Attorney General William Barr told federal prosecutors to “clamp down very strong” on Black Lives Matter protests. 

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This week’s episode: The bad place ([link removed])

The vacant building that once housed the Riverside Academy in Wichita, Kansas, was covered in haunting graffiti: “Burn this place.” “Youth were abused here … systematically.” “This is a bad place.” The graffiti says it all. Why do states send children to facilities run by Sequel, after dozens of cases of abuse?
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Protesters in Las Vegas take to the streets May 31 to demand justice after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Credit: Denise Truscello/Getty Images


** The federal crackdown on Black Lives Matter protests
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Millions of Americans took to the streets to demand racial justice over the summer, staging Black Lives Matter protests in every state. Federal authorities responded by cracking down. Last week on Reveal, Aarón Miguel Cantú ([link removed]) reported on how federal prosecutors aggressively pursued charges ([link removed]) against Black Lives Matter protesters and pushed for lengthy detentions of protesters before their trials. Between late May and early September, prosecutors sought to detain at least 104 defendants pretrial – and judges agreed to detain 62 defendants in all, nearly half of whom were Black. With COVID-19 spreading through jails and prisons, this is an especially dangerous time to be incarcerated. This crackdown started after direction from the top. Attorney General William Barr told federal prosecutors to “clamp down very strong” on the protests and “go after the troublemakers
([link removed]) .”

How did you start reporting this story?

Aarón Miguel Cantú: After the initial week of uprisings following George Floyd’s murder, I saw some people on Twitter posting new stories about felony charges in federal jurisdiction. Because of my own personal experience having gone through that system, I was interested. The Prosecution Project ([link removed]) was the only group that I saw systematically collecting these federal prosecutions. They have a spreadsheet publicly available with all of these cases, so I just started to go through each case, one by one. At that point, I didn't know what I was writing about; I was just looking for patterns. And the one pattern that kept popping out to me was the aggressive pursuit of pretrial detention by prosecutors.

What stood out to you as different in these cases from what you would see in a typical arrest?

Aarón: Something that I sensed and confirmed later by talking to former prosecutors and defense attorneys is the fact that these prosecutions exist in the first place is very strange. You normally don't have U.S. attorney's offices filing charges for things that would normally be handled by local jurisdictions like a state court. If someone allegedly commits a crime, they're prosecuted in the state jurisdiction. Once that matter is over, then the feds step in and file their own indictments. From what I observed, it seemed like the federal district courts were very eager to jump on cases perceived as being associated with civil unrest.

Why does this story feel really important to you?

Aarón: When you study the issue of pretrial detention in the context of countries outside of the U.S., Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International regularly condemned pretrial detention in other countries. I think our understanding of it when it happens in other countries is that it's deeply politicized, that it's unfair and is an affront to the rule of law. But the fact is that pretrial detention in this country has been at extreme crisis levels for a while. One statistic is, like, half a million people are in pretrial detention ([link removed]) across the country in state courts, primarily because they can't afford bail. Ultimately, this story is about a politicized prosecution. It's about using the full weight of the president's office, of executive authority, to fulfill political goals. I think that is deeply corrosive and troubling for a supposedly fair system of justice. I think people recognize the corrupting influence that it can create –
a very corrupt precedent.

You have some personal experience with being pursued by the federal government on spurious charges. Can you talk a little bit about your history there and how it has impacted your reporting?

Aarón: Sure. So during Donald Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017, I was in Washington, D.C., as a reporter with some other reporters. We were embedded in a march that took place that morning in D.C. What ended up happening is that a few of the protesters engaged in some property destruction. The response of the police was to essentially corral everybody to a corner and mass arrest everybody, and then the prosecutors mass prosecuted everybody. I was part of that group of over 200 people who got swept up in that mass arrest ([link removed]) .

The worst part of that experience was the prosecution, which lasted a year and a half. Over the course of that time, we came to learn that much of the evidence prosecutors were using was obtained from (right-wing activist group) Project Veritas ([link removed]) , a very dubious source, to say the least. That ended up actually resulting in all of the charges being dropped, including mine, because the prosecutor was found to have hidden the fact that they had been given so much evidence from Project Veritas. What I learned from that experience was how overly aggressive prosecutions can really be.

I think from that experience, I learned that just because someone is accused of something or charged with something, it doesn't mean that it tells the full story of what actually happened. When I looked through these case files of folks who had been swept up in the prosecutions this year after George Floyd's murder, I noticed a similar sort of lack of specificity in what defendants were charged with.

Is there anything that you think Americans misunderstand or never learned in the first place that your reporting is trying to challenge?

Aarón: I think, obviously, everything about the situation is very polarizing. Everyone in these kinds of situations has narratives that they want to be correct. On the right, you have people who say, “These are rioters, these are domestic terrorists. They’re antifa, they're agitators.” It's not just people on the right, it’s also the president and the attorney general who very quickly advanced these narratives. But then you also have people on the other side, who have their own narratives that they're married to – I think one example is that all of the unrest was caused by undercover White supremacists. That may have been true in a handful of instances, but it’s not the full story of what happened across the country. Reporting on these stories, there are such extreme passions on both sides. All of these people who were charged, they have their own back stories, they have their own histories. They had their own reasons for being out there in the streets that day. I really just tried to lay
the facts out honestly, for people to see and to challenge them to dispel their own narratives.

Read the story: Federal prosecutors hold protesters for months pretrial ([link removed])

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** In the Field
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Get the free In/Vulnerable digital comic book

Over the summer, Reveal published the In/Vulnerable series ([link removed]) : 15 nonfiction comics illustrated by Thi Bui that share real-life stories illuminating inequity amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The comics are based on interviews with people around the country, from an ER doctor in New York City to a Black Lives Matter activist in Baltimore and a man selling luxury bunkers in Texas.

Now we’ve collected the comics into a 38-page book and made it available to download as a free PDF ([link removed]) . The team behind In/Vulnerable wants the series to be used as a powerful teaching tool to help educate people of all ages about the way the pandemic has affected Americans’ lives. Readers can share this digital comic book with classes, workshops, family and friends.

Download the free In/Vulnerable comic book PDF here. ([link removed])

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** Reveal Recommends
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Sarah Mirk is a Portland-based digital producer at Reveal. I help make Reveal’s work look good. I hire illustrators and photographers, lay out articles and write this newsletter.

Listening: I listen to a ton of podcasts, but my favorite show right now is “You’re Wrong About ([link removed]) ,” which examines cultural narratives we collectively got wrong and is also hilarious.

Reading: Since the physical library has been closed during the pandemic, I’ve been devouring audiobooks through the library’s free app. My favorite audiobook of the year has been “Braiding Sweetgrass ([link removed]) ” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, which is a joyful exploration of scientific and Indigenous knowledge of plants.

Watching: I’ve watched more TV in the last nine months than I ever have in my life. One of the funniest and most spot-on shows I’ve seen this year is “PEN15 ([link removed]) ,” which follows two girls in middle school in cringeworthy realness.

You can follow my work on Twitter: @sarahmirk ([link removed]) .
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Do you have feedback for Reveal? Send it over! This newsletter was written by Sarah Mirk (mailto:[email protected]?subject=Weekly%20Reveal%20feedback) , who will share your thoughts with the team.
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