PRESS RELEASE: J20 Conspiracy Case Defendants and Supporters Condemn Intimidation of Organizers and Activists

By PRESS RELEASE

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CONTACT:

PRESS RELEASE

Defend J20 Resistance and The Dead City Legal Posse

For Immediate Release: August 28, 2017

J20 Conspiracy Case Defendants and Supporters Condemn Intimidation of Organizers and Activists

_Judge’s ruling on government subpoena of “www.disruptj20.org” server host enables prosecutor’s “chilling effect” on activism

Washington, DC - Data Released to DOJ will have far reaching consequences on the organizing and resistance to the Trump agenda. Anyone who communicated with a political website, or organized under the name DisruptJ20 could be under investigation.

The subpoena will give the DC Police, Department of Justice, and numerous other federal agencies the information to broadly increase the amount of information on organizers in Washington, DC, and a database of people interested in attending and participating in an anti-Trump protest.

This request was made to assist the DOJ with the case they have been building against 230 people mass-arrested on Inauguration Day. The Dreamhost subpoena was intended to intimidate organizers of protests on Inauguration Day, particularly those added to the mass-arrest case.

The information the United States demanded from Dreamhost includes: emails to protest organizers, emails between protest organizers and the accounts used to create a website for a protest. This is the latest effort to criminalize political expression, as trials for protestors -charged with eight felonies are coming up later this year. Efforts to investigate the behavior of the DC Police have not yet begun, although 2018 budget money has been earmarked for these purposes.

The state has dropped the request for 1.3 million IP Addresses, Sam Menefee-Libey from the Dead City Legal Posse commented “they are still demanding every communication between individuals wanting to attend a protest and the organizers of said protest. This is an attack on political speech and the right to organize in Washington, DC, and will create a chilling affect for anyone who seeks to visit a politically dissident website.”

“Protesters and organizers should not have to live in fear. The fundamental right to organize is under attack,” said Dylan Petrohilos, a J20 defendant.

_Defend J20 Resistance is a large group of felony defendants arrested on January 20, 2017 in Washington, DC and their supporters who have all agreed not to testify against each other and are working together to collectively defend themselves. DefendJ20Resistance.org is a product of their work. _@defendj20

The Dead City Legal Posse is a collective of DC activists formed in response to the January 20, 2017 arrests and is working to provide support to those facing charges. www.dclegalposse.org. @dclegalposse