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THE WAR ON PROTEST  
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Adam Federman
April 17, 2024
Type Investigations
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_ Since 2017, 21 states have passed 41 laws enhancing penalties and
fines for common protest-related crimes—part of a wave of nearly 300
anti-protest bills introduced nationwide. _

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Amin Chaoui had been in Atlanta less than 24 hours when things took an
unexpected turn. Chaoui, then 31, drove down from Richmond, Va., to
attend a March 2023 music festival organized by activists trying to
stop the construction of the police training facility known as Cop
City. The sprawling compound in one of Atlanta’s largest urban parks
would require clearing at least 85 acres of partly forested land that
abuts a predominantly Black neighborhood in DeKalb County. It faced
growing opposition from racial and environmental justice advocates,
including an occupation of the forest that began in November 2021.

Chaoui was loosely familiar with Cop City — he’d seen flyers
around Richmond — but hadn’t been involved in the campaign.
He’d also never been to Atlanta, and was especially drawn to the
music. There was also an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at the festival
that appealed to Chaoui, who had started a recovery program five
months prior. ​“I honestly just thought I was going to spend a few
days in the forest and then go home,” Chaoui said.

But before the hour-long AA meeting ended his first night there,
Chaoui noticed heavily armed police officers encircling the venue.
About a half-mile away, a group of protesters had staged an impromptu
march through the development site, setting fire to some of the
construction equipment. As the sun began to set, plumes of smoke rose
above the forest, providing the only pretext law enforcement needed to
round up anyone in attendance. As Chaoui tried to leave, he and about
50 other people were corralled and handcuffed in a parking lot. By the
end of the night, 23 of them were thrown in the DeKalb County jail.

When Chaoui was released 18 days later, he faced a very different
future: He’d been charged with domestic terrorism, which, in
Georgia, is punishable by up to 35 years in prison.

Several months later, in August, Chaoui and 60 others were also
indicted under anti-racketeering laws designed to go after organized
crime, known as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
(RICO). Allegations against members of the group include being part of
a criminal conspiracy among an ​“organized mob” to ​“occupy
the DeKalb forest and cause property damage.” Chaoui has struggled
to find work since then; he’s been relying on fundraising networks
to pay his rent. Chaoui’s relationships with friends and family have
also frayed. As a Muslim American, the domestic terrorism
charge — one of the first results that appears if you search him
online — is an especially heavy burden. ​“My personal life
is in shambles now,” Chaoui told me.

The sweeping nature of the Cop City arrests and charges may be novel,
but the targeting of protesters and social movements is not.
Since 2017 — the same year Georgia expanded its domestic
terrorism law to include property destruction — 21 states have
passed legislation to enhance penalties and fines for common
protest-related crimes, such as trespassing or blocking highways. 

“We’re in a really unique moment with the amount of legislation
that we’re seeing, [with] this legal assault on protesters and the
right to protest in the U.S.,” says Nick Robinson, a senior legal
advisor at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, which
tallied nearly 300 anti-protest bills introduced in state
legislatures since 2017, 41 of which passed.

Many of those laws seemed like direct responses to specific protest
campaigns, says Nora Benavidez, senior counsel for the nonprofit group
Free Press and lead author of the 2020 PEN America
report, _Arresting Dissent: Legislative Restrictions on the Right to
Protest [[link removed]]_. ​“For every
progressive movement — irrespective of its actual
views — there’s so quickly a crackdown that occurs in
language and narrative and law.” 

The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law tallied nearly 300
anti-protest bills introduced in state legislatures since 2017.

Among recently passed state laws, 19 enhance penalties for or make
it a felony to engage in protest on or near energy infrastructure—
a clear reaction to the mass protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline
at Standing Rock in 2016. After 2020’s Black Lives Matter
protests, five states enacted laws — and nine others have
pending legislation — that impose harsh penalties for
individuals who block traffic or even sidewalks. Some states added
laws granting immunity to drivers who strike protesters and extending
liability for crimes committed during protests to any organizations
that support them. This January, in response to growing opposition to
the war in Gaza, Democrats in New York proposed a bill that would
expand the definition of domestic terrorism to include blocking public
roads or bridges.

