Vice President Kamala Harris at the presidential debate on Sept. 10, 2024 in Philadelphia.Vice President Kamala Harris at the presidential debate on Sept. 10, 2024 in Philadelphia.
On the presidential debate stage Tuesday, former President Donald Trump spewed reliably racist and lie-riddled diatribes about towns being taken over by “millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, for her part, didn’t bother to counter the sentiment, the central ideological violence at the heart of Trump’s message. Harris, albeit in the predictably moderated tones of a Democratic border authoritarian, upheld the right-wing lie that immigration — the migration of poor people, that is— should be stopped.
Both candidates purported to offer diametrically opposed visions for the country’s future. When it came to immigration and the U.S. border, however, only one narrative was available throughout the night: Immigration is a social ill, if not a criminal endeavor, to be deterred as much as possible.
Harris upheld the right-wing lie that immigration — the migration of poor people, that is— should be stopped.
Andrew Muir, the ABC news anchor and debate moderator, set the bleak, hyper-nationalist tone. He opened the discussion on immigration with a lengthy question posed to Harris.
“We know that illegal border crossings reached a record high in the Biden administration,” he said, noting that, since President Joe Biden “imposed tough asylum restrictions” last June, the numbers are down.
“Why did the administration wait until six months before the election to act?” he asked Harris “And would you have done anything differently from President Biden on this?”
This narrative of a “border crisis” was taken for granted from the jump – specifically, that it is a “crisis” for the U.S., not the desperate people who have fled their homes and must face brutal, unforgiving barriers to seek refuge here. Harris answered Muir accordingly, treating migration as a problem of criminality to be policed and fought.
“I’m the only person on this stage who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations for the trafficking of guns, drugs, and human beings,” she said. “The United States Congress, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Senate, came up with a border security bill which I supported.” The bill, she noted, “would have put 1,500 more border agents on the border” and “allowed us to stem the flow of fentanyl.”
The border bill in question was indeed one of the most draconian in recent memory. Harris’s only problem with the legislation, she said on Tuesday, was that Trump had allies in Congress kill it. Meanwhile, Biden’s executive order, cited approvingly by Muir, lowered crossing numbers because it effectively shuttered the southern border, even to asylum seekers — an affront to international humanitarian law and, more to the point, an echo of Trump’s ban on asylum.
The only characters in current migration narratives mentioned by the cable news host and the Democratic nominee were gang members, traffickers, fentanyl pushers, and “illegal” border crossers. Obscured totally from view: the hundreds of thousands of people risking their lives to cross the border to find safety and better lives in the wealthiest nation on earth – a nation that bears significant historic responsibility for much of the political turmoil that has driven people in their millions to flee violence, repression, economic devastation and climate catastrophe in Northern Triangle countries, Haiti, and elsewhere in the first place.
Even typical liberal shibboleths about our “nation of immigrants” were absent on Tuesday night. So, too, was any reckoning with the deadly consequences of hardened border policy. As many as 80,000 people have reportedly died trying to cross into the U.S. through the Southern border in the last decade.
The reality in which a Democratic candidate would advocate for opening borders is, of course, a distant cry from our current cruel and nationalist political quagmire. Harris, the centrist Democratic candidate, does not even mention the economic and social interests served by welcoming migrant workers into the U.S., as the existing population ages and the need for workers, particularly in the care sector, only grows.
From an electoral point of view, too, centrists bending rightwards – appealing to white resentment – has in the last decade only served to strengthen far-right leaders and parties, from Italy, to France, to Germany.
Immigrants, of course, should be welcomed as a point of ethical and humanitarian necessity – of global justice – not only in service of the U.S. economy or electoral maneuvering. As Tuesday’s debate made clear, however, that when it comes to border politics, inhumanity is a point of bipartisan agreement.
Border Rule Race to the Bottom
This race to the bottom on “law and order” border rule is not new. As I’ve previously noted, the Biden-Harris administration is not simply borrowing Republican talking points to appeal to disaffected conservatives. Harsh border policies have been the standard of Democratic administrations for three decades, dating back at least to Bill Clinton’s tenure in the White House.
Clinton’s 1996 immigration laws significantly expanded the United States’ ability to detain and deport migrants with even minor criminal convictions. President Barak Obamarelied, like Harris since, on the racist, classist narrative of only targeting “criminal” migrants, and deported some 3 million people — earning the moniker “deporter in chief.”
Biden’s administration followed suit, shuttering the border this year; introducing a policy in early 2023 to immediately eject asylum-seekers from Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua who cross the border without having previously applied for asylum in a third country; and overseeing the increased use of solitary confinement for thousands of detained migrants.
Former President Donald Trump during the second presidential debate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Sept. 10, 2024.Photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images
While Democrats will participate in this bigoted race to the bottom, it should not be lost on us that Republicans – especially Trump and his allies – will always win. Harris’s grim picture of gangs and trafficking was met by Trump’s obscene, unfounded repetition of the lie that immigrants from Haiti are stealing and eating people’s pets.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” Trump said, parroting a lie posted by vice presidential candidate JD Vance and other right-wing online grifters like Elon Musk about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. On the debate stage, Trump grew ever more outlandish: “The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
The racist myth sits within a legacy of vile slander faced by Haitians in the West, ever since Haitians liberated themselves from the yoke of French colonialism in the world’s most renown successful revolt by enslaved people. Trump and his followers need not know the specific history of racist backlash to play into its violent afterlives.
Muir, the host, did note – in one of only a few mealy-mouthed fact checks – that, no, there were no credible reports of any such incident in Springfield. Yet when the stage is set to treat Black and other migrants of color as de facto criminals, neither Muir nor Harris, nor anyone involved in Tuesday’s performance – or in this entire election – is a bulwark to the dehumanization to which immigrants are subjected.
The rhetoric around the “border crisis,” from the far-right to the liberal center, suggests that the pressure of global migration is bearing down on the U.S. This is hardly the case.
The overwhelming majority of displaced people in the world are internally displaced or in refugee camps near their countries of origin. By comparison to the U.S.’s so-called crisis, around 1.5 million Syrian refugees currently reside in Lebanon, where the total population is only 5.5 million.
I’m not suggesting that, even for a global superpower, it does not take resources and work to settle millions of newcomers into a country, but these are questions of resource distribution priorities. Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, the federal government has spent an estimated $409 billion on immigration enforcement agencies alone, and tens of billions more on deterrence strategies like barriers and walls.
Prioritizing the economic security of our collective lives, and the lives of those who enter the country, rather than “securing the border” through militarized violence, would see such sums better spent.
Vice President Kamala Harris at the presidential debate on Sept. 10, 2024, in Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center.Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
On the presidential debate stage Tuesday, former President Donald Trump spewed reliably racist and lie-riddled diatribes about towns being taken over by “millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, for her part, didn’t bother to counter the sentiment, the central ideological violence at the heart of Trump’s message. Harris, albeit in the predictably moderated tones of a Democratic border authoritarian, upheld the right-wing lie that immigration — the migration of poor people, that is — should be stopped.
Both candidates purported to offer diametrically opposed visions for the country’s future. When it came to immigration and the U.S. border, however, only one narrative was available throughout the night: Immigration is a social ill, if not a criminal endeavor, to be deterred as much as possible.
Harris upheld the right-wing lie that immigration — the migration of poor people, that is — should be stopped.
David Muir, the ABC news anchor and debate moderator, set the bleak, hyper-nationalist tone. He opened the discussion on immigration with a lengthy question posed to Harris.
“We know that illegal border crossings reached a record high in the Biden administration,” he said, noting that, since President Joe Biden “imposed tough asylum restrictions” last June, the numbers are down.
“Why did the administration wait until six months before the election to act?” he asked Harris. “And would you have done anything differently from President Biden on this?”
This narrative of a “border crisis” was taken for granted from the jump — specifically, that it is a “crisis” for the U.S., not the desperate people who have fled their homes and must face brutal, unforgiving barriers to seek refuge here. Harris answered Muir accordingly, treating migration as a problem of criminality to be policed and fought.
“I’m the only person on this stage who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations for the trafficking of guns, drugs, and human beings,” she said. “The United States Congress, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Senate, came up with a border security bill which I supported.” The bill, she noted, “would have put 1,500 more border agents on the border” and “allowed us to stem the flow of fentanyl.”
The border bill in question was indeed one of the most draconian in recent memory. Harris’s only problem with the legislation, she said on Tuesday, was that Trump hadallies in Congress kill it. Meanwhile, Biden’s executive order, cited approvingly by Muir, lowered crossing numbers because it effectively shuttered the southern border, even to asylum-seekers — an affront to international humanitarian law and, more to the point, an echo of Trump’s ban on asylum.
The only characters in current migration narratives mentioned by the cable news host and the Democratic nominee were gang members, traffickers, fentanyl pushers, and “illegal” border crossers. Obscured totally from view: the hundreds of thousands of people risking their lives to cross the border to find safety and better lives in the wealthiest nation on Earth — a nation that bears significant historic responsibility for much of the political turmoil that has driven millions of people to flee violence, repression, economic devastation, and climate catastrophe in Northern Triangle countries, Haiti, and elsewhere in the first place.
Even typical liberal shibboleths about our “nation of immigrants” were absent on Tuesday night. So, too, was any reckoning with the deadly consequences of hardened border policy. As many as 80,000 people have reportedly died trying to cross into the U.S. through the Southern border in the last decade.
The reality in which a Democratic candidate would advocate for opening borders is, of course, a distant cry from our current cruel and nationalist political quagmire. Harris, the centrist Democratic candidate, does not even mention the economic and social interests served by welcoming migrant workers into the U.S., as the existing population ages and the need for workers, particularly in the care sector, only grows.
From an electoral point of view, too, centrists bending rightward — appealing to white resentment — has in the last decade only served to strengthen far-right leaders and parties, from Italy to France to Germany.
Immigrants, of course, should be welcomed as a point of ethical and humanitarian necessity — of global justice — not only in service of the U.S. economy or electoral maneuvering. As Tuesday’s debate made clear, however, that when it comes to border politics, inhumanity is a point of bipartisan agreement.
Border Rule Race to the Bottom
This race to the bottom on “law and order” border rule is not new. As I’ve previously noted, the Biden–Harris administration is not simply borrowing Republican talking points to appeal to disaffected conservatives. Harsh border policies have been the standard of Democratic administrations for three decades, dating back at least to Bill Clinton’s tenure in the White House.
Clinton’s 1996 immigration laws significantly expanded the United States’ ability to detain and deport migrants with even minor criminal convictions. President Barak Obamarelied, like Harris since, on the racist, classist narrative of only targeting “criminal” migrants and deported some 3 million people — earning the moniker “deporter in chief.”
Biden’s administration followed suit, shuttering the border this year; introducing a policy in early 2023 to immediately eject asylum-seekers from Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua who cross the border without having previously applied for asylum in a third country; and overseeing the increased use of solitary confinement for thousands of detained migrants.
Former President Donald Trump during the second presidential debate in Philadelphia on Sept. 10, 2024.Photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images
While Democrats will participate in this bigoted race to the bottom, it should not be lost on us that Republicans — especially Trump and his allies — will always win. Harris’s grim picture of gangs and trafficking was met by Trump’s obscene, unfounded repetition of the lie that immigrants from Haiti are stealing and eating people’s pets.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” Trump said, parroting a lie posted by vice presidential candidate JD Vance and other right-wing online grifters like Elon Musk about immigrants in Ohio. On the debate stage, Trump grew ever more outlandish: “The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
The racist myth sits within a legacy of vile slander faced by Haitians in the West, ever since Haitians liberated themselves from the yoke of French colonialism in the world’s most renown successful revolt by enslaved people. Trump and his followers need not know the specific history of racist backlash to play into its violent afterlives.
Muir, the host, did note — in one of only a few mealy-mouthed fact checks — that, no, there were no credible reports of any such incident in Springfield. Yet when the stage is set to treat Black and other migrants of color as de facto criminals, neither Muir nor Harris, nor anyone involved in Tuesday’s performance — or in this entire election — is a bulwark to the dehumanization to which immigrants are subjected.
The rhetoric around the “border crisis,” from the far right to the liberal center, suggests that the pressure of global migration is bearing down on the U.S. This is hardly the case.
The overwhelming majority of displaced people in the world are internally displaced or in refugee camps near their countries of origin. By comparison to the United States’ so-called crisis, around 1.5 million Syrian refugees currently reside in Lebanon, where the total population is only 5.5 million.
I’m not suggesting that, even for a global superpower, it does not take resources and work to settle millions of newcomers into a country, but these are questions of resource distribution priorities. Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, the federal government has spent an estimated $409 billion on immigration enforcement agencies alone, and tens of billions more on deterrence strategies like barriers and walls.
Prioritizing the economic security of our collective lives, and the lives of those who enter the country, rather than “securing the border” through militarized violence, would see such sums better spent.
Correction: September 11, 2024, 11:57 a.m. ET An earlier version of this article misstated the given name of ABC news anchor and moderator David Muir.
Attendees at a panel following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that found that the Muscogee Nation had remained a reservation after Oklahoma became a state on July 13, 2021, in Tulsa, Okla. Photo: Michael Noble Jr./Tulsa World via AP
Below is an excerpt from Rebecca Nagle’s book, “By the Fire We Carry,” published by HarperCollins on September 10, 2024. Continuing to explore a history she revealed in the podcast “This Land,” Nagle writes on the U.S. government’s forcible removal of 80,000 Indigenous peoples living east of the Mississippi and a landmark Supreme Court case nearly 200 years later that upheld the sovereignty of tribal lands.
When I finally reached the cornfield, the sky was a bluish haze. The field had already been harvested. In swarms, blackbirds ate the broken pieces left on the ground. A spring-fed creek carved out the lowest place. From there, the ground rose east to a grassy knoll and then again east to a distant ridge lined with trees. There was little color in the hard Tennessee dirt and faded stalks before my feet. It looked mournful, as if the earth knew what history it held. When Cherokees were rounded up and forced into concentration camps, this was the largest one. They stayed close to the spring for water. There is no marker.
Whether or not the United States committed genocide against Indigenous peoples is still debated among historians. In 1948, the crime was defined by the United Nations as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” by one or more acts of physical violence. The Cherokee word for our removal is ᏗᎨᏥᎢᎢᎸᏍᏔᏅᎢ. It literally means “when they drove us.” It’s the same word we use to talk about herding animals.
To prepare, the army split logs, drove them into the ground lengthwise, and built 25 open-air stockades. On May 23, 1838, 7,000 U.S. soldiers and militiamen went out into the hills and valleys of Cherokee Nation and rounded the people up. At gunpoint, the militia drove a woman in labor from a remote valley town to the main concentration camp. Even after she gave birth, they would not let her rest. Finally, on a riverbank near the stockade, she lay down and died. Over 15,000 people were herded into the camps. In the squalor, violent conditions, they died in droves. When Cherokees marched west that winter, death followed. People walked over 1,000 miles; their footsteps left a trench in the earth. Although the exact number is unknown, one missionary estimated 4,000 people died between the camps and removal — a quarter of the total population.
“By the Fire We Carry,” by Rebecca Nagle, published by HarperCollins on Sept. 10, 2024.Courtesy: HarperCollins
In the 1830s, the United States decided all Indigenous nations living within its borders needed to leave. Those that refused were forced. Choctaws were herded through waist-deep swamps; parents held their children over their heads so the kids wouldn’t drown. Seminoles who tried to hide were hunted to the ends of the earth. The U.S. army charged Chickasaw Nation the cost of daily rations for deportees who had already died. Muscogee citizens walked through eight inches of snow (many without shoes because the company in charge of their exile lost their winter clothing). Because there was no time for proper burials, the dead were hastily covered in brush and later eaten by animals. Loss of life at this scale is compounded by the children who were never born. After removal, the population of Muscogee Nation steadily declined for two decades.
On my reporting trip to the South, I also visited the public parks and monuments that were clearly labeled and dedicated to this history of our removal. They were no less jarring than the cornfield. The visitors seemed most interested in the architecture of the early-1800s buildings. They walked their dogs. It is a heavy history to truly hold — a weight our public and our government has never lifted.
In 2005, a man on Oklahoma’s death row appealed his conviction arguing the state didn’t have jurisdiction to execute him because he was Native and the murder happened on the Muscogee reservation. Oklahoma argued that reservation no longer existed.
When the U.S. military rounded Muscogee people up at gunpoint and forced them into exile halfway across the continent, Andrew Jackson promised their new home would remain theirs for “as long as the grass grows or the water runs, in peace and plenty.” That promise was not kept. In violation of their treaties, Oklahoma was created on top of Muscogee land. Since it became a state, Oklahoma acted as if all reservations within its borders were abolished. For over a century, the Muscogee reservation was denied. And while that might sound like a reservation no longer exists, that’s not what the law says. The case would ultimately go all the way to the Supreme Court. Although the case was about the Muscogee reservation, I knew whatever the outcome, it would likely determine the reservation status of my tribe too.
On July 9, 2020, the Supreme Court made its decision in McGirt v Oklahoma. “On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise,” the opinion began. “Forced to leave their ancestral lands in Georgia and Alabama, the Creek Nation received assurances that their new lands in the West would be secure forever. … Today, we are asked whether the land these treaties promised remains an Indian reservation for the purposes of federal criminal law. Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word.”
After it was denied for over a century, the court ruled Muscogee Nation still had a reservation. Subsequently, eight other reservations in Oklahoma were upheld, including my own Cherokee Nation. Taken together, our reservations cover 19 million acres — about half of the land in Oklahoma and most of the city of Tulsa. It is an area larger than West Virginia and nine other U.S. states. The McGirt decision resulted in the largest restoration of Indigenous land in US history.
The historic status of the McGirt decision is ironic when you understand what happened legally. The Supreme Court didn’t overturn anything, strike anything down, or change its own precedent. All the court did was follow the law. But still, that was radical.
The Supreme Court didn’t overturn anything, strike anything down, or change its own precedent. All the court did was follow the law.
When it comes to tribal sovereignty, the U.S. government is spineless. Most often when states or non-Native people want something that belongs to a tribe — whether it’s gold, oil, land, or power — they get it. Even when the law clearly protects the tribe. Sometimes our government simply looked the other way. Other times settlers wanted so much that our government remade the law to fit their demands. Greed — not justice — has governed more of our history than we are willing to admit.
Indigenous nations have been governing ourselves since before this country was founded — since before it was even an idea. As the United States was built around us, we shaped it. Since the founding, tribal leaders, Indigenous intellectuals, Native diplomats, warriors, lawyers, and advocates carved out a space in American law through which our inherent sovereignty was recognized. Over the generations, we continue to leverage the legal foothold our ancestors created.
Federal Indian law today is not all good or all bad — rather it is the totality of our history. Embedded in American law are the victories and defeats of our ancestors, and the unimaginable compromises they were forced to make. The legal terrain with which we are left is tricky: The protections Indigenous nations have under U.S. law are not enough, yet we have to constantly fight for those protections to remain and be followed. We demand the U.S. government fulfill its legal obligations to us, knowing it often will not. Native nations don’t have a constitutional amendment or Supreme Court decision that ended our legal subordination. What we are left with is a government that still contains both impulses: The impulse to uphold the inherent and legally recognized sovereignty of Indigenous nations. And the impulse to railroad tribes because it can.
The lesson of McGirt is not that when the law is on our side and we fight hard, justice prevails. The lesson is that although justice for Indigenous nations is rare, in our democracy, it is possible.
In our self-conception, America is a beacon of democracy for the rest of the world. Even when our founding sins are recognized, we like to believe things have gotten better. The story we tell ourselves is one of progress. In reality, our government committed genocide. It has never reformed itself or changed its laws to prevent such atrocities from happening again.
So now, when our government wants to ban Muslims from entering our country, suspend the international rules of war to fight terror, detain enemy combatants indefinitely, put migrants in detention camps, and separate families at the border, it uses principles of federal Indian law to do so. As scholar Maggie Blackhawk has pointed out, the legal doctrines the U.S. created to take Indigenous land still govern how the U.S. treats those living at the margins of our empire. Native history is often treated like a tragic, distant chapter of the American story, and the legal terrain it created like a siloed backwater of American law. But it is foundational.
The Founding Fathers wanted a democracy that, unlike the king of England, would derive its power from “the consent of the governed.” But they also wanted an empire. And so they built both: a democracy that at its center gave every citizen a voice and a vote, and an empire that, as it constantly expanded, controlled the lives and the lands of people who had no say. While over the centuries who was included in that center of democracy changed, the edge of empire never went away. From Indigenous nations, to Guam and Puerto Rico, to migrants detained at our border, there have always been people who lived under the raw power of our government but without the liberties and privileges of our Constitution. Our inheritance as American citizens is a democracy that is often wildly antidemocratic — a government that rules by both consent and by conquest.
When I left the cornfield, I drove north. The side of the road was punctuated with signs letting me know it had once been a route on the Trail of Tears. The small town a few miles north of the internment camp was the army’s base of operations. I got out there and walked a small circle of residential blocks. One of the streets was named after the secretary of war who oversaw the deportation, another after the army general in charge. For a moment, I watched a family decorate their home for Christmas. They pulled green garlands and red and silver balls out of plastic bins. I felt overwhelmed by the weight of it all. And so alone in that feeling.
Attendees at a panel following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that found that the Muscogee Nation had remained a reservation after Oklahoma became a state on July 13, 2021, in Tulsa, Okla. Photo: Michael Noble Jr./Tulsa World via AP
Below is an excerpt from Rebecca Nagle’s book, “By the Fire We Carry,” published by HarperCollins on September 10, 2024. Continuing to explore a history she revealed in the podcast “This Land,” Nagle writes on the U.S. government’s forcible removal of 80,000 Indigenous peoples living east of the Mississippi and a landmark Supreme Court case nearly 200 years later that upheld the sovereignty of tribal lands.
When I finally reached the cornfield, the sky was a bluish haze. The field had already been harvested. In swarms, blackbirds ate the broken pieces left on the ground. A spring-fed creek carved out the lowest place. From there, the ground rose east to a grassy knoll and then again east to a distant ridge lined with trees. There was little color in the hard Tennessee dirt and faded stalks before my feet. It looked mournful, as if the earth knew what history it held. When Cherokees were rounded up and forced into concentration camps, this was the largest one. They stayed close to the spring for water. There is no marker.
Whether or not the United States committed genocide against Indigenous peoples is still debated among historians. In 1948, the crime was defined by the United Nations as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” by one or more acts of physical violence. The Cherokee word for our removal is ᏗᎨᏥᎢᎢᎸᏍᏔᏅᎢ. It literally means “when they drove us.” It’s the same word we use to talk about herding animals.
To prepare, the army split logs, drove them into the ground lengthwise, and built 25 open-air stockades. On May 23, 1838, 7,000 U.S. soldiers and militiamen went out into the hills and valleys of Cherokee Nation and rounded the people up. At gunpoint, the militia drove a woman in labor from a remote valley town to the main concentration camp. Even after she gave birth, they would not let her rest. Finally, on a riverbank near the stockade, she lay down and died. Over 15,000 people were herded into the camps. In the squalor, violent conditions, they died in droves. When Cherokees marched west that winter, death followed. People walked over 1,000 miles; their footsteps left a trench in the earth. Although the exact number is unknown, one missionary estimated 4,000 people died between the camps and removal — a quarter of the total population.
“By the Fire We Carry,” by Rebecca Nagle, published by HarperCollins on Sept. 10, 2024.Courtesy: HarperCollins
In the 1830s, the United States decided all Indigenous nations living within its borders needed to leave. Those that refused were forced. Choctaws were herded through waist-deep swamps; parents held their children over their heads so the kids wouldn’t drown. Seminoles who tried to hide were hunted to the ends of the earth. The U.S. army charged Chickasaw Nation the cost of daily rations for deportees who had already died. Muscogee citizens walked through eight inches of snow (many without shoes because the company in charge of their exile lost their winter clothing). Because there was no time for proper burials, the dead were hastily covered in brush and later eaten by animals. Loss of life at this scale is compounded by the children who were never born. After removal, the population of Muscogee Nation steadily declined for two decades.
On my reporting trip to the South, I also visited the public parks and monuments that were clearly labeled and dedicated to this history of our removal. They were no less jarring than the cornfield. The visitors seemed most interested in the architecture of the early-1800s buildings. They walked their dogs. It is a heavy history to truly hold — a weight our public and our government has never lifted.
In 2005, a man on Oklahoma’s death row appealed his conviction arguing the state didn’t have jurisdiction to execute him because he was Native and the murder happened on the Muscogee reservation. Oklahoma argued that reservation no longer existed.
When the U.S. military rounded Muscogee people up at gunpoint and forced them into exile halfway across the continent, Andrew Jackson promised their new home would remain theirs for “as long as the grass grows or the water runs, in peace and plenty.” That promise was not kept. In violation of their treaties, Oklahoma was created on top of Muscogee land. Since it became a state, Oklahoma acted as if all reservations within its borders were abolished. For over a century, the Muscogee reservation was denied. And while that might sound like a reservation no longer exists, that’s not what the law says. The case would ultimately go all the way to the Supreme Court. Although the case was about the Muscogee reservation, I knew whatever the outcome, it would likely determine the reservation status of my tribe too.
On July 9, 2020, the Supreme Court made its decision in McGirt v Oklahoma. “On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise,” the opinion began. “Forced to leave their ancestral lands in Georgia and Alabama, the Creek Nation received assurances that their new lands in the West would be secure forever. … Today, we are asked whether the land these treaties promised remains an Indian reservation for the purposes of federal criminal law. Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word.”
After it was denied for over a century, the court ruled Muscogee Nation still had a reservation. Subsequently, eight other reservations in Oklahoma were upheld, including my own Cherokee Nation. Taken together, our reservations cover 19 million acres — about half of the land in Oklahoma and most of the city of Tulsa. It is an area larger than West Virginia and nine other U.S. states. The McGirt decision resulted in the largest restoration of Indigenous land in US history.
The historic status of the McGirt decision is ironic when you understand what happened legally. The Supreme Court didn’t overturn anything, strike anything down, or change its own precedent. All the court did was follow the law. But still, that was radical.
The Supreme Court didn’t overturn anything, strike anything down, or change its own precedent. All the court did was follow the law.
When it comes to tribal sovereignty, the U.S. government is spineless. Most often when states or non-Native people want something that belongs to a tribe — whether it’s gold, oil, land, or power — they get it. Even when the law clearly protects the tribe. Sometimes our government simply looked the other way. Other times settlers wanted so much that our government remade the law to fit their demands. Greed — not justice — has governed more of our history than we are willing to admit.
Indigenous nations have been governing ourselves since before this country was founded — since before it was even an idea. As the United States was built around us, we shaped it. Since the founding, tribal leaders, Indigenous intellectuals, Native diplomats, warriors, lawyers, and advocates carved out a space in American law through which our inherent sovereignty was recognized. Over the generations, we continue to leverage the legal foothold our ancestors created.
Federal Indian law today is not all good or all bad — rather it is the totality of our history. Embedded in American law are the victories and defeats of our ancestors, and the unimaginable compromises they were forced to make. The legal terrain with which we are left is tricky: The protections Indigenous nations have under U.S. law are not enough, yet we have to constantly fight for those protections to remain and be followed. We demand the U.S. government fulfill its legal obligations to us, knowing it often will not. Native nations don’t have a constitutional amendment or Supreme Court decision that ended our legal subordination. What we are left with is a government that still contains both impulses: The impulse to uphold the inherent and legally recognized sovereignty of Indigenous nations. And the impulse to railroad tribes because it can.
The lesson of McGirt is not that when the law is on our side and we fight hard, justice prevails. The lesson is that although justice for Indigenous nations is rare, in our democracy, it is possible.
In our self-conception, America is a beacon of democracy for the rest of the world. Even when our founding sins are recognized, we like to believe things have gotten better. The story we tell ourselves is one of progress. In reality, our government committed genocide. It has never reformed itself or changed its laws to prevent such atrocities from happening again.
So now, when our government wants to ban Muslims from entering our country, suspend the international rules of war to fight terror, detain enemy combatants indefinitely, put migrants in detention camps, and separate families at the border, it uses principles of federal Indian law to do so. As scholar Maggie Blackhawk has pointed out, the legal doctrines the U.S. created to take Indigenous land still govern how the U.S. treats those living at the margins of our empire. Native history is often treated like a tragic, distant chapter of the American story, and the legal terrain it created like a siloed backwater of American law. But it is foundational.
The Founding Fathers wanted a democracy that, unlike the king of England, would derive its power from “the consent of the governed.” But they also wanted an empire. And so they built both: a democracy that at its center gave every citizen a voice and a vote, and an empire that, as it constantly expanded, controlled the lives and the lands of people who had no say. While over the centuries who was included in that center of democracy changed, the edge of empire never went away. From Indigenous nations, to Guam and Puerto Rico, to migrants detained at our border, there have always been people who lived under the raw power of our government but without the liberties and privileges of our Constitution. Our inheritance as American citizens is a democracy that is often wildly antidemocratic — a government that rules by both consent and by conquest.
When I left the cornfield, I drove north. The side of the road was punctuated with signs letting me know it had once been a route on the Trail of Tears. The small town a few miles north of the internment camp was the army’s base of operations. I got out there and walked a small circle of residential blocks. One of the streets was named after the secretary of war who oversaw the deportation, another after the army general in charge. For a moment, I watched a family decorate their home for Christmas. They pulled green garlands and red and silver balls out of plastic bins. I felt overwhelmed by the weight of it all. And so alone in that feeling.
The Intercept filed a lawsuit on Monday to force county officials in Pennsylvania to release 911 recordings from the July rally in which former President Donald Trump was injured in an apparent assassination attempt. Despite the public’s “compelling” interest in these materials, Butler County refuses to hand them over without a court order.
Almost two months after the July 13 shooting, questions remain about the timeline of law enforcement officials’ response and coordination, including when rally attendees first alerted them to the gunman climbing onto a nearby roof. Police from Butler Township released body camera footage showing their frantic real-time response from multiple perspectives.
But Butler County insists that releasing the 911 calls might jeopardize investigations into what happened.
“Simply put, there is no accountability without public access,” said Melissa Bevan Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association. “The county should reverse its denial so that the nation has a better understanding of what happened and can work to prevent similar attacks in the future.”
Soon after the shooting, The Intercept submitted a request to Butler County for copies of recorded 911 calls under Pennsylvania’s right-to-know law. Multiple other outlets requested the same materials, including reporters from Scripps News and NBC News, who also filed lawsuits against the county on Monday.
