that Russians and Chinese seem to be safer from their respective governments, than residents of the US. I hope that your country recovers from it's experiment with dictatorship.

> I get the impression that Russians and Chinese seem to be safer from their respective governments, than residents of the US.

What an utterly misguided conclusion to make from the recent news. While the current US administration is just dipping their toes in the pool of authoritarianism, the aforementioned countries have been on board that train for quite a long time. In Russia teenage girls get prison sentences for reposting anti-war Facebook memes, and LGBTQ+ people get hunted down on the streets. China runs actual concentration camps for their ethnic minorities and has the most locked down Internet in the world. And yet somehow you think a ruling from one activist judge in Texas makes US citizens as a whole less safe than that?

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#427

Post by TrackerFF »

Xorakios wrote: post #12

Here's the case: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/antifa-cell-members-con... The 30 year sentence was for hiding documentation being sought under a federal warrant after being called by his wife and asking him to do so. The warrant was for documentation after the protesters shot fireworks to bring out first responders from the ICE facility, and allegedly one of the group shot a responder in the neck instead of th…

Let's not ignore the fact that:

- The group was designated as "Antifa cell", and thus this became a terrorist and aiding terrorism charges.

- The judge went above and beyond to hand out harsh punishments. There's been commentary from previous state prosecutors that the sentences, and how they were carried out, were much harsher than predicted. The speculation was that these sentences are being handed out to be served consecutively, not concurrently.

Would not surprise me if some of them could be appealed as "cruel and unusual punishments" / 8th amendment.

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#428

Post by vel0city »

JackFr wrote: post #155
ipython wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear, the January 6 defendants: - were a group of at least 1000 people - who, among other things, erected a noose on the capitol grounds, brought zip ties and weapons - forcefully overran several capital police barricades intended to deter their entrance - used any weapon available including poles etc to violently attack any police in their way Granted they did not explicitly shoot any federal agents with…

But they were largely convicted and jailed. One absolute moral abomination of a human is responsible for pardoning them. (Thanks founders!) The disparity in sentencing is likely that they credibly set an ambush to murder law enforcement

Yeah but imagine if you were also sentenced for 30 years not because you were there on January 6th but because your friend who was there asked you to pick up all those MAGA hats from his home.

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#429

Post by cmrdporcupine »

pnt12 wrote: post #382
green_wheel wrote: post #334

Even if he did exactly what they said he did, no way that's worth 30 years. But people really need to realize that the justice system has been and never will be "blind" or "fair" or whatever you may think it is. It is wielded by those in power largely as they see fit, so keep that in mind if you're thinking about messing with the feds.

It seems especially bad now. This relativistic mindset is really bad for critical thought: "oh, it was never 100% fair". Well, if it was 80% earlier, it seems approaching 20% now. It's a whole new level.

I think you need to do some research on how the policing and legal system was used against left wing agitators, thought, and organization for most of the 20th century. From COINTELPRO to Eugene Debs being jailed (for speech), it's a pretty clear and consistent pattern and consistent with what was done here and it was done under both Democrat and Republican administrations.

It's just out of people's recent memories because the bogeyman in the last 25 years became Islamic fundamentalist radicals, not communist ones. And because far left politics fell markedly in size and impact after the collapse of the USSR.

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#430

Post by cmrdporcupine »

TrackerFF wrote: post #418
aqme28 wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 30 years for that seems harsh though I anticipate they will be pardoned by the next Democratic Party President. I really doubt it.

The writing on the wall is pretty clear now: Undoing Trump-policies and Trump-legacy should be priority for any potential presidential dem candidate, no mater how center or left leaning. I don't think we'll get a Ocasio-Cortez type front runner, but I don't think you can be a total milquetoast "water under the bridge" candidate to win either. If there is one thing the Trump 47 presidency has shown, it is that traditi…

Absolutely no way. The Democratic party is currently having a public freak out about 3 DSA members winning in NY primaries and about the mayor of NY. They voted en-masse last year to join with the Republicans in congress to symbolically "denounce socialism" in all its forms.

a) That party would rather lose to Trump than let even moderate social democrats have strong influence b) There is no way they're going to bat for left wing agitators in jail.

> I don't think you can be a total milquetoast "water under the bridge" candidate to win either.

Yep, and that's why they won't win. They're going to go out of their way to frame themselves as super moderate reasonable totally not the "radical left democrats" and run someone semi-Republican trying to appeal to the non-existent center. And piss off anybody "left wing" (or even just sympathetic to Gaza) under the age of 40, which is increasingly a large part of the American populace.

Red-baiting and using the power of the police and law against far left organizations is the bread and butter of the security apparatus in every western country since at least 1917. It's only been temporarily distracted by Islamic radicalism and left wingers have been remarkably disorganized and weak since the fall of the USSR.

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