But it’s not just state legislatures cracking down on protest.
Republican senators have introduced federal legislation, also in
response to protests over Gaza, to criminalize blocking public roads
and highways. Another bill, introduced by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and
ostensibly responding to ​“pro-Hamas leftists,” would increase
the prison sentence for participating in
a ​“riot” — loosely defined as an act of violence
committed by a group of three or more people — from five years
to 10. 

Accompanying these laws is increasingly harsh rhetoric from political
figures to demonize protest movements, characterizing activists as
rioters, mobs, violent extremists and terrorists. Protesters face
other threats too: During the summer of racial justice protests that
followed the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, the Trump
administration openly discussed deploying military force to clear
demonstrations, and protesters in Portland, Ore., were snatched from
the street by federal law enforcement officials in unmarked vehicles,
a troubling episode still shrouded in mystery. More recently,
pro-Palestinian activists say they’ve faced home visits from police
and the FBI. This week, Cotton urged
[[link removed]] people
who end up stuck in traffic due to protest actions to ​“take
matters into your own hands” and ​“put an end to
this nonsense.”

Courts have also struck at the right to protest. Just this Monday, the
Supreme Court announced
[[link removed]] its
refusal to hear a case involving DeRay Mckesson, a prominent leader
in the Black Lives Matter movement. On two prior occasions, a lower
court had ruled that protest organizers like Mckesson can be held
liable for the actions of others, upending decades of legal precedent.
The Supreme Court’s rejection of Mckesson’s appeal means that, at
least for now, it is a huge risk to organize mass actions in
Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

Taken together, says Charlie Hogle, a staff attorney with the
American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, these
shifts will inevitably ​“have a chilling effect on the sort of
important political speech we think the First Amendment is intended
to protect.”

A Georgia State Patrol officer threatens a journalist with arrest at
the Block Cop City march in Atlanta on Nov. 13, 2023, as activists
from across the country rallied at the construction site. (Photo by
Carlos Berrios Polanco/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)

A decade ago, protesters in Georgia and other states who engaged in
civil disobedience — knowingly breaking the law to advocate for
their cause — likely would have faced misdemeanor charges and
perhaps a night in jail. Today, they can spend months in pretrial
detention — as several activists involved in the Stop Cop City
campaign have — before facing lengthy and expensive legal
battles to clear their names. The new laws, stiffer penalties, and
more aggressive policing have, in addition to landing more activists
in jail, had a corrosive effect on social movements across
the country.

Jamie Marsicano, a third-year law student at the University of North
Carolina-Chapel Hill who was swept up in the same Cop City raid that
nabbed Chaoui, had been arrested at protests before — including
during street marches in 2020 — and assumed they’d be
processed quickly and released. But like Chaoui, Marsicano spent
nearly three weeks in jail and had to post $50,000 in bonds to get
out — money that may not be recouped for years. Upon their
release, Marsicano had to wear an ankle monitor for three months and,
after a decision by UNC’s chancellor, was barred from setting foot
on campus or even attending classes online. Marsicano was able to
finish their coursework at Duke and will graduate this
spring — but they can’t take the bar exam in North Carolina or
practice law until the case is settled, which could take years.

Even if the felony charges are ultimately dropped — as lawyers
say they routinely are in protest-related arrests — the threat
keeps activists off the streets and siphons resources away from
political organizing.

“I don’t think the goal is conviction, which is really
sinister,” says Xavier T. de Janon, director of mass defense with
the National Lawyers Guild.

In September, the city of Atlanta published the full names and
addresses of more than 100,000 people who signed a Stop Cop City
petition, effectively doxxing them. Afterward, many locals said
“they would never sign another controversial petition again.”

The tactics have already changed the way movements organize. Activists
in Georgia are now worried about the implications of participating in
routine political activities, such as putting up flyers or circulating
and signing Cop City-related petitions. The fears aren’t unfounded:
Three activists swept up in the RICO indictment were initially
arrested for posting flyers identifying the police officer who
allegedly shot and killed Stop Cop City activist Manuel Esteban Paez
Terán in January 2023. In September 2023
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the city of Atlanta made the unusual decision to publish the full
names and addresses of the more than 100,000 people who signed
a Stop Cop City petition, effectively doxxing them. Afterward,
according to Marlon Kautz — cofounder of the Atlanta Solidarity
Fund, which has provided bail support and other resources to area
activists since 2016 — many locals said ​“they would never
sign another controversial petition again.”