“These records can show us what the crowd saw on that day and how long it took law enforcement to respond,” said Pennsylvania attorney Joy Ramsingh, who is representing The Intercept in the lawsuit against Butler County. “It’s important for the press to be able to go straight to the source of these authentic public records, instead of obtaining filtered facts through polished statements made by public officials.” Ramsingh is also representing Scripps and NBC in their lawsuits for the 911 records.
Butler County denied all three outlets’ requests on identical grounds, citing part of the Pennsylvanian public records statute that generally exempts 911 recordings from disclosure.
“It is the policy of Butler County only to release 911 audio under court order or by subpoena,” a clerk wrote in an email to The Intercept. “Therefore, the request is denied.”
Another crucial provision in Pennsylvania law, however, gives Butler County the discretion to release the recordings if “the public interest in disclosure outweighs the interest in nondisclosure.”
The Intercept’s lawsuit claims Butler County’s refusal to use this discretion qualifies as “bad faith” under state law.
“It is difficult to fathom a case where the public interest in disclosure is more obvious, given the political, historical, and national significance of this assassination attempt,” reads The Intercept’s court petition. “The voting public, regardless of political affiliation, has a keen interest in learning more about the events that transpired at the Butler rally and the government’s response to the same.”
In July, The Intercept appealed Butler County’s denial to the state Office of Open Records. Despite finding there was “a compelling argument concerning the heightened public interest in the records at issue here,” the OOR sided with Butler County, claiming OOR lacked the authority to overrule Butler County’s decision to withhold the 911 tapes.
The Intercept’s lawsuit claims OOR was wrong about its own authority too.
“The entire nation has a right to know how the government responded to this threat against a former president,” said The Intercept’s general counsel, David Bralow. “And The Intercept takes its responsibility to ensure public accountability seriously.”
Nikki was unconscious and her lips were blue when her father Robert Roberson found her in bed the morning of January 31, 2002.
The 2-year-old had been ill the previous week, coughing, vomiting, and running a high fever. Roberson had taken her to the doctor twice and both times was sent home with drugs that, today, would not be prescribed for children her age. The night before Roberson found his daughter unconscious, Nikki had fallen out of bed; he’d comforted her and everything seemed fine. Now, she was unresponsive. Roberson rushed Nikki to the local hospital in Palestine, Texas. Within a day, Nikki was dead and Roberson was quickly accused of having killed her.
The following year, he was convicted and sentenced to death based on claims by medical professionals that Nikki’s death was the result of so-called shaken baby syndrome, or SBS: a diagnosis based on the belief that a certain combination of injuries found in a baby or toddler could only be caused by violent shaking. This theory has repeatedly been disproven by scientific research. Across the country, 34 people convicted based on SBS have been exonerated, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
Texas is currently planning to kill Roberson on October 17. If that happens, he will be the first person executed in the U.S. based on the junk science of SBS — despite a first-of-its-kind law in Texas meant to undo convictions that hinged on science now known to be unreliable.
Roberson challenged his conviction under the state’s “junk science writ” back in 2016, three years after the law’s passage. He was a week away from execution when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stepped in, sending the case back to a trial court. During a nine-day evidentiary hearing, Roberson’s lawyers laid out the flaws that had led to his wrongful conviction, including the fact that SBS had been debunked and that the medicines prescribed to Nikki had likely made her condition worse. Nevertheless, the trial court rejected Roberson’s claim, ignoring the wealth of evidence that he was innocent — and that Nikki’s death was related to her previous illness and not to any abuse. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals then signed off on the court’s ruling and cleared the way for Roberson’s execution.
Roberson’s ordeal is typical of Texas courts’ failures to implement the law as intended, according to a new report from the Texas Defender Service. He is one of 25 people on Texas death row who have challenged their convictions under the state’s junk science writ since its passage in 2013. None of their appeals have been successful.
Robert Roberson and his daughter Nikki.Photo: Courtesy of Gretchen Sween
A Failed Promise
Texas was the first state in the country to create an avenue for people convicted based on junk science to challenge their convictions. A handful of other states have since adopted similar measures, as courts have failed to sufficiently address the problem of flawed forensics. Earlier this year, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor urged more states to follow Texas’s example, writing that such statutes “create an efficient avenue for innocent people convicted based on forensic science that the scientific community has now largely repudiated.”
The Texas statute was an innovation born from a series of high-profile disasters for the state involving forensic science. In the early 2000s, the Houston Police Department crime lab had been forced to shutter its DNA operations amid a rolling scandal that would eventually see the entire lab shut down. In 2004, the state executed Cameron Todd Willingham, an innocent man convicted based on bogus arson science. The ensuing outrage led, among other things, to the creation of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, which oversees forensic practices in the state. And a series of people convicted of killing children in high-profile cases had filed appeals based upon questionable scientific opinions.
It had become increasingly clear to state lawmakers that something had to be done. Legislators had tried twice to pass the law but were thwarted by prosecutors who claimed it wasn’t necessary, before finally passing it in 2013. “Back then there was tons of optimism,” Gretchen Sween, Roberson’s lawyer, said. “Texas got a lot of positive publicity out of this, you know, as a trailblazer.”
“It was promising at the beginning,” Sween said, because the courts paused the executions of a number of people, including Roberson.
There was every reason to be optimistic. State lawmakers had demonstrated that they understood the problem at hand. In laying out the bill before a House committee that spring, then-Houston Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner specifically cited arson and SBS cases as cause for concern. The new law, Turner told his colleagues, would “clarify the standard by which such cases would be judged.”
And yet, the new law would only be as good as the criminal legal system tasked with applying it.
Under the statute, people challenging their convictions file their claims in the court where they were originally tried, and those courts vet the claims. The Court of Criminal Appeals, Texas’s highest criminal court, ultimately reviews the lower courts’ decisions.
In its new report, the Texas Defender Service, which represents people on death row and advocates for the end of the death penalty in the state, concludes that the courts, particularly the Court of Criminal Appeals, have failed to apply the law as lawmakers intended. While the total number of claims filed under the law is not known, of the 74 applications filed and ruled upon by the court over the 10-year period ending in December 2023, only 15 people had received relief. None of them were on death row.
In all, 34 percent of the 74 applications came from people facing a death sentence. Of those, nearly three-quarters were “procedurally barred,” meaning the courts dismissed the case without considering the merits of the claim because the applicant had failed to overcome the myriad legal hurdles that routinely stand in the way of appeals.
“The deadly consequences of this pattern are clear: People may be executed following convictions that rest on faulty science because they are unable to obtain relief,” reads the report. “This is especially concerning because the rate of wrongful convictions of death-sentenced people is quite high.”
Texas’s Court of Criminal Appeals has long been a hostile place for criminal defendants, including those with innocence claims and especially for those on death row. One outspoken critic of the court’s handling of such cases is former Judge Elsa Alcala, who served on the court from 2011 to 2018. In a recent op-ed for the Austin American-Statesman, Alcala laid out the ways the law has failed the very people it was designed to help. “Of people who have sought relief under the law, 80% have lost,” she wrote. “It would be comforting to believe that they lost because their convictions were not based on junk science in the first place; however, the reality is quite different. So many people who lost had incredibly compelling claims backed up by scientists and other experts. Exhibit A is Robert Roberson.”
Alcala told The Intercept that the Texas Defender Service report confirmed a pattern she had observed during her years on the court. There were many cases in which Alcala supported granting relief to a person facing execution only to be outnumbered by her judicial colleagues. The junk science writ was supposed to be a mechanism to get the court to grapple with a specific problem it was largely ignoring. Instead, the court has often interpreted the law in ways that have narrowed its scope.
One of the most consequential examples is the court’s refusal to apply the statute to the sentencing phase in capital cases, a problem highlighted in the report. In a 2016 ruling, the court concluded that the statute only offered relief to someone convicted based on unreliable science, not necessarily someone sentenced on such a basis.
“What bothered me about the junk science statute in particular with respect to the death penalty is that the court just said it wasn’t going to apply it at all to the punishment phase,” Alcala said. “And, that, I thought, was pretty ridiculous.” It’s the sentencing, after all, that decides whether a defendant will live or die. If a prosecutor uses flawed scientific evidence to convince a jury that a person is likely to pose a danger to society, that defendant cannot use the statute to challenge their death sentence. As the report warns, “discredited and unreliable scientific evidence can lead to wrongful executions, which is an irreversible miscarriage of justice.”
Terrifying Indifference
The junk science statute only requires that individuals prove that faulty science undermines their conviction, yet the Texas Defender Service found that the Court of Criminal Appeals has functionally required people to demonstrate they’re actually innocent. Since Texas law already allows individuals to raise claims of wrongful conviction, the court’s actions largely diminish the protections of the junk science law.
And by focusing on innocence, the court has also shown a clear bias toward reviewing cases based on DNA evidence, while largely ignoring the serious problems inherent in a number of other forensic practices — including the debunked science behind SBS.
“The statute recognizes that many scientific disciplines, at one time regularly used to secure convictions, have been found to be riddled with errors,” according to the report. “But new DNA evidence is the only consistently reliable type of evidence upon which the CCA grants relief.”
Although DNA is only available in a small number of cases, 73 percent of successful claims under the law involved DNA.
“DNA evidence uniquely has the power to definitively establish innocence or guilt, making it possible to overturn wrongful convictions based solely on its re-evaluation. Few other types of scientific evidence possess this same conclusive power, even though they can still significantly influence trial outcomes,” reads the report. “This underscores the harm of prioritizing the concept of innocence over evaluating the reliability of the verdict in light of the evidence.”
The report also highlights a systemwide issue: The lack of legal representation for indigent defendants. Without a lawyer to help, it’s nearly impossible for incarcerated people to investigate and properly raise their claims before the courts. According to the report, the Court of Criminal Appeals has denied all but one application that an incarcerated person has filed on their own. Alcala said that, during her time on the bench, the CCA dismissed this concern. “Well, you can sit in your cell and you can fill out this form and tell us what your complaints are,” she said of the court’s attitude. “Now, that is one of the most laughable things I’ve ever heard of.”
The lack of lawyers may be one big reason the total number of applications filed and ruled upon under the junk science law — 74 through December 2023 — is startlingly low. Although the report does not account for applications that remain pending before the courts, Estelle Hebron-Jones, director of special projects at Texas Defender Service, said “it’s still a lower number than expected.”
Alcala believes the lack of legal representation is blocking people from raising these claims at all. “It’s not something somebody sitting in jail can just conjure up by themselves and then present an argument to the Court of Criminal Appeals. So that’s why I think that number is so low. It’s not that there aren’t probably thousands of junk science cases out there. The problem is that indigent defendants are deprived of the opportunity to investigate and pursue their complaint,” Alcala said. “Should it be more like 7,000? Probably.”
The Texas Defender Service suggests a fix to this problem. The report recommends that state lawmakers amend the statute to require lawyers be appointed to incarcerated individuals seeking to file a junk science claim, and to clarify that the statute does include evidence offered during the sentencing phase of a death penalty trial. For her part, Alcala doesn’t think the statute would need amending if the court would properly apply the law.
“I think the junk science statute probably needs to be amended because of the composition of the court,” Alcala said. “But frankly, if you change the composition of the Court of Criminal Appeals, the statute’s just fine.”
Until that happens, people like Roberson, who is just a month away from execution, are more likely to be executed for crimes they did not commit.
Sween recently filed another appeal, citing new medical and scientific evidence that shows Nikki died from pneumonia that led to septic shock. In other words, there was never a crime to begin with. Roberson’s lawyers are asking the courts to step in and halt the execution.
Sween said she understands that people used to believe that shaken baby syndrome was rooted in science. But today, decades of research has revealed that’s not the case. Sween hopes the courts will finally see that.
“Now, how could you just look the other way?” Sween asked. “The indifference of it is terrifying.”
Spycops victims have delivered a letter to the new home secretary Yvette Cooper highlighting a state of crisis in the Undercover Policing Inquiry and asking that she reconsider the arbitrary end date and financial constraints imposed by the last government.
Spycops inquiry in “crisis”, Yvette Cooper must act
Women deceived into long-term relationships with undercover officers, family justice campaigners and other victims of spycops delivered a letter to the new home secretary, Yvette Cooper, today asking her to lift the arbitrary December 2026 end date imposed by her predecessors, because it is plunging the inquiry into crisis just as it is beginning to uncover the truth.
A group of core participants delivered the letter to the Home Office in Marsham Street this morning. The group included ‘Jessica’, ‘Alison’, and Eleanor Fairbraida, all women from Police Spies Out of Lives, Suresh Grover from The Monitoring Group, and family justice campaigners John and Linda Burke-Monerville.
The Spycops inquiry was set up to investigate fifty years of undercover policing infiltrating and targeting a wide range of campaign groups and family justice campaigns.
However, in June 2023, having heard only the first decade’s worth of evidence, the chair released an absolutely damning interim report. He concluded that the secret political policing operations, and the offensive tactics they employed, sanctioned by Met Police chiefs, were unjustifiable and should have been shut down in the 1970s.
Following that report, the Home Office under the previous government brought pressure to bear on the inquiry to bring its investigations to a close and deliver a final report by December 2026, however it is clear that the inquiry does not have the resources or capacity to fairly and effectively fulfil its terms of reference to that timescale.
A deepening chaos
The letter highlights how a compressed timetable combined with ongoing delays in disclosure is creating chaos and unfairness, with non-state participants subjected to punishing deadlines, and unilateral decisions being made by the Inquiry without their input.
It asks Yvette Cooper, the new home secretary, to reconsider the decisions imposed on the Spycops inquiry by her predecessor Suella Braverman which created this situation.
This deepening crisis comes at a time when the full truth of the scandal is just beginning to come out. In July, the Met Police were forced to apologise for their infiltrators’ targeting women activists for fraudulent and abusive sexual relationships, and for their targeting of anti-racist and family justice campaigns.
It is vital that the Spycops inquiry listens to its ‘Core Participants’, stops cutting corners, and is given the time and resources it needs to properly collect and hear all the relevant evidence.
The Spycops report may not even be credible
Jessica from Police Spies Out of Lives said today:
There were massive delays at the start of this investigation. They spent nine years and over £82 million mainly on undercover officers’ applications for anonymity and State applications for secrecy and that process is still ongoing. Now the victims in this Inquiry are being squeezed up against arbitrary deadlines. Witnesses are not being given time to view the files before being asked to give evidence and that is causing real distress. The disparity in time given to us and to the state is completely unfair.
For the final report to be credible, core participants and the public must have confidence in the Inquiry process. The scope of these human rights abuses and how they were allowed to happen must be fully understood if we are to ensure they cannot happen again.
Suresh Grover from The Monitoring Group added:
We urge the new Home Secretary to personally intervene to ensure that this Inquiry achieves what it was set to do – to examine policing spying of campaigns and protests and its disastrous implications for democracy thoroughly without cutting corners. It’s in her power to fix this.
Core Participants are asking Yvette Cooper to meet with them urgently to explore ways to ensure the Spycops inquiry is able to meet its Terms of Reference and that victims are treated fairly.
In July 2014, shortly after the kickoff of Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” in the Gaza Strip — a 51-day affair that ultimately killed 2251 Palestinians, including 551 children — Danish journalist Nikolaj Krak penned a dispatch from Israel for the Copenhagen-based Kristeligt Dagblad newspaper.
Describing the scene on a hill on the outskirts of the Israeli city of Sderot near the Gaza border, Krak noted that the area had been “transformed into something that most closely resembles the front row of a reality war theatre”.
Israelis had “dragged camping chairs and sofas” to the hilltop, where some spectators sat “with crackling bags of popcorn”, while others partook of hookahs and cheerful banter.
Fiery, earth-shaking air strikes on Gaza across the way were met with cheers and “solid applause”.
To be sure, Israelis have always enjoyed a good murderous spectacle — which is hardly surprising for a nation whose very existence is predicated on mass slaughter. But as it turns out, the applause is not quite so solid when Israeli lives are caught up in the explosive apocalyptic display.
For the past 11 months, Israel’s “reality war theatre” has offered a view of all-out genocide in the Gaza Strip, where the official death toll has reached nearly 41,000.
A July Lancet study found that the true number of deaths may well top 186,000 — and that is only if the killing ends soon.
Protests for hostage deal
Now, massive protests have broken out across Israel demanding that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enact a ceasefire and hostage deal to free the remaining 100 or so Israeli captives held in Gaza.
Last week, when the Israeli military recovered the bodies of six captives, CNN reported that some 700,000 protesters had taken to the streets across the country. And on Monday, a general strike spearheaded by Israel’s primary labour union succeeded in shutting much of the economy down for several hours.
Although certain wannabe peaceniks among the international commentariat have blindly attributed the protests to a desire to end the bloodshed, the fact of the matter is that Palestinian blood is not high on the list of concerns.
Rather, the only lives that matter in the besieged, pulverised, and genocide-stricken Gaza Strip are the lives of the captives — whose captivity, it bears underscoring, is entirely a result of Israeli policy and Israel’s unceasing sadistic treatment of Palestinians.
As Israeli analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg recently commented to Al Jazeera regarding the aims of the current protests, “the issue of returning the hostages is centre stage”.
Acknowledging that “an understanding that a deal would also mean an end to the conflict is there, but rarely stated”, Flaschenberg emphasised that “as far as the protests’ leadership goes, no, it’s all about the hostages”.
The captives, then, have assumed centre stage in Israel’s latest bout of blood-soaked war theatrics, while for some Israelis the present genocide is evidently not nearly genocidal enough.
Press a button for ‘wipe out’
During a recent episode of the popular English-language Israeli podcast “Two Nice Jewish Boys”, the podcasting duo in question suggested that it would be cool to just press a button and wipe out “every single living being in Gaza” as well as in the West Bank.
Time to break out the popcorn and hookahs.
At the end of the day, the disproportionate value assigned to the lives of the Israeli captives in Gaza vis-à-vis the lives of the Palestinians who are being annihilated is of a piece with Israel’s trademark chauvinism.
This outlook casts Israelis as the perennial victims of Palestinian “terrorism” even as Palestinians are consistently massacred at astronomically higher rates by the Israeli military.
During Operation Protective Edge in 2014, for example, no more than six Israeli civilians were killed. And yet Israel maintained its monopoly on victimisation.
In June of this year, the Israeli army undertook a rescue operation in Gaza that freed four captives but reportedly killed 210 Palestinians in the process — no doubt par for the disproportionate course.
Meanwhile, following the recovery of the bodies of the six captives last week, Netanyahu blamed Hamas for their demise, declaring: “Whoever murders hostages doesn’t want a deal.”
General consensus over Israeli life
But what about “whoever” continues to preside over a genocide while assassinating the top ceasefire negotiator for Hamas and sabotaging prospects for a deal at every turn?
As the protests now demonstrate, many Israelis are on to Netanyahu. But the issue with the protests is that genocide is not the issue.
Even among Netanyahu’s detractors, there persists a general consensus as to the unilateral sacrosanctity of Israeli life, which translates into the assumption of an inalienable right to slaughter Palestinians.
And as the latest episode of Israel’s “reality war theatre” drags on — with related Israeli killing sprees available for viewing in the West Bank and Lebanon, too — this show is really getting old.
One would hope Israeli audiences will eventually tire of it all and walk out, but for the time being bloodbaths are a guaranteed blockbuster.
Belén Fernández is the author of Inside Siglo XXI: Locked Up in Mexico’s Largest Immigration Detention Center (OR Books, 2022), Checkpoint Zipolite: Quarantine in a Small Place (OR Books, 2021), and Martyrs Never Die: Travels through South Lebanon (Warscapes, 2016). She writes for numerous publications and this article was first published by Al Jazeera.
The Fiji government is backing the appointment of the country’s new anti-corruption chief who was under investigation by the office she now heads, which has left Fijians asking questions.
Barbara Malimali — who was also the Electoral Commission chairperson — was revealed as the new Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC) commissioner last Wednesday.
Malimali’s appointment, confirmed by the nation’s president on the advice of the Judicial Services Commission (JSC) — who report to the Attorney-General — has been slammed as “unbelievable” by one opposition MP, while the opposition leader in Parliament has said it raises “numerous questions . . . that need answers”.
The announcement was causing a stir due to it being unclear if she held the Electoral Commission chairperson role at the time of her appointment — raising concerns about conflict of interest.
But the issue became more critical when Malimali was taken for questioning by FICAC officers on her first day in the job as its boss, sanctioned by the anti-corruption agency’s acting deputy commissioner Francis Puleiwai.
However, the saga became even more bizarre when the government’s chief legal officer and minister responsible for the anti-corruption office, Attorney-General Graham Leung, criticised Puleiwai for not updating him for detaining Malimali.
The crisis over the appointment of the Fiji’s new anti-corruption chief who was under investigation by the office she now heads has been dubbed by local media as “Barbara-gate”. Image: RNZ Pacific screenshot
In a statement, Leung said Puleiwai — who resigned later on the same day Malimali was detained, stating that she would “not be able to work in that institution when we know that a suspect is there” — was “legally obliged” to advise him of the activities of FICAC.
“This matter is particularly sensitive since Ms Puleiwai was herself an applicant for the position of commissioner. She was unsuccessful,” Leung said in a statement.
“As acting deputy commissioner, Ms Puleiwai has no role in the appointment of the commissioner. If Ms Pulewai has a problem with the appointment then, like every other public official or citizen, she has the right of access to the courts,” said.
He said Malimali still “has the responsibilities and powers of Commissioner” despite the investigation and was “entitled to the presumption of innocence”.
“I am concerned with a worrying trend in this country of maligning people based on rumours and innuendo,” he said.
“Trial and conviction by whispers are wrong and must stop. They run against the very grain of decency and fairness, which is the foundation of a society ruled by law. This is not who we are.”
Attorney-General Graham Leung . . . “full confidence in the integrity of Malimali”. Image: Fiji Govt
In his statement, Leung defended Malimali’s appointment, saying all five members of the Electoral Commission had written to the Judicial Services Commission “expressing full confidence in the integrity of Malimali and explaining the context of the complaint against her for abuse of office”.
“They say the complaint has no basis. The commissioners are persons of high repute and integrity,” he stated.
He said the issue was “particularly sensitive” because Puleiwai was an unsuccessful applicant for the position of FICAC commissioner, adding her actions were “severely open to question”.
Puleiwai has rejected the suggestion that she had a “vested interested”.
“The only interest that I have is for the rule of law to be upheld.”
Resigned acting Deputy Commissioner Francis Puleiwai . . . “The only interest that I have is for the rule of law to be upheld.” Image: Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption
On Friday, FICAC put out a statement saying Malimali was back in office and ready to lead FICAC.
“Malimali is back in office this morning, Friday, 6 September 2024 and is ready to lead the commission,” the statement said.
“Malimali stated that she would not let the events of yesterday [Thursday] deter her from performing her duties as prescribed under the law,” it added.
Meanwhile, Judicial Services Commission has condemned the new FICAC chief’s arrest on Thursday, who it says is “a distinguished member of Fiji’s legal community”.
It remains unclear whether the abuse of office investigation against Malimali has been closed.
It is also unclear when Malimali had resigned from her role as the Electoral Commission chairperson.
RNZ Pacific has contact FICAC and the Electoral Commission Secretariat for comment.
Timeline:
Wednesday, September 4:
Barbara Malimali revealed as the new FICAC commissioner.
FICAC confirms Malimali is under investigation for an allegation for abuse of office.
A former Prime Minister and Labour Party leader, Mahndra Chaudhry denounces the appointment and calls Prime Minister Rabuka to intervene.
Thursday, September 5:
Rabuka tells state broadcaster government has no input in Malimali’s appointment.
Local media report Malimali is taken in for questioning under orders from FICAC’s acting deputy commissioner Francis Puleiwai.
Attorney-General Graham Leung weighs in backing Malimali and slams Puleiwai, saying she “must respect that appointment”.
Leung says Malimali remains in charge despite investigation, which he claims, “has no basis”, according to five Electoral Commissioners who are “persons of high repute and integrity”, and Pulewai’s actions are “severely open to question”.
Puleiwai resigns, saying she is “not be able to work in that institution when we know that a suspect is there”, adding “I don’t have any vested interest.”
Opposition leader in parliament Inia Seruiratu calls the turn of events ‘transparency and accountability under fire’, saying the Malimali appointment situation raises “numerous questions…that need answers”.
Friday, September 6:
Malimali is back in office and tells state broadcaster she would not let the saga “deter her from performing her duties”.
Judicial Services Commission condemns the new FICAC chief’s arrest on Thursday, who it says is “a distinguished member of Fiji’s legal community”.
It remains unclear whether the abuse of office investigation against Malimali has been closed as well as when Malimali stepped down from her role as the Electoral Commission chairperson.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Four Just Stop Oil supporters have been sentenced to prison for up to three years, while one has been given a suspended sentence. The five took action in August 2022, demanding the UK government immediately halts all licensing and consents for new fossil fuel exploration and extraction.
Just Stop Oil: five sentenced, four sent to jail
Sam Johnson, Larch Maxey, Joe Howlett, Christopher Bennett, and Autumn Wharrie appeared before Judge Graham in Basildon Crown Court on Friday 6 September, after they were found guilty in March of ‘conspiracy to cause a public nuisance’, a statutory offence under the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.
Sam Johnson and Christopher Bennett were sentenced to 18 months, Larch Maxey was sentenced to three years and Joe Howlett was sentenced to 15 months, whilst Autumn Wharrie received a suspended sentence.
Just Stop Oil had taken action by occupying tunnels dug under the road leading to the Navigator Oil Terminal in Thurrock, Essex. This occurred simultaneously with three other tunnelling actions in Essex and Warwickshire, as well as occupations of oil trucks and terminals overground. These combined efforts massively reduced the flow of oil in the UK at the time.
Xavier Trimmer-Gonzalez took action with the group, but died in 2023 after taking his own life whilst under strict curfew and being subject to invasive electronic monitoring. Xavi spent time in prison on remand following his actions with Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil. Friends of Xavi reported that his isolation due to strict bail conditions and the threat of returning to prison was a major factor in the deterioration of his mental health.
A Just Stop Oil spokesperson said:
Xavi was loved for his bright spirit, his strength, his humour and wit. Those who had the joy of knowing him and sharing his life, continue to feel his loss every day. Xavi took action with a sense of service and love. He demanded a future worth living and for that the state sent him, with many others, to prison. If the judiciary continues to imprison and penalise good, courageous people, then the mental burden visited on our young people will only increase.
The group join 21 other Just Stop Oil political prisoners, including the Whole Truth Five who were sentenced to 4-5 years in prison in June at Southwark Crown Court, in the longest ever sentences handed out for nonviolent climate action.
Punished for taking action over the climate crisis
Sam Johnson said before the sentencing:
Two years ago, I took part in an action digging tunnels to block the Navigator oil terminal. I did this to protect my nephew Alex, who was six at the time. He’s now eight years old, and in these past two years, we’ve watched climate breakdown unfold in real time.
The reality is so terrifying it’s almost unimaginable – and that’s part of the problem. Make no mistake: this crisis will affect every single human alive today, and far sooner than most people think.
It’s time to ask ourselves: What do we truly hold dear? What are we willing to fight for? Because we could lose it all.
The group remained in the 52-foot tunnel for 13 days. At the time, Chief Constable of Essex Police, BJ Harrington, recognised in a statement that the climate crisis is a “serious concern”, however, Essex police put the lives of the action takers and motorists at risk by opening the roads over the tunnel.
At the time, action taker Joe Howlett said:
The climate crisis is caused by a very small minority of people and it’s those same people who are currently profiteering from the cost of living crisis. That’s why I’ve spent the last ten days living in a tunnel under a road leading to the Navigator oil terminal in Essex.
UK prisons overflowing – but let’s jail Just Stop Oil
Today’s sentencing comes as the Copernicus Climate Change Service has confirmed that Summer 2024 was the Earth’s hottest on record. August was the 13th month in a 14-month period where the global average temperature exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
It is increasingly likely that 2024 will be the hottest year on record globally, according to the EU’s climate service. The United Nations’ weather and climate agency chief, Celeste Saulo, of the World Meteorological Organisation, warned that spiralling temperatures should trigger a global “red alert.”
Meanwhile, the prison population has reached a new record high. Official figures showed there were 88,521 people imprisoned on Friday, 171 more than the previous record set at the end of last week. Ministers are considering sending prisoners to serve sentences in Estonia in order to address the capacity problem faced by British prisons- where just over 1,000 spaces are thought to be left in England and Wales.
62,830 people have already signed Just Stop Oil’s petition calling for an end to the imprisonment of truth tellers. You can join them here.
In the Labour Party governments latest ploy, they are looking into sending prisoners to Estonia in an effort to ease overcrowding.
As reported by Sky News, the government is considering having offenders serve out their sentence in the Baltic state. Apparently it is one of many options being considered. Latest figures show that there are only 1,098 free prison spaces across England and Wales – which apparently is not enough. But when they’re aimlessly jailing peaceful protestors – what do they expect?
Highly doubtful sending UK prisoners to Estonia would survive a legal challenge. https://t.co/Hb7MOx8nZ4
Since Labour came into office, justice secretary Shabana Mahmood has been warning that prison overcrowding could mean law and order breaks down. That is unless something is done to alleviate the pressure.
It was also reported in the Express that ‘magistrates have been asked to stop jailing criminals for several weeks’. Men’s prisons in England and Wales nearly ran out of cells last month, with only 83 spaces spare.
Double standards: Estonia vs Rwanda
Recently, the Tory government’s infamous Rwanda policy – which would ship asylum seekers off to Rwanda – was scrapped by the new Labour government. Starmer said he guaranteed he would tackle the issue upstream, by targeting people-smuggling gangs behind the border crossings:
Can Labour explain why it’s bad to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. But good to send prisoners to Estonia? https://t.co/fkth3NWELh
However, anyone with half a brain knows that the smuggling gangs are not the root cause of our asylum crisis. The UK has backed countless wars, destabilised countries across the globe, fuelled the climate crisis, and propped up our global capitalist system.
All of these entrench poverty and colonialism.
To make matters worse, the UK currently offers no safe asylum routes for the majority of people. This is despite being a part of the Refugee Convention – which means its obligated to. This means our government is forcing people seeking asylum into the hands of smugglers.
The smugglers are merely a symptom – they make it less safe for migrants. They are not the root cause – and Starmer is delusional if he truly believes this is the case.
