In recent weeks, the misnamed US Department of Justice has indicted twenty-three activists on serious charges related to their organizing against institutional complicity in the US-Israeli genocide of Palestinians and the kidnapping of US residents by militarized federal immigration enforcers. The indictments are connected to two different cases, one in Michigan and the other in Minnesota. From my vantage point, it seems fairly clear that the indictments are, among other things, designed to deflect the media and the public attention away from the crimes against humanity being perpetrated by the government and those institutions behind the prosecutions. In fact, these indictments are purposefully political and part of a broader repression against US residents and organizations opposed to the ultra-right government of Donald Trump.
The Michigan indictments are of eight people involved with the movement at the University of Michigan demanding the university divest from all investments benefitting Israel, its illegal occupation of Palestine and the accompanying slaughter of thousands of Palestinians, especially in Gaza since October 2023. Although the indictments were issued under the current administration, it is important to remember that the protests and the actions the eight defendants are charged with began during the Biden administration, whose relentless support for the Israeli genocide qualifies as a crime in and of itself. According to the departmental press release, the charges are related to what John Gorgon, one of the US attorneys involved in the prosecution, characterized as “alleged threats and attempts to terrorize government officials, businesses, and the Jewish Federation,” which he characterized as “anti-American.” The press release continues, arguing that graffiti reading “Fuck the IOF” and “MTU arms genocide” was an illegal attempt at coercion and a threat worthy of prosecution. It’s important to remember that the graffiti and other property damage hurt absolutely no one and—in what seems too obvious to mention, but apparently isn’t—was precipitated by the very real murders of tens of thousands of children by the US-Israeli occupation state in Palestine. Furthermore, the indictment states that the protests of the anti-genocide protesters were an attempt to coerce public officials, something which is somehow un-American. The most obvious response to this claim is that the United States was founded precisely in such a manner. Indeed, isn’t that the point of all protest—to coerce public officials into changing course?
The Minnesota indictments stem from the resistance to the winter 2026 invasion of immigration enforcement troops into the city of Minneapolis and the surrounding areas. The fifteen people charged include union members and others actively involved in observing and standing up to the brutal actions of ICE and other immigration enforcement forces in the city. Like the charges against the activists in Michigan, the Minnesota organizers are charged with conspiracy; the indictment is almost one hundred pages long and lists actions common to organizing protests as proof of this conspiracy. Of course, it is the eye of the prosecutors that turns emails and conversations about keeping immigrants safe from violent and well-armed militias with unfettered power into a conspiracy against those military forces and the government they represent. The essence of the charges is that these organizers (and others unnamed in the indictment) conspired to impede or injure a federal officer; officers whose actions involved the cold-blooded murder of two Minneapolis residents involved in peacefully defending their neighbors. I don’t need to remind the reader that none of the federal forces filmed killing these individuals has been charged with anything. Instead, the men who pulled the trigger in each case were reassigned, while their commander retired and is now campaigning for the 2028 presidential election using campaign imagery straight out of Mussolini’s attire for the Brigate Nere.
While reading both indictments, I was reminded of how actions and conversations labor, anti-racist and leftist organizers and protesters have every day can be construed as a conspiracy to undermine the authority of those in power. This seems especially true when those pursuing charges and writing up indictments against such protesters come from the right wing and authoritarian range in the political spectrum. Simple statements regarding potential strategies like “We need to become ungovernable” become proof of a conspiracy while writing an article for the anarchist website Crimethinc discussing an angry protest against the murder of a Minneapolis resident by immigration enforcement troops becomes an element in the case against a defendant in the indictment.
While reading the indictments, especially that of the Minneapolis defendants, it becomes clear that those involved in these types of actions and campaigns need to be more careful in their conversations online and via various messaging apps. At the same time, it’s important to realize that the intention of the indictments discussed here—like those against the more mainstream protesters charged with disrupting the church service of a Christian nationalist preacher near Minneapolis and those convicted for protesting an ICE detention center in Prairieland, Texas—is to scare people away from protesting the fascist creep taking over the United States. Let me be clear: we cannot let this happen. The very charges of coercion and intimidation that the US government is accusing the indicted people in these cases of is what these indictments are all about. The DOJ and the government it is part of want to end all protests against it, especially those that challenge its authoritarian roundup of migrants. If we allow these court cases to proceed without protest, we are complicit in this endeavor.
In the early 1970s, the US government went after the New Left, the antiwar movement and the Black liberation movement in the courts. Richard Nixon’s DOJ filed conspiracy and other charges against eight anti-war and Black liberation organizers related to protests and an ongoing police riot that took place during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago (Chicago 8). In 1970, Black revolutionary Angela Davis was indicted on conspiracy and other charges related to the courtroom takeover by Jonathan Jackson and other liberation fighters earlier in the year. A few years later eight antiwar activists known as the Gainesville 8 (seven of them veterans) were indicted by the DOJ on charges of conspiracy to disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida. These are but three such prosecutions from the period of perhaps a couple dozen that come immediately to mind. These three cases saw Davis and the Gainesville 8 acquitted, while the Chicago defendants were found not guilty of conspiracy (although some individuals were found guilty of individual charges). The primary reason all these individuals (and dozens more in other cases) were let go is because of the popular movements for their defense that sprang up around them.
That is what is needed now as regards the cases mentioned in this article and those that will most likely come in the next several months. Like the efforts that have prevented the deportations and long-term incarceration of various international students who spoke out against the slaughter of Palestinians in the past few years, we must build an even greater movement against such prosecutions.
In this regard, our opening demands should be to drop all charges against all Minneapolis and Michigan defendants and to overturn the convictions of the Prairieland folks.
Here are some suggested links:
Legal Defense Fund for Minnesota Defendants
Legal Defense Fund for Michigan Defendants
Prairieland Defendants Page
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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ron Jacobs.