Know Your Rights - Undocumented Community Part 2

this is what's called the use of force continuum this is what cops are trained on about how much force they're allowed to use against us a cop showing up at your protest in uniform is a use of force that's the lowest level of force is mere presence just having a there is a form of force at the other end of the spectrum is what's called deadly force a cop is only allowed to use deadly force if they believe there is a serious threat of physical injury or death to either the cup of the cop or to another person between those two areas is this continuum things like static resistance you know the cop says put your hands behind your back and you don't you lock them down like this that now allows the cops to use hands on compliance tactics which can also read things called pain compliance tactics where they like bend your thumb back in order to get you to do or they press on a part in your neck so if you're watching cops manhandling humans you know watch what they're doing with their hands and what they're using is it a baton is it a Taser is it mace is it tear gas you know all of those things are important for me to analyze whether or not a cop is using excessive force or unlawful force or what's also called police brutality you know all of those terms mean that the cop used more force than necessary to do his job you know cops are the one profession that have the legal authority to murder humans but with that power comes incredible responsibility as well a cop is only allowed to use the amount of force reasonably necessary to deal with the situation at hand obstructing police activities whether it's with vehicles or on person you know whether it's an ambulance or a cop car if you are distracting the cop to the point that they can't do their job they can potentially arrest you for obstructing police activities that can also mean yelling at them engaging and debate with them etc etc so security culture is basically a term that is meant to describe how political activists attempt to keep themselves and their political movements safer from the state and corporations that they oppose it is basically a set of customs and norms shared by a community who are under threat who risk arrest or other types of targeting the central principle for security culture is that you should act on a need-to-know basis or you know in other words Don't Ask Don't Tell and what this means you know why this is important is if I walk up to you and you know say next Thursday I'm gonna commit a felony you're now a conspirator potentially in my crime but more importantly you you know if they come after me and start investigating me you are now potentially subject to a grand jury subpoena for instance you could be contacted by the cops to give information up about me or the movement that we're a part of and so you should never place anyone else in a vulnerable situation with regard to your own actions and the same is true for other people like somebody that walks up to you and is like I broke the law last night you know that person is potentially showing poor judgment but they also could potentially be in intentionally setting you out as well so act to know on a need-to-know basis other forms of security culture include you know recognize that you can always say no to any action at any time if you get a bad feeling about something or you have a second thought you can always always back away from that commitment to be able to you know come back another day I can't tell you how many times I have had to represent people who have said after the fact I got this feeling that something was wrong but we decided to do it anyway and then you know really bad consequences happened um don't be a tattle-tale you know is another way of saying don't be an informant don't be a snitch don't talk about things that should not be talked about publicly and especially be careful about public statements that you make whether it's in a setting like this whether it's to the media or whether it's typing it up on face crack meetings you know not every meeting needs to be high security but there could be meetings where you might want the location to be secure you know if you hold your meetings in the same place every single week it would be very easy for someone to set up some audio recording capacity to record your meetings whether that is a corporation or the cops you know especially these days it could be either so moving the location around having it in a private home you know etc etc can be important maybe you want everybody at this particular meeting to be vouched for meaning you know they've been vetted like two other people know this person know them not to be a cop know them not to be a private security goon and be careful of what is said in a meeting if it's supposed to be a public meeting don't stand up and say next Thursday we're all gonna go get arrested because now everybody at that meeting has been subjected to that information and some of them may not have wanted to be you know subjected to that so consent is really important and remember you know there can be different levels of security for different types of meetings and different discussions now a grand jury is a very common tool of repression by the state a grand jury is used for all felonies whether it's a drug crime or a political crime it's the way indictments are issued to start all felony cases but when a political movement is targeted with a grand jury very often people who are viewed as leaders or a media spokespeople who have done nothing illegal could be subpoenaed to a grand jury this means that they must now go in front of a US attorney and snitch out their movement and other people their choices are to either snitch the movement out or go to jail for contempt of court up to six months it is a horrible hardcore so you know situation to deal with the US Attorney or US Marshal or an FBI agent shows up at my house and thrusts a subpoena on me the subpoena is gonna be requiring me to go snitch out my comrades or go to jail if this happens to you or anyone in your community contact us we do a one-hour training on grand juries there's a lot of stuff to grand juries but the important thing to know is that you know grand juries are often used as witch hunts you know they are often you when a movement is being really successful in a campaign is being successful this is a surefire way to mess that up to throw a wrench into the works to make people paranoid and to divert your attention you know if your campaign is going real well and all of a sudden