What this shows though, is the complete double standards that Starmer is displaying. He kicked off big time at the Rwanda plan – yet here is his government looking into sending prisoners to another foreign country. They are attempting to put a sticking plaster on a gaping, open wound – and it won’t fix the problem.
Root causes
Arguably, Starmer could now take the same approach now when it comes to prison overcrowding. Tackling the root causes of violence and offending behaviour. Tackling inequality, reducing poverty, and helping victims of violent offences are all proven ways crime prevention strategies:
Perhaps Ministers should visit Estonia and find out what the reasons are for empty jails and emulate such policies to encourage it in UK.
The Criminal Justice System is failing it needs radical reform.
Labour also has plans to continue the Tories’ appeal against the High Court ruling which found the government’s anti-protest laws unlawful. This shows that Labour want the state’s criminal justice apparatus – the police and the courts – to continue to have access to these sweeping authoritarian laws that clamp down on people’s right to protest.
To date, who’s that meant cops have been nicking? Obviously, it has been climate protesters and pro-Palestine activists. So when the government plans to send prisoners to Estonia, that could very likely be a lot of these protesters:
Will it be the sex offenders or the anti-government protesters who get exiled to Estonia? https://t.co/L1Ti7UCZHL
Leave the ones who have not been proven guilty out of prison ..the ones on remand..and speed up the court system …not give some a ‘holiday’ in estonia paid for by the tax payer
By threatening to ship prisoners to Estonia, Starmer is proving he is no better than Sunak. He is placing the worth of prisoners on their ability to be useful and productive – just like Sunak was doing with asylum seekers. If they can’t improve our GPD – get rid. Prisoners don’t contribute to a capitalist society, so obviously we don’t need them.
We also cannot forget, that all prisoners have the statutory right to family visits. This means our government would be responsible for flying family members to Estonia, along with presumably their accommodation. I’m no mathematician, but that sounds pricey:
Loopy policy. All prisoners have statutory right to family visits, so the government will have fly prisoners wives and kids to Estonia and put them up in hotels. https://t.co/vD07f1ikBK
Clearly, we need to find a balance. We should be dealing with violent criminals who pose a risk to society. However, at the same time we should not be punishing those who have been protesting, peacefully.
If we carry on the way we are, the government will be sending disabled people to Vietnam – because we all know that disabled people are useless under capitalism. If we’re not productive, then they don’t need us.
This story was originally published by Invisible Institute, IPM Newsroom, and Illinois Times.
Kyle Adkins was leaving his parents’ house in Kincaid, a small village in central Illinois’ Christian County, to pick up his young children from their mother’s house just a few blocks away on the night of May 8, 2021.
Kincaid police officer Sean Grayson pulled him over — but he wasn’t sure why.
Grayson told Adkins there was a warrant out for his arrest and issued him a “notice to appear,” a document equivalent to an arrest, recommending felony drug charges against him. The case dragged out for two years before it was dropped, and a new investigation reveals the warrant — and other evidence Grayson said he had against Adkins — never actually existed. Body camera footage shows Grayson admitting to the chief of police he had no evidence to recommend charges, but even after the footage surfaced in court, no other department or agency was notified.
Meanwhile, Adkins, who works as a mechanic, had to show up to court regularly for years, face questions about his reputation, and deal with repercussions for his loved ones pulled into his criminal case. He said he even struggled to get formal visitation with his kids while the case was ongoing — and said he’s just now building a stronger relationship with his oldest child, now 11.
Grayson, now 30, would go on to work at four other police departments across central Illinois, the last being the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office, where he would fatally shoot and kill Sonya Massey, 36, in her home in July 2024 after she called the police for help. Grayson shot at Massey, an unarmed Black woman whose family had called police with concerns about her mental health, three times, hitting her once in the head. He’s since been charged with murdering her.
Police accountability and legal experts who reviewed multiple internal misconduct investigations involving Grayson, including Adkins’s dropped criminal case, say Grayson’s misconduct should have sounded alarm bells in Illinois law enforcement long before he applied to work at the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office.
“What happened to Sonya Massey is shining a glaring light on policy changes that need to be made if we are serious about holding the police accountable in Illinois,” said Loren Jones, who directs criminal legal system reform efforts at Impact for Equity, a public interest law and policy center in Chicago.
Legal Loopholes Let Grayson Jump Between Departments
Experts say that instances of dishonesty or questions about Grayson’s credibility should have been reported to state authorities, documented for future background investigators, and that such actions could have prevented the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office from hiring him in May 2023. The state’s new discretionary decertification system, which makes it easier to strip officers of their ability to work in policing, went into effect in July 2022 but has been hampered by delays, according to a May 2024 report by Impact for Equity.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Attorney General Kwame Raoul, and members of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus were responsible for the passage of the SAFE-T Act, which reformed Illinois’ police certification system for the first time in decades. Floor discussion was severely limited on the legislative package, which included provisions that cut off access to some records on police misconduct that were previously accessible.
But despite these reforms aimed at ridding the state of officers with significant misconduct, new reporting by Invisible Institute, IPM News, and Illinois Times shows that little action was taken to stop Grayson from landing new law enforcement jobs in departments across central Illinois. Authorities in several police agencies that documented Grayson’s misconduct internally did not report the problems to the state, as required, or to Grayson’s future employers.
After Grayson left Kincaid and took a job with a different sheriff’s office, a supervisor stated on a recording that he believed Grayson potentially lied on a report documenting his reasoning for a dangerous high-speed chase — but the department higher-ups never wrote that down in their report. Instead, they cleared him of misconduct and found he made a mistake, absolving the department of the requirement to report Grayson’s dishonesty to the state.
Those same officials never even interviewed a female detainee who said that Grayson had been inappropriate with her at the county jail and a local hospital, she said — including about her allegations that he asked her to remove drugs from her body in front of him and pulled back a curtain at a hospital while she was exposed.
Despite this string of misconduct with numerous agencies across central Illinois, none of the existing accountability mechanisms prevented Grayson from landing new jobs in other jurisdictions — and it’s unclear how recent statewide reforms would prevent another Sean Grayson from taking advantage of the loopholes.
“Some agencies are more concerned about protecting the reputation of themselves and their officers than the safety of Illinois citizens.”
“Some agencies are more concerned about protecting the reputation of themselves and their officers than the safety of Illinois citizens,” said Jones, the lawyer with Impact for Equity.
Officials in Illinois have been circumspect about the next steps they intend to take, especially since Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell announced his retirement on August 9. Officials with Pritzker’s office and Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police, as well as members of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus, ignored or declined requests for comment.
“I Thought It Was Gonna Ruin My Life”
Kyle Adkins stands in a park in Mechanicsburg, Ill. Adkins said he was arrested by Kincaid police on charges with no evidence.Photo: Farrah Anderson for Invisible Institute
When Grayson stopped Adkins on the night of May 8, he didn’t have his body camera turned on during the stop, seemingly violating the Illinois Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act. (This would reappear as an issue in Sonya Massey’s case, where the footage comes from the body camera of the other responding officer.)
Some time after they arrived at the station, however, Grayson turned his camera on. The footage — obtained exclusively by Invisible Institute, IPM News, and Illinois Times from the Christian County Circuit Clerk’s office — starts with Grayson reading Adkins his Miranda rights.
Grayson claims he has video of informants making drug buys from Adkins, which resulted in a warrant being put out for his arrest. Grayson then tries to use those claims to convince Adkins to set up controlled buys with other supposed drug dealers in the area.
“Obviously, I got you on camera on two buys, OK?” he tells Adkins. “I’m not gonna lie. That’s why you’re here. That’s why I was able to arrest you today. I have two informants that I busted for something, they did two buys off you. So today, I’ll give you the same opportunity.”
“It’s kind of up to you what you want to do,” he continues. “I mean if you want to work with us, we’ll work with you. We’ll help you out as much as we can. We can never make promises, but this is what we do. Every time I bust somebody small, we try to get someone bigger.”
In an interview, Adkins said he was incredulous.
“I just didn’t understand why he was even like, trying to charge me with this shit,” Adkins said. “You know, I can’t believe it. He just kept saying, ‘We know you’re doing this,’” to which Adkins said he responded, “Well, obviously you don’t, because I’m not doing that. I don’t know where you guys are getting your information.”
In the video, Grayson tells Adkins — who protests throughout that he doesn’t know anyone he can buy meth off of — to consider it, then dials a contact in his phone labeled “Chief Of Kincaid” and asks the person on the other end of the line exactly how he should charge Adkins.
At the time, DJ Mathon was the chief of the Kincaid Police Department; he still holds that position today.
“Is it intent to deliver, just possession of meth, what do we put on that?” Grayson asks the person over the phone, while Adkins sits across the desk from him.
“Did he have anything on him?” the person responds.
“No,” Grayson says.
The person audibly sighs over the phone. “On a ‘notice to Appear’? I would just do intent to deliver,” he says.
“Yeah, there was a baggie, but I wasn’t gonna mess with field testing it,” Grayson says. “I didn’t really care that much.”
“What was it?” the person asks.
“It was just, like, a baggie,” Grayson responds. “But I didn’t really care to field test it, to be honest with you.”
During the video, Grayson can be seen Googling the Illinois Controlled Substances Act and the Methamphetamine Control and Community Protection Act while explaining the preliminary charges he’s planning to bring against Adkins.
A screenshot from then-Kincaid police officer Sean Grayson’s body camera showing him Googling various Illinois criminal laws about drugs as he decides what charges to bring against Kyle Adkins.Courtesy: Christian County Circuit Clerk’s Office
Adkins was released that day with a notice to appear in court. Because his car was impounded, Adkins had to walk home from the police station. On the walk, he said he didn’t know what was going to happen to him next. Court records show that he had only ever received traffic infractions before.
“I thought it was gonna ruin my life,” said Adkins, now 29.
Felony charges of intent to deliver methamphetamines were filed in Christian County Circuit Court on May 17, 2021. State police certification records show that the next day, May 18, Grayson left the Kincaid Police Department.
On a form submitted to the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board on May 19, Kincaid Police Chief DJ Mathon wrote that Grayson had been “terminated,” but that there was “no police misconduct related to [the] termination.” In a later records request response letter, Mathon wrote that Grayson was terminated only because he had declined to live within a 10-mile radius of the village, as required by the village Board of Trustees.
Despite Grayson’s departure from the Kincaid Police, that wouldn’t be the end of the department’s case against Adkins.
Strong-Arm Tactics in Drug Arrests
The day felony charges were filed against Adkins in Christian County Circuit Court, Mathon announced his campaign for county sheriff as an independent, running on a platform committed to tackling drug crimes.
“I plan to go directly after the source of illegal narcotics and go after the thieves that steal directly from Christian County,” Mathon later said in an interview on WTIM radio.
A few weeks later, on July 5, Mathon pulled over Brittney Myers, Adkins’s girlfriend. In an interview with Invisible Institute and IPM News, she said that while picking up a friend from an apartment building next to the police station, she saw Mathon watching her from his car.
“I backed up and he immediately jumped in his car and pulled behind me,” she said. He told her it was for not wearing a seatbelt and because someone had made a noise complaint about the sound of her car exhaust. In response to a records request, Mathon said that no video of the stop exists.
She agreed to let him search her car. “I wasn’t even concerned to let him look,” she said, “because I didn’t have anything.” He found a plastic baggie containing cannabis flower that Myers said also previously contained THC crystals — a concentrated cannabis extract, and a legal substance to possess in Illinois.
In his report, Mathon writes that he had pulled Myers over after seeing her and her passenger not wearing their seatbelts and that while searching her car with her consent, he “found a small baggie in the middle console with a green leafy substance and a white powder substance.”
He writes that he let Myers and her passenger go with citations for the seatbelts and her muffler, and after handling a separate call, “field tested the white substance and it field tested positive for methamphetamine.”
Mathon arrested Myers on charges of possession of methamphetamine on her mom’s doorstep. She spent the night in jail and lost both of her jobs — one at a bar and another at her child’s daycare — after the department posted about her arrest on Facebook.
Throughout Myers’s interaction with Mathon, he “kept asking if [Kyle Adkins] was selling, or if I could get somebody to set up or something,” she said. “I kept telling him, ‘No, I don’t do that. I literally work in a daycare.’”
After further testing by an Illinois State Police lab showed the substance was, in fact, cannabis, the Christian County State’s Attorney’s Office dropped the charges against Myers four months later, court records show.
Brittney Myers in Mechanicsburg, Ill. She said she was arrested by Kincaid Police on charges with no evidence.Photo: Farrah Anderson for Invisible Institute
While field drug tests have become a tool of choice for police departments throughout the country, they are notoriously imprecise and often produce false positives that are “one of largest known contributing factors to wrongful arrests and convictions,” according to a recent report from the University of Pennsylvania’s Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice.
Field tests for drugs can’t be saved because they deteriorate over time, so it’s often left up to the honor code of the officer whether or not the test actually came back positive for drugs, said Ralph Weisheit, a criminal justice professor at Illinois State University who studies crime, policing, and their links with substance abuse in rural areas.
“In many cases, you can claim that there was a drug arrest when, in fact, drugs weren’t there,” Weisheit said.
These kinds of “strong-arm tactics” with potential confidential informants were something that Maybell Romero said she saw frequently during her three years as a prosecutor in rural Utah, before going on to teach law at Northern Illinois University and now Tulane, where she studies rural crime and prosecution.
“I have heard stories of people who have had nothing to do with purchasing or using or selling drugs, who’ve had their identity mistaken — or perhaps it’s not a mistake. It’s hard to know,” she said. Some of these people, she continued, “have been enlisted as confidential informants because they’re frightened of the police, or they’re intimidated, or they’re scared of the legal system, and they don’t know what else to do.”
The Warrant That Never Existed
Even after Myers’s case was dismissed, Adkins would be called back into court over the next year. Then, on September 1, 2022 — five days before the scheduled trial — then-State’s Attorney Wes Poggenpohl filed a motion asking for more time to prepare.
Poggenpohl wrote, “One of the witnesses for this trial, Kincaid Chief of Police DJ Mathon, was reviewing his case file in preparation for trial. On August 31, 2022, Chief Mathon called State’s Attorney Poggenpohl to inform him that he had just located an audio video interview of the above-named defendant regarding this case. Chief Mathon was unaware of this interview until his review of the case file on August 31, 2022.”
Poggenpohl had inherited the case from former State’s Attorney Michael Havera when Havera resigned in December 2021 to accept a position with the Illinois State’s Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor’s Special Prosecution Unit. Havera did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The motion continues, “The officer who conducted this interview, Sean Grayson, departed the Kincaid Police Department sometime after this investigation without sending it to the State’s Attorney’s office.” He wrote that he had not even had a chance to review the file when he wrote the motion. The video was sent to Adkins’s attorney, Christian County Public Defender Tiffany Senger, the next day.
Shortly thereafter, Poggenpohl lost his election bid, and said in an interview with Invisible Institute and IPM News that he wasn’t sure if he ever watched the video before turning the case over to the new state’s attorney, John McWard. He said the video surfaced just before the case was set to go to trial, after he asked Mathon to make sure all of the evidence had been turned in for the case.
In the next court filing after obtaining the video, Senger moved to throw out all of the evidence in the case as “illegally seized” because Grayson arrested Adkins “without a warrant or without other lawful justification,” she wrote.
She also added that the videos of Adkins selling drugs to informants never existed, “and moreover, that they never did,” according to her conversations with the state’s attorney’s office. Neither did the warrant that Grayson said was out for Adkins’s arrest, she argued. Subpoenas were issued by the court for both Grayson and Mathon to appear.
On February 24, 2023, during a hearing over whether to suppress evidence based on the newly discovered video, Christian County Judge Bradley Paisley dug into whether anything about Grayson’s actions was legal.
The judge and attorneys all acknowledged that police can lie to a suspect during an interrogation. Where they differed was whether an officer can arrest somebody by lying about whether there is a warrant out for their arrest.
“That’s quite a stretch. You tell somebody they’ve got a warrant for their arrest. That’s a piece of paper signed by a judge saying arrest this guy for that offense. That’s what [Grayson] told him. And it never existed,” said Paisley, who previously served as Christian County State’s Attorney before being appointed to the bench in 2007, during the hearing, according to a transcript obtained by Invisible Institute and IPM News.
McWard argued that Grayson’s knowledge of the buys the informants allegedly made off of Adkins — which Senger denied in court ever happened, and which no video existed for — was enough to have detained Adkins even without a warrant.
Paisley asked both Senger and McWard to write briefs for him. “The primary question for me is … can you initiate the initial seizure based on the lie?” he said. “If he doesn’t have the ability to lie to get that initial seizure, then the motion has to be granted.”
During the next hearing, on April 21, 2023 — 714 days after Adkins’s arrest — McWard moved to dismiss the charges without the judge ever ruling on the motion to suppress evidence.
When contacted in person at the Kincaid Police Department by Illinois Times, Mathon, who lost his bid for sheriff, repeatedly declined to comment.
How Grayson Kept Getting Hired
Accountability measures broke down in more than one way in this case, police accountability and legal experts said.
When Grayson called the “Chief of Kincaid” and asked him for advice on what charges he should file against Adkins, Mathon — if he was indeed the individual who answered the phone — should have advised him not to file charges without evidence. But, based on the advice of the chief — who is the only supervisor in a department the size of Kincaid — Grayson issued Adkins a felony notice to appear, despite admitting that Adkins had nothing on him.
“His chief that was supervising him, and should have been that second line of defense against these issues happening, just reinforced his decision,” said Jones, of Impact for Equity.
Once the Christian County State’s Attorney’s Office became aware of the video and other evidentiary issues, they also had a responsibility to at least write a report documenting the issues in Adkins’s case, said Rachel Moran, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis.
“If the prosecutor decided to dismiss the case because of Grayson’s untruthfulness/misconduct, then they have an obligation to document that and disclose it in the future,” she wrote in an email, pointing to prosecutors’ obligations under decades-old Supreme Court precedent in the cases Brady v. Maryland and U.S. v. Giglio.
A request for comment to the Christian County State’s Attorney’s Office about why the case was dropped, and whether a report had been created, went unreturned.
However, the responsibility of the state’s attorney in Christian County ends there, Moran said — because Grayson moved to the jurisdiction of other prosecutors.
“Neither Brady nor any other Supreme Court precedent says the prosecutor has a duty to share this information with other agencies, and I’m not aware of any Illinois law requiring this either,” wrote Moran, a former Illinois state appellate defender who has studied prosecutors’ legal obligations under these Supreme Court rulings.
“If Deputy Grayson were to move on to a new jurisdiction,” she continued, “the prosecutor in the new jurisdiction has an obligation to learn about this prior misconduct and disclose it to the defendant in cases involving Deputy Grayson. But in practice, prosecutors frequently wouldn’t know about this past misconduct, probably wouldn’t ask Deputy Grayson about it, and therefore would unwittingly violate Brady by not disclosing the information they don’t know about. And unless defense counsel has some way to unearth this information, they won’t know about it either and thus won’t call the prosecutor out for failing to disclose it.”
Ultimately, she said, “This is a huge gap in the Brady disclosure system and a major obstacle to accountability and fairness.”
Law enforcement officials were also obligated to report the untruthfulness, once it was rediscovered in August 2022, to the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board, or ILETSB, which maintains an Officer Professional Conduct Database.
“Once law enforcement in Kincaid discovered the video and observed a likely violation of” statewide policing standards, wrote Jones in an email, “they would have been required … to notify the ILETSB within 7 days.”
However, according to Attorney General Kwame Raoul, no law enforcement agency had ever submitted a report about Grayson to the database until the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office made a report about Massey’s killing, a fact first reported by Springfield TV station WICS.
Former Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell has said that no red flags were raised during his agency’s background check of Grayson, which, under the SAFE-T Act, is required to include a check of the database. When asked by Illinois Times whether he knew of any misconduct by Grayson in Christian County, Campbell said he didn’t.
Regardless, by the time the video was filed in court, Grayson had already been successively hired by the Virden Police Department, Auburn Police Department, and Logan County Sheriff’s Office.
“The Professional Conduct database relies on the integrity and professionalism of each law enforcement agency to report accurately,” Jones said.
Because submissions to the database are essentially left up to the honor code of police agencies — and largely secret from the public — she said the database has many gaps that leave officers like Grayson able to move from department to department.
“It really shined the light on the glaring issue that we have,” Jones said. “That in order to hold police accountable, we need to have mechanisms that do not involve police.”
“In order to hold police accountable, we need to have mechanisms that do not involve police.”
In the face of calls from Massey’s family and activists like the Rev. Al Sharpton for new legislation, Illinois leaders have declined to detail their thoughts about further reforms to the SAFE-T Act’s provisions. Senate President Don Harmon pointed back to the systems that were already in place by the time Grayson had been hired in Sangamon County.
“We took steps to address this in the SAFE-T Act by requiring law enforcement to report misconduct violations when an officer is terminated or when an officer resigns under investigation of criminal offenses,” he said in a statement last month. “However, our work is not done, and I am open to any ideas for legislative action to prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again.”
In an interview, Senate Republican floor leader Steve McClure, a former Sangamon County assistant state’s attorney, criticized the Pritzker administration for the rushed passage of the SAFE-T Act, and called for a bipartisan legislative investigation “into what can be done to increase the transparency between departments.”
Since Campbell announced his resignation as sheriff in August, which Pritzker had called for, the governor has made few public statements about the case and has not responded to requests for comment for this story.
In an interview with Illinois Times, Raoul, the attorney general, said he hadn’t read the Impact for Equity report describing reforms to the state’s police decertification system — which he noted was supported by law enforcement groups, most of which did not support other aspects of the SAFE-T Act — as “stalled.”
“The murder of Sonya Massey was a horrific tragedy, there’s no denying that,” Raoul said. But he said it may not be fair to expect all parts of the new police decertification system to be fully operational after two years.
It’s unknown whether any failures of that system played a role in Massey’s death, he said: “I just want to be cautious of pointing the finger at ILETSB.”
He was reluctant to commit to supporting any specific legislative reforms connected to Massey’s death unless the reforms would correct problems that have been documented throughout the state. However, he said, “An incident can expose a need.” He added that state Sen. Doris Turner, D-Springfield, is looking into potential legislation to address systemic issues.
After coming up with the police accountability reforms in the SAFE-T Act, Raoul said he and law enforcement groups agreed to “let them operate for a while in order to evaluate whether anything else needs to be done.”
Raoul, who as attorney general has a statutory seat on the board of ILETSB, said he also didn’t know how well police departments understand what they need to report to ILETSB and what disciplinary issues remain under their sole authority.
Carlton Mayers II, an attorney and police reform consultant who worked with lawmakers on some of the original language of the SAFE-T Act, said that the original bill didn’t come with any funding for ILETSB’s new responsibilities, which had to be appropriated the next year. He added that the agency also still lacks administrative rules, which are proposed by state agencies and then approved by the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules.
Those administrative rules would lay out not only the processes for discretionary decertification, but also could also speak to things like what’s required of a department’s background investigation, which right now is only required to include a check of the Officer Professional Conduct Database.
In a statement, a spokesperson hired by ILETSB pointed to its “multiple mandates to implement” for its delay in “the establishment of discretionary decertification hearings.”
“We are committed to leading this work thoughtfully and deliberately to ensure our law enforcement maintains the highest level of professional standards, and have made significant progress in building this new initiative from the ground up,” the statement continued. “We have engaged a range of partners and studied best practices from across the country to ensure we get this right from day one.”
The spokesperson wrote that the agency “anticipates” that “day one” will come in the “4th quarter of 2024.”
“We’re going to see more Sonya Masseys and more law enforcement agencies [claiming] they didn’t know” about their reporting requirements, Mayers said, until the administrative rules are in place and have teeth backing them.
The missed red flags in Grayson’s background that reporters have been able to find — including Adkins’s case in Kincaid and internal investigations in Logan County — should have been caught by not only the safeguards put into place by the state, but also the final accountability mechanism: the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office’s background investigation of Grayson, said RaShall Brackney, an expert who reviewed the two-page investigation by SCSO Lt. Wes Wooden.
Wooden’s investigation also didn’t dig into any questions raised in his report, like all of Grayson’s past employers who were interviewed saying he needed more training. It didn’t even mention two of the departments Grayson had previously worked for: Pawnee and Kincaid.
“Not everybody who applies to be a police officer should be a police officer.”
“We have to become a nation of police chiefs or sheriffs or city managers or mayors that understand not everybody who applies to be a police officer should be a police officer, or deserves to be a police officer, because they applied,” said Brackney, who rose through the ranks of the Pittsburgh police department before being named chief of the Charlottesville, Virginia, police department, where she served from 2018 to 2021.
“There are multiple points where these agencies can take it upon themselves,” Jones said, “to ensure that the record is clear and that they’re not putting other people from different departments and in different jurisdictions at risk.”
“Everyone Believes a Cop”
Adkins and Myers currently live in Mechanicsburg, Illinois, a small Sangamon County village of just over 650 people almost 20 miles north of Kincaid. They’re both working — she as a store manager and he as a mechanic — and raising seven children together.
They left Kincaid and rarely return to the village where their arrests led to lost jobs, loss of visitation with kids, and broken relationships with family who believed they were guilty of the crimes they were accused of.
“It rubbed our names through the dirt,” Myers said. “But everyone believes a cop,” Adkins added.
This story was produced in collaboration between Invisible Institute, a nonprofit public accountability journalism organization based in Chicago; IPM Newsroom, a public media station based in Champaign; and Illinois Times, a weekly newspaper based in Springfield. Sam Stecklow is a journalist and FOIA fellow with Invisible Institute. Farrah Anderson is an investigative reporting fellow with Invisible Institute and Illinois Public Media. Dean Olsen is a senior staff writer for Illinois Times.
Long before the 2001 trial started, then-St. Louis County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Keith Larner decided the butcher knife used to kill Felicia Anne Gayle Picus was “worthless” as a piece of evidence.
On Wednesday, Larner testified in court that he had concluded there was no additional forensic testing that needed to be done on the murder weapon used in the 1998 killing. The knife handle had been analyzed for fingerprints, but none had been found; blood on the blade matched Picus.
Larner said he saw no problem with his repeated handling of the weapon without using gloves in the months leading up to the trial of Marcellus Williams, who Larner would prosecute and send to death row for the murder. Now, the retired prosecutor was defending his actions during a one-day hearing held as part of an effort to overturn Williams’s conviction.
“There was nothing to link anybody to the crime on that knife,” Larner insisted.
Williams, who is scheduled for execution in September, maintains his innocence. Until last week, the knife was central to proving his claim.
Williams sought testing of the weapon before his 2001 trial, but the judge denied his requests. DNA testing done in 2016 excluded Williams from handling the weapon. Instead, the results revealed unknown male DNA.
“This case is about contamination.”
Last week, a new round of analysis confirmed that Williams’s genetic material was not on the knife, but it could not exclude either Larner or his investigator as the source of the unknown DNA. Whatever DNA might have existed connecting the perpetrator to Picus’s murder was irretrievably lost — thanks to the prosecution’s handling of the evidence.
Now, the contamination itself would be at the center of current elected county prosecutor Wesley Bell’s efforts to overturn Williams’s conviction. According to Bell, the state’s willful mishandling of the evidence before trial had violated Williams’s rights, meaning his conviction and death sentence must be overturned.
“This case is about contamination,” Matthew Jacober, a special counsel appointed to represent Bell at the hearing, told Circuit Court Judge Bruce Hilton.
From the witness stand, Larner sparred with one of Williams’s lawyers, insisting that his handling of both the murder weapon and the case had been aboveboard. A five-lawyer contingent from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office — which had intervened to block a deal between Williams and prosecutors, leading to Wednesday’s hearing — was there to back the former prosecutor. Larner hadn’t mishandled the evidence at all, Assistant Attorney General Michael Spillane told Hilton. Larner’s handling of the evidence without gloves was routine.
To prove Larner’s actions constituted a constitutional error that would make Williams’s conviction untenable, Bell’s office would have to prove the evidence had been mishandled on purpose. And it wasn’t, Spillane said. Instead, it was Larner’s practice was to “not use evidence-saving techniques.”
“It wasn’t bad faith,” Spillane said of Larner’s actions. “It wasn’t even negligent.”
Now, Hilton is tasked with determining whose version of the truth — and of constitutional error — is correct. His decision on whether Williams’s conviction should be overturned is due by September 13, just two weeks before Williams is slated for execution. Should he adopt the attorney general’s reasoning, that execution will almost certainly go forward.
Dan Picus came home from work on August 11, 1998, to find his wife murdered. Despite a wealth of physical evidence found at the scene, including the knife, the investigation quickly stalled.
It wasn’t until months later, after Picus posted a $10,000 reward for information leading to a conviction, that a jailhouse informant came forward claiming his former cellmate, Marcellus Williams, confessed to the crime. Police later secured a second informant, a former girlfriend of Williams’s, who also claimed he’d confessed to the murder, though their stories shifted over time and often conflicted with one another.
Despite the informants’ accounts, none of the physical evidence at the scene tied Williams to the killing. Their testimony, however, was enough to secure a conviction against Williams.
With each of his appeals denied, Williams was twice on the brink of execution, including in 2015 when the Missouri Supreme Court stepped in and ordered DNA testing on the knife. Although the testing revealed the unknown DNA, the court dismissed the appeal. Ultimately, Williams’s execution was reset for September 24.
Meanwhile, Bell’s office had started looking at the case and in January 2024 filed a motion to vacate Williams’s conviction. In addition to the foreign DNA on the knife and the dubious informant testimony, Bell cited issues with the quality of Williams’s legal defense and misconduct by prosecutors whom he argued had struck qualified individuals from the jury pool because they were Black. These factors cast “inexorable doubt” on Williams’s guilt, he argued.
With Jacober, the special counsel, ready to argue the county’s position, the latest DNA analysis — revealing that neither Larner nor his investigator could be excluded from contributing DNA to the knife — had changed the calculation: The weapon, which had been key to proving a wrongful conviction, became useless for identifying the murderer.
Instead, Bell’s office struck a deal with Williams on August 21. The prosecutor would concede constitutional error and take the death penalty off the table if Williams agreed to enter a so-called Alford plea that lets Williams acknowledge a strong case against him while maintaining his innocence; the plea would let him to avoid the death penalty by accepting a life sentence, while retaining the right to challenge the arrangement if new evidence comes to light.
Hilton, the judge, agreed with the outcome, as did Dan Picus, who’d told the court he did not want Williams executed. Hilton was slated to resentence Williams the next day.