But many states, including Georgia, are now going even further,
attempting to pass new laws that could fatally undermine the support
networks that social movements depend on.

A couple months after the music festival, Kautz awoke to the sound of
his front door being kicked in by law enforcement. The Atlanta
Solidarity Fund’s home-based office, which Kautz shares with two of
its board members, was ransacked, their files and computers seized.
Kautz and his coworkers were initially charged
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in May 2023, with money laundering and charity fraud — though
they have not yet been indicted on those initial charges. But in
August, they were included in the sweeping RICO indictment, which
claims that the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, through its parent nonprofit
the Network for Strong Communities, provided financial support to the
forest defenders and published posts online claiming responsibility
for acts of property destruction. According to Georgia’s attorney
general, these were all acts that furthered the ​“conspiracy.”
(Kautz says he is unable to talk about specific allegations while the
case is ongoing but ​“suffice it to say the indictment contains
claims which are objectively lies.”)

Like de Janon, Kautz doesn’t believe the RICO charges are
intended ​“to secure convictions in the long term.” Rather, he
tells me, ​“It’s to create as much disruption as possible to
protesters and the nonprofit organizations which protect their rights.
And in that sense, these charges are working exactly as intended.”

But Kautz and his colleagues also face another threat. Republicans in
Georgia have introduced multiple anti-protest bills since Cop City
protests began in order to, as one said, send ​“a signal to
troublemakers … that they won’t get a slap on the wrist” if
they ​“engage in rioting” in Georgia. In 2023, Georgia
Republican state Sen. Randy Robertson introduced what was initially
characterized as a bail reform bill, which would significantly expand
the number of offenses requiring mandatory cash bail to include
criminal trespass and unlawful assembly — charges frequently
lobbed at protesters. That was bad enough, says Tiffany Williams
Roberts, policy director at the Southern Center for Human Rights,
which opposed the legislation. But this year, a new clause was added
that makes it virtually impossible to operate a nonprofit bail fund
in Georgia by limiting the number of people that charitable
organizations, including churches, can assist in any given
year — to only three people.

Kautz, who faces up to 20 years in prison and $25,000 in fines if
convicted on the RICO charges, sees the bill as a direct response to
the solidarity fund’s successful work in bailing out
nearly 100 Cop City activists. ​“It was shocking how blatantly
targeted it was at our work,” Kautz says.

The bill passed both houses of Georgia’s legislature. It takes
effect in July.

Dakota Access Pipeline water protectors face off with militarized
police on Feb. 22, 2017, the day their camp was slated to be raided.
At least six were arrested, including a journalist who sustained a
broken hip. (Mike McCleary/The Bismarck Tribune via AP, File)

The anti-pipeline campaigns of the 2010s ushered in a new era of
environmental politics and protest. The Keystone XL campaign,
targeting a pipeline that would have carried oil from the Canadian
tar sands to the Gulf Coast, embraced direct action, including
tree-sits, to disrupt the project’s construction. Though the
movement was committed to nonviolent civil disobedience,
it engendered heavy resistance
[[link removed]] from
industry and law enforcement at multiple levels. In early 2012,
before Keystone XL became a household name, the FBI opened
a counterterrorism assessment of South Dakota activists with a focus
on Native groups and leaders. A second FBI assessment, targeting
Texas activists protesting the pipeline’s southern leg, began less
than a year later. In documents I obtained through Freedom of
Information Act requests, the FBI hypothesized both
groups — whose members they
called ​“extremists” — would move from lawful First
Amendment-protected activity (including attending public hearings)
to ​“violent opposition.”

The language of extremism — many of the FBI documents are part
of larger ​“domestic terrorism” case files — came to
permeate the federal government’s characterization of the
anti-pipeline movement and has dogged subsequent social justice
campaigns. The charging documents in many of the Cop City arrests cite
a Department of Homeland Security classification that characterized
Defend the Atlanta Forest, a group affiliated with the Stop Cop City
movement, as ​“domestic violent extremists.” Similar labels
have been used to describe Black Lives Matter and anti-fascist
activists — labels with serious impact on movements’ ability
to attract new members and how law enforcement responds to
those groups.