somebody's gonna go to jail for contempt refusing to testify to a grand jury now instead of fighting the man everybody is like working on the grand jury and doing prisoner support and stuff like that so when a grand jury comes to town the most effective thing that the movement can do is redouble its efforts to resist that you know redouble the amount of protests you're doing we double the effectiveness over whatever it is that you're fighting about because if the state or corporation realizes that what they did was successful what they did was effective you can make sure that they're gonna do it again and again and again so one of the most important ways to fight against government repression is by making sure that they don't recognize that what they're doing is effective against us an infiltrator is a person who comes to your community and enters your group with bad intent they're there to spy on you they're there you know to cause trouble this can be either someone from a corporation or from the state there is almost let me go let me finish an informant is one of our own that gets into trouble and turns on us and starts giving information to the state in order to get out of trouble or to reduce their prison sentence or whatever it may be a provocateur is normally an outsider that sent into your community in order to up the ante you know they're the guy that's gonna stand up and be like let's go burn it down you know when you've never talked about that and that's not a tactic you're interested in the idea of a provocateur is to make it so that you become a tar of the state provocateurs are very dangerous especially if you have younger activists in your midst a provocateur shows up and starts poking around is like hey you want to go commit some arsons you know hey should we make some Molotov cocktails all of a sudden you've got you know a 19 year old who thinks that might sound good they go off and commit a crime with this person and then you know they're indicted prosecuted to go to prison for a long time we generally have this general rule like if someone does something inappropriate that is provocateur ish one time you educate them you know one time you take them aside and you tell them that's not appropriate in these public meetings if you do that again we're gonna have to ask you to leave if they do it a second time then it's intentional you know the first time maybe it's lack of information maybe it's poor judgment a second time is where they should be viewed as a problem child and believe it or not as sensitive as we are to being inclusive to everyone in our movements if someone is there to cause harm trouble problems you do have the right to tell them that maybe they should find a different hobby or a different group to work with we are not required to take all you know regardless of their intent the fact that they do nothing but cause drama and you know for men divisions among your group you do have the right to say it might be more effective without you in our organizing community potentially because you know the reality is that there's no way to know for sure whether somebody is a snitch or just someone with poor judgment groups call me all the time I like we think so-and-so is a snitch can you help us prove it no usually there is very little way that I can say with certainty that someone is a snitch or not the only way is if we get like FOIA documents or they are named in discovery or they out themselves inadvertently and you want to be really careful about snitch jacketing someone you know about accusing someone of being a snitch because you know what the feds do that you know the state will pick out your effective leader and say hey you know Lauren I think Lauren's a snitch someone accuses me of that I get pissed I leave the group I leave the city I stop organizing with you and the person who accused me was an FBI agent doing it intentionally so that is historically you know tactics that the state has used and we just need to be you know really aware of it uh if someone is a problem ask them to leave don't let one person run your bank accounts and your websites and everything that you need to be effective if they end up being a problem they take all of that and run you know we've had we've had informants that have robbed organizations bank accounts we've had informants that have reported back to the FBI for years about what groups are doing we've had informants date activists do drugs with them commit crimes with them make out with them in the US FBI agents aren't allowed to have sex with you but corporate spies can and will you know so just because someone goes out and commits a felony with you it doesn't mean that they've proved themselves to not be a snitch a provocateur an FBI agent a corporate private security person so good security culture should make it almost irrelevant whether that person is infiltrating you or not if you're using good security culture you're not bragging you're not gossiping you're not you know doing stupid things in public meetings then you know you are creating a sure that will make it very very difficult for them to destroy you you know security culture also has bad behaviors like dominating meeting time asking a bunch of really personal questions about everyone pressuring people to do things they don't want to do or up in the NT or upping the tactics and disregard for others safety you know meaning we all decide we're gonna go to the Federal Building and hold a banner well we get there and one of our own launches Amala tied toward the cops you know putting all of us in severe risk that person you know is obviously someone that we should not be organizing with in the future and that's of course an extreme example there are a lot of infiltrators and snitches that move from one community to the other you know so they go from Portland rising tide to the buffalo field campaign to you know the Seminole earth first campaign and they move around and so this website tries it's best to keep track of known infiltrators snitches informants etc including photographs it is in no way complete at all um so private spies corporate spies are also called grey intelligence most corporations that are in big corporations that are involved with climate coal oil and gas you know Monsanto all of these major corporations will now have a separate entity that is their security and their PR their media and the security and PR people work together so that they will come and spy on you and then create a terrorist bulletin to share with others about what bad people you are this document