"A labor of love, this book arose from a genuine desire to share important experiences from our political history. My greatest hope is that we can take these stories to heart and use them to help advance our collective struggles for liberation."

Kris Hermes is a Bay Area–based activist who has worked for nearly thirty years on social justice issues. Organizing with ACT UP Philadelphia in the late 1990s spurred his interest in legal support work and led to his co-founding and years-long involvement with R2K Legal. Since 2000, Hermes has been an active, award-winning legal worker-member of the National Lawyers Guild and has been a part of numerous law collectives and legal support efforts over the years. In this capacity, he has organized dozens of press conference and spoken at numerous community meetings, political conferences, book fairs, and other similar events across the U.S. Hermes has written extensively in his professional career as a media worker and as a legal activist.

Marina Sitrin (Foreword) is a writer, lawyer, teacher, organizer, and dreamer. She is editor of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina, author of Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism & Autonomy in Argentina and coauthor of They Can't Represent US! Reinventing Democracy from Greece to Occupy. She has a JD in International Women's Human Rights from CUNY Law School and a PhD in Global Sociology from Stony Brook University.

Heidi Boghosian (Afterword) is the executive director of the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute and former executive director of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the cohost of the weekly civil liberties radio show Law and Disorder. She received her JD from Temple Law School where she was the editor in chief of the Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review. She also holds an MS from Boston University and a BA from Brown University. She is the author of Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance.

Other writing by the author

• 02/20/24 | NLG Review | Law for the People: Supporting Mass Protest, Political Resistance, and Movements for Social Change

• 06/01/23 | The Eden Magazine | Activists Appeal Criminal Convictions and 30-Day Jail Sentence for Exposing Animal Cruelty at Excelsior Hog Farm

• 03/04/21 | National Observer | Indigenous land defender sentenced to 90 days in jail

• 01/19/21 | Briarpatch Magazine | How Canada is targeting Indigenous resistance to TMX

• 08/01/20 | Truthout | Mass Arrests in 2020 Echo the Brutality Endured by RNC Protesters 20 Years Ago

• 07/15/20 | Agency | COVID-19 and Uprisings for Black Liberation Used as a Pretext for Advancing Mass Surveillance

• 08/07/19 | The Tyee | Will ‘Chilling Effect’ of Spying on Protesters Silence Pipeline Opponents?

• 07/18/19 | Agency | Ngo More Sympathy: Mainstream Media Must Recognize the Real Threat of Fascism

• 06/27/19 | CounterPunch | Syrian Refugee Terror Plot or Latest in Pattern of FBI-Manufactured Terrorism Cases?

• 07/27/18 | Agency | Remaining J20 Cases Dismissed: Takeaways for Anarchists and our Social Movements

• 08/31/17 | NLG Review | BOOK REVIEW: A Tilted Guide to Being a Defendant

• 04/03/17 | HuffPost | Antiwar Activists Challenge Army’s Domestic Spying Apparatus in Ninth Circuit

• 03/17/17 | HuffPost | Federal Judge Approves Landmark Settlement, But Is It Enough To Curb NYPD Spying

• 11/07/16 | HuffPost | Federal Judge Rejects Settlement in Landmark NYPD Spying Cases as Inadequate to Curb Abuse

• 09/27/16 | NewsWorks | Recently disclosed DNC insurance policy shows law enforcement's contempt for protest

• 09/26/16 | HuffPost | Law Enforcement Uses StingRays To Spy On Americans And Lies About It

• 08/24/16 | HuffPost | John Timoney’s True Legacy Is Today’s Enduring And Repressive Model For Policing Political Dissent

• 08/04/16 | NewsWorks | Federal charges: a new anti-protest tactic, or is the Secret Service entrenching its authority?

• 08/02/16 | HuffPost | Don't Be Fooled By The RNC/DNC Bubble: Criminalization Of Protest Continues Unabated

• 07/21/16 | Upping the Anti | Collective Action Behind Bars: A history of jail solidarity and its importance for today's social change movements

• 07/19/16 | Jacobin | Battling Convention: Inside the police's playbook for repressing protests at national conventions

• 07/08/16 | HuffPost | Where Are They Now? Philadelphia Officials Who Stifled Dissent at RNC 2000

• 06/24/16 | The Declaration | On-Again, Off-Again at Holmesburg Prison

• 06/20/16 | NewsWorks | Will Philadelphia respect decades-old restriction on police spying at the DNC?

• 06/09/16 | HuffPost | Will Philadelphia Adhere to Decades-Old Restrictions on Police Infiltration at Upcoming DNC Protests?