The move sparked the attorney general’s intervention. Bailey’s office ran to the Missouri Supreme Court, arguing that Hilton didn’t have the power to agree to such a deal and, essentially, that Williams should face execution. The court sided with Bailey, ordering Hilton to hold a hearing on Bell’s motion to vacate the conviction as originally planned. Hilton set the hearing for August 28.
Sitting at the witness stand on Wednesday afternoon, Larner cut a familiar figure. Lanky with a long face and birdlike nose, he resembled actor Sam Waterston’s district attorney character Jack McCoy from the original “Law & Order” TV show. Under questioning, he was self-assured and insistent that his cause in prosecuting Williams was a righteous pursuit.
Jonathan Potts, a lawyer working with Williams’s attorneys at the Midwest Innocence Project, asked Larner about the motivations and credibility of the snitches he’d used to tie Williams to the murder.
Each had a history of repeated run-ins with the law, and each had collected $5,000 from Dan Picus in exchange for their testimony. Larner had even advocated for one, a man named Henry Cole, to receive the money months before he’d testified against Williams. Cole came forward “predominately for the reward,” Larner said, “and to tell the truth.”
Larner said he asked Picus to pay Cole in advance after it became clear the snitch’s commitment to testifying was wavering.
“We gave you the money,” Larner recalled Wednesday of his “promise” to Cole. “Please come back for trial.”
Larner dismissed any notion that anything questionable had occurred. He said the informants were the “two strongest witnesses” he had produced in a murder case during his nearly 32-year career as a St. Louis County prosecutor.
Larner bristled when Potts pressed him about his reasons for striking Black people from the jury pool. Although Larner eliminated all but one Black person from the panel, he insisted he hadn’t run afoul of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that rejecting jurors based on race is unconstitutional.
In his motion to vacate Williams’s conviction, Bell pointed to several instances where it appeared Larner did just that. In one case, Larner rejected a Black man he said “looked very similar” to Williams. Pressed on the instance, Larner doubled down. “They looked like brothers, like familial brothers, not like Black people,” Larner said. “They were both young Black men, but that’s not why they were similar.”
Much of Pott’s questioning focused on Larner’s handling of the murder weapon. Larner said the knife was collected from the medical examiner’s office, carefully packaged and processed for forensics, then repackaged and securely stored. The state then summarily concluded no additional testing would be conducted, Larner said.
Still, it would be more than a year before Williams was indicted for the crime and Larner was assigned to the case.
Larner said he readily concluded that the weapon was “irrelevant” because he was sure the killer had worn gloves. Larner testified that an investigator had told him about the gloves, and Cole, the informant, claimed Williams said he wore a pair during the killing.
Although Bailey’s office has parroted this line, there is nothing concrete to back it up. The second informant, Williams’s ex-girlfriend, said Williams told her that, after the murder, he washed blood off his hands.
Nobody bothered to pin any of it down. Instead, Larner admitted on Wednesday that in the months before Williams’s trial, he handled the knife on at least five occasions without wearing gloves of his own.
Larner’s repeated handling of the weapon before trial came as a surprise to one of Williams’s then-trial attorneys, Christopher McGraugh. Now a circuit judge in the city of St. Louis, McGraugh testified on Wednesday that, back in 2001, it was well known that handling forensic material without precautions could contaminate the evidence. He said that when he handled evidence related to Williams’s case, he’d been required to wear gloves.
Though Larner claimed there was no indication before trial that the defense wanted any additional testing on the knife, court records show otherwise. Williams’s other trial attorney, Joseph Green, who is also now a sitting circuit court judge, testified that when the lawyers learned another piece of physical evidence had been destroyed, they filed a motion to postpone the trial, in part so they could do forensic testing of the knife. The request was rejected.
Larner denied during the hearing that the defense ever sought DNA testing. “Wrong, wrong!” he exclaimed. He said he opposed the defense’s motion to postpone the trial because his case was ready to go.
Judge Hilton had a question of his own for Larner: Could the prosecutor have consented to the defense request? Not without the approval of his boss, Larner said. Besides, there was “no additional evidence” anyone was going to obtain that would prove anything.
Under cross-examination, Spillane, from the attorney general’s office, did his best to prop up Larner’s testimony. In how many of the cases he prosecuted over his nearly 32-year career had Larner handled the evidence after initial forensic testing was done, Spillane asked. Larner replied, “Probably all of them.”
“No one fathomed that the prosecutors would have such disregard.”
Spillane told Hilton that there was no reason to vacate Williams’s conviction. His claims about the racist jury selection and deficient defense lawyering had been previously considered by the Missouri Supreme Court and denied.
The only thing that was new was Bell’s claim that the evidence had been mishandled, he argued, but even that was nonsense — since Bell couldn’t prove the prosecution had contaminated the knife on purpose.
In his closing remarks, Potts recalled how eager Williams was for the knife to be tested. Just as Bell had seen it as a key to exoneration, Williams viewed the knife as an opportunity to definitively prove he hadn’t been at the crime scene.
“No one fathomed that the prosecutors would have such disregard,” Potts said. “For 23 years, the reasonable people in this room thought that was impossible.”
The Spycops scandal saw secretive police units use undercover officers for decades to infiltrate activist groups. The Canary believes this is a massive issue that everyone needs to be more aware of. We will be releasing a set of related articles and interviews in the run-up to part 2 of Tranche 2 of the Undercover Policing Inquiry, which will begin on 30 September. Tom Fowler goes to every hearing of the inquiry. In his own words, he’s been there “for every second of it”. But as he told the Canary:
We’ve got no real faith in this judicial process… the point of following it so closely is the disclosures that… are coming out of it.
For Fowler, the state’s overt and covert policing of progressive groups in the country from the 1960s onwards had a fundamental impact on the nature of British society.
Spycops: denying power to progressives, preventing positive change
Tom Fowler explained that Spycops collected “really useless” information about progressives because it was “very powerful information to turn somebody into an informant”. And he summed up why the state was so intent on following activists so closely, saying:
Why are they spying on so many people and creating these huge databases, these huge lists about everybody on the left, everybody involved in progressive politics since 1968? It’s so that they can deny these people from ever working in positions of influence in British society, whether that’s the civil service, or the BBC, or whatever else. And I think that became very, very clear during these hearings.
He also spoke about the significant transformation of society as a result:
When you kind of combine that with the fact that they weren’t doing this to the far right, is it any wonder that we now live in an incredibly right-wing country, with the huge influence the far right has over the discourse, setting the agenda of British politics day in, day out? The BBC is so incredibly biased towards the likes of Farage and so forth, whereas… there’s such little legacy of the huge history of left-wing politics that Britain has that has any influence on mainstream society. We have so few long-term left-wing institutions, because they’re undermined and destroyed…
He added:
Dividing British society more than it would have been otherwise. And it goes bigger than that. What could Britain have been like if we hadn’t had all this? … Their first target was the anti-Vietnam-War movement. Britain didn’t send troops into Vietnam partially because of that movement. British support for apartheid went on way longer than it should’ve given the level of opposition that existed in this country, because of the way in which they destablised the anti-apartheid movement. The rise of the far right in the 1970s – the way they allowed it to flourish whilst suppressing anti-fascism. And that’s before you get onto the likes of the miners’ strike … It’s only recently that the environmental movement has reached the levels of support that existed for it in the late 80s. … They’ve fundamentally changed Britain by the way that they’ve done these things. Maybe they’ve fundamentally fucked our chances of saving the planet from runaway climate change because of this stuff.
‘Preserving the parasitic, aristocratic section of society’
Tom Fowler asserted that the state tries to justify Spycops on the grounds of preventing ‘public disorder’ and ‘subversion’. But as he said:
They literally considered working-class political representation and mobilisation as being like a form of criminality
As he pointed out, though:
In the minds of people who want to preserve the parasitic, aristocratic section of society that bleeds the rest of us dry and is destroying the planet – if you wanna defend that, then you need things like this.
In short, he added:
Anybody who wants to make this world a better place has to be revolutionary
Learning from the past and continuing to mobilise
While we don’t know the exact details of the state’s current efforts to undermine left-wing movements with Spycops, Tom Fowler said, we can assume that “it’s about building up those vetting lists. It’s about finding those connections”. And he insisted:
I think failing to learn the lessons of what we’ve learned from this is a dereliction of duty for any activist who’s seriously looking to do any social change.
The “big lesson”, he stressed, is that:
the state doesn’t wear kid gloves when it comes to dissent. You need to take it seriously.
He highlighted in particular the need to be careful with our personal information. And another piece of advice he gave was:
Society is not a debating chamber. It’s a power struggle. You don’t actually get anywhere by formulating the right collection of words in order to defeat your opponent in discussion. It’s not about that. It’s about marshalling social forces. And we need to concentrate on that.
While some people have been ‘shocked into inactivity’ and scared away from acting as a result of the Spycops revelations, he insisted:
As much as I think that people should take an interest in what we’re learning about undercover policing from the past, if it’s a choice between that or mobilising right now – however incorrectly, however messily, however else – always choose mobilising now.
He added:
People need to step up, organise and mobilise… and be confrontational. And that’s the most important thing. That’s where hope lies.
Prosecutors on Tuesday filed a revised indictment of Donald Trump, pressing ahead with bombshell charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 US election after losing to Joe Biden.
The superseding indictment retains the same four charges against Trump as in an earlier version. However, it also considers a recent Supreme Court ruling that a former president has broad immunity from criminal prosecution.
The new indictment of the 78-year-old Republican White House candidate is 36 pages long, down from 45 pages previously. It removes material affected by the immunity ruling from the conservative-dominated top court.
It retains the same core, stating that Trump lost in 2020 but “was determined to remain in power” and attempted to subvert the results. All this comes amid the US presidential election 2024.
Trump’s question of immunity
The Supreme Court ruled in July that an ex-president has broad immunity from prosecution for official acts conducted while in office. However, the ruling also found that ex-presidents can be pursued for unofficial acts.
This threw into doubt the historic prosecution of the ex-president.
Trump referred to the new indictment as an “act of desperation” that was part of a “witch hunt” against him.
He posted on his social media platform:
The illegally appointed ‘Special Counsel’ Deranged Jack Smith, has brought a ridiculous new Indictment against me, which has all the problems of the old Indictment, and should be dismissed IMMEDIATELY.
The new indictment comes three days before Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought the charges against Trump, and lawyers for the former president had been set to file a schedule for pre-trial proceedings.
Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, had also scheduled a status hearing for 5 September in Washington and it was not immediately clear if that would go ahead now, following the filing of the superseding indictment.
Trump is accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. Of course, this refers to the 6 January 2021 joint session of Congress that was attacked by Trump supporters.
Trump is also accused of seeking to disenfranchise US voters with his campaign of false claims that he won the 2020 election.
He was originally scheduled to go on trial on 4 March, but that was put on hold while his lawyers pushed his claim of presidential immunity all the way up to the Supreme Court.
‘Private capacity’
It will be up to Chutkan to decide which of Trump’s actions regarding the 2020 election were official acts and which were unofficial acts subject to potential prosecution.
That and other pre-trial issues are expected to take months, making it unlikely the case will go to trial before the 5 November presidential vote.
The new indictment drops references to Jeffrey Clark, a former senior Justice Department official who was one of six co-conspirators listed in the original indictment allegedly enlisted by Trump to press his false claims of election fraud.
The Supreme Court, in its immunity ruling, said a president’s communications with members of the Justice Department should be considered official acts.
The remaining co-conspirators, who include Trump’s former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, “were acting in a private capacity,” the indictment said, “to assist him in his criminal efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and retain power.”
Raft of cases
Trump has many other legal dealings in the recent past or ongoing. Hewas convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Sentencing has been scheduled for 18 September. Trump’s lawyers have asked for his conviction to be tossed, citing the Supreme Court immunity ruling, and sentencing to be delayed.
Trump also faces charges in Georgia related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump was also charged in Florida with mishandling top-secret documents after leaving the White House.
The judge presiding over the documents case, Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the charges on the grounds that Smith, the special counsel, was unlawfully appointed. Meanwhile, Smith has appealed Cannon’s ruling.
At the Pacific Islands Forum this week the UN Secretary General stated that the Pacific needs to be provided with a bigger voice when it comes to climate change.
But who has that voice and who is not listened to? New University of Canberra/ACIAR funded research is addressing diverse gender inclusivity in the design and implementation of climate programs in the Pacific. It is adopting an intersectional and diverse approach to gender (consistent with the IPCC goal 3.4) to capture the voices of groups who report feeling marginalised in these programs and discussions.
The importance of gender equality and inclusion to achieve better and more equitable outcomes in climate program is increasingly being reflected in global, regional and domestic institutional climate statements. For example, A 2023 reportby Recourse, BRICS Feminist Watch and CLEAN (Coastal Livelihood and Environmental Action Network) emphasised that principles of climate justice and rights are crucial in giving effect to the Paris Agreement on climate change:
Given the limited scale of public investment resources for sustainable development and climate finance, it is a matter of efficiency, effectiveness and equity that it needs to set the highest bar with respect to good governance; applying, safeguarding and advancing environmental and social standards; and actively promoting social inclusion and poverty reduction, gender-responsiveness and human rights.
The growing policy and research activity in the gender and climate space acknowledges that women, men and children experience climate impacts differently depending on how they sustain their livelihoods and the roles they play in their community.
To be effective, and to avoid entrenching or exacerbating existing inequalities, climate programs must accommodate these differences. There is however a need for more diverse inclusion, as gender is still being used in much of the literature and development programming without considering the intersection of other identities such as diverse sexuality, disability, age etc.
Accordingly, the Commission on the Status of Women 2022 Outcome Statement on achieving gender equality in the context of climate change called on climate adaption programs to be more inclusive – especially of people living with a disability, LGBTQ+ groups and other marginalised voices who are impacted but whose diverse needs are not taken into account in the design and delivery of climate adaptation programs.
Linda Tabua in 2014 at a tea party. Picture: Stemoc, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
On top of the importance of a diverse and gender inclusive approach to climate adaptation programs, we need insight into what works ‘on the ground’ for better and more equitable and inclusive outcomes. A ‘one size-fits-all approach’ will not work. Climate adaption programs that seek to be diverse and gender inclusive need to be nuanced and context specific. Crucially, they will need to be informed and shaped by local communities developing local solutions that meet a diverse range of needs and circumstances.
The 2024 Pacific Islands Forum Women Leaders meeting last month focused on a fuller diversity of gender responsive climate change. The Fiji Minister for Women the Hon Lynda Tabuya noted that “achieving gender equality and gender-responsive climate resilience requires understanding of the well-being of women and girls ‘in all their diversity’.
This emphasised that understanding requires more than an afterthought, a paragraph is a speech or a report. The 2 year University of Canberra/ACIAR elicitation of Pasifika perspectives on gender and climate change will take the time to support the design and implementation of more inclusive climate programs and broader development programs that are increasingly including a climate change element, with an emphasis on intersectional and locally-led approaches, indigenous research methodologies such as talanoa and tok story and deep listening.
A New York University student holds a Palestine solidarity sign at a protest for a ceasefire in Gaza in New York City on Oct. 25, 2023.Photo: Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
As students and faculty in the U.S. return to campuses for the fall semester, there are innumerable reasons to continue demonstrating against institutional complicity with Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. The need for those protests is as urgent as it’s ever been.
University and college administrations, however, are not only signaling plans to treat pro-Palestinian speech with intellectual dishonesty, they’re making clear they plan to use their specious logic to inflict evermore repressive intolerance.
New York University led by troubling example when the school shared an updated code of student conduct last week. Ostensibly aimed at curtailing bigotry, the new language instead shuts down dissent by threatening to silence criticism of Zionism on campus. Students who speak out against Zionism — an ethno-nationalist political ideology founded in the late 19th century — will now risk violating the school’s nondiscrimination policies.
The corporatized industry of American higher education is hardly a site of social justice and liberatory knowledge production. There is, however, something particularly ghoulish in NYU’s actions here.
Students who speak out against an ethno-nationalist political ideology founded in the late 19th century will now risk violating the school’s nondiscrimination policies.
School communities are returning to a new academic year after a summer in which Palestinians have seen no shred of respite from Israel’s U.S.-backed eliminationism: constant bombing and forced displacement, a campaign of targeted starvation, purposeful destruction of water supplies, and denial of basic medical care. Instead of fighting against U.S. material support for these conditions, however, university administrators like those at NYU have spent that same summer prefiguring ways to demonize anti-genocide protesters as bigots.
Tucked into a document purportedly offering clarification on school policy, the new NYU guidelines introduce an unprecedented expansion of protected classes to include “Zionists” and “Zionism.” Referring to the university’s nondiscrimination and anti-harassment policy, known as NDAH, the updated conduct guide says, “Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists.”
The university’s NDAH rules are intended to reflect the school’s legal obligations, including to Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination and harassment based on a student’s race, color, national origin, religious identity, shared ancestry, or ethnicity.
“Using code words, like ‘Zionist,’” the guide says, “does not eliminate the possibility that your speech violates the NDAH policy.”
“Dangerous” Title VI Precedent
The entire premise of the guidance — that “Zionist” must be functioning as a “code word — is a flaw egregious enough to reject the entire document outright.
The language here is of utmost importance. The text does not say that “Zionist” can and has been used by antisemites as a code word, which is no doubt true. Instead, it takes it as a given that, when used critically, “Zionist” simply is a code word.
The ironies of the approach abound. On campuses and off, anti-Zionists have been vocally trying to ensure that “Zionist” does not get used as a stand-in for “Jewish.” Yet it is Zionists themselves who most often insist on the conflation, claiming that Israel as an ethnostate speaks for, acts on behalf of, and represents all Jews.
According to NYU’s guidance, then, Zionist and Zionism are either antisemitic dog whistles when invoked critically or a protected category akin to a race, ethnicity, or religious identity. Ethically committed and politically informed anti-Zionism — including the beliefs of many anti-Zionist Jews like myself who reject the conflation of our identity and heritage with an ethnostate project — is foreclosed, and the long history of Jewish anti-Zionism, which has existed as long as Zionism itself, is all but erased.
Ethically committed and politically informed anti-Zionism is foreclosed.
“For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity,” the NYU guidance says. And this is of course true. That does not, however, make Zionism an essential part of Jewish identity.
There are conservative Christians for whom the damnation of homosexuality is a key part of their Christian faith too, but Republican lawfare to see homophobic positions enshrined as protected religious expression have been rightly and consistently condemned by the liberal mainstream.
“The new guidance sets a dangerous precedent by extending Title VI protections to anyone who adheres to Zionism, a nationalist political ideology, and troublingly equates criticism of Zionism with discrimination against Jewish people,” NYU’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine said in a statement in response to the updated conduct guide.
“Furthermore, the new guidance implies that any nationalist political ideology (Hindu nationalism, Christian nationalism, etc.) that is integrated into some members of that group’s understanding of their own racial or ethnic identity should be entitled to civil rights protections.”
The faculty group warned that the guidance “will legitimize far-right and ethno-nationalist ideologies under the guise of protecting students from racial discrimination.”
Repressing Speech
The conduct guidance purports to provide “examples and explanations of our policies to help the community better understand not only what the rules say, but how they are applied.” The list offered for Zionism, though, only serves to ensure that the distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is obliterated.
The document lists unambiguous antisemitism, like “minimizing or denying the Holocaust” or “demanding a person who is or is perceived to be Jewish or Israeli to state a position on Israel or Zionism,” alongside examples of arguably reasonable, nondiscriminatory political opposition, like rejecting adherents of Zionism from certain group activities.
Rejecting Zionists can only be discriminatory if “Zionist” is understood as a protected category, rather than a political ideology with defenders and opponents. Consider whether it would be discriminatory, for instance, if a campus protest group in favor of reproductive freedoms insisted that anti-abortion activists be excluded from organizing activities.
The example of Zionist exclusions given by the guide is born out of the last year of protests. Numerous Gaza solidarity encampments around the country sought to exclude Zionist speakers last semester, provoking unsurprising censure. Suggestions that such exclusions were driven by antisemitism were, however, reliably meritless, not least given the significant percentage of Jewish students and faculty participating in and organizing the encampments.
While, as the NYU Faculty for Justice in Palestine noted, the logic of the conduct guidance could be applied to an array of nationalist ideologies beyond Zionism, the immediate threat of such policies is to those speaking out for Palestinian liberation during a genocidal war. It is consistently pro-Palestinian speech that faces exceptional repression.
Last April, NYU was among the many universities to call in police to arrest students and faculty members participating in protest Gaza solidarity encampments. In what the NYU Student Government Assembly described in a statement as the “administration’s reliance on violent force to disperse a peaceful protest,” the police raid led to over 100 arrests of NYU students and workers. Over 2,000 arrests were made on campuses nationwide in consistently brutal police raids, invited by universities against their own students and staff in the name of “safety.”
“The policy is designed to facilitate the administration’s continued repression of pro-Palestinian speech and protest on campus.”
“The policy is designed to facilitate the administration’s continued repression of pro-Palestinian speech and protest on campus,” said Zach Samalin, an assistant professor of English at NYU, of the new conduct guide. Samalin was arrested alongside students and colleagues in the April police raid.
He told me that he understands the conduct guide as “enshrining Zionism — for the first time at any U.S. university, as far as I know — as an ‘identity’ in need of protection under the Civil Rights Act instead of a political ideology that is being used to justify genocidal violence and unfathomable destruction in Palestine.”
Conflation as a Tactic
Conflations of anti-Zionism and antisemitism have become commonplace on campus, often relying on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Jewish bigotry.
Though the IHRA’s expansive definition has been embraced by the pro-Israel political establishment in the U.S., over 100 Israeli and international civil society organizations have urged the United Nations to reject it for its conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
By spuriously specifying Zionism as a part of a protected category, however, NYU’s conduct guide goes even further than the IHRA.
That the school would take this tack now is no accident. The new conduct guide comes in the wake of federal litigation brought against NYU by three pro-Israel Jewish students, who accused the university of failing to intervene in an atmosphere they said made them feel unsafe. The university and the plaintiffs reached a settlement, announced in July, in which the university agreed to pay the students an undisclosed sum of money, and agreed to create a new administrative position of Title VI coordinator to “oversee compliance with Title VI, including ensuring that NYU responds adequately and consistently to allegations of discrimination and harassment based on all protected traits.”
The lawsuit was part of a wave of similar litigation facing universities, including Columbia, Harvard, and the University of California, Los Angeles, adding to months of political and economic pressure targeting universities, weaponizing claims of antisemitism to silence anti-Israel speech and expression.
As the NYU settlement was released, the executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, a group committed to implementing pro-Israel policies on campus, said on X that her organization “looks forward to continuing to work with @nyuniversity administrators & officials across the school in order to develop more best practices around these goals & to support their full implementation!”
While the totalizing onslaught and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank continue with unconditional U.S. backing, universities across the country have hurried to prevent a return to last semester’s student-led protests — not by meeting protesters’ reasonable demands for institutional divestment, but by doubling down on anti-protest regulations and groundless claims that Palestinian solidarity makes Jewish students unsafe.
As I have previously said, universities should not be validating feelings of fear based in false conflations, but they should instead be committed to the work of demystification. Above all, educators should work to cast out the pernicious myths that Palestinian freedom is an inherent threat to Jewish safety, or that it is somehow discriminatory to express opposition to an ethnostate forged and maintained through the violent displacement, dispossession, and slaughter of a people.
This is the fifth and final part of Samantha Asumadu’s series on the ‘permanent state’.
I did the best writing of my life in 2018/2019. I was in the midst of a trauma induced breakdown (see chapters 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26, 33 and 38 of my new book) but that didn’t seem to affect the quality of my writing.
I get extremely productive and write well under pressure and throughout traumatic experiences. I think It’s the heightened fear. I feel like I have to finish things before I am either thwarted or murdered. It’s not worth it though. I’d rather the peace.
A lot of that writing features in Between a Rock, a Hard Place and a Dystopia. However I didn’t even really know that I was a writer until 2018 when Kojo told me “you’re a writer”, after reading the first draft of Beyond Reproach? Labour, the Left and White Supremacy.
Before that I had always solely identified as a filmmaker, who happened to have founded an organisation to foreground the voices of people of colour.
Really I have Hicham Yezza, Adam Elliott-Cooper, Assed Baig, Justin, and Symeon Brown to thank for encouraging me back then. We had a WhatsApp group, aptly named Burnout that usually got popping in the morning over this or that in 2018.
To start at the beginning – kind of
I’ve only ever told this whole story once. And I sounded mad. I’ll never know the truth unless they expand the SpyCops inquiry to include 2022. Currently it ends in 2014. Of course I may be in those documents anyway as a former short-term boyfriend has been named as one of those under surveillance. We’re no longer in contact but at the time (and now) he was a journalist writing mostly about Israel and its agents in the UK. He was getting constant scoops then and now. But his platform is small and has never written for the mainstream press.
We went out for a couple of months around 2014/2015. But to tell the story I have to go back to 2010. I came back to London from Uganda; my intention was to find funding for my second film, Born Again in the United States of Uganda. Something I had been filming for a few months every time I got the opportunity:
Back in London, my sister was pursuing her own dream of training to become a pastor. After her daughter died from complications of sickle cell she had become religious, stopped partying, and stopped drinking. I was concerned and just didn’t understand having gone to Catholic schools throughout my childhood and teenage years. I had an aversion to organised religion but wanted to understand more so I could support my sister.
Confused by this turn to religion from my previously secular sibling and wanting to understand what being ‘born again’ meant, I sought to find out more about the burgeoning Pentecostalism congregations in Uganda. I read the local papers and found an advert for a church just a short drive from where I lived.
There I met with the head of the church; the self-styled Bishop Kiganda with a view to following him for a documentary. What I didn’t know when I stepped into his luxurious office at the side of his rundown church was that he was one of the pastors alongside Pastor Ssempa at the helm of a notorious anti-gay movement and leading advocate of the ‘Kill the Gays’ bill.
Three months later when I’d gained his trust and that of the others in this largely male movement of pastors, the world caught on to what was happening in Uganda. I found myself at the centre of a global story, and an unwitting participant in the video for a viral anti-gay song featuring Pastor Ssempa Eat da poo poo, that was beamed across the world.
Born Again in the United States of Uganda was about the anti gay bill, prosperity gospel, money laundering and ‘the Family’ also known as ‘the Fellowship’: a secretive neo-conservative boys club who believe in free trade, abolition of abortion, and being anti-gay. The boys club consists of both Democrat and Republican politicians and others with a lot of money. They fund the national prayer breakfast in America and the national prayer breakfast in Uganda. It’s rumoured that Uganda’s president of over three decades is a member.
The MP who wrote Uganda’s infamous anti-gay bill, Bahati, is a member. In 2010 the Texas Republican Party brought out a manifesto. It had striking similarities to the anti-gay bill that came out almost simultaneously. I came back to London in 2011 to try and find funding to finish my film.
I needed over a hundred thousand pounds in my estimation to be able to do the film justice. I’d need to not only go back to Uganda, but Nigeria and America too. This was the text that went along with the trailer I made and the application to ITVS – an American film fund. There is a web of entanglement between US evangelicals, fundamentalists, conservatives and African clergy that exists to maintain a power structure and a severe homophobic agenda that serves the hard-core religious groups.
This documentary will be the definitive film that shows that the American evangelical right invests heavily in financial and advocacy effort in influencing religious Africans to shun gay rights and that the Ugandan Anti-Gay Bill was an import from the West. Uganda is the test bed for Texas.
The ecstasy was short-lived. I didn’t get awarded the money. Another film similar on the surface to mine did. Another film about the Anti-Gay Bill, and the underground gay scene which the two white American filmmakers, neither of whom had been to Uganda I found out, were more interested in than the money laundering and corruption I wanted to investigate.
C’est la vie.
Going underground
So, I went underground. And found Twitter. I would chat with British and American anarchists until 4am in the morning or later; good times. Some of them were as much on the periphery as me, which became apparent a few years later when Novara Media was founded by Aaron Bastani. His ‘break the house’ party was legendary. It was there I was first in the company of James Butler, his eventual co-founder, and even Laurie Penny was there.
The former was about to move from the rented accommodation and a last house party was the only way to celebrate that. Aaron Bastani had been along for the anarchist ride. Clearly no longer, considering his appearances on GB News.
I consider myself an anarchist at heart and a socialist in practice. I’m not sure what he would call himself these days. I was pretty lost in those few months. No second film, no boyfriend. I started questioning my position on this earth. That led to a perhaps unhealthy obsession with Twitter but it also led me to finding some people that I had never considered before – anti-imperialists, I soon learned.
I found a meeting that was to be gathered somewhere in North London that would be the founding of the small, nascent, and barely existent anti-imperialist movement until the recent war on Gaza.
At the centre of the 2010 were charismatic characters like Sukant Chandan, Lowkey, Pablo Navarette, Adam Elliot-Cooper, Jody McIntyre, Akala and others. The women were less known. Nonetheless, it birthed films, music, writing, protests, and campaigns.
It was a campaign called Hands Off Somalia that I joined which is relevant to the title of my book. Hands Off Somalia was convened by a group called the Revolutionary Communists, known colloquially with the acronym RFRI. They included a woman who calls herself Nikki, who is now part of Prisoners Advice Service, who organised many protests, had a newsletter and so on. For this campaign they got involved with some Somalis who were on the periphery of the anti-imperialist movement. They were fierce poets and public speakers. I was in awe. They were the first hijab wearing women I had met. A far cry from the depiction that the mainstream media would have you believe of meek, controlled, and subservient.
One woman was particularly charismatic. We’d added each other on Facebook back then and I hadn’t thought of it again. Until 2022 when out of the blue she called me.
Kill the Bill
I was in the midst of organising the Nationality and Borders Bill fight back. I had brought lots of different campaigns together, and I did an interview for Al Jazeera, which reported:
Samantha Asumadu, a campaigner for representation in the media, told Al Jazeera: “I only knew about the bill on Friday through the New Statesman piece, that said that up to six million people were at risk of being deported.”
In that recent report by the New Statesman magazine, reporters alleged that the the bill focuses on minorities – who currently make up nearly six million people in England and Wales – and who could be at risk of deportation if they were to commit a crime that was deemed applicable by the government.
Asumadu called for cross-community action to resist the bill.