The language of extremism came to permeate the federal government’s
characterization of the anti-pipeline movement and has dogged
subsequent social justice campaigns.

Hundreds of individuals were arrested during the roughly five-year
campaign to halt Keystone XL, which declared victory when Obama
canceled the project in late 2015. But none of those activists were
charged, or even threatened with felonies, recalls Lauren Regan,
executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center.

Nonetheless, policing and prosecution tactics escalated sharply during
the Dakota Access Pipeline blockade the following year. In 2016,
thousands of activists, including many veterans of the Keystone XL
fight, descended on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North
Dakota, where tribal leaders had set up ​“spirit camps” in an
attempt to block pipeline construction. The standoff lasted several
months and was marked by violent clashes with heavily armed state and
local law enforcement, National Guard troops and private security
firms. The FBI, according to newly released court documents, deployed
up to 10 informants to spy on the protesters.

The legislative response to Standing Rock was equally severe. In
January 2017, just weeks after the camps were cleared, North Dakota
introduced and later passed two laws expanding the definition of
criminal trespass and dramatically heightening penalties for so-called
riot offenses — an unmistakable response to what had unfolded at
Standing Rock. As with similar bills that have deployed terms like
rioting or domestic terrorism, the language in these was deliberately
vague, giving law enforcement and state officials broad discretion to
target groups whose viewpoints they disagree with. In 2019, a third
law was passed, enhancing penalties for trespassing on or near
critical infrastructure and making interference with pipeline
construction a felony, carrying penalties of five years in prison and
fines of up to $10,000.

What all of this adds up to is that a Standing Rock-style protest in
North Dakota, or many other states, is virtually impossible today.

Nearly 20 states now have similar ​“critical infrastructure”
laws [[link removed]],
which have been supported by the petrochemical and oil and gas
industry and shepherded through statehouses with assistance from the
conservative American Legislative Exchange Council.

What all of this adds up to is that a Standing Rock-style protest in
North Dakota, or many other states, is virtually impossible today.

At the same time, in the more than 20 years since 9/11, many states
have passed or amended laws increasing the number of crimes defined as
domestic terrorism, which can levy exceptionally harsh punishments and
grant law enforcement far greater investigatory powers. Georgia, for
example, updated its domestic terrorism law in 2017, ostensibly in
response to the 2015 mass shooting of nine Black parishioners by
white supremacist Dylann Roof in Charleston, S.C. But the law included
provisions — like classifying as terrorism the disabling or
destruction of critical infrastructure, government facilities or
public transit systems — that had nothing to do with Roof’s
crimes and which were condemned by civil liberties groups as potential
threats to constitutionally protected speech. 

Maine and now Oregon have similar statutes. Oregon’s law, passed in
August 2023, is particularly worrisome, since its definition
of ​“critical infrastructure” extends to public
roads — meaning protest activity that ​“damages”
a highway could be prosecuted as domestic terrorism. What
constitutes ​“damage” Oregon’s statute doesn’t say,
exemplifying how vaguely written laws open the door to
potential abuse. 

“It places a lot of power in the hands of state and local law
enforcement and gives a lot of prosecutorial discretion to people who
may be driven by political incentives,” says the ACLU’s Charlie
Hogle. ​“And that should be very troubling to everyone, no matter
your politics.”

Protesters block the entrance of the Holland Tunnel in Manhattan on
January 8, demanding a permanent cease-fire. Hundreds were arrested
during simultaneous actions at the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan
Bridge and the Williamsburg Bridge. (​Photo by Michael Nigro/Sipa
USA)(Sipa via AP Images)

Donald Trump’s rise to power overlapped with — and in many
ways fueled — the surge in anti-protest legislation, as
his 2016 election was met with unprecedented mass action. The
Women’s March on Jan. 21, 2017, marked what is widely believed to
be the largest single-day protest in U.S. history, with some four
million people taking to the streets in more than 600 U.S. cities.
The day before— Inauguration Day — more than 200 protesters
were arrested in Washington, D.C., and indicted on felony rioting
charges, all but one of which were later dropped. A week after taking
office, Trump signed an executive order banning people from seven
Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, prompting
yet more demonstrations at airports across the country.