that you can't really see we got through the Freedom of Information Act and feminists is one of these grey intelligence agencies Dennis was hired by the US Chamber of Commerce huge organization US Chamber of Commerce to spy on a group called u.s. chamber watch this was just a group that was tracking the US Chamber of Commerce and they had a website where they were reporting on it in this document this private spy agency investigated the u.s. chamber watch they said US paper watch is well-connected politically evidenced by the established relationship between them and and Eastern and powerful DC operatives and then it goes on to lay out what their plan is for trying to destroy this above-ground group they say things like we're gonna plant two spies one is gonna out the other one thus legitimizing the second one one is gonna leak a document to the activists claiming it's a real document and then when they go to the media and say look at this document we're gonna say those liars that's a fake document here's the real document they can't be trusted they also say in here that they're gonna do smear pieces on the leaders and organizers all of this being done against an aboveground group that was barely being effective you know all they're doing is monitoring the US Chamber of Commerce and millions and millions of dollars were spent on this spy agency with this complicated plan so TransCanada which was responsible for the Keystone XL pipeline they are tar sands corporation they put together a whole PowerPoint and long before the Keystone pipeline was even a thought and nari our minds they were traveling along the pipeline route going to FBI offices police departments and district attorney's offices doing a PowerPoint presentation saying the eco-terrorists are coming and here's what they're gonna do and here are their tactics here's a sleeping dragon this is what it is this is how to extricate them when they lock down to these things oh and by the way here's a crime that Texas could use to prosecute them oh and by the way here's a photo and a description of the three people we want you to target first here's the three main organizers that might be coming to your town that we hate and that we would like you to arrest and prosecute as soon as possible oh and by the way district attorney's there's all these terrorism crimes and at the state and federal level that we think you should charge these people with all being put out by a corporation a multinational corporation and TransCanada is not the only one that does this type of stuff and again their mistake the reason I got my hands on this is once they shared it with law enforcement then it becomes subject to public records laws the power of FOIA the Freedom of Information Act and your state public records laws should not be underestimated by requesting this stuff on a regular basis you two might get stuff like this out which helps us learn how they are spying on us and how they are targeting us and of course you know the idea of a corporation telling the US Attorney's Office what to do when nonviolent protesters come to town is outrageous and certainly shows the con you know the confluence the conflation between private corporations and the state you know they are one now and just to show you you know with the FBI right now most of the head honchos of these private security groups are X FBI they go from working for the government out to the private sector make millions of dollars go back to the FBI so they get access to those computers and all of that information and then go go to the private sector where they make big bucks again and again and again um you have no rights at airports you know if you were to read the small print on your airline ticket it says you've got no rights they can search your stuff they can you and not just like your bags once you get to TSA once you get into the airport parking lot they're allowed to search you and things like that however the pilot cannot refuse to fly a passenger based on like political beliefs and stuff like that so you know we had a woman who wore a t-shirt that an Arabic said peace be with you but the captain refused to let her fly on the plane because they thought that the Arabic was terrorism related so we sued the airplane and you know she didn't get to fly that day but she got more than enough free money for flights in the future ice can never enter someone's home without consent without the person letting them in they are not allowed to bust down the doors the other thing I'll just tell you in solidarity is right now if someone has picked up on a deportation arrest it takes about 18 months for them to be processed through the immigration system before they are returned to their country of origin after six months of being in custody the state is allowed to terminate their parental rights and legally put their children up for adoption or funnel them into the foster care system after six months of in custody the only way to avoid this is for the parents to fill out what's called a guardianship authorization that basically says in the event that I am picked up on an immigration hold I give Ryan as a US citizen permission to go get my kids so he goes and gets the kids out of ice jail and then he and I have made arrangements you know he's gonna bring the kids across the street to my undocumented sister and she'll raise them or he's gonna put him on a plane and fly him to Grandma you know in Guadalajara or whatever the idea is to not let the state make those kinds of decisions for undocumented parents and nor do we want those children in the system you know 80 percent of California prison inmates right now we're in the foster care system 80 percent of all California inmates were former foster children it is an extremely broken system slap suits stens slap stands for strategic lawsuits against public participation this is where corporations sue activists and organizations in order to try and shut them down we currently have to slap suits going on right now one is where energy transfer partners you know dapple has sued a bunch of groups for talking knotty about them you know literally they have filed a civil lawsuit for defamation saying that we knowingly gave false information about them being earth rape or destroyer you know and they are now trying to sue these activists and organizations for millions of dollars in civil court so no jail but you get wrangled into the legal system a slap suit if a you know a slap suit you have to be served a copy of the lawsuit you know it because it's a civil lawsuit and then you