“The goal is to stop the Nationality and borders bill in its entirety. Collaboration among all groups is are only and best option. Muslims, Sikhs, Jews and more have come together in the last few days to oppose this bill. The opposition will only grow as it approaches its next trading [sic] in the House of Lords.”
And wrote an article for openDemocracy – Why we need to join forces to oppose the Nationality and Borders Bill Democracy – and two for Ceasefire Magazine – On the Nationality and Borders Bill and the UK Left and For the Culture: Reflections on Black & Brown Activism.
It was apparently the openDemocracy article that the charismatic woman I previously mentioned read and made her want to get involved. She’d missed the Zoom meeting I convened with 23 different groups, but I sent her a link to the recording. I’d had no reason to distrust her before:
Duly she turned up at the first protest held outside Downing Street where she made a beeline to meet some of the other organisers and quickly became second within the group. Some of whom I had known before; Dome I hadn’t but they all had long track records in community organising. Checking out her Facebook a few weeks later it seemed she had done little since 2010 since I first met her. Perhaps some university? It wasn’t clear.
The group used all the tools available for us to communicate – email, Twitter and WhatsApp. It was Twitter that caused the final fragmentation.
Before that however alongside our protests, there was another organisation called Kill the Bill. They were organising huge protests, larger than ours. Thousands were on the street. A friend and I went along, and met the Somali woman and a friend of hers. By that time another person who had no track record – other than his insistence had been arrested once at a protest and a Twitter account – had joined us. He was by the looks of things South Asian. He would repeatedly bring up this arrest as a symbol of his bona fides. None of us cared. We had no intention of getting arrested, even with encouragement from him.
After this massive protest I found myself in a cafe with these three characters. It was there I started to feel uneasy. The South Asian guy began to talk about the royal family – saying it was their fault for the bill – I didn’t take the bait, and said my mum loved the royal family. Then he moved on to another FGM campaigner I knew who happened to be good friends with Boris Johnson’s wife and attempted to get me to stage her off. I said, gosh, I haven’t seen her for ages, last time was at a party somewhere in North London, she’d been looking good!
Eventually he left and me and the Somali woman and her friend went outside to chat. I hushed them and said ‘can you turn your phones off’. They looked at me incredulously. Whilst I wish I had never watched Homeland, London Spy, or any of those TV shows or read any John Le Carre books (I love him really) they are good for teaching/understanding spy craft. And on the flip side, learning evading tactics. I said “please just turn your phone off” and then laid out my suspicions to them. And left.
Enter the wreckers
I then noticed photos I had taken in Cardiff of me and Shirley had gone missing from my phone. The next day my laptop stopped working. Soon after that I left the Nationality and Borders bill campaign group completely. Other than being in a DM group on Twitter that I never looked at, my involvement was over. One of my good friends remained however and she gave me a call out of the blue a few weeks later, saying that the Somali woman had accused her and others of being spies, and the group was having a meltdown. I said I’d give the Somali woman a ring seeing as I had brought her into the group and known her for years (I hadn’t seen her for 12 years). We had a chat. It seemed fine.
Then she and her friend announced in the DM group that someone had screenshotted a message they had put in the group and it was circulating outside. In affect accusing someone in the group of being a spy and selling us out. I knew this was rubbish. And as far as I was concerned had confirmation that this woman and her friend were wreckers – spies or informants. It didn’t matter which, but they had destroyed the careful, painstaking work we had done to first get together then put on two protests, get a petition to over 200,000 signatures, publish writing etc.
Whilst I left, the paranoia didn’t abate. In fact it had only just got started. I reached out to Tom Fowler. Tom Fowler was targeted by undercover officers for many years whilst part of South Wales Anarchists and active in environmental and social justice campaigns. He has spent much of the last 14 years taking legal action against the police, doing live reports from the SpyCops Inquiry, launched in 2015, and producing the Spycops Info Podcast.
Tom said:
I mean, like, Yeah, I can’t say I got anything really to like, I can’t really shine a light on it. But there are lots of bad faith actors in all these things. As well as undercover officers. There’s like informants, infiltrators, there’s grasses, there’s a whole corporate world of infiltration that doesn’t come from the state. One of the big the big roles of all this intelligence gathering, gathering is what they call vetting what we would refer to as blacklisting. So you know, the idea that someone would be sent out to like, kind of update a vetting of somebody by questioning people who are associated with them sounds perfectly, like a believable sort of thing that would happen. I don’t I don’t know anything about this particular case. But yeah, I mean, I’ve cut off these people. I’m not going to name names. I don’t want any trouble. But they did ruin that. But yeah, the I would say it’s down to those two women, at least, the organising stuff,
I’m gonna, I’m gonna, on top of that, you know, there, there is a lot of people in activism who are fucking funny types, funny fish. And like, you know, there’s plenty of ways in which groups get destroyed by the internal dynamics of it. I would say that my personal experience, the people who did that world, and they would they were encouraged in the planes are fanned by undercover officers who nobody thought was doing things like that. But then you look back at it. And you saw the way in which they lifted up the voices of those who were, you know, there’s a role within that as well. Disrupting undermining and destroying groups was a big part of what their deployment was about, right. It wasn’t just about intelligence gathering. Yeah. The whole sector of the state, it’s about undermining and destroying groups.
TV shows, more than anywhere – even my time spent In Congo where I trekked guided through the forest and was told by the ranger violence still broke out there and later interviewed broken looking ex FDLR fighters in a tent administered by either the UN or an NGO – is where I learned the disturbing behaviour I exhibit when in the midst of a triggered PTSD meltdown:
Turning all the lights on in my flat when I enter.
Checking every room and cupboard for intruders.
Only speaking on WhatsApp or Signal.
When feeling under threat making everyone I meet turn their phones off.
Taking longer routes when walking, stopping intermittently, occasionally doubling back on myself.
Putting my phone on aeroplane mode.
When feeling under threat taking all the cash out of my bank account so I can’t be tracked by credit or debit card transactions.
Leaving household items in particular places so I can check if anyone has been in my flat whilst I was out.
Playing loud music so whoever has bugged my flat can’t overhear me.
There’s probably more.
Hypervigilance
This all sounds like paranoid stuff to the general public. However when I talked to an actual investigative journalist and also talked to author Michela Wrong, she understood completely having been hyper-vigilant because of the book she had just published and the Rwandan government’s reaction to it.
Foreign correspondents understand living in fear because we have done stories that meant we had to, if we were to expose what was happening. In Congo I was followed by a mining company only because I was doing a story on blood minerals. In Uganda I was scared because after covering a landslide and nearly being buried alive and fearing my death that day, I then had to cover the Al Shabab bombings of Kampala in 2010. I wasn’t supposed to be in Kampala but had missed my flight to London the week before so subsequently covered it for CNN.
For me, (undiagnosed) PTSD has manifested because I have seen and been tangentially involved in so much bad shit during my short time as a breaking news reporter and foreign correspondent that bad things seem to happen a lot more (to me and those around me) than actually happens in reality. For example I haven’t gotten on the tube for 12 years because of what happened in Bududa.
Last month I was told that I do not have PTSD, But I do have trauma-informed claustrophobia due to the landslide:
Recently had a mental health assessment, and good news, I DON'T have PTSD from my journalism work in Congo in 2010. I do have a touch of claustrophobia though because of the landslide in Eastern Uganda. Hope that helps any vetting profile
Yes I am a big old troll where it comes to spies and informants and their handlers:
It’s unlikely a tube tunnel is going to collapse on me but it feels like if it’s going to happen to anyone it would happen to me. It’s unlikely I will get caught up in a city where there’s another terrorist attack but in my brain it seems very likely that I will. It had seemed unlikely that I would ever come across as big a story as the blood minerals one I did in Congo 12 years ago. However then came #NationalityAndBordersBill followed quickly by #JusticeForIPPs, all massive and necessary stories, meaning to me and my overtaxed brain those odds about tunnels collapsing got smaller again.
So even though these shows are all fiction, done very well, they bring danger and violence closer but also present ways to combat some of the intrusion of being at the other end of the state.
Thus as the story below shows basically everyone is a spy until they are proven not to be a spy, they have a normal job, such as nurse that doesn’t allow for travel whenever you feel like it. Or I have known them for at least 20 years:
A Black Lives Matter group in South Wales has been closed following an alleged infiltration attempt by the police. Swansea BLM cited concerns for their members’ safety, harassment and threats from the far right as the primary reasons for shutting down its operations. The news emerged after one of the group’s main organisers, Lowri Davies, revealed last year that a police officer tried to persuade her to become an informant, secretly recording the approach and publishing it. In a statement published months after, the collective explained that the decision had been taken following concerns for their members’ welfare.
“We’re dissolving our organisation for a number of reasons, including the physical and mental safety of all our team members. Whilst we have found that our organisation has done some important work, we have been subject to an attempt of infiltration at the end hands of South Wales Police, doxxing and targeted harassment from Voice of Wales and some far-right members turning up at members’ homes.”
Justified paranoia – but that doesn’t make it right
For a brief moment last weekend whilst messaging with author and journalist Matt Potter, who I interviewed for a podcast called The Information War, that my transcription service tells me was about:
The discussion centers on the concept of an ongoing information war, tracing back to 1999, emphasizing the integration of cyber and physical warfare. The conversation highlights Russia’s use of cyber attacks and disinformation since the Kosovo conflict, noting the rise of “hacker industrial complexes” and the role of script kiddies. The Ukrainian government’s call to hackers to join the “Ukrainian IT Army” is discussed as a strategy to counter Russian cyber threats. The conversation also touches on the naivety of Western approaches to cyber warfare, the impact of social media on political movements, and the need for radical empathy in global conflicts.
I convinced myself that Matt was a spy, which is ridiculous when you consider his body of work! (Matt’s first book tracked post-Soviet pilots running arms, drugs, and worse from Afghanistan to Somalia.) The reason was literally because of a band name I had tweeted that I had forgotten I had tweeted. He referenced my tweet in a message and because I didn’t remember ever writing a tweet with ‘The Metres’ in it on Twitter (I had done it automatically from the source) I went to investigate and only calmed down once I found the tweet I had sent unwittingly earlier that day.
Crazy stuff.
So my paranoid PTSD meltdown three weeks ago was more than justified in the context of the Nationality and Borders Bill organising and subsequent IPP exclusive that thousands left in English and Welsh prisons have been left without release dates, despite controversial indefinite sentences long being scrapped. But not my suspicion of a perfectly nice man chatting to me about music, vinyl, and books on a Saturday morning rather than finishing his overdue manuscript:
Thankfully I finally spoke to a doctor two days later (I had been waiting three weeks for a telephone appointment with my GP) about the PTSD stuff. I explained to her about Congo, the bombs and the landslide.
She said “you’ve had quite a life”.
Then I said yeah “but it was a poem that pushed me over the edge”She was surprised that I had never been diagnosed before. She asked me what service I would be transferring from. I said i hadn’t realised until around 2017/2018 that I even had PTSD. That I have had therapy/CBT numerous times before but they NEVER mentioned I might have PTSD or ADHD. Internally i was saying ‘If they had things wouldn’t have got this bad’.
Racist assumptions or neglect I don’t know, but it was definitely an abdication of duty of rather than disappear into the ether, making me look like a spy in 2016, and 2019 a lot of pain and trouble for people/a person other than me could have been avoided if I had been diagnosed/had the correct therapy in 2010. CBT does not cut it.
Writing this book has meant reliving some old pain. My brother says that finishing it will relieve my anxiety meaning even potentially finally getting rid of my eczema which is invariably exacerbated by my anxiety. My book research was mostly of the low brow variety – looking up WhatsApp messages, old Facebook and Instagram statuses.
Whilst reliving pain can be cathartic I suppose, it has also pushed me to places that maybe would be best left in the past. As well as reading my old social media I had to read my old articles from 2018/2019. Some were published, some were just on my old blog that doesn’t exist anymore.
I have been notifying people that they are in the book since 2022. Some couldn’t care less, others did. One particular person in 2022 who I sent a chapter to felt that I had betrayed him and our confidences going back years. Whilst I think it’s important to have an outside critique once in a while, we all come with our own biases and perceived relationships/slights etc.
The chapter I wrote was coloured by the fact that I felt he had betrayed me or our friendship. I should say back in 2019 when he had I thought chosen someone else over me. It turned out that wasn’t the case. And just speaking to each other resolved a lot of the differences and I realised I had been unfair to him in parts of the chapter.
Which starts:
I always thought Madani was perfect. Radical and perfect. Radical, successful and perfect. Busy too. But never too busy for me. I think he reached out to me (via his assistant) as founder of Media Diversified. He thought we were radical too. And on our way to being successful. He was determined to help me get there. And it would shore up his cred as radical while he was at it.
Not all but part was unfair. But today it becomes even more important as he too was a friend of me and my charismatic peers from around 2012 onwards. I’m as sad for him today as I am myself, Anthony, Lowkey, Adam, Symeon, Pablo, Akala, Malia, and others affected by the ‘permanent state’:
SpyCops is not a lesson of history, but a lesson of our present
I spoke to Tom Fowler on 30 July, four days before the hacking of my social media accounts, the same same day I scanned and found AirTags in my vicinity and the day my laptop stopped working again. Here is an abridged version of our interview in which according to the AI summary of our conversation says:
the conversation delves into the UK’s spy cops scandal, where undercover police infiltrated activist groups since 1968, using stolen identities of deceased children. The inquiry, initiated by Theresa May in 2015, is chaired by Sir John Mitting and involves numerous legal representatives. The first tranche covered 1968-1982, suggesting the unit should have been disbanded. The second tranche, 1983-1992, is ongoing. Key points include the use of trauma for empathy and withdrawal, the infiltration of various political movements, and the long-term impact on activists and their families. The inquiry aims to uncover the extent of police misconduct and its broader societal repercussions. Plus it delves into the inquiry, revealing that over 1,000 left-wing groups were infiltrated by undercover units, while only one far-right group, the BNP, is known to have been infiltrated. The inquiry, which began in 2015, is expected to conclude by October 2026. The conversation highlights the historical lack of police action against the far-right and the impact of undercover operations on social justice movements. It also touches on the broader issue of police corruption, including cases of sexual misconduct and the use of covert surveillance. The speakers emphasize the need for public awareness and accountability, urging listeners to follow the #Spycops hashtag for updates.
Tom: They were, when it happened, spread across the country, or just in London, or where all over the country, initially was eight women in that group, and now it’s 60.
Sam: Yeah. What sort of groups were they in that were infiltrated?
Tom: I mean, basically, I mean, like, it goes the same. There’s over 1000 groups infiltrated by the undercover units. They’re almost exclusively left wing, progressive environmentalism, anti racism, human rights, women’s rights, evil group found is there’s a real lack of reporting on the far right. We heard about one officer who infiltrated the BMP last week, hm, 56 and, I mean, like it was, I mean, it was fucking pathetic. He infiltrated for 10 months. I mean, he gave one report at the start of his deployment. He didn’t then report them. Another four months. He just did incredibly little. He was absolutely petrified the entire time. He was worried that fellow undercover officers were going to out him. Because, I mean, essentially, he didn’t say this, but you get the impression that, and as we know from previous investigations that happened in the past, that there’s sympathy for the far right within the British police and within special branches, particularly, we heard from our officers that were were tasked with infiltrating anti-racist groups the 1970s who said the National Front weren’t a problem. They cooperated with the police. It was only because they were getting attacked by lefties. Police really refused to make a connection between the racist murders that were happening and, like, the growth of the far right. So, I mean, like, for example, when we looked at the BNP HQ that used to be in Welling in the late eighties, it was like, set up there in 89 and there’s big protest against it 93 that’s like, which the police, like, absolutely battered everybody… they did police horse charges into like, people sitting in the road… But like, you know, the area around the national BNP HQ there was, like, that’s where Stephen Lawrence was killed. That’s where there was a number of racist murders in that area. I’m not using the names that might get it wrong, because there’s so many, there’s so many names you kind of end up with.
Tom: But so there was lack of a feeling that, you know, because the far right believed in the queen. I mean, that sounds insane, right? But like, you know, we heard a lot from a lot of the undercover officers talking about, like, the protection of the Queen’s peace is the highest calling of any police officer. And they just didn’t see the far right as like, a threat to social attitudes in the way in which the far left was and is. And you can, like, see the kind of the whole thing about, they talked about public disorder and subversion, but what they’re really, actually concerned with is social attitudes they didn’t want. Like, we heard from undercover officers during tranche, one who, I mean, this is direct quote. ‘There’s a lot of long haired, long haired layabouts in need of a good clout’. And like, that’s, I mean, that’s literally how they saw it. I mean, they saw the new left of the late 60s and the social attitudes that went with it. You know, one of the earliest groups to be infiltrated was Women’s Liberation Front. I mean, their demands were things like, you know, ban rape in marriage, allow women to have bank accounts. You know, children born out of wedlock should have the same legal rights as unborn in wedlock. Incredibly minor things. Sometimes we forget how far this country’s come on, some really basic stuff. I mean, rape in marriage was only made illegal in 1990 it was 1974 before a woman could open a bank account in the UK. It simply wasn’t possible for women to get a mortgage before that. These kind of social attitudes, these changes, social actions which were happening were real. You can see, like the SDS as part of a rear guard action against all those slowing them down from happening in any sort of sensible pace. Like it’s the way in which Britain really has, like, kind of lagged behind the views of its population. I mean, there’s lots of ways that they do.
Sam: The state has lagged behind Jimmy, the permanent state
Tom: Yeah, behind the views of the population of the country. Yeah, absolutely.
Sam: And do you think there’s a difference between the permanent state, as in SDS, blah, blah, and the governments that come in?
Tom: Yeah. I mean, whoever government is in power, it’s the Tory state, right? It’s like the aristocracy owns this country. We just live here.
Sam: There’s two things I wanted to pick up on what you just said. One, you said there was one person who has given evidence, who did infiltrate the BNP for 10 months, etc. You also said there was 1,000 groups that were infiltrated. So are you saying there was only one far right group that was infiltrated out of all of their deployments?
Tom: That’s all we’ve heard of so far. Now there is a number of undercover officers who have got such a high level of anonymity. We don’t have their cover names, we don’t have their real names, and we don’t have a cipher for them. There’s a lot of bullshit being put out by the inquiry about how dangerous their deployments were, and it sort of inferred that these were officers were infiltrating the far right. But we don’t have any details about that. We don’t know if that was them infiltrating the far right proper, or, like, some aspect of it, or something unrelated. Were they infiltrating the anti-fascist groups? Because we heard also about another officer in the 70s who infiltrated a left-wing party, the Workers Revolutionary Party. And whilst he was infiltrated doing that, they were doing a lot of anti-fascist work, and they got him to go undercover into the far right. So he was like an undercover officer in the left pretending to be left wing activist pretending to be a right wing activist to report back to. So I mean, you know, we get examples like that that happen, and we know that the role of Searchlight in infiltrating the far right has been significant in the past.
Sam: Explain what Searchlight is, please.
Tom: Searchlight is an anti fascist magazine set up by Gerry Gable… and they’ve had very, very close links with the security services. They send their activists undercover into far-right groups. There’s a lot about them that’s really dodgy. It’s not an area I have that much of a specialist on. But… the point I’m making is, is that there was obviously some monitoring of the far right that took place, but we have no evidence beyond this one officer or the role that the SDS took in that.
Sam: But Joe, you’ve got a lot of evidence on the left wing groups from like, you know, that’s that’s suspicious. Basically, you’re suspicious of that, yeah?
Tom: But it feeds into, you know, certainly when we talk about, like, the really big fascist mobilisations of the 1970s like Southall places like that. You know where Blair Peach was murdered, the Red Line Square where Kevin Gately was murdered. You know that these, these are incidents that there was no undercover police officers in the far right, but there were significant numbers in the far left, right?
Sam: Can I ask another you said these undercover cops, they were going in. So it’s, you know, boots on the ground. What were they? Was there any technology involved? Is there any phone tapping?
Tom: All those things that are undoubtedly all those things are part of what the British state does. Theoretically, the police are governed by more specific more of the law than security services. So it would take a warrant to tap someone’s phone historically, whereas it would take the oversight of one senior officer to deploy an undercover officer into someone’s life. So particularly for the early years the unit, it’s the it’s the human infiltration, the covert human intelligence source, which is used willy nilly, really, whereas it would take a lot more paperwork to do things like wire tapping. Obviously that changed massively in the modern era. And like, you know, when you, when you start looking into this stuff, you start being really, like, kind of, I used to be very quick to make suggestions for how things are done now, I would I’m more wary of doing that now, because the more you know about the past, the less you want to speculate. But we certainly live in a year of neoliberal policing, where the use of private firms to do police work is commonplace, the use of informers for criminal cases is – the national former database has exploded over the last couple of decades – and the use of covert, electronic covert surveillance is everywhere, right? So, I mean, obviously that has changed massively, but when we talk about the historic period, it really is human beings.
Sam: So there’s two BBC articles from 2013. The first one is called Mi5 spy unhappy with ex’s calls. I’ll read you a little bit of it:
An Mi5 five spy accused of assaulting his fellow spy. Ex- girlfriend went to another phone to call her at work when she ignored him. A jury has heard the woman referred to by her Mi5 pin number 2363, then answered the call but became uncomfortable. The Crown Court heard the defendant, using a false name Mark Barton for security reasons, denies two assaults counts and one of harassment, a sexual assault charge was dropped during the trial… So a former line manager of the woman who was a spy as well, told the court that a few weeks before the woman complained to police about Mr. Barton’s behavior at the end of august 2011 he was aware of an occasion when 2363 took a telephone call that she was uncomfortable with taking… Earlier this week, the court heard that Mr. Barton was out of control. After 2363, left him, she said that after following her from a work party, Mr. Barton had lifted her off the tube in a bear hug and forced her to return to his flat. And Mr. Barton had wanted to discuss their relationship and did not accept the romance was over. The woman said she tried to leave but Mr. Barton physically restrained her, throwing her into a cupboard… The trial was going to to continue the next Monday.
Sam: That’s the first article. Now I don’t know. Do you know of any on about any spy on the spy, like abuse, like that, is that something that’s come out?
Tom: I mean, it’s certainly not that many much about there have been a number of cases of Mi5 agents behaving appallingly, that there’s been a number of cases. I’m not sure if this is the same one as there’s another one which was, I think, more recent than that of an Mi5 officer who was sexually abusing his partner. I would say, like the SDS, though, they are spies, they are cops. These are police officers. They’re not special agents. They haven’t had anything like that kind of training. They come from a very different background. They’re not allowed to kill people like Mi5 officers are. They are allowed to arrest people though which Mi5 officers aren’t. There’s a much, much bigger scandal than all of this that like relates to the way in which men treat women, right? I mean, we live in a deeply misogynistic society, a patriarchy, when men feel they have a right to women’s bodies. And that manifests itself in a multitude of ways, you know. Surprisingly enough, people who were given the license to break society’s norms in the name of the state abuse that to abuse people, particularly when there’s no oversight. And there was no oversight with these cases, and there’s very little oversight on my phone, yeah. So, yeah, I’m sure there is, like, a multitude of cases like,
Sam: Yeah, I mean something you said just made me think of something that I’ve been doing recently, because I found that on Twitter that I get, like, every day, there’s some sort of court case or tribunal or something of a police officer who have committed some crime, and it can be any police, it’s not just the Met, it’s not even just GMP, it’s all over the shop. They’re getting convicted of rape, of drug dealing, of abuse. It’s actually thieving off dead people. It’s mad. So I created this hashtag, like police crime daily. I wasn’t online yesterday. I wasn’t able to update it, but I’m sure there was more cases that came out every single day, and it’s tip of the iceberg, right? Because the vast majority of police officers don’t get held to account for their crimes.
Tom: Yeah, it’s endemic. It’s endemic.
Sam: Yes, I’ll just go on to the other other article. I think it may it may be about the same case and the reporting of it, but, yeah, so. So this one is in July 2013:
Mi5 spy assault and harassment claims, total nonsense. an Mi5 spy has dismissed as total nonsense allegations that he harassed and assaulted his former girlfriend… The defendant, who is using a false name for security reasons, told the jury that he did not think his ex girlfriend had ever been frightened of him. Mark Barton denies two assaults and one of harassment against the woman. A charge of a sexual assault against Mr. Barton has been dropped during cross examination. The prosecutor Alison Morgan, asked Mr. Barton if he had ever been violent towards his ex girlfriend, referred to in court only as 2363, and he said, ‘that’s a ridiculous suggestion. That’s absolutely total nonsense. I’ve never been physically aggressive to her in my life’. Asked if she’d been scared of him he said, ‘there’s absolutely no way she was frightened whatsoever’… then asked if he told 2363, three’s mother that the couple would be married in two years. Mr. Barton told the court. I did not say we would be married in two years, but I made it very clear that I was very committed to her.
Sam: I mean, it goes on like that. I can’t actually get to where if he was convicted or not, which is a shame they seem to have stopped reporting on it after a while. That’s not too great, is it?
Tom: There’s a series To Catch A Copper, and if you’ve seen it, it’s like, fairly recent series. And I mean, like, essentially, it’s one of those ones where they use police footage. I mean, the police cooperates with it, where they show police footage of police abusing their position, and then the investigation into them, and then they all get off.
Sam: It’s been nine years for a short period. What do you see? How long do you think this is going to take to do all six tranches, and what will, what accountability will there be after this?
Tom: Okay, so, I mean, I’ll answer the second one part. First, absolutely none whatsoever. There’s no question of anybody getting any response, any responsibility, any blame being pinned onto anybody. The police will go away completely scot free for all their crimes. The point of the inquiry is not to do that. It’s purely to learn the lessons. And there’ll be a bunch of recommendations that will come out of it. In terms of when it reports. The last government demanded it be finished by October 2026. Totally unreasonable, totally unlikely that would happen. The inquiry intends to, like, speed up its process to try and be finished by then. It means we’re just rushing through the important detail of the inquiry whilst we spent so many years like faffing around appeasing police fears about anonymity.
Sam: I wanted to ask you about, like, some specific things just to, just to end us off, because my interest in this is actually personal as well. I mean, I’ve been, I’m a I’m a journalist, I’ve also been an activist in the past. And and something came up on my Twitter a little while ago. It’s, you know, Batt Murphy, who are a team of lawyers, they wrote in a statement at today’s undercover police inquiry hearing ‘the Met has apologised unreservedly for undercover officers spying on family, campaigns and community organisations seeking justice, and in particular to members of Black and Asian communities seeking to hold the Met to account’. So I asked, just in general, like, where do we find a list of which groups and people they were surveilling? Because I had weird things happen to me over the years from 2013 onwards, though, I mean, I’m quite paranoid person. I used to be a foreign correspondent. I was in Congo, and I was followed by mining companies specifically because of work that I was doing there that was about blood minerals. So, somebody replied to me, and they sent a list. The current list of 246 core participants is on the UCPI website. So I looked at it, and I replied again, well, wow, there’s a guy I used to go out with for a few months on there, which, which is, which was quite shocking to me. Well, no, not shocking, because he’s a journalist. He’s a good you know, he’s an activist journalist. He does some really great work on like Israel and Palestine. He’s done that for years. I’m not going to identify him at all. It was a short relationship. So this, this other person, this friend of mine, replied to me, saying, so if you were, in fact, of a close relationship with someone who were themselves under SDS, MPOIU surveillance, ‘I would expect you to have been subject to a background check at minimum, but in and of itself, that would not qualify you for inquiry participant status’. Like, can you comment on that? Is that something because, because the relationship I had was after 2010?
Tom: the person you’re talking about is a co participant because they were spied on. A lot of people who were directly named in a lot of the documents have been refused core participant status. So the core participant is quite high bar it would appear to be to become a core participant. Yeah, it only relates to stuff before 2010 in terms of what the security services and Special Branch have been up to when it comes to monitoring or activists since then, we don’t know, and we’re unlikely to find out through this process, we definitely need to run sort of other process for that. But yeah, there’s, I mean, there’s a huge number of people who were what what they call collateral intrusion into their lives, who are simply being disregarded by the inquiry and any of these processes in terms of the effect that it had on them.
Sam: Okay, well, I mean, I’m still, I have a little worry about this, and I’ll tell you why. So, I mean, the person told me that a lot of these SDS officers from the 68 to 72 period are dead. So that, I mean, not that they were going to be accountable at all, but they can’t even participate, or can’t be exposed.
Tom: If they’re abroad, they don’t have to give evidence. So a lot of people have moved abroad. They start when the inquiry started. They live in the UK, and they thought, actually, do you know what I’m going to abroad? so in one case, hn 109, says he’ll kill himself if he’s called to give evidence. So the inquiry hasn’t called him to give evidence. It’d be interesting to see how many other former undercover officers try that technique as a method of not giving evidence themselves.
Sam: Well, I mean, you alluded to it. We don’t know any inquiry won’t cover what’s happened since 2010. You said that they were is about social attitudes. Was there any actual legislation that they were trying to to uphold, like we’ve got the Public Order Act now. What did they have in the 70s? Was there anything official
Tom: Criminal justice acts and public order acts a hallmark of British governments. They come out every couple of years. There were numerous bits of legislation all through the 70s, the SDS were not managed through any piece of legislation. The closest thing was RIPA, which was released in the early 2000s which gives a certain sort of free framework. More recently, Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021 legalises basically anything you can rape and murder as an undercover officer, and it’s perfectly okay, perfectly legal. I mean, if you look at, like, kind of the mood music, but that will Lord Walney report. I mean, they’re, they’re demanding, you know, higher levels of infiltration of groups again, but yeah, in terms of legislative framework, there wasn’t for the majority of this through the STS. The CHIS Act had support of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer said it was just formalising what already happens anyway.
Sam: Yeah, that’s something that’s, that’s a, that’s a theme of what I found. You know, the work is going on. The boots are on the ground. It’s just legislation catching up with what actual policy is on the ground. Something I wrote about in my exclusive for the Canary, published on 30 July:
According to Netpol, a campaigning group that challenges police power by working on the front lines with movements for social justice, the Bill “seeks to revive the amendments that it lost in the Lords”. The PCSC Act and Public Order Act were just laws catching up with actual operational policy.
Sam: When the Nationality and Borders Bill was announced, my organisation, myself, we got together with about 22 other organisations to try and oppose it.
Bad-faith actors are vetting you
A this point, I recounted to Tom my story of Hands Off Somalia, the Nationality and Borders Bill campaigning, what happened in the cafe, and the potential infiltration of the group.
Tom: There are lots of bad faith actors in all these things, as well as undercover officers. There’s like, informers, infiltrators, there’s grasses, there’s a whole corporate world of infiltration. It doesn’t come from the state. One of the big, the big roles of all this intelligence gathering, gathering is what they call vetting, what we’d refer to as blacklisting. So you know, the idea that someone would be sent out to like, kind of update, the vetting of somebody by questioning people who are associated with them, sounds perfectly like believable sort of thing that would happen. I don’t, I don’t know anything about this particular case.
Sam: I’ve cut off these people. I’m not going to name them. I don’t want any trouble, but they did ruin that. But yeah, I would say it’s down to those two women, at least the organising stuff.
Tom: On top of that, you know, there, there is a lot of people in activism who are fucking funny types funny fish and like, you know, there’s plenty of ways in which groups get destroyed by the internal dynamics of it. I would say that my personal experience, the people who did that were like that. They were encouraged and the blames were fanned by undercover officers who nobody thought we were doing things like that. But then you look back at it, and you saw the way in which they lifted up the voices of those who were, you know, there’s a role within that as well, disrupting, undermining and destroying groups was a big part of what their deployment was about, right? It wasn’t just about like, intelligence gathering, yeah, you know that the whole sector of the state, it’s about undermining and destroying groups.
Sam: I mean, you mentioned the guy who got to the top of his his organisation?
Tom: Rick Gibson with the Troops Out movement, yeah. I mean, he, he really pioneered the whole way of using sex as a way in which of bringing people onside, he had sex with a number of women in the groups that he was infiltrating, which led to those groups he was in, like supporting his candidacy to be the regional organiser and the national organiser for the Troops Out movement in the mid 1970s. Yeah, that kind of that seemed to be a bit of a blueprint, then, for later officers who use sexual relationships as a primary method, not just to building their legend, but like, giving access to privileged information.
Sam: so, you know, their handlers, would their handlers be near? Are these? What does the handler do?
Tom: So much of these roles informal, so there’s not, like, some rule about, like, how many, how many meters away they had to be the old times, but certainly they were kept in close contact. What we know from Kate Wilson’s case of the IPT is that Mark Kennedy was communicating with his handler every couple of minutes, sending him text messages, making phone calls. It’s constant, relaying of information constantly, really about both his professional deployment and his personal life – massively overlapped throughout the whole time period.
Sam: So what to just to end off, what is the one thing you want the public to know? Because there’s been a bit of reporting. I’ve seen some in the Guardian. Your Twitter feed is like my Bible to go for when I want, you know, just, you know, daily updates, I just click on your profile and have a read and know what’s going on and so, but not everybody’s following you on Twitter. Let’s say two questions. What do you think of the reporting so far from the mainstream press on this?
Tom: So, I mean, the problem is, is that we’ve got a very tabloid influenced media in the UK, sex, the sex angle has dominated the majority of the reporting. Certainly, I think a lot of editors, when presented with new information about this case, go, we covered that sex story 10 years ago. I think there’s, there’s a willful ignoring of the democratic angle, the suppression of dissent in general. It seems human interest. I mean, that’s not to downplay the human interest element at all. The lives were destroyed, personal relationships were damaged beyond repair. You know, I mean, like, I’m somebody whose personal life was completely destroyed by this. Like, I don’t, I don’t downplay any of that at all. There’s a much bigger story about what I said the beginning. It affects all of us. It’s not just about those of us who, like, were directly impacted. And that’s the story that doesn’t really get told very much. If it does get mentioned in passing, it’s certainly something which campaigners forefront brought that element to it, as well as the institutional sexism. Yeah, the coverage is very limited, frustratingly so, given that, like, police corruption is such a popular topic in Britain today for like, fiction and stuff. So, you know, we were sat in court all day talking about real police corruption, and in the evenings, everybody was on about this fictional police corruption, and they weren’t interested in the real stuff, which was kind of weird, you know.
Tom’s interview brought up lots of additional questions for me, not least about the government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption. John Woodcock, or Lord Walney as he is now called, Keir Starmer when he was Director of Public Prosecutions, and his now-right hand woman, Sue Gray a senior civil servant up until recently.
The (un)civil service in action
In 2021 she led the inquiry into Party Gate and gave a rare interview, indeed her first ever one, to an Irish outlet. According to our transcription service, the interview:
featured an interview of Sue Grey, who held a significant role in the propriety and ethics team at the cabinet. Speaker 2 clarifies that the titles “Deputy God” and “most powerful woman in Britain” were given by journalists, not a self-proclaimed title. Speaker 2 also discusses their experience running a pub in Newry and their unsuccessful bid for the head of the civil service position, speculating that their reputation as a disruptor may have hindered their chances. The interview touches on the perception of Speaker 2 as a potential spy, which they dismiss. Speaker 3 then introduces themselves, mentioning an assault incident at Nando’s and expressing gratitude for the support received
Here’s an abridged version edited for clarity:
Interviewer: You’re bit of a mystery. I mean, I’m just going to read out some of the titles that I’ve heard applied to you, “Deputy God”, that’s a good one, the most powerful civil servant you’ve never heard of, or the most powerful woman in Britain. Do you recognise those titles?
Gray: They obviously relate to my former job. The Deputy God title was that I worked for Gus O’Donnell, and his initials are God, and so I was his deputy. And therefore I was Deputy God. I, you know, most powerful person you’ve never heard of. I actually was just doing my job. And I think that was some of your journalist colleagues probably actually devised that.
Interviewer: But I suppose the mystery around you, this is the first interview you’ve ever done. You were the director general of the propriety and ethics team at the cabinet, and it said you did have the power to make or break political careers, and that is exactly what you did.
Gray: So I would always have just given my advice to the prime minister, and it was obviously then was the prime minister’s decision, but the job I was doing then was very different to the job I do now. And I don’t necessarily recognise all that you’re saying about me. I’m not actually sure many permanent secretaries in Whitehall have run a pub in Newry…
Interviewer: And you were with your husband and that venture, of course…
Gray: And he’s not very good at it. So, he hated the pub, and actually most of the customers didn’t like him either, because he was quite miserable in it. So he after six to eight weeks, it was making him a bit fed up, so I sent him back to London, and I carried on running the bar on my own. Whenever he was back, when he would come back for a short time, I would make sure that I booked him to sing and play music in the bar on a Thursday and Saturday night, and that went down quite well. But as for his bar skills, they’re not the best. I think I felt I was being a bit pigeon holed in Whitehall in a particular role. So I thought, do something very, very different, and that’s what I did. I did go for the head of the civil service job, and I really wanted that job. So I’m going to be completely honest, I was disappointed not to get the job. I really wanted the job, but had to get over it. And you know, why didn’t I get the job? I’m not sure I’ll ever quite know, but I suspect people may have thought that I perhaps too much of a challenger or a disruptor. I am both, and perhaps I would bring about, you know, perhaps I was there to be too much change. And yes, I wanted to have change.
Interviewer: Did you think you obviously thought the civil service needed change… I’ve even had someone put it to me that you are a spy.
Gray: I know you’ve had that put to you. And I think if I was a spy, I’d be a pretty poor spy. If people are talking about me being a spy…
Gray is not only interested in the mechanics of government, but in policy. “She has been painted as this very Whitehall figure, but she’s very political,” one colleague said. “She’s not the voice of caution. If anything, she has been telling shadow ministers: ‘You own this issue, you can legislate, make your mark, don’t be too timid.’”
Those policy interests were first revealed in Starmer’s biography, written by Tom Baldwin, for which Gray agreed to be interviewed. Her proposal for the party to look at the wider use of citizens’ assemblies was picked up by the national press and quickly disavowed by the party, though it gave an illuminating insight into Gray’s character.
Far from being a Whitehall creature, she is invested in active citizenship and inspired by how consensus was built in Ireland by citizens’ juries on equal marriage and abortion. But among Labour staffers, there has been little discussion of the substance and more on whether it was appropriate for the interview to take place.
The first some aides heard about it was from Baldwin himself. “It’s a book about Keir,” said one. “It feels a bit odd for her to have done it.”
In the interview, Gray said:
she was working on the creation of a unit at the centre of government that would be “focused purely on mission delivery and transparency of performance”.
Sue’s time in Northern Ireland has come in to sharp focus in the face of the recent and ongoing pogroms by the far right and paramilitary groups who we discussed in the fourth article/podcast of this series.
Hacking, betrayal – yet no atonement
On the 13th August I interviewed Dr Adam Elliot-Cooper for my book Between a Rock, a Hard Place and a Dystopia. I told him something that I had only told in full to a couple of people before: Biz Pears from the Financial Times, the comedian Ava Vidal, and Ayaz Rafik a former columnist at Media Diversified. I told him exactly what happened in the months leading to closing Media Diversified in 2019.
The AI transcription summary said:
The conversation covers various personal and professional topics. Speaker 1 discusses personal challenges, including being hacked and dealing with betrayal in a professional context. They mention the importance of documenting historical activism and the impact of not doing so. Speaker 1 also talks about a book project covering East Africa and London activism from 2007 to 2018. They express frustration over being betrayed by colleagues at Media Diversified, detailing financial mismanagement and deception.
Here’s the conversation edited for clarity:
Sam: You gotta try and do something When you’ve retreated into the heteronormative nuclear family.
Adam: Oh my God. How many syllables was that? But, yeah. But, you know, a lot of people don’t practice what they preach. Do they like? What do they call the word um, Praxis in there? Okay, yeah. Like, you get a lot of revolutionary men who don’t, don’t actually help out at home and stuff.
Sam: It’s nice to hear your voice. It’s been a while. I’ve spoken to Simeon quite a bit recently because of the work. Well, I don’t know if you know, I know you’re not online much, but because of this investigative work I’ve been doing, I’ve had somebody hack all my Twitter accounts, all three, hack my laptop. Just, just really make life difficult, difficult, in the sense that I get very paranoid and worried about it, you know. And then there was air tags on my phone, and so, um, so, yeah, I spoke to Simeon about, could the Black Writers Union put earlier statement out or something, just so? So it looks like I’m not just by myself. I’ve got some institutional support, basically.
Adam: That’s horrible, things happen. Yeah? I remember when, yeah, at the monitoring group, they the fascists hacked our work computers and deleted all of our files.
Sam: What the fuck I didn’t know that. I remember you telling me that lots of stuff happened at the monitoring group, but I never quite found out what. What actually happened?
Adam: Yeah. Lots of, yeah. Lots of, what’s been around little bail on pumps been around since the 70s. So, yeah, lots of thing going down over the years,
Sam: Okay, that’s cool. That’s cool. Yes. So thank you very much for agreeing to speak to me. Of course, that’s not necessarily, of course, I don’t think, but no, I appreciate it. So so a little bit about the book, so you know where I’m situated. And, yeah, so it isn’t a memoir, but it’s also a kind of history of East Africa in the late 2000 you know, the late noughties, I should say so, 2007 to 2010 and then it’s a short kind of history of London more than anything. And then a history of London anti-imperialist scene, plus the white left scene, kind of an activism in the in sort of 2011 up until 2018-ish, including Media Diversified. For media diversified only me and Yasmin know everything. And well, Yasmin doesn’t even know everything, so, so she knows a big part of Media Diversified ‘me’. And Manveer knows a different part me, and Marcus knows a different part. If I don’t write it down, it’s just lost. And so, and I think that early 2000 and 10s period, the anti imperialist stuff that didn’t go very far is quite important as well, because at that time, I was like, I knew Pablo Navarette, and he made me an associate or producer on this film with Lowkey. So I knew Lowkey a little bit, all of those people, and then I knew you. I do not know how I met you, or whatever it might have been through Black students, through Malia. I’ve no idea, but I’d remember, maybe, yeah, because I forgot about Malia for a little while, and finally I thought, oh my god, Malia. She was really important person, uh, figure, in my life and a lot of people’s lives in the early 2000 and 10s, until they monstered her. So I’ve asked her for an interview, but she’s quite I mean, she’s been quiet for years. They literally got rid of that woman from the public space. I know she’s an editor at Red Pepper, but it’s terrible. And I know Sarah, my friend, was really close to her, so she told me, you know, she was affected by it. Of course you would be. I mean, some people have got tougher skins, but even me, I was affected by shit. And even though mine’s a mental health thing, it did affect me, some of the crap that I got daily from white people and black and brown people. You know, I don’t think you know what happened to Media Diversified in 2019? Why? Why we? Why I took over again from Henna and Maurice, because I thought Henna was going to take over permanently, but they really, they really fucked me over. Well, yeah, because, basically I went on a sabbatical, and I told her, and I made Henna a director as well, just so that she had an investment into the to the organisation, and that she would, you know, hopefully do stuff. I before I left, I got all this funding so she could pay herself. She could pay Morris and and Samira, you know, I didn’t take any of that money. I pursued that money for two years. I didn’t take a thing. I just left it to them. And I thought, yeah. And then, you know, I came back, and I was like, I still didn’t want to be involved. But I then I I was helping out, because people saw me, because Media Diversified had gone really quiet. They were publishing stuff, but they weren’t too social. So every time things came up, people would come to me and asked me, could do, what about this? Sam What about this? Can I publish this? And I’m like, I’m not the editor, man, what’s going on? And so I got involved on that basis. And then, yeah, I’d had meetings, a couple of meetings, with them over five months. Yes, I was back for five months, and we’d meet together. I see, is there anything you need to tell me, or anything these people lied to my face for five months? Henna, in the meantime, had made Maurice and Samira directors as well, meaning that if we had some sort of vote, I would be voted out. I see they did not tell me. I found out by accident. Henna sent me some papers to sign, and I actually read them… and I was like what are these directors? How many directors? What’s going on? And so I emailed her. She didn’t reply. And so I emailed a couple of questions to Yasmin: did Henna make some more directors, or what’s happened? And she said, I have no idea. We’ve hardly met since you went, Sam. I was like, what? And then so I spoke to Samira, what is going on – Henna made you a director? And she said, Yeah, me and Morris, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I actually, I don’t even think. She said, sorry the stupid cow. And I said, five months I’ve been with you guys, and I asked you to, you know, to tell me if there’s anything you need, to tell me they lied to my face for five months..
Adam: that’s bad. That’s really bad, really bad.
Sam: And what happened is, in the end, I did, and in the meantime, they’ve been doing consulting work for various people, saying it’s Media Diversified and just taking all the money and not putting it in media diversified bank account… So we got this funding, and they were splitting it in three parts, so they pay everyone, and we got a payment, and it was in the bank account. They hadn’t taken it yet. And so I start emailing Henna, what is going on? I’ve got my friend who’s a company secretary, so she’s looking through things and seeing what is this. And so she puts a list of questions to Henna. Henna’s gone quiet. She’s not saying a fucking thing yet. And then what she does is she goes into the bank account and takes all the money out and she was leaving and they should invoice and so people started emailing me, asking me to be paid their invoices. She’d taken the fucking money I just paid people out of my own money. Absolutely, absolutely mad. And I didn’t put it out publicly because I didn’t want to smear Media Diversified and people, you know, all the chat that would have happened, all the crap, of course, I just, I just hated them for that. What she did over months, and I didn’t know she was trying to take my life, be me in some way, but me as a real fucking capitalist who fucking takes money off other people. I just, it’s just horrendous, what she did. So then I’m finding all this stuff, like, right? I’m taking this back. I am not having them in it. So she’s trying to, like, secure the website. But what she doesn’t know I’ve got the like, the website, Media Diversified, is linked to my email or something like that. So what I could do is change the password, and change all the passwords for the for the website. I didn’t know until I saw Usayd last month, he said, “you know, Henna emailed me around that time, saying, Could I help her with the website? And I said no”, because he doesn’t know her, and all he knows of her is she likes money, and so he didn’t do anything. I didn’t even know this part of the story. She’s trying to get the website back from me. And you know what? The chapter in my book, it’s called DJ Takeover, because I went through everything, I changed the passwords of everything. I locked them out of everything. I went to the bank and said, cut it off. Do not let them take any more money out. Jesus the drama. The drama was so deep, I think I told Biz Pears about it all, and Maurice was involved with all of it. And it’s not surprising now you see that he’s Fraser Nelson’s best friend. These people I trusted, trusted to my soul because I’d worked with him for years. Can you imagine somebody lying to your face for five months. I wouldn’t have said anything if she wanted to make them directors. She could have told she could have asked me. I would have said yes. That’s the thing. I thought they were invested. So I would have said yes. But instead, they did it in a sneaky, nasty fucking way, and it made me paranoid. It made me not trust people. It still makes me not trust people.
Adam: That’s really horrible, yeah, and you put so much work into that project as well.
Sam: We built it over years, but you know, with my mental health and all of that. It was just too much for me. In the end, I couldn’t take it. It was still hurtful. Sorry. I haven’t talked about it for a long time, and now I’m supposed to be interviewing you, were you able to listen to any of the counseling
Adam: I haven’t listened to a podcast in ages, unfortunately, sorry, yeah.
Sam: So the reason I asked it Sukant is I just did like a two hour interview with him, and what I wanted to talk about is the early days, like when I vividly remember this meeting I went to. I can’t remember where he held it, but it was him and Carlos were the top people, sort of, who convened this meeting. It’s a room full of people, and the people I met there. I don’t think you were there actually, but I did meet some British Iranian people… You know the people I met, Shafi and so on…
Lurking in the shadows
On 10 August I posted the following on Instagram.
Went to Kew Gardens last week and interviewed Sukant Chandan, who was born into a family of leading anti-colonial resistors in Kenya and India. I’ve known Sukant since 2011. I was interviewing him for my book, Between a Rock, a Hard Place and a Dystopia, but it was such a great chat I turned it into a podcast: The Activist – Forged in the Fires of Junglism
Sukant has been committed to the anti-colonial grassroots since 1994, when at the age of 16 he organised an anti-racist police patrol watch at Eid celebrations on Southall Broadway. He is also a committed Junglist, on Pirates and inna dance, and been a MC since 1996 as MC RebelBase.
I hope Lowkey, Hicham Yezza, Pablo and Akala will listen to this I think it will show you a side of Sukant you’ve never seen before. It delves in to history, his activism, fallouts, Grime, Libya and there’s some fucking great Jungle in there
Sukant told me his origin story/legend and had been successful in convincing me of his bona fides, which I hoped to convince others of. Because I felt sorry that he was not in contact with other people who had been in the anti-imperialist movement he had founded alongside Carlos Martinez. And his mental health struggles he told me about back in 2012 had stayed with me. His frequent emails and WhatsApp messages checking in on me had always touched me too:
On 15 August someone who calls themselves William Crow contacted me on Twitter. He replied to a song I had posted of David Bowie and linked me to a Jungle tube he said it reminded me of. I replied to him saying “Are you a Junglist?”. He identified himself as a Junglist:
Used to be a free party DJ in the 00s. Dusted the vinyl off recently: https://t.co/VdLF4T1OTb
I sent him the podcast I had recorded with Sukant Chandan a few days before, The Activist – Forged in the Fires of Junglism, In which Sukant had created a big legend and I had allowed him to myth make.
He quoted the podcast back to me and we proceed to chat back and forth first publicly, then in DM and then on Signal. An Ai transcription summary of our discussion on Sukant says the following:
The conversation revolves around a series of interactions on Twitter and Signal between Speaker 1 and William Crow, who bonded over their shared love for jungle music. They discuss various personal and political topics, including William’s involvement with Palestine Action and his struggles with mental health and ADHD. Speaker 1 expresses concerns about potential undercover agents due to past experiences with infiltrations. William shares his family photos to alleviate these concerns and discusses his dissertation and activism work. They also plan to attend a jungle event in Manchester and discuss potential collaborations and investigations
William offers to help Speaker 1 (Sam) with investigations in Manchester, sharing his own experiences with the police and ambulance services.
Speaker 1 (Sam) mentions planning to visit Manchester and suggests meeting William and another mutual friend, Harry Stokes, to listen to jungle music.
William transition to a more secure communication platform, Signal, to discuss their work further.
Building Trust and Sharing Personal Stories
Speaker 1 (Sam) and William continue to share personal stories, including their experiences with mental health and medication.
They talk about their love for Manchester and their experiences with the city’s culture and people.
Speaker 1 and William discuss their political views and social issues, including their thoughts on Palestine Action and their work.
They talk about their experiences with mental health and the challenges they face in their daily lives.
William shares his thoughts on the effectiveness of medication and the broader issues of poverty and economic inequality.
They discuss their experiences with tattoos and the role they play in their lives, including the pain and symbolism behind them.
He ended our conversation by saying please tell people on Twitter to email their support for Palestine Action detainees. Was that another attempt to identify subversives, whether that be anti-imperialists or trans people, who they think inherently subservient and who the permanent state, with the help of people such as Claire Fox, try to legislate against?
Unwarranted scrutiny – just for being a Black woman in journalism
On Friday 24 August Women Press Freedom also known as the Coalition for Women Journalists published an article. It followed a long conversation with myself and the author, her investigating, and reading. She said the following:
The situation mirrors an incident two years prior when Asumadu suspected her laptop had been compromised. At the time, Asumadu was trying to distance herself from activism by focusing on her book. Her writing process was interrupted when her Chromebook asked for an unfamiliar login—an email address that closely resembled hers but wasn’t hers. Despite taking it to IT experts, they couldn’t resolve the issue or explain who was behind the attempt. This led to a year of leaving the laptop unused, fueling paranoia about surveillance and hacking.
In another unsettling episode, she recounted how photos taken with a contact she suspected could have been surveilling her, mysteriously disappeared from her phone when she had not deleted them. The photos remained in her cloud storage.
Asumadu has not ruled out the possibility that British security services may be involved, given her investigative work, including her interview with Tom Fowler, a man with deep insights into state infiltration of activist networks, and her inquiries sent to prominent figures and outlets investigating the recent riots in the UK. Asumadu also thinks that her past activism against the Nationality and Borders Act, which she believes disproportionately targets marginalized groups, has also made her a target for surveillance and far-right agitators.
“Whilst I don’t always know where a threat is. I know there is a threat,” says Asumadu. “Security services/special branches etc. follow both activists and journalists. Activists are hyper-vigilant in different ways. They are used to their groups being infiltrated. The thing with me is. I am an activist and a journalist. So, I am hyper-vigilant in both ways. It’s served me quite well so far.”
In the meantime publishing the same day, my editor at the Canary said this:
Samantha Asumadu is a highly experienced journalist, broadcaster, and editor. She has been a working journalist since 2010 when she lived in East Africa. Asumadu has done breaking news reporting for CNN and France 24. She created news pieces for AFP, filmed in the DRC for DW Global, and also directed a documentary for Al Jazeera English.
Now, Asumadu has opened herself up to further scrutiny. She said:
“Recently I embarked on a five-part investigative series about state surveillance and government authoritarianism for the Canary. Three parts have been published and there are two to go.”
Her work for us covered the notorious Forde Report into racism within the Labour Party. It also looked at how the state is silencing and imprisoning peaceful activists. Asumadu most recently delved into the links between the recent far-right race riots and the ‘acceptable’ faces of this kind of ideology like Douglas Murray.
People who have read my work for years were incensed, one even saying,
independent media professional and @thecanaryuk writer Samantha Asumadu has been subject to attempted hacking.
This is shocking even by extant standards and expectations. Independent journalists like @SamanthaAsumadu are the last line of defence against the miasma that blankets the rest of the media. https://t.co/EsXNVFh29W
There was even some new information in the Canary editorial that I wasn’t aware of. I haven’t had any mail for over two weeks. Usually I would have reminders about not paying my rent. I have had none. Speaking to the former editor in chief of an Independent publication, he told me:
I’m convinced there’s a different unit or team that works out of/ adjacent to Whitehall and outside the ‘normal’ security services structures that does basically low intensity digital attack.
I seek patterns, that’s how I do investigative journalism plus asking questions, often seemingly obtuse questions, but lots of them. Relentlessly. And at the same time I try to keep myself from falling over the edge into psychosis.
It’s possible I have apophenia. I try my best not to self diagnose though. I noticed that many people in my circle and in my periphery had taken the Civil Service Test in the early 2000s but then had only briefly or had not gone on to work for the civil service:
For example Anthony Anaxagorou’s partner and mother of his child had taken the test. She told the Observer in 2019 that:
I wanted to be a spy – or anything that was exciting and took me to different places.
Helping to build her legend the Observer’s theatre columnist, Arifa Akbar, wrote in an article entitled, Sabrina Mahfouz: ‘People used to say they expected me to be a lot more foreign’about her adaptation of noughts and crosses set to tour the UK and her anthology of Muslim writing picked for Emma Watson’s book club. The article noted that:
Her parents never tried to direct her passions, so she was able to dabble and experiment as she wished. She began a classical archaeology degree at King’s College London, but changed to English literature and classics because the original course was too scientific for her liking. By her 20s, she had changed direction and signed up to the civil service’s fast-stream programme with the Ministry of Defence… That career was stymied by her not receiving top secret security clearance, for reasons she sees as being linked to class and ethnicity.
Then there’s Andrew Neilson the director of campaigns for the Howard League for Penal Reform for the last seventeen years, who was previously a Ministry of Justice press officer and chair of the Poetry Society, who both I and Anthony Anaxagorou have had unfortunate unsolicited runnings into on X:
Aren’t you supposed to be the chair of @PoetrySociety and you’re coming for independent poetry presses like this? Weird. Amazon don’t invest in Israeli weapons. BG do. I have 47 authors I’ve published, inc Palestinians, if one asked to not have work on Amazon we would discuss.
Much as I value the work of the Howard League, this was a great thread from @SamanthaAsumadu. It is okay to call out the govt on decisions when they are new – indeed a good time to do it! Please think hard about why you decided to call a black woman “aggressive” for doing this
— same handle on Threads & Bluesky (@octodoll) July 28, 2024
We asked questions of both Sabrina Mahfouz and Andrew Neilson, At the time of publication we have had no reply
Pushing through, regardless
Last weekend I asked the writer of the Women Press Freedom article whether these people wanted to kill me. She didn’t directly answer but did say:
ADVICE I WAS GIVEN BY AN EXPERT: I think it’s good idea, to take note of your exact location coordinates, the time and any other details about the tag, I’m not sure how they work exactly. But document what you can, so you can send to access now, and they can advise you properly. Stay with people you trust
I really think you should stay with friends until you feel safe. I know they were useless before but if you are feeling this unsafe you should go to the police. Report feeling unsafe and feeling you are being followed. I understand you feeling so stressed, and I want you to be safe above anything else. Please report to the police if you feel it can escalate. From my experience, working with journalists this is generally a tactic to intimidate and doesn’t escalate physically, and speaking publicly as you have normally helps too but you need to do the best for you right now. Secure your digital security with the help of the experts and go to police, maybe you know a friendly officer? And document everything.
Whilst I don’t know and friendly police officers, I have documented everything. It is a habit I have.
Subsequent to that I purposefully reached out to people I know who were either rich, powerful, editors in chiefs or lawyers. I told them the situation. I sent them the two articles and told them I may need their help. I know that asking people for help or advice makes them more beholden to you than giving your help. It’s an ego thing, human nature. I posted photos of my self at journalism awards events in order that the permanent state knew I was not just a line freelancer. I had powerful connections, if not money and state power myself.
I managed to push through and work despite the most challenging of circumstances and for that I am proud.
Black and brown people who work as spies for the state must be psychopaths no?
They’re literally working against their own interests if they are doing spy shit for Mi5 on behalf of the Home Office, right? Isn’t that the definition of a psychopath, they think they are special? Adding to my theory here.
On the flip side, foreign correspondents are mostly ADHD and subsequently all get PTSD. The best foreign correspondents – that is, the survivors – are psychopaths. I am however getting good at spotting the difference between your garden variety narcissist and a spy. With Black and brown narcissists as Professor Yasmin Gunaratnam pointed out to me last week:
identity can become a commodity, something that is an extension of the ego, rather than the site for politics. You can then end up flogging it on different markets. Like selling off the family silver.
I believe the same goes for white working class narcissists.
White, middle-class narcissists and spies are a whole other kettle of fish. Who knows why they do what they do.
In my interview with Matt Potter in 2018 he told me that:
the rise of Trump and Brexit and so on, is the creation of whether you want to call them useful fools, or whether you want to call them kind of, you know, there’s this word floating around, so and so is an asset. So and so it’s a Russian asset. And actually, that’s I’ve always found that to be a very frustrating word. It covers a multitude of sins. So it could that could mean, and in intelligence circles, it can mean somebody who is an informant, paid or or lent on or otherwise, who just isn’t a member of the intelligence service, but he’s effectively a spy, or it could mean somebody who is just bumbling along and doing things that the accuser claims is useful to the opposition, in which case it’s just about everybody on Earth.
Being yourself is a hell of a responsibility; one that some people do not take on
When I set out to write this article, I intended to focus on Keir Starmer. It was going to be the revealing of him as a spook. I teased it in the third article by ending on calling him the man, the legend. A play on the fact that spies create what’s called a ‘legend’, which Tom Fowler explained to me, how much work goes into it.
But Keir has always been public. He literally had a title called the Director of Public Prosecutions. However, when asking about him I came across a wall of silence. Nobody would talk to me. It was as unsettling as the silence around the Forde Report. which I wrote about in the first article in this series. I contacted barristers who he had worked with before he was DPP at Doughty Street Chambers, I contacted other barristers he would have interacted with during the London Riots, investigative journalists who have taken a critical stance on the permanent state, and authors who had written about the British state, cyber warfare, and and even a former colleague who had worked at Brunswick financial PR company (on a punt).
Nobody replied. Not one single person.
According to the Times, in a keynote speech on 26 August the prime minister will prepare the public for potentially unpopular decisions, such as tax rises, by blaming the ‘rubble and ruin’ left by the Conservatives:
Sir Keir Starmer will compare the government’s job to the efforts of communities, such as in Middlesbrough, to clean up after the recent riots. Keir Starmer will say that he needs 10 years as prime minister to rebuild the country following the ‘rubble and ruin’ left by the Tories. He will also compare the ‘hard work’ of the British people cleaning up the streets after the riots to his job of cleaning up the country after Tory rule.
It is a speech to pave way for unpopular decisions.
Author and poet Sylvia Plath once said:
It’s a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It’s much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.
I believe I have been a useful fool, an asset and an agent of change.
The latter us why I was targeted by the permanent state.
The former was because I was more useful than a their informants and agents put together. That’s because I have love for people whether they be Black, white, Muslim, Jew, or brown. These narcissists and psychopaths also known as informants and spies can feel no love. Nonetheless I feel sorry for them.