This period was also marked by a dark shift in rhetoric, as Trump and
his allies vilified protesters as thugs and referred to
constitutionally protected activity as crimes. During 2020’s
demonstrations against police brutality, Trump reportedly instructed
law enforcement and top military officials to ​“beat the fuck out
of” protesters and ​“just shoot them.” That June, the
National Guard used tear gas and rubber bullets to remove peaceful
protesters from Washington’s Lafayette Square, before escorting
Trump to a photo-op in front of a church.

The following month, federal officers dressed in camouflage and
driving unmarked vans grabbed protesters off the street in Portland,
Ore., and held them for questioning without pressing charges. An
attorney with the Oregon Justice Resource Center told NPR
[[link removed]] it
was like ​“stop and frisk meets Guantanamo Bay.” Mark
Pettibone, one of those detained, wrote that the officers covered his
eyes and he feared for his life. (The ACLU is currently suing the
federal government over what it alleges were unlawful detentions.)

During 2020’s demonstrations against police brutality, Trump
reportedly instructed law enforcement and military officials to
“beat the fuck out of” protesters and “just shoot them.”
Meanwhile, Republicans pushed the Department of Justice to prosecute
antifascist and Black Lives Matter activists under federal
anti-racketeering laws.

Meanwhile, Republican congressmembers pushed the Department of Justice
to prosecute antifascist and Black Lives Matter activists under
federal anti-racketeering laws. ​“We have laws on the books that
prohibit organized crime — the kind of organized crime that
we’re seeing from BLM,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told reporters at
an event organized by the House Freedom Caucus in June 2020. The year
prior, fellow Texan and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz urged Attorney
General William Barr to open a similar investigation
into ​“Antifa,” noting that RICO would enable prosecution of
members of a group ​“even when the government cannot establish
which particular individual … committed a given crime.”

State legislators heeded their call, enacting laws that empower local
officials to charge not only individual activists but also the
networks that support them as part of a broader ​“conspiracy.”
Many of the critical infrastructure bills, for example, include stiff
penalties for organizations that aid — through funding or
direct-action trainings — in impeding pipeline construction. In
Montana and North Dakota, an organization found to be
a ​“conspirator” in protesting on or near critical
infrastructure is liable for fines 10 times the amount authorized
for trespassing.

Still, Georgia’s more recent RICO indictment against Stop Cop City
activists marks a clear shift in government targeting of social
movements. According to the Civil Liberties Defense Center’s Lauren
Regan — who’s representing one Cop City defendant and has
advised others — it’s the first time RICO has been weaponized
this way. There have been lawsuits brought by corporations against
environmental activists in the past, but those were civil, not
criminal, cases. And while Indiana prosecutors tried to use RICO to
criminally prosecute two Earth First! activists in 2009, the
racketeering charges were eventually dismissed.

Ultimately, Regan says, the statute was never intended to be used to
prosecute political activity: ​“Historically, we do not place
political protests in the same bucket as gang drug dealers.”

But now, regardless of whether Georgia prevails in its case, other
states could follow suit.

“The notoriety and the commitment of resources to these cases in
Georgia have made a lot of states look at their RICO statutes,”
says Regan, and think of them ​“as a potential tool.”

Pro-Palestine protesters block the main expressway leading to JFK
Airport, leading to dozens of arrests. The protesters demand immediate
ceasefire in Gaza, the right to return, and freedom of movement for
Palestinians. (Photo by Olga Fedorova / SOPA Images/Sipa USA)(Sipa via
AP Images)

On Nov.2, 2023, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and allied groups in
Durham, N.C., staged a protest that brought rush hour traffic on
Highway 147 to a standstill. About 50 protesters occupied two
lanes of the highway, calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, for
two and a half hours. 

“The political mainstream doesn’t like it when people awaken the
conscience of the nation,” Tema Okun, a JVP member who participated
in the protest (but did not block traffic), tells me,
but ​“it’s deeply American to protest like this.”