only have 30 days to respond once you've been served so if this ever happens to you contact us right away we'll help you get lawyers we'll help you you know know what the next steps are there are many many states including Oregon that have anti slack laws this says you know when the corporation is falsely and frivolously suing you to try to suck up your time and energy there is a fast-track process for you to get out of the case and if you are successful then the corporation has to pay all of your attorney fees and costs for the that they have caused you now the reason that slap suits are taken very seriously and the reason that we fight them as soon as possible is because one of the things these corporations want is discovery they want to know your membership list they want to know where you get your money they want to look at all your emails so that they can poke holes into your world and better know how to destroy you in the future and so we get these cases thrown out before it ever gets to the discovery time period you know the other lawsuit that we are currently involved in is a Canadian boreal logging company called resolute sued a bunch of environmental groups that had a campaign to stop logging in the Canadian boreal forest the in both of those cases that I mentioned both the dapple one and resolute the law firms that filed both of them are the same law firms that represent donald trump both cases were filed by the same law firm and in the resolute case we filed a motion to dismiss that the judge just recently granted and threw the case out but it now has given them leave to refile it but we want we do not want them to have a second of discovery once discovery is cracked open then we're in kind of a serious ohshit moment which is why most activists are not going to sue the corporation for defamation because it's reciprocal discovery we get to discover on their and they get to discover on their end and we don't want them to have any of our private information for their purposes so it's volley or you're in a vulnerable situation if you file for defamation we would rather advise people to fight defamation in the court of public opinion you know do media do outreach organize you know do all the usual things to call them out as liars and prove that they're liars the legal system is not a perfect system and it puts activists in a vulnerable position and it sucks energy resources money out of your activism so if you are organizing you know be prepared you know do what do you need in order to prove to pull off a successful action one of the number one things that I find is missing from most action planning is your exit plan you know you plan all the details of what you're gonna do and who's gonna speak when and who's bringing the cookies and you know who has the signs but you don't plan how you're gonna leave and how you're gonna get all of your people home safely and the number one time period that individuals are targeted by the state is when you get into your private vehicle and you all leave in different directions so make sure you have solid plans and that you're prepared for all sorts of contingencies that might happen legal observers are people who have been trained to witness cops they are only there to witness the actions of police either police misconduct or the arrest of activists and they agreed to be a witness for you either in your criminal case or your police brutality case police liaisons are the person who is chosen by your group or by your movement to be the negotiator between protesters and cops the police liaison should be really the only person input the talking to the cops at a protest they have been authorized by the community and they are given very specific marching orders a police liaison doesn't get to make it up as they go it's the movements job to tell them what the parameters are will do this if this happens we won't do this this happens you know and police liaison has to go back and forth between the people but they're not there to make the job of the cops easier you know it's not your job as police liaison to go back and say well you're all gonna have to leave now or they're gonna arrest you you know like that's not a police liaisons job you know your job is to say well they only want to be here for six hours you know why don't you go have a doughnut and let that exercise in First Amendment rights and you know we'll all be good here or if someone has locked down or if someone you know is in a high-stakes situation maybe you are trying to negotiate lawyers to be able to go witness that person maybe you're trying to negotiate people to be able to come down from the blockade and leave without a rest you know there can be all sorts of things that you might be doing but you don't get to make it up yourself you know you don't get to think for yourself you're supposed to be you know taking direction from the movement and this person really needs to know their rights I've been probably arrested half a dozen times as the police liaison get myself out of jail you know if I wasn't prosecuted but as the go-between you are often targeted by the cops so you want to make sure that you know your rights and you can talk on your feet pretty well a support person is basically the person who often is at home sitting by the phone and if you have a health issue or you were unexpectedly arrested and your dog is you know locked in the house this is the person you call in order to get assistance from jail oftentimes you need to have a landline because sometimes jails will not allow collect calls and just because you got arrested as you planned doesn't mean you need to call the jail support person and this is that phone number that you might want to write on your arm or your leg don't take anything to a protest that you don't want the cops to have whether that's drugs weapons love notes you know you name it and make sure that you are prepared for the situation you are going to don't expect me to provide you with water food slippers a pen a pencil a sign you know come as an adult take yourself seriously you know we're not here to party in a parking lot we're here to fight the state and if we're actually going to take ourselves seriously as activists we need to start treating ourselves in a more serious way and then of course protect your digital devices make sure they're password-protected or don't bring them at all

Channel: Civil Liberties Defense Center

Views: 267

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Id: B9l6ZSeEmj8

Length: 33min 7sec (1987 seconds)

Published: Fri May 04 2018