As Albert Camus said:
Some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
Imagine having to do that.
Featured image via the Canary and additional images via Samantha Asumadu
It began as a devastating, confined storm off the coast of Sicily, striking the luxury yacht Bayesian in the form of a devastating water column resembling a tornado. Probability was inherent in the name (Thomas Bayes, mathematician and nonconformist theologian of the 18th century, had been the first to use probability inductively) and improbability the nature of the accident.
It also led to rich speculation about the fate of those on the doomed vessel. While most on the sunk yacht were saved (the eventual number totalled fifteen), a number of prominent figures initially went missing before being found. They included British technology entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his daughter, along with Morgan Stanley International Bank chairman, Jonathan Bloomer, and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo.
Lynch, co-founder of the British data analytics firm Autonomy and co-founder and investor in the cybersecurity firm Darktrace, had been recently acquitted by a US federal jury of fifteen counts of fraud and conspiracy, along with his co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain, regarding Hewlett-Packard’s acquisition of Autonomy in 2011. While the firm’s acquisition had cost a mighty US$11 billion, HP wrote off a stunning US$8.8 billion within 12 months, demanding an investigation into what it regarded as “serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations at Autonomy.” Clifford Chance was instructed by Lynch to act for him following the write down of Autonomy’s value in November 2012, hence Morvillo’s presence.
Lynch had his fair share of unwanted excitement. The US Department of Justice successfully secured his extradition, though failed to get a conviction. The investor proved less fortunate in a 2022 civil suit in the UK, one he lost.
For all his legal travails, Lynch stayed busy. He founded Invoke Capital, which became the largest investor in the cybersecurity firm Darktrace. Other companies featured in terms of funding targets for the company, among them Sophia Genetics, Featurespace and Luminance.
Darktrace, founded in 2013, has thrived in the thick soup of security establishment interests. British prime ministers have fallen within its orbit of influence, so much so that David Cameron accompanied its CEO Nicole Egan on an official visit to Washington DC in January 2015 ahead of the opening of the company’s US headquarters.
Members of the UK signals intelligence agency GCHQ are said to have approached Lynch, who proceeded to broker a meeting that proved most profitable in packing Darktrace with former members of the UK and, eventually, US intelligence community. The company boasts a veritable closet of former operatives on the books: MI5, MI6, CIA, the NSA, and FBI. Co-founder Stephen Huxter, a notable official in MI5’s cyber defence team, became Darktrace’s managing director.
Other connections are also of interest in sketching the extensive reach of the cyber industrial complex. This need not lend itself to a conspiratorial reading of power so much as the influence companies such as Darktrace wield in the field. Take Alexander Arbuthnot, yet another cut and dried establishment figure whose private equity firm Vitruvian Partners found Darktrace worthy of receiving a multi-million-pound investment as part of a push into cybersecurity.
Fascinating as this is, such matters gather steam and huff on looking at Arbuthnot’s family ties. Take Arbuthnot’s mother and Westminster chief magistrate, one Lady Emma Arbuthnot. The magistrate presided over part of the lengthily cruel and prolonged extradition proceedings of Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks and hounded for alleged breaches of the US Espionage Act. (Assange recently pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information under the Espionage Act of 1917.) Any conflict of interest, actual or perceived, including her husband’s own links to the UK military community as former UK defence minister, were not declared during the legal circus. Establishment members tend to regard themselves as above reproach.
With such a tight tangle of links, it took another coincidence to send the amateur sleuths on a feverish digital trawl for sauce and conspiracy. On August 17, a few days prior to Lynch’s drowning, his co-defendant was struck while running in Cambridgeshire. Chamberlain died in hospital from his injuries, with the driver, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, assisting at the scene with inquiries.
Reddit and the platform X duly caught fire with theories on the alleged role of hidden corporate actors, disgruntled US justice officials robbed of their quarry, and links to the intelligence community. Chay Bowes, a blustery Irish businessman with an addiction to internet soapbox pontification, found himself obsessed with probabilities, wondering, “How could two of the statistically most charmed men alive meet tragic ends within two days of each other in the most improbable ways?”
A better line of reflection is considering the influence and power such corporations exercise in the cyber military-industrial complex. In the realm of cyber policy, the line between public sector notions of security and defence, and the entrepreneurial pursuit of profit, have ceased to be meaningful. In a fundamental sense, Lynch was vital to that blurring, the innovator as semi-divine.
Darktrace became an apotheosis of that phenomenon, retaining influence in the market despite a scandal spotted record. It has, for instance, survived claims and investigations of sexual harassment. (One of those accused at the company was the most appropriately named Randy Cheek, a sales chief based in the San Francisco office.)
In 2023, its chief executive Poppy Gustafsson fended off a stinging report by the US-hedge fund Quintessential Capital Management (QCM) alleging questionable sales and accounting practices intended to drive up the value of the company before it was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2021. This sounded rather typical and seemed eerily reminiscent of the Autonomy affair. “After a careful analysis,” QCM reported, “we are deeply sceptical about the validity of Darktrace’s financial statements and fear that sales, margins and growth rates may be overstated and close to sharp correction.”
QCM’s efforts did no lasting damage. In April this year, it was revealed that Darktrace would be purchased by US private equity firm Thoma Bravo for the punchy sum of US$5.32 billion. The Darktrace board was bullish about the deal, telling investors that its “operating and financial achievements have not been reflected commensurately in its valuation, with shares trading at a significant discount to its global peer group”. If things sour on this one, Thoma Bravo will only have itself to blame, given the collapse of takeover talks it had with the company in 2022. Irrespective of any anticipated sketchiness, Lynch’s troubled legacy regarding data-driven technology and its relation to the state will remain.
Earlier this week, in a culmination of a decade-long fight, James Cain, a federal judge in Louisiana who was appointed by president Trump, decided to block the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice from pursuing enforcement actions based on “disparate impacts” — or the idea that a regulation might disproportionately harm one group of people over another.
A provision of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VI allows federal agencies to take action against state policies and programs that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin. Since the EPA’s founding in 1970, however, the agency allowed most of the Title VI complaints that it received to languish without resolution. In 2015, a coalition of community groups in Louisiana, with the assistance of the public-interest environmental law organization Earthjustice, sued the agency for this practice and won. Five years later, after president Biden took office, federal regulators finally began addressing the civil rights complaints they received and the EPA announced a civil-rights probe into Cancer Alley — a stretch of land on the lower Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans where over 150 chemical plants pump cancer-causing chemicals into air of predominantly Black communities — marking a new phase of the agency’s use of Title VI.
Documents obtained by Grist last year indicated that the federal government was making significant progress with Louisiana officials in their Title VI negotiations. Cancer Alley residents’ principle demand — that state regulators assess whether a community is already exposed to disproportionately high levels of pollution before permitting a new project there — had made it into a draft resolution document. But at a certain point in the process, sources told Grist, the talks broke down.
Then in May 2023, Jeff Landry, then the attorney general (and now governor) of Louisiana, filed a lawsuit against the EPA. On the basis that the agency was overstepping its authority, Landry’s suit challenged not only the EPA’s use of Title VI to regulate pollution in Louisiana, but also the very legal justification of disparate-impacts regulation, which reaches thousands of programs across the country and iscan be used to adjudicate decisions as varied as where a new highway can go or whether a housing practice is discriminatory. Advocates worried that the lawsuit had the potential to unravel decades of civil rights law. This week’s decision puts those concerns to rest, for now.
Judge Cain’s final judgment concurs with Landry’s argument. In effect, the ruling will make it impossible for the EPA to pursue enforcement actions based on disparate impacts — but only in Louisiana. Cain’s judgment comes in the same week as the EPA’s new Title VI guidance, which urges state and local regulators to establish safeguards that protect their constituents against discrimination.
Louisiana’s lawsuit was just one instance in a spate of right-wing attacks against the EPA’s use of civil rights law to regulate pollution in neighborhoods of color. In April, Republican attorneys general from 23 states filed a petition with the Biden administration’s EPA asking the agency to stop using Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to regulate pollution. The effort was led by Florida’s Ashley Moody, and compared the EPA’s efforts at tacking environmental justice through civil rights law to “racial engineering.” The EPA has not yet responded to the petition.
Debbie Chizewer, an attorney at Earthjustice, told Grist that the EPA and the DOJ could choose to appeal the case. In his ruling, Cain argued that disparate-impact regulations “are illegal anywhere in the United States.” Whether they do or not, Judge Cain’s decision is not binding on any other district courts. However, Chizewer cautioned, “if another state filed a case using the same theories, they will point to this case as persuasive authority for another court to consider.” It will be up to other courts whether they are persuaded by Cain’s analysis, she said.
In Louisiana, the decision means that communities have one less tool at their disposal to fight a slate of new oil and gas facilities soon to break ground.
“Louisiana has given industrial polluters open license to poison Black and brown communities for generations, only to now have one court give it a permanent free pass to abandon its responsibilities,” said Earthjustice Vice President for Healthy Communities Patrice Simms in a statement. “Louisiana’s residents, its environmental justice communities, deserve the same Title VI protections as the rest of the nation.”
Editor’s note: Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.
When the Rev. Al Sharpton took the stage to introduce members of the Exonerated Five on the last night of the Democratic National Convention, it was, for the briefest moment, a nod toward a reality that the DNC had otherwise aggressively avoided: the myriad injustices of our criminal legal system.
“Thirty-five years ago my friends and I were in prison for crimes we didn’t commit,” Korey Wise said. As teenagers, Wise, Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Antron McCray were wrongly arrested, brutally interrogated, and imprisoned for the rape of a jogger in Central Park. Donald Trump notoriously spent tens of thousands of dollars on full-page ads in the New York Times calling to bring back the death penalty. “Our youth was stolen from us,” Wise said. “Every day as we walked into courtroom, people screamed at us, threatened us because of Donald Trump.”
“He wanted us dead,” Salaam, now a New York City Council member, said. Now in their late 40s and early 50s, the men once known as the Central Park Five stood as a living testament both to Trump’s cruelty and the futures he sought to crush.
The moment was powerful. But it also exposed a tension that had been present throughout the entire convention. All week, the criminal justice system — and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s role in it — had been cast as a force for good: a source of protection and justice for society’s vulnerable. Harris was praised by a parade of sheriffs, state attorneys general, and members of the U.S. security state as the leader who will keep Americans safe. “Crime will keep going down when we put a prosecutor in the White House instead of a convicted felon,” President Joe Biden said in his speech on Monday.
To anyone who has ever watched the Democrats maneuver in an election year, none of this was particularly surprising. The party’s belief that their candidates must adopt the mantle of law and order is a long-held tradition. Yet Wise, Salaam, Santana, Richardson, and McCray were once themselves demonized as looming threats to American society — branded not only as “felons” but also as “superpredators,” a racist and dehumanizing myth weaponized to give prosecutors the power to punish children as adults. Trump’s targeting of these teenagers was certainly repugnant and cruel. But their convictions came out of an era that saw politicians build careers on criminalizing and punishing young people like them. Few were more successful than Biden and Bill Clinton, both of whom were welcomed as heroes at the DNC.
For years, Harris has presented herself as an antidote to these bad old days: a prosecutor who believed in being “smart” rather than “tough” on crime. As a contender during the 2020 presidential primary, she promised a slew of criminal justice reforms, calling mass incarceration “the civil rights issue of our time.” As senator, she sponsored and co-sponsored legislation to make the system fairer and more humane, including a bill to abolish the federal death penalty and grant new sentences to everyone on federal death row. But now, with the presidency within reach, rather than seize the opportunity to follow through on such work, Harris and the Democratic Party have simply moved on from the discussion. The appearance of the Exonerated Five was bookended by yet another round of speeches elevating prosecutors and bashing criminals.
Unmet Promises
Salaam’s presence in particular was a reminder of a specific policy the Democratic National Committee has abandoned. In the years after his wrongful incarceration, he became an activist against the death penalty, telling his story to audiences around the country. (This is how I first got to know Salaam; for years we jointly served on the board of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty.) When the New York State Legislature debated fixing the state’s death penalty law, which had been invalidated by the state’s highest court, Salaam presented himself as a cautionary tale. Had capital punishment been the law of the land the year he was tried, he may well have been executed before proving his innocence.
Yet in the hours before Salaam spoke at the convention, many Americans were learning for the first time that the DNC had removed its goalof ending capital punishment from its official platform. The issue had previously been enshrined in the party platform for years, with the language in 2016 especially robust: “We will abolish the death penalty, which has proven to be a cruel and unusual form of punishment,” it read. “It has no place in the United States of America.”
As a document, the platform does not always reflect the priorities or beliefs of a presidential candidate. The 2016 language, for instance, was at odds with candidate Hillary Clinton’s support for capital punishment. But the decision to remove any reference to the death penalty was nonetheless alarming. At best, it raises questions about Harris’s stated commitment to ending capital punishment, something she not only claimed to want to do during the 2020 primary but took action on as senator. At worst, it signals something much darker, especially for the 40 men on federal death row.
The omission is especially worrisome to those who lived through Trump’s unprecedented federal execution spree, carried out in the waning months of his presidency. Under Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr, 13 people were executed at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute. The last three executions were carried out back-to-back over the course of a week, just days before Biden’s inauguration. The cases were emblematic of the death penalty’s cruelty and unfairness. Lisa Montgomery, the only woman under a federal death sentence, had lived a life marked by extreme trauma and mental illness. Corey Johnson was killed despite a Supreme Court ban on executing people with intellectual disabilities. And Dustin Higgs, the last man to die, was executed for three murders carried out by another man, who had since said that the government’s case was “bullshit.”
The horror of Trump’s executions made Biden’s 2020 campaign pledge to end the federal death penalty all the more urgent — and his victory over Trump cause for celebration and relief. In this light, the removal of the death penalty from the DNC platform feels like a stunning betrayal. “Biden’s promise four years ago created a set of expectations that his four years in office so far has not met,” said Robert Dunham, director of the Philadelphia-based Death Penalty Policy Project. “It’s those raised expectations that make the absence of reference to the death penalty so disappointing to people who want him to carry out that promise.”
Still, Dunham doesn’t believe the platform’s revision signals a change in policy. “It isn’t that they dropped their position on the death penalty. The issue here is, when you’re faced with an existential threat to democracy, what issues do you emphasize and what issues don’t you emphasize?”
Rendered Invisible
If relatively few Americans recall Trump’s execution spree, it is almost certainly because it was largely undiscussed by politicians on either side. The executions in Terre Haute were pushed through recklessly, in the earliest days of the Covid pandemic, in a manner that was shocking even to seasoned anti-death penalty activists, legal experts, and defense attorneys. If there was ever a year that presented the moral imperative to speak out against the death penalty, it was then. Instead, the federal executions were completely ignored at Democrats’ virtual convention four years ago.
In my correspondence with people on federal death row at the time, several criticized the Democrats for staying silent while Trump killed their friends and neighbors. “The Government is killing people in the name of the tax payers and it is not even a major story,” Christopher Vialva wrote to me before he was put to death in September 2020. He was acutely aware that Biden helped expand the federal death penalty in the first place and was skeptical of his vow to end executions. Those who survived the executions have expressed pessimism that anything will change.
With conservatives’ Project 2025 seeking to execute the rest of the men on federal death row, the stakes could not be higher. But for all their somber warnings of the Republicans’ terrifying blueprint for a second Trump administration, Democrats have been conspicuously silent about this part of the plan.
For those who witnessed the federal executions up close, news that the DNC platform no longer included opposition to the death penalty was dismaying but not reason to lose all hope. “It’s disappointing,” said activist Bill Breeden, who served as a spiritual adviser to Johnson, standing in the death chamber while he was killed by lethal injection. Breeden is certain that the very people who will power the Democrats to victory — especially women and young people — are opposed to capital punishment. But he also is adamant that Harris must win the election. “The opposite, Christian nationalism, is fascism,” he said. As a regular visitor to federal death row, Breeden is acutely aware of the danger posed by a second Trump term. “There will be a serial killer in the White House.”
Yusuf Nur, who served as a spiritual adviser to Higgs and Orlando Hall, another man killed by the Trump administration, echoed Breeden’s sentiments. The federal executions were traumatic for both men. “It really changed my life,” Nur said.
Nur believes the silence about the death penalty evinces a lack of political courage. “They’re scared. They don’t want to bring up anything that they think could be used against them in this election cycle. That’s basically what it boils down to,” Nur said. He questioned how much direct involvement Harris had in the drafting of the platform. “I want to give her the benefit of the doubt,” he said, but he still found it disheartening and a bit ironic. “She wants to project strength and that she cannot be intimidated. But at the same time, this tells me that, yes, she can be intimidated.”
This invisibility has undoubtedly made it easier for Biden to turn his back on his previous promises. So has the silence from Democrats. As Vialva said about the federal government before he was killed, “they want us quiet so they can operate without the public caring too much. They keep us secret.”
In the summer of 2015, officials in Jackson, Mississippi sent the state a series of water samples taken at different locations throughout the city’s public water system. Residents had complained for weeks about the low pressure in their taps, and the city wanted to test the distribution system to check for possible contamination. Sure enough, regulators in the Mississippi State Department of Health, or MSDH, identified elevated lead levels in the water supply. But rather than immediately inform the city about the public health risk, they sat on the data for half a year. Unwittingly, residents continued to drink toxic water.
Officials in the Environmental Protection Agency were unaware of the problem until they inspected the city’s water system in February and March of 2020. While in Jackson, they found a network of pipes plagued by leaks, poor corrosion control, and elevated lead levels. These “persistent and concerning violations” prompted the EPA to issue an emergency order requiring the city to make improvements. As the events of the following years would show, it was already too late: The following winter, Jackson experienced a system-wide failure during a storm, causing several areas of the city to go without water for weeks. Then, in August 2022, the city’s main water treatment plant failed due to heavy flooding, precipitating a high-profile public health crisis that captured the attention of the nation. To this day, some residents don’t feel that they can depend on the system to deliver safe drinking water.
For years, none of the stakeholders with some authority over Jackson’s water system has taken full accountability for the water crisis. The state government has long blamed city officials for mismanaging the system and violating the Safe Drinking Water Act. City office holders have blamed the state for rejecting their repeated requests for funds to improve the failing infrastructure. The EPA has had a role to play as well. In May, a report from the Project for Government Oversight found that EPA regulators had for years turned a blind eye to Mississippi’s routing of federal dollars away from Jackson. Now, a new report from the EPA’s Office of Inspector General, an independent office within the agency, puts the Mississippi Department of Health in the hot seat.
The MSDH’s failure to promptly report the results of Jackson’s lead tests in 2015 is just one example of the communication deficiencies that kept local and federal officials in the dark about the dire conditions of the city’s water system, the report found. Beyond that single incident, the Inspector General reported that MSDH officials repeatedly failed to document financial and technical capacity challenges; address systemic deficiencies like excessive distribution line breaks and boil water notices; or notify the city about any of the issues they identified. These practices “obscured the long-standing challenges of the system, allowed issues to compound over time, and contributed to the system’s failure,” the report read.
Dominic DeLeo, a local clean water advocate and long-time Jackson resident, told Grist that it wasn’t fair to blame city officials for problems they didn’t fully understand. Over the past half century, Jackson has suffered a long period of decline, the result of deindustrialization and white flight that stripped the local government of resources to maintain the city’s aging infrastructure. Last year, the Mississippi newspaper the Clarion Ledger reported that Jackson is the fastest shrinking city in the nation. City officials seem to have had some information about how Jackson’s water system was failing. For years leading up to the water crisis, the city’s Department of Public Works had raised the alarm over persistent budget deficits and staffing shortages that made it impossible to address issues with the water system.
In 2016, Jackson’s city council declined to institute a civil emergency to deal with persistent water issues so as to not raise alarm among the public. “What we don’t want is to have people in the city concerned or any of our customers concerned that there is something wrong with the water supply,” said then mayor Tony Yarber. Then, at a 2021 hearing, the director of the city’s Department of Public Works Bob Miller said, “There’s no other way to say it, but we’re hanging on by our fingertips.” The missing piece for Jackson along the way was the lack of money available to do anything with the information they did have.
Despite the dire conditions in Jackson, the state failed to route funds from the federal Drinking Water State Revolving Fund to the city to diagnose and address its water issues. Had the EPA been alerted of the issues in Jackson sooner, the agency could have taken proactive steps, like providing more oversight to MSDH or making sure emergency federal funds got to Jackson more quickly, to prevent the kind of system-wide failures that rattled Jackson in subsequent years. One of the problems state regulators omitted in their annual reports was the persistent boil water notices that Jackson residents had to contend with in the years leading up to the crisis. The city would post these notices when pressure in residents’ taps fell, the result of leaks throughout the water system. On average, distribution networks should experience no more than 15 breaks per 100 miles of line every year, according to the OIG. In Jackson, the system experienced an average of 55 line breaks per 100 miles between 2017 and 2021.
The findings of the report offer validation to Jackson residents who have long felt abandoned by the state.
“I wish that [the report] did surprise us, but the trust level of the community with the state is so low,” said Makani Themba, a local activist. “The governor tends to attack us when he has a shot. It’s just been hostile.”
After the EPA charged Jackson officials with violating the Safe Drinking Water Act in January 2022, a federal judge revoked the city’s authority to manage its own water system. Ted Henifin, an engineer by training, was appointed to oversee the system until the conditions in Jackson improved. Last year, the Biden Administration secured an unprecedented $600 million in emergency funds for Jackson to repair its treatment plants and distribution network. While some local residents have reported marked improvements in their water pressure over the past year, others continue to report off-colored, smelly tap water. But the main problem with Henifin’s tenure, city advocates told Grist, is the opaqueness of his spending.
Henifin has full authority to decide how to allocate the infusion of federal dollars that Jackson was awarded last year. Shortly after beginning his new role, the engineer created a company called JXN Water to facilitate his overhaul of the system, prompting concerns about privatization. According to Themba and DeLeo, many residents have seen their utility bills spike since the engineer took over the system. Despite repeated requests for information on how the $600 million is being spent, the only information about the water system that local advocates can reliably get is from the quarterly reports that Henifin delivers to the federal judge who appointed him. This lack of transparency compelled a coalition of local advocacy groups to petition the EPA to enter its lawsuit against the city of Jackson. That request was granted earlier this year. And still, Themba told Grist, they have yet to view Henifin’s budget.
The OIG’s report includes a variety of recommendations for the EPA to provide better oversight of the MSDH, including a complete assessment of the state’s process for monitoring municipal water systems and enforcing federal drinking water standards. EPA officials should also train Mississippi regulators on how to better document system deficiencies and enter that information into a federal database, the report said. According to the OIG, the EPA agreed with all seven of its recommendations. The MSDH has not released an official statement on the report, but told the Mississippi Free Press and ProPublica last week that it is reviewing the document.
DeLeo told Grist that the main reason things were improving in some parts of Jackson was not renewed state or federal oversight or the management of Ted Henifin, but the availability of funding that the low-income city desperately needs. Until Biden issued the emergency funding, Jackson had to use the state as a conduit for receiving federal grant money — a dynamic that has rarely worked out in the city’s favor.
“Should Jackson officials have addressed all the problems that the EPA said they should address” prior to the water crisis, DeLeo asked. “Yes. Did they have the means or the resources to? No. At some point the question becomes, whose fault is that?”
Matthew Jacober stood to address the judge inside the small, packed courtroom on the third floor of the St. Louis County Courthouse in Clayton, Missouri. Jacober, a special counsel representing the county’s elected prosecutor, had a confession to make: The knife used to kill Felicia Anne Gayle Picus inside her home in August 1998 had been contaminated by the prosecution team that had tried Marcellus Williams for her murder.
Because prosecutors had mishandled and improperly stored the weapon, Jacober said, county prosecutor Wesley Bell had concluded that Williams’s rights had been violated. His conviction — and death sentence — could not stand. “The murder weapon was handled without the proper procedures then in place,” Jacober told Judge Bruce Hilton. “The St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office regrets its failure to maintain proper protocols surrounding key physical evidence in this heinous crime.”
It was a stunning admission on the day that Jacober had been slated to present the state’s case that Williams had been wrongly convicted of killing Picus. The fact that the state had so tragically mishandled the murder weapon, which had traces of unknown male DNA, meant that a key piece of evidence that would support Williams’s exoneration was no longer usable.
It was a bitter pill. The judge overseeing Williams’s 2001 trial had denied his request for DNA testing. It wasn’t until 2016 that testing ordered by the Missouri Supreme Court excluded Williams as the source of DNA found on the knife. In other words, he could not be linked to the weapon. Now, Jacober admitted, a new round of testing revealed that a prosecutor’s investigator could not be excluded as the source. Nor could the prosecutor who handled Williams’s trial. Whatever DNA evidence there was connecting the perpetrator to the murder had been irretrievably lost.
While Jacober conceded that Williams’s conviction could not stand, neither could the office point to the unknown DNA on the murder weapon to exonerate him. Instead, after hours negotiating behind closed doors with Williams’s attorneys as spectators waited in the courtroom, the county prosecutors offered Williams a deal: agree to a plea that would take the specter of execution off the table, replaced by a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
Williams would have to accept the arrangement to avoid being executed for a crime he insists he did not commit. Wearing a silvery gray thobe and white skull cap, his beard flecked with white, the 55-year-old Williams was still as Jacober spoke. The judge asked Williams if he had agreed to the terms. “Yes,” he said.
Hilton said he agreed with the outcome, as did Picus’s husband, Dan Picus. The judge would formally re-sentence Williams to life in prison the following day.
Everyone, it seemed, was on the same page. Everyone, that is, except Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey. By Wednesday night, his office had successfully appealed to the state’s Supreme Court to block the deal. But Bell’s office was determined not to let Bailey have the final word.
“Inexorable Doubt”
Dan Picus came home from work on August 11, 1998, to find his wife dead. The former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter had been stabbed repeatedly and the murder weapon, a knife from the couple’s kitchen, had been left lodged in her neck. Additionally, there were hairs found near Picus’s body, bloody fingerprints on a wall, and a trail of bloody shoeprints. Despite the wealth of physical evidence, the investigation stalled. It wasn’t until months later, after Picus’s family posted a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her killer, that a jailhouse informant came forward claiming his former cellmate, Marcellus Williams, had confessed to the murder. Police later secured a second informant, a former girlfriend of Williams’s, who also claimed he’d taken responsibility.
Notably, none of the physical evidence at the scene tied Williams to the killing. And there was good reason to question the accounts provided by the informants; both were facing prison time for unrelated crimes, and each had a history of ratting out others to save themselves from trouble. Many of the details they offered police shifted over time, while others did not match the murder. Nonetheless, Williams was tried and sentenced to death.
Each of Williams’s appeals were denied. He was on the eve of execution in January 2015 when the Missouri Supreme Court stepped in and ordered DNA testing on the murder weapon, which ultimately revealed unknown DNA. The court summarily dismissed Williams’s claims without considering those results and reset his execution for August 2017.
The Midwest Innocence Project, which represents Williams, turned to Missouri’s then-Gov. Eric Greitens, asking him to halt the execution and to convene what’s known as a board of inquiry to investigate the case. On the day Williams was set to die, Greitens issued an executive order convening a five-member board of retired judges to “assess the credibility and weight of all the evidence” in the case. The board was given subpoena power and, per state law, tasked with reporting back to the governor whether or not Williams should be executed or his sentence commuted.
That process was ongoing when the current governor, Mike Parson, issued his own executive order in June 2023, disbanding the board. It was time to “move forward,” he said. The Midwest Innocence Project sued, arguing that Parson had overstepped his authority by dissolving the panel before it had issued a report as the statute required it to do. The Missouri Supreme Court disagreed, ruling in June 2024 that Parson could do as he wished. The court reset Williams’s execution for September 24.
Meanwhile, the county court was considering a motion that Bell filed in January, seeking to vacate Williams’s conviction. In addition to the foreign DNA on the knife and the sketchiness of the snitch testimony, Bell cited poor defense lawyering at Williams’s trial and misconduct by prosecutors who struck qualified individuals from the jury pool because they were Black. These factors combined cast “inexorable doubt on Mr. Williams’s conviction and sentence,” the prosecutor argued.
Fast forward to this week: A court was finally slated to consider evidence of Williams’s innocence.
An Unexpected Twist
The rows of wooden benches inside the Division 13 courtroom were full by 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, when the hearing was slated to begin. Forty-five minutes later, Hilton stepped into the room without his robes. He was there to explain the delay. The parties were talking, he said, discussing a way to “resolve” the case. Hilton joked that he wanted everyone to know they weren’t waiting around because the judge was late.
It wasn’t until after 1 p.m. that Hilton finally took to the bench and announced that Bell’s office and Williams’s lawyers had come to an agreement. There would be no hearing as had been planned. Instead, Jacober, the special prosecutor, admitted that the state had so mishandled the murder weapon that the physical evidence was no longer probative of Williams’s innocence — or of anyone else’s guilt.
While the state’s incompetence had violated Williams’s rights — prompting the prosecutors to say his current conviction and death sentence couldn’t stand — it also cut off the most tangible path to his exoneration.
Without the DNA evidence, what remains of the case against Williams is the questionable testimony of two snitches, who have both since died. Williams had previously raised the issue of their dubious credibility but was dismissed by the courts. The same is true of his claims about his defense lawyers’ failures at trial and about the prosecution’s striking of Black people from the jury pool. At each turn the courts have shrugged their shoulders. Still, Jacober indicated that Bell’s efforts to make a case for Williams’s innocence were hamstrung without the exculpatory DNA.
Jacober announced that the prosecutors’ office would admit that it had bungled the job and take the death penalty off the table. In exchange, Williams would enter what is known as an Alford plea, accepting a charge of first-degree murder.
Named for the U.S. Supreme Court case North Carolina v. Alford, it is a plea where a defendant maintains their innocence but agrees that the state has enough to convict them and thus pleads guilty to avoid a harsher sentence — in Williams’s case (as in Alford’s), the death penalty.
As part of the deal, Williams would have the right to appeal his sentence if new evidence of his innocence comes to light.
“Marcellus Williams is an innocent man, and nothing about today’s plea agreement changes that fact,” Tricia Rojo Bushnell, Williams’s lawyer and executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, said in a statement. “The fact that there is DNA on the knife matching members of the trial prosecution team proves the State of Missouri disregarded critical protocols in the investigation of this case, including mishandling pivotal evidence.”
“That Is Not Justice”
During the hours of negotiations on Wednesday morning, Hilton had spoken to Dan Picus, who affirmed that he does not support the death penalty for Williams. Picus would be in court the following morning to testify at the sentencing hearing, the judge said.
Lawyers with the attorney general’s office were displeased. Andrew Clarke, an assistant attorney general, lodged an objection to the agreement, which Hilton overruled. Bailey, Missouri’s attorney general, then appealed to the state’s high court to intervene.
Since being appointed to his post in 2023, Bailey has spent a considerable amount of time attempting to thwart state courts from exonerating the wrongly convicted — or even from considering their claims. Bailey sought to block Williams from ever receiving a hearing, arguing to the state Supreme Court that, by granting a hearing, Hilton was challenging its authority as the highest court in the state. Last month, the court denied Bailey’s motion to scuttle the hearing and clear the way for Williams’s execution.
In a Wednesday evening court filing, the attorney general’s office again argued to the state’s high court that Hilton had overstepped his role by vacating Williams’s conviction and asked it to halt the planned resentencing. The court did just that, issuing an order requiring Hilton to hold the innocence hearing as planned and to issue a ruling by September 13, or to respond to the court explaining why he would not do so.
Picus joined the court session on Thursday morning via video call, but instead of attending Williams’s resentencing, he listened as Hilton responded to the high court’s order. The judge and attorneys had decided to move forward with a hearing on August 28, despite the lack of definitively exonerating DNA. Bell’s office indicated that it would seek to show, without the benefit of dispositive DNA evidence, that Williams’s case was too flawed to withstand scrutiny.
Rojo Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project said that evidence presented at next week’s hearing would affirm Hilton’s decision to accept the prosecutor’s confession that constitutional error had poisoned Williams’s case.
She also questioned the attorney general’s continued meddling, noting in a statement that the agreement to overturn Williams’s death sentence and to accept the Alford plea was made after careful consideration and with the support of Picus’s family.
“Yet in spite of this, the Attorney General has fought to invalidate that agreement. It is impossible to understand who this decision serves or what justice it provides,” she said. “This decision directly contradicts the will of a duly elected prosecutor and the community he represents, and the wishes of a family who has already lost so much. That is not justice.”
Last spring, New York City police officers stopped a 19-year-old on the subway during her commute. She was eligible for a free transfer from the bus to the subway, but the transfer failed to register at the turnstile, so she and a friend entered through the platform emergency exit door.
Police stopped them, took their names, and let her friend go. Officers told the 19-year-old she had a prior arrest — from 2018, when she was in her early teens — and began to question her.
The cops should not have known about that past arrest. A New York state law protects juvenile records in cases without any finding of guilt from access by anyone, including law enforcement, without a court order.
The arrest had occurred after an incident involving the girl’s mother that resulted in child services filing a petition against her mother for abuse and neglect, and removal of the girl from her mother’s custody. At the time of the subway encounter, she was still in foster care.
The arrest was never prosecuted and was later dismissed and sealed. Yet officers had managed to access the sealed record from their phones and question her about it.
The young woman is one of three plaintiffs who filed a class-action suit in July against the city and NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban for what they said was a practice of illegally accessing, using, and leaking sealed youth records. The suit, which was unsealed Thursday, alleges that officials routinely share those sealed records with prosecutors and the media — specifically with pro-cop tabloids that regularly publish juvenile arrest information sourced from police.
“The NYPD routinely accesses this information, uses it, and also discloses it.”
“When a case is sealed, it can’t be disclosed to any person or to any private or public agency, and that includes the NYPD,” said Kate Wood, an attorney in the juvenile rights practice at the Legal Aid Society, a legal advocacy group working on the suit. “Yet we know, contrary to both that statutory language and the underlying purpose of the Family Court Act — and really the juvenile legal system more generally — the NYPD routinely accesses this information, uses it, and also discloses it.”
The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Legal advocates working on the suit said the practice of leaking sealed juvenile records was indicative of the NYPD’s broader disregard for civil liberties.
“It essentially reflects an attitude by the NYPD that anyone who has come in contact with the NYPD — who, of course, are predominantly brown and Latinx young people — should be subjected to hyper-surveillance and kept in their databases,” Lisa Freeman, director of special litigation and law reform at the juvenile rights practice at Legal Aid.
Illegal Disclosure
The lawsuit brought by Legal Aid alleges that the NYPD improperly trains personnel on how to handle sealed records, and that internal practices regarding sealed records contradict one another.
The NYPD office for conducting legal training, for instance, issued a 2018bulletin saying that youth records must not be shared outside of the department. These records, however, are routinely passed by the NYPD to media, according to attribution in the tabloids, and the suit outlines instances of this external sharing.
NYPD policies that train personnel to access sealed juvenile records also violate state law, the plaintiffs wrote in the complaint. “The NYPD uses information from sealed youth arrest-related records to make decisions that have profound effects on young people, including whether to arrest or detain a person,” plaintiffs wrote.
The NYPD isn’t the only agency that has accessed sealed juvenile records and used them to question people. One plaintiff in the suit told The Intercept that agencies including the Port Authority and the city’s Department of Correction accessed his juvenile records.
The man, who requested to go by the name “George” due to the confidentiality of his juvenile record, said he applied for jobs at all three agencies, and each asked why he had not previously disclosed an arrest. His lawyer sent letters to the agencies notifying them that requesting her client disclose a sealed juvenile record was against the law.
George said he was told that his application with the NYPD would be put on hold and potentially disqualified if he didn’t disclose his juvenile record. “It was like the better the jobs I was getting, the harder the process,” he said. He said police did not handcuff him and told him he was not under arrest, so he was unaware that he was even arrested until the agencies asked him about the record as an adult.
“Juvenile records should not be showing up in background checks for law enforcement,” said his attorney, Emma-Lee Clinger. “There should have been no reason why Port Authority, the NYPD, or the Department of Correction knew about George’s arrest record.”
The New York Family Court Act seals all arrest-related records for juveniles who have not been found guilty of anything, unless a judge has ordered the case to remain unsealed.
The idea behind the law and others protecting juveniles from being treated as adults in the criminal system is two-fold. First, the criminal system separates juveniles from adults because of differences in brain development and capacity for decision-making, and also to give children the opportunity for rehabilitation. Second, Black and brown young people are more likely to come into contact with police and to face surveillance andarrest, meaning that it’s more likely that those records could be used to discriminate against them in the future.
The NYPD’s practice of accessing and sharing what are supposed to be sealed records violates both of those notions, in addition to state law.
If someone, particularly a juvenile, is arrested for something they did not do, they should be returned to that presumption of innocence, said Melanie Westover Yanez, a litigation and arbitration attorney at Millbank, a law firm working with Legal Aid on the case.
“You’re a totally innocent juvenile in particular in this case: a sensitive, delicate young person who gets charged for something, nothing comes of it, and yet it’s being disclosed to prosecutors, to the media, to police who stop you on the street for something else,” she said. “It’s a real harm that they’re suffering through no wrongdoing of their own.”
The NYPD’s routine violations of state law undermine the presumption of fairness that the law is supposed to afford, said Legal Aid’s Freeman.
The police treat DNA in a similar way in what Legal Aid has said is an unlawful database with samples of genetic material from people who have not been charged with a crime or have had charges dismissed. Legal Aid sued over the database in 2022, and the case is ongoing. The NYPD also illegally kept a database of juvenile fingerprints for years, The Intercept reported.
Legal advocates sued the NYPD in 2018 for similarly leaking what were supposed to be sealed records — and training officers to access them — for adults in cases in which no one was convicted. In March, a judge ruled that the department had to stop using sealed records and overhaul its databases and predictive policing technologies to remove sealed records.
In the suit filed Tuesday, plaintiffs are asking for an injunction to force the NYPD to immediately stop accessing, using, and sharing sealed juvenile records. The plaintiffs are also asking that the court declare the agency’s practice of accessing and sharing sealed juvenile records a violation of state law.
“It really has a very negative effect both on our sense of our own credibility as juvenile defenders and on the public perception of the fairness of the system that purports to provide protections that it doesn’t in fact provide,” Freeman said.
“If it wasn’t for my lawyer, I probably wouldn’t have a job right now,” said George. “If this is happening, it’s happening to other kids. It’s sad, it’s a sad situation. It’s not fair that somebody can judge you based off of something you did, or something they think you did, as a juvenile.”
On Tuesday 20 August at Glasgow Sheriff Court, five young people from Palestine Action Scotland were jailed.
Israel, the climate crisis, and the UK’s political prisoners
It was after they occupied Thales’s weapons factory in Govan, Glasgow, on 1 June 2022. The five occupied the roof of the arms maker and dropped banners to disrupt production. Two of them also damaged weaponry inside the building. In total, they cost Thales’ over £1m in losses.
Three who were convicted of ‘Breach of the peace’ were given 12 month custodial sentences. Whereas two of the five who were convicted of ‘breach of the peace’ and ‘malicious mischief’ were given 14 months and 16 months custodial sentences. They will be expected to serve half of their sentences in prison.
The Judge stated the aim of the harsh sentences was to deter further activism against weapons companies in Scotland.
There has now been more than 40 political prisoners jailed in Britain since July for taking action to stop crimes against humanity.
16 of these are linked to the group Palestine Action, which takes direct action to stop Britain facilitating violations of international humanitarian law by Israel against the civilian population of Gaza.
26 are linked to Just Stop Oil, which takes direct action in support of science-based demands to prevent catastrophic and irreversible harm to humanity and life on earth.
Enabling Israel’s genocide
Thales is one of the world’s largest arms companies – producing armoured vehicles, missile systems and military UAVs (drones). Thales works in partnership with Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons company, to produce military drones in their joint owned factory in Leicester called UAV Tactical Systems. They both work on the ‘Watchkeeper’ drone project which was modelled on Elbit’s Hermes 450 and “battle-tested” on the Palestinian people.
A Palestine Action spokesperson said:
Imprisoning activists for taking action against Scotland’s arms trade with Israel only serves to protect companies enabling genocide. Such sentences will urge more people to acknowledge Scottish complicity with the ongoing Gaza genocide and motivate them to take action against it. It is those who arm the massacres of the Palestinian people who are guilty, not those who take action to stop them.
On Friday, the senior British diplomat, Mark Smith, resigned from the FCDO over arms sales to Israel:
It is with sadness that I resign after a long career in the diplomatic service, however, I can no longer carry out my duties in the knowledge that this Department may be complicit in war crimes.
Defend Palestine Action
A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries said:
It was just over 10 years ago in September 2013, that Russia jailed 30 Greenpeace activists for a daring direct action against the Prirazlomnaya oil drilling platform. The action was widely perceived as symptomatic of Russia’s descent into authoritarianism under Putin. After concerted diplomatic pressure, the 30 were released in December 2013 after 3 months imprisonment.
But now Britain has decided to follow in Putin’s footsteps by filling its own broken prison system with political prisoners – people of conscience who have taken direct action to stop crimes against humanity.
Israeli embassy officials in London attempted to get the attorney general’s office to intervene in UK court cases relating to the prosecution of protesters, documents seen by the Guardian suggest.
In the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election, Louisiana experienced a parade of devastating hurricanes. On August 27, Hurricane Laura hit the state’s southwest coast as a Category 4 storm, bringing winds up to 150 miles per hour, extreme rainfall, and a 10-foot storm surge. Hurricane Delta hit the same region six weeks later as a Category 2. Hurricane Zeta then hit the southeast part of the state a week before the election. The storms made voting a chaotic and difficult process: polling locations damaged, thousands displaced from their state, all the necessary paperwork and IDs lost to floodwaters.
It is an experience that many Americans have found themselves in, or will in the future, as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of natural disasters. According to recent polling from the Pew Research Center, seven in 10 Americans said their community experienced an extreme weather event in the past 12 months, including flooding, drought, extreme heat, rising sea levels, or major wildfires.
The aftermath of a disaster can be terrifying and traumatic, and many victims struggle to secure basic necessities such as food and shelter, or to fill out paperwork for disaster aid and insurance. Finding accurate information about where and how to vote is even harder — so hard, in fact, that many people who have experienced disasters don’t bother to vote at all.
With experts forecasting a historically active hurricane season and a rash of wildfires breaking out across the West, it’s more important than ever to be prepared for disruptions to the voting process in what stands to be a pivotal election year.
The guide below aims to help you navigate early voting, absentee voting, and election day, the rules of which vary widely across the U.S. (Still not registered to vote? You still have time: Find your state’s voter registration rules here.)
A sign indicating a change in a polling location in Leonia, New Jersey following Superstorm Sandy in 2012. James Leynse/Corbis via Getty Images
In-person voting
If a disaster strikes, the governor can extend voting deadlines, allow ballots to be forwarded to a new address, allow local officials to change or add new polling places, or postpone municipal elections. Those rules are different depending on the state, and in the wake of a disaster that information may be hard to find.
The U.S. Vote Foundation has a tool to access your county election office’s contact information. These range by state; they’re typically county clerks, supervisors, auditors, boards of elections, or election commissions. You can try to contact these offices, but it’s not guaranteed they’ll be able to answer the questions. You can also ask voting rights groups in your area and watch local news for any changes or updates.
In the wake of a disaster, first confirm where you should be voting. Has your polling place been damaged or moved? If multiple locations are combined or election day volunteers are scarce post-disaster, be prepared to stand in long lines to vote. If you’re waiting in the heat, make sure to wear comfortable shoes and appropriate clothing (21 states prohibit campaign apparel, so keep that in mind), and bring water. Here are some other resources on heat waves.
Was your car damaged in a disaster? Need a ride to the polls? Some ride share services and public transit systems offer free rides on Election Day. Here’s more information.
Early voting
Most states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands offer some form of early voting, which is voting in-person before the election anywhere from a few days to over a month early, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. However, the hours, locations, and timing differ for each. Three states — Alabama, Mississippi ,and New Hampshire — do not allow early in-person voting.
Early in-person voting is a useful option if you’d like to avoid lines on election day or will be out of town. It’s also an option for people who live in a region of the country prone to natural disasters or have been recently hit by one. In-person voting on election day, which comes at the tail end of “danger season,” may not be a possibility or a priority. Go here to see the specific rules around early voting in your state.
Francisco Salomon Mendoza of La Puente, California seals his mail-in ballot at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder on March 4. Christina House / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Absentee ballots
Absentee voting is often called “mail-in voting” or “by-mail voting.” Every state offers this, but some require you to meet certain conditions, like having a valid excuse for why you can’t make it to the polls on election day. Absentee voting can be a particularly useful tool for people who have been recently displaced by extreme weather, or are at risk of being so. It also safeguards voters who live in the hottest parts of the country, where heat can make waiting in long lines dangerous.
The League of Women Voters explains absentee voting rules by state here. If you reside in a county that gets a federal disaster declaration after a disaster hits, there may be changes to these processes that can offer you more time and flexibility.
Since it’s the height of hurricane season, we’ve included the registration and absentee ballot request deadlines for hurricane-prone states below:
Florida: Registration deadline is October 7. If voting by mail, you must request an absentee ballot 12 days before the election, no later than 5 p.m. (more here).
Alabama: Registration deadline is 15 days before the election. If voting by mail, request a ballot five days before the election if you’re applying in person, or seven days before if you’re mailing your request (more here).
Mississippi: Mississippi does not have online registration. The deadline is October 7, 30 days before election day. The last day to request an absentee ballot is five days before election day (more here).
North Carolina: Voter registration deadline is5 p.m. Friday, October 11, 2024. You must request an absentee ballot no later than a week before the election (more here).
South Carolina: Registration deadline is October 7, 30 days before the election. You must request an absentee ballot no later than 5:00 p.m. on the 11th day prior to the election (more here).
Louisiana: Online registration deadline is 20 days before election on October 15; in-person or mail is 30 days on October 7.Read the absentee ballot requirements here.
Georgia: Registration deadline is October 7, 30 days before the election. You can request an absentee ballot 11 weeks before the election, and it must be returned two Fridays before (more here).
Texas: Registration deadline is October 7, 30 days before the election. If voting by mail, you must request an absentee ballot 11 days before the election (more here).
An election official in Lee County, Florida, sets up signs directing voters to a polling station in Fort Myers after Governor Ron DeSantis expanded early voting access following Hurricane Ian in 2022. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Voter ID laws
Each state has a different voter ID law. Some require photo identification, others require a document such as a utility bill, bank statement, or paycheck; some require a signature. The National Conference of State Legislatures has a breakdown of these rules here.
If your ID gets destroyed in a flood, fire, or tornado, your state may be able to exempt you from showing an ID at the polls. For instance, after Hurricane Harvey, Texas residents who lost their ID to floodwaters could vote without one once they filled out an affidavit stating that the voter didn’t have identification because of a natural disaster. Your state may also waive the fees associated with getting a new ID.
The best way to find this information out is to contact your county clerk or other election official, or contact a voting rights group in your area.
Know your rights
Just as there are strict rules in states around how people can cast ballots, there are also many others that dictate what happens outside of polling places. In most states, you can accept water and food from groups around election sites, but there is misinformation around whether or not it is legal. After the 2020 election, Georgia passed a law prohibiting this within a certain buffer zone. A judge struck down part of that law: there is no longer a ban on handing things to votes with 25 feet of them standing in line, but it’s still illegal to do so within 150 feet of the building where ballots are being cast.
Call or text 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) to report voter intimidation to the Election Protection Coalition. You can also find more information on voter rights from the ACLU.
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No matter where you live, extreme weather can hit your area, causing damage to homes, power outages, and dangerous or deadly conditions. If you’re on the coast, it may be a hurricane; in the Midwest or South, a tornado; in the West, wildfires; and as we’ve seen in recent years, anywhere can experience heat waves or flash flooding.
Living through a disaster and its aftermath can be both traumatic and chaotic, from the immediate losses of life and belongings to conflicting information around where to access aid. The weeks and months after may be even more difficult, as the attention on your community is gone but civic services and events have stalled or changed drastically.
Grist compiled this resource guide to help you stay prepared and informed. It looks at everything from how to find the most accurate forecasts to signing up for emergency alerts to the roles that different agencies play in disaster aid.
An aerial view shows flooding in Merced, California following a “bomb cyclone” in January 2023.
Josh Edelson / AFP
Where to find the facts on disasters
These days, many people find out about disasters in their area via social media. But it’s important to make sure the information you’re receiving is accurate. Here’s where to find the facts on extreme weather and the most reliable places to check for emergency alerts and updates.
Your local emergency manager: Your city or county will have an emergency management department, which is part of the local government. In larger cities, it’s often a separate agency; in smaller communities, fire chiefs or sheriff’s offices may manage emergency response and alerts. Emergency managers are responsible for communicating with the public about disasters, managing rescue and response efforts, and coordinating between different agencies. They usually have an SMS-based emergency alert system, so sign up for those via your local website (Note: Some cities have multiple languages available, but most emergency alerts are only in English.) Many emergency management agencies are active on Facebook, so check there for updates as well.
Local news: The local television news and social media accounts from verified news sources will have live updates during and after a storm. Follow your local newspaper and television station on Facebook or other social media, or check their websites regularly.
Weather stations and apps: The Weather Channel, Apple Weather, and Google will have information on major storms, but that may not be the case for smaller-scale weather events, and you shouldn’t rely on these apps to tell you if you need to evacuate or move to higher ground.
National Weather Service: This agency, also known as NWS, is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and offers information and updates on everything from wildfires to hurricanes to air quality. You can enter your zip code on weather.gov and customize your homepage. The NWS also has regional and local branches where you can sign up for SMS alerts. If you’re in a rural area or somewhere that isn’t highlighted on its maps, keep an eye out for local alerts and evacuation orders, as NWS may not have as much information ahead of time.
Cal Fire firefighters livestream images and data from efforts to control and contain the Park Fire on July 29 near Chico, California.
David McNew/Getty Images
These can often be expensive to create, so contact your local disaster aid organizations, houses of worship, or charities to see if there are free or affordable kits available. Try to gather as much as you can ahead of time in case shelves are empty when a storm is on the way.
Some of the most important things to have:
Water (one gallon per person per day for several days)
Food (at least a several-day supply of non-perishable food) and a can opener
Medicines and documentation of your medical needs
Identification and proof of residency documents (see a more detailed list below)
Battery-powered or hand crank radio, batteries, flashlight
First aid kit
Masks, hand sanitizer, and trash bags
Wrench or pliers
Cell phone with chargers and a backup battery
Diapers, wipes, and food or formula for babies and children
Food and medicines for any household pets
Don’t forget: Documents
One of the most important things to have in your emergency kit is documents you may need to prove your residence, demonstrate extent of damage, and vote. FEMA often requires you to provide these documents in order to receive financial assistance after a disaster.
Government issued ID, such as a drivers’ license for for each member of your household
Proof of citizenship or legal residency for each member of your household (passport, green card, etc.)
Social Security card for each member of your household
Documentation of your medical needs, such as medications or special equipment including oxygen tanks, wheelchairs, etc.
Health insurance card
Car title and registration documents
Pre-disaster photos of the inside and outside of your house and belongings
Copy of your homeowners’ or renters’ insurance policy
For homeowners: copies of your deed, mortgage information, and flood insurance policy, if applicable
For renters: a copy of your lease
Financial documents such as a checkbook or voided check
You can find more details about why you may need these documents here.
A volunteer assesses the remains of a charred apartment complex in the aftermath of a wildfire in Lahaina, western Maui, Hawaiʻi in 2023. Yuki Iwamura/AFP via Getty Images
Disaster aid 101
It can be hard to know who to lean on or trust when it comes to natural disasters. Where do official evacuation orders come from, for example, or who do you call if you need to be rescued? And where can you get money to help pay for emergency housing or to rebuild your home or community. Here’s a breakdown of the government officials and agencies in charge of delivering aid before, during, and after a disaster:
Emergency management agencies: Almost all cities and counties have local emergency management departments, which are part of the local government. Sometimes they’re agencies all their own, but in smaller communities, fire chiefs or sheriff’s offices may manage emergency response and alerts. These departments are the first line of defense during a weather disaster. They’re responsible for communicating with the public about incoming disasters, managing rescue and response efforts during an extreme weather event, and coordinating between different agencies. Many emergency management agencies, however, have a small staff and are under-resourced.
Much of the work that emergency managers do happens before a disaster: They develop response plans that lay out evacuation routes and communication procedures, and they also delegate responsibility to different government agencies like the police, fire, and public health departments. Most counties and cities publish these plans online.
In most cases, they are the most trustworthy resource in the days just before and just after a hurricane or other big weather event. They’ll send out alerts and warnings, coordinate evacuation efforts, and direct survivors and victims to resources and shelter.
You can find your state emergency management agency here. There isn’t a comprehensive list by county or city, but if you search your location online you’ll likely find a website, a page on the county or city website, or a Facebook page that posts updates.
Law enforcement: County sheriffs and city police departments are often the largest and best-staffed agencies in a given community, so they play a key role during disasters. Sheriff’s departments often enforce mandatory evacuation orders, going door-to-door to ensure that people vacate an area. They manage traffic flow during evacuations and help conduct search and rescue operations.
Law enforcement agencies may restrict access to disaster areas for the first few days after a flood or fire. In most states, city and county governments also have the power to issue curfew orders, and law enforcement officers can enforce these curfews with fines or even arrests. In some rural counties, the sheriff’s department may serve as the emergency management department.
Lexington Firefighters’ swift water teams rescue people stranded by extreme rain in Lost Creek, Kentucky in 2022.
Michael Swensen/Getty Images
Governor: State governors control several key aspects of disaster response. They have the power to declare a state of emergency, which allows them to deploy rescue and repair workers, distribute financial assistance to local governments, and activate the state National Guard. The governor has a key role in the immediate response to a disaster, but a smaller role in distributing aid and assistance to individual disaster victims.
In almost all U.S. states, and all hurricane-prone states along the Gulf of Mexico, the governor also has the power to announce mandatory evacuation orders. The penalty for not following these orders differs, but is most often a cash fine. (Though states seldom enforce these penalties.) The state government also decides whether to implement other transportation procedures such as contraflow, where officials reverse traffic flow on one side of a highway to allow larger amounts of people to evacuate.
HUD: The Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, also spends billions of dollars to help communities recover after disasters, building new housing and public buildings such as schools — but this money takes much longer to arrive. Unlike FEMA, HUD must wait for Congress to approve its post-disaster work, and then it must dole out grants to states for specific projects. In some cases, such as the aftermaths of Hurricane Laura in Louisiana or Hurricane Florence in North Carolina, it took years for projects to get off the ground. States and local governments, not individual people, apply for money from HUD, but the agency can direct you to FEMA or housing counselors.
A homeowner hangs a sign that reads “FEMA please help make Mexico Beach great again” on a house damaged by Hurricane Michael in Florida in 2018.
Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images
FEMA
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, is the federal government’s main disaster response agency. It provides assistance to states and local governments during large events like hurricanes, wildfires, and floods. FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
FEMA is almost never the first resource on the ground after a disaster strikes. In order for the agency to send resources to a disaster area, the state’s governor must first request a disaster declaration from the president, and the president must approve it. For large disasters such as Category 4 or 5 hurricanes, this typically happens fast. For smaller disasters, like severe rain or flooding events, it can take weeks or even months for the president to grant a declaration and activate the agency. FEMA has historically not responded to heat waves.
FEMA is broken into regional offices and offers specific contacts and information for each of those, as well as for tribal nations. You can find your FEMA region here.
FEMA has two primary roles after a federally declared disaster:
Contributing to community rebuilding costs: The agency helps states and local governments pay for the cost of removing debris and rebuilding public infrastructure. During only the most extreme events, the agency also deploys its own teams of firefighters and rescue workers to help locate missing people, clear roadways, and restore public services. For the most part, states and local law enforcement conduct on-the-ground recovery work. (Read more about FEMA’s responsibilities and programs here.)
Individual financial assistance: FEMA gives outfinancial assistanceto individual people who have lost their homes and belongings. This assistance can take several forms. FEMA gives out pre-loaded debit cards to help people buy food and fuel in the first days after a disaster, and may also provide cash payments for home repairs that your insurance doesn’t cover. The agency also provides up to 18 months of housing assistance for people who lose their homes in a disaster, and sometimes houses disaster survivors in its own manufactured housing units or “FEMA trailers.” FEMA also sometimes covers funeral and grieving expenses as well as medical and dental treatment.
In the aftermath of a disaster, FEMA offers survivors:
A one-time payment of $750 for emergency needs
Temporary housing assistance equivalent to 14 nights’ stay in a hotel in your area
Up to 18 months of rental assistance
Payments for lost property that isn’t covered by your homeowner’s insurance
And other forms of assistance, depending on your needs and losses
If you are a U.S. citizen or meet certain qualifications as a non-citizen and live in a federal disaster declaration area, you are eligible for financial assistance. Regardless of citizenship or immigration status, if you are affected by a disaster you may be eligible for crisis counseling, disaster legal services, disaster case management, medical care, shelter, food, and water.
FEMA representatives take information from people displaced by Hurricane Ian in Estero, Florida in 2022.
Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post via Getty Images
FEMA also runs the National Flood Insurance Program, which provides insurance coverage of up to $350,000 for home flood damage. The agency recommends that everyone who lives in a flood zone purchase this coverage — and most mortgage lenders require it for borrowers in flood zones — though many homes outside the zones are also vulnerable. You must begin paying for flood insurance at least 30 days before a disaster in order to be eligible for a payout. You can check if your home is in a flood zone by using this FEMA website.
How to get FEMA aid: The easiest way to apply for individual assistance from FEMA is to fill out the application form ondisasterassistance.gov. This is easiest to do from a personal computer over Wi-Fi, but you can do it from a smartphone with cellular data if necessary. This website does not become active until the president issues a disaster declaration.
Some important things to know:
FEMA will require you to create an account on the secure website Login.gov. Use this account to submit your aid application.
You can track the status of your aid application and receive notifications if FEMA needs more documents from you.
If FEMA denies your application for aid, you can appeal, but the process is lengthy.
Visiting a FEMA site in your area after a disaster: FEMA disaster recovery centers are facilities and mobile units where you can find information about the agency’s programs as well as other state and local resources. FEMA representatives can help you navigate the aid application process or direct you to nonprofits, shelters, or state and local resources. Visit this website to locate a recovery center in your area or text DRC and a ZIP Code to 43362. Example: DRC 01234.
A woman looks over her apartment in Fort Myers, Florida, after Hurricane Ian inundated it with floodwaters in 2022.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
What to expect after a disaster
Disasters affect people in many different ways, and it’s normal to grieve your losses — personal, professional, community — in your own time. Here are a few resources if you need mental health support after experiencing an extreme weather event.
The National Center for PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, on what to expect after experiencing a disaster.
The American Red Cross has disaster mental health volunteers they often dispatch to areas hit by a disaster.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, has a fact sheet on managing stress after a disaster. The agency has a Disaster Distress Helpline that provides 24/7 crisis counseling and support. Call or text: 1-800-985-5990
After a disaster is an especially vulnerable time. Beware of scams and make sure to know your rights.
Be wary of solicitors who arrive at your home after a disaster claiming to represent FEMA or another agency. FEMA will never ask you for money. The safest way to apply for aid is through FEMA’s official website: disasterassistance.gov.
Be cautious about hiring contractors or construction workers in the days after a disaster. Many cities require permits for rebuilding work, and it’s common for scammers to pose as contractors after a disaster.
Renters can often face evictions after a disaster, so familiarize yourself with tenant rights in your state.
Residents of Paradise, California visit the town’s planning department to file permitting applications to re-build homes and other structures after the devastating 2018 Camp Fire.
Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Image
What to keep in mind before, during, and after a disaster
The most important thing to consider during a disaster is your own, your family’s, and your community’s safety. The National Weather Service has a guide for hurricanes and floods; FEMA has a guide for wildfires; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a guide for extreme heat safety.
A few potentially life-saving things to remember:
Never wade in floodwaters. They often contain harmful runoff from sewer systems and can cause serious illness and health issues.
If it’s safe to do so, turn off electricity at the main breaker or fuse box in your home or business before a hurricane to prevent electric shock.
If you lose power, never operate a generator inside your home. Generators emit carbon monoxide, a colorless and odorless gas that can be fatal if inhaled.
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(Matt’s first book tracked post-Soviet pilots 
I think it will show you a side of Sukant you’ve never seen before. It delves in to history, his activism, fallouts, Grime, Libya and there’s some fucking great Jungle in there
”. He identified himself as a Junglist:
(@mzybnkmsv) 