Two months later, North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis and Tennessee Sen.
Marsha Blackburn, both Republicans, introduced the Safe and Open
Streets Act, which would make it a federal crime to block a public
road or highway or, crucially, to ​“attempt to conspire to do
so” — a clause which implicates any individual or group that
might help plan such an action. A press release for the bill, which
describes groups protesting U.S. support for Israel as ​“Hamas
sympathizers,” said the legislation was a ​“direct response to
radical tactics of pro-Palestine protesters.”

The Tillis-Blackburn bill is part of a wider effort among state and
federal lawmakers to subvert the growing opposition to U.S. support
for Israel’s war in Gaza. Since the Hamas attack on southern Israel
on October 7, and Israel’s retaliatory assault (which has killed
more than 33,000 Palestinians), mass civil disobedience has been one
of the most visible ways for people to express discontent.

These campaigns, many led by progressive Jewish groups, have been met
with reactionary rhetoric equating any support for Palestine with
Hamas and a new round of legislation criminalizing dissent. Sen. Tom
Cotton, who called for deploying the military against Black Lives
Matter protests in 2020 and giving ​“no quarter” to
participants in protests that turn violent, also introduced a bill
this March: the ​“Stop Pro-Terrorist Riots Now Act,”
against ​“pro-Hamas mobs.” And Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.),
Trump’s former interior secretary, proposed legislation that
would ​“expel Palestinians” from the country.

When Sens. Tillis and Blackburn introduced their bill, Tillis declared
that blocking roads or bridges — common protest tactics going
back at least to the civil rights era — ​“needs to be
a crime throughout the country.”

Soon, it may be. 

New York’s bill, introduced by Democratic lawmakers, is perhaps the
most extreme, declaring that blocking public roads, bridges or
transportation facilities — or even “act[ing] with the
intent” to do so — is a form of domestic terrorism.

Alaska, Arizona, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Washington and West
Virginia have all introduced bills in recent months 
[[link removed]]to
criminalize blocking roads or highways during protest, with some
lawmakers explicitly referencing pro-Palestinian protests as
justification. In Tennessee, which already criminalized highway
protests, Republicans have proposed an enhancement measure that would
make the offense a Class D felony, punishable by up to 12 years in
prison and a $5,000 fine. (South Dakota, Oklahoma, Iowa, Florida and
Arkansas have already passed similar bills, and Massachusetts may soon
follow.) New York’s bill, introduced by Democratic lawmakers, is
perhaps the most extreme, declaring that blocking public roads,
bridges or transportation facilities — or even ​“act[ing]
with the intent” to do so — is a form of domestic terrorism.

Even if these bills fail, they contribute to a climate of
intimidation that chills speech and deters people from taking action.
The crackdown has been more explicit on college campuses, amounting to
what JVP executive director Stefanie Fox describes as a new form of
McCarthyism, as student protesters have been doxxed, suspended and
threatened with deportation. In early November 2023, Brandeis became
the first private university to ban its chapter of Students for
Justice in Palestine (SJP); a week later, George Washington
University followed suit. Around the same time, Columbia University
temporarily suspended its SJP and JVP chapters. More recently,
Columbia and American University have drafted policies severely
limiting when and where students can protest.

Meanwhile, Florida’s public university system ordered the
deactivation of all SJP chapters, claiming the group’s activism
amounted to ​“material support” for terrorists, a felony under
Florida law. (The order was challenged by the ACLU and has since been
walked back by the chancellor, but the deactivation order remains on
the university system’s website.) And a growing number of states
have passed laws defining antisemitism in ways that limit criticism of
Israel and stifle academic freedom

All of this is happening at a particularly volatile and perilous
moment in U.S. history. The movement opposing U.S. policy toward
Israel is attracting ​“hundreds of thousands” of new
supporters, says Fox, but that’s also coming at ​“a time where
the Right is really experimenting and trying to build new tactics and
legislative tools of repression.”

In Democratically controlled Chicago, pro-Palestinian groups have
already been denied permits to protest outside this summer’s
Democratic National Convention — an echo of the violent clashes
between protesters and police at the 1968 convention, which also
concerned racial discrimination and an unjust war. Organizers have
declared that, even if Chicago refuses to allow them near the
convention center, the march will take place, ​“permit
or not.”