• 03/22/16 | HuffPost | Court Offers Rare Opportunity for Public Comment on NYPD Spying

• 05/15 | Interface Journal | Fundraising for Direct Action and Legal Defense: A Case Study of the RNC 2000 Protests

• 11/18/14 | HuffPost | Darren Wilson Ain't No Ham Sandwich: Prosecutorial Manipulation of a Flawed Grand Jury System

• 02/13/14 | HuffPost | Bahrainis Take the Streets on 3rd Anniv of Uprising, as John Timoney & U.S. Gov't Continue Their Role in Violent Crackdown

• 02/10/14 | HuffPost | Failure to Convict NATO 3 Protesters as Terrorists Undermines Broader Police Entrapment Trend

• 09/09/13 | HuffPost | New Film Informant Is Vacuous and Self-Serving, Fitting for Its Subject Brandon Darby

• 05/30/13 | HuffPost | John Timoney and the Kingdom of Bahrain: White-washing Human Rights Abuses and Suppressing a Popular Revolution

• 04/30/13 | HuffPost | Chasing Anarchists: May Day and the Federal Government's Use of Grand Juries as Political Counterintelligence

• 01/25/13 | HuffPost | The NATO 5: Manufactured Crimes Used to Paint Political Dissidents as Terrorists

• 12/09/12 | AlterNet | Did the FBI Use Occupy Cleveland Case to Equate Activism with Terrorism? 

Comments by the author

• 08/15/23 | The Breach | To stop a pipeline, a three-week jail sentence was a small price to pay by Maya Laframboise

• 10/13/22 | Animals 24-7 | Excelsior Hog Farm protest leaders Soranno & Schafer get 30 days each by Merritt Clifton

• 03/03/21 | CTV News | 4 arrested after 24-hour rally protests 'outrageous' jail sentence, blocks traffic outside Port of Vancouver by Alissa Thibault

• 03/02/21 | Vice News | Indigenous Land Defender Gets Jail Time After Performing Ceremony Near Trans Mountain Site by Anya Zoledziowski

• 09/16/20 | Burnaby Now | Supporters rally as sentencing begins for Burnaby TMX protesters by Dustin Godfrey

• 07/06/20 | In These Times | They Came to Support People Getting Out of Jail. Then They Were Attacked By Police by Elizabeth King

• 06/02/20 | The Intercept | A Short History of U.S. Law Enforcement Infiltrating Protests by Ryan Grim and Jon Schwarz

• 10/31/18 | Burnaby Now | Jailed Trans Mountain pipeline protesters appealing sentencing by Kelvin Gawley

• 10/18/18 | The Star | Sentencing delayed for Trans Mountain protesters by Cherise Seucharan

• 10/12/18 | BuzzFeed | Using Project Veritas As A Source Is Still Causing Headaches For Federal Prosecutors In Washington by Zoe Tillman

• 07/04/18 | Focus on Victoria | Who are the real pipeline fanatics? by Leslie Campbell

• 01/18/18 | UK Independent | Justice Dept drops charges against 129 people involved in Trump inauguration day demonstrations by Emily Shugerman

• 01/18/18 | Associated Press | Government drops prosecution of 129 inauguration defendants by Ashraf Khalil

• 12/18/17 | The Intercept | Jurors to Decide What Constitutes Journalism in Trial of J20 Inauguration Protests by Eoin Higgins

• 12/13/17 | Salon | Trumped-up charges: Feds try to criminalize Inauguration Day protest by Matthew Sheffield

• 11/15/17 | Truthout | As Trial Begins, Trump Protest Attendees Face 60 Years in Prison by Chris Steele

• 11/14/17 | The Intercept | Group Investigating Police Conduct on Inauguration Day Has History of Siding With Police by Sarah Lazare

• 10/09/17 | The Real News Network | Document Shows D.C. Police Threw More Than 70 Grenades at Inauguration Protesters by Baynard Woods

• 07/05/17 | In These Times | The Police State Can Come After Trump Protesters, But It Can’t Make Them Cooperate by Sarah Lazare

• 06/03/17 | The Intercept | Standing Rock Documents Expose Inner Workings of "Surveillance-Industrial Complex" by Alleen Brown

• 07/25/16 | Law and Disorder Radio | Legal Defense at the Republican National Convention 2016 [AUDIO]

• 07/20/16 | Billy Penn | Philly police and how to control a presidential convention by Mark Dent

• 07/20/16 | US News & World Report | RNC Flag Burning Ends Calm on Cleveland Streets by Steven Nelson

• 07/20/16 | WHYY | Philly police approach to DNC in stark contrast with combative stance during last convention by Bobby Allyn

• 06/30/16 | The Real News Network | Mass Arrests Expected at Republican and Democratic Conventions by Jaisal Noor

• 06/27/16 | Los Angeles Times | As activists prepare to protest the RNC, the FBI comes knocking by Matt Pearce

• 06/20/16 | WHYY | Will Philadelphia respect decades-old restriction on police spying at the DNC? [AUDIO]

• 06/10/16 | The Fixers: Stories from a Greater Cleveland | RA Washington & Jacqueline Greene by Chelsie Corso

• 06/09/16 | Newsworks | Riot ready? Philly in talks for protest insurance ahead of DNC by Dana DeFilippo

• 04/10/16 | Unicorn Riot | NSSE's Feed Millions of Dollars Toward Militarization of Police Across American Cities

• 04/04/16 | McClatchy | A Donald Trump convention could see a new era, with new complications, in street protests by Scott Canon

• 03/14/16 | KPFK Radio | Chris Burnett of Indymedia On Air interviews Kris Hermes about Crashing the Party [AUDIO]

• 02/28/16 | Daily 49er | Alumnus holds forum on fighting surveillance, brutality in political movements by Sara DeLeon

• 01/15/16 | KPFA | Brian Edwards-Tiekert of UpFront interviews Kris Hermes about Crashing the Party