The FBI has already been knocking on doors in Chicago, home to the
largest Palestinian American diaspora community in the country.

But the FBI has already been knocking on doors in Chicago, home to the
largest Palestinian American diaspora community in the country, with
roots dating back to the late 19th century. Muhammad Sankari,
a Chicago-based organizer with the U.S. Palestinian Community
Network, says at least two Yemeni families and one prominent
Palestinian community leader have faced questioning in their homes by
the FBI and Chicago police, in visits that followed Democratic Rep.
Nancy Pelosi’s January call for the agency to investigate
pro-Palestinian groups’ funding.

The FBI has conducted home visits to members of the Palestinian
community in the past, Sankari says, especially during periods of
social unrest. But the visits now seem particularly intent on
intimidating a movement that’s growing nationwide. In Oklahoma,
three FBI agents showed up at the home of Stillwater resident Rolla
Abdeljawad after she posted comments to her Facebook page critical of
the war in Gaza. The advocacy group Palestine Legal has reported
numerous similar incidents. An attorney working with one of the
Chicagoans who was questioned confirmed that a Chicago police officer
who was present during the visits told them that the FBI again has its
eye on the city’s Arab American community.

The Chicago Police Department did not respond to requests for comment.
In a written statement, an FBI spokesperson declined to confirm
whether the Chicago visits had even taken place or if any
investigations had been opened. But, the spokesperson
assured, ​“The FBI will never open an investigation based solely
on protected First Amendment activity.”

Sankari is not convinced: ​“This sets the stage for the next
phase of repression,” he says.

And what that phase brings will be shaped by what happens this
November. Whatever the outcome of the election, mass protest is
almost guaranteed.

Trump has lamented not having sent troops to quell protests during the
summer of 2020 and his far-right allies have reportedly drafted plans
to invoke the Insurrection Act, allowing Trump to use military force
to crush opposition movements and civil unrest.

Should Trump win — as he well might — he has already vowed
to pursue his enemies with a vengeance and serve as a dictator for
at least ​“day one.” On the campaign trail, Trump has lamented
not having sent troops to quell protests during the summer
of 2020 and has said he’d consider suspending the Constitution to
further his agenda. Meanwhile, his far-right allies have reportedly
drafted plans to invoke the Insurrection Act, allowing Trump to use
military force to crush opposition movements and civil unrest, making
mass action like the Women’s March all but impossible.

The legal landscape has shifted considerably since Trump last occupied
the White House: states have many more tools to go after protesters,
and, as the Cop City arrests indicate, Republican officials are
increasingly willing to deploy existing laws in new ways to conduct
sweeping arrests of activists.

The day after I spoke to Tema Okun, who has been an activist with
progressive Jewish organizations for 20 years, she emailed to say
she felt she had understated the threat posed in this moment. She
wanted to try again.

As more and more laws are proposed and passed to ​“criminaliz[e]
dissent, and as we face a possible presidency by a man who admires
Putin and expresses his penchant for dictatorship,” Okun
writes, ​“we are skating closer and closer to
authoritarianism.” Basic freedoms, once enshrined in the
Constitution, are now at risk of being eliminated. ​“Congress
shaves off more and more rights piecemeal until we find we are unable
to speak aloud our criticisms of government policies and practices. We
slowly become a police state.”

_Type Investigations [[link removed]] is a
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amplifies new voices and offers reporters unparalleled opportunities
to take risks, break news, and effect change. Type Investigations
covers the most urgent issues of our time, including racial and
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human rights._

PUBLISHING PARTNER

_Adam Federman is a reporting fellow with Type Investigations who has
written widely on environmental policy, public lands, and corporate
and police spying on environmental activists. The recipient of a 2020
Fetisov Award for his environmental reporting, he has written for
Politico Magazine, The Washington Post, Wired, Slate, The Nation, and
other publications. His first book, Fasting and Feasting: The Life of
Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray, was a New York Times notable book
of 2017 and a finalist for the LA Times Book prize in biography. _

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informing movements for a more humane world, and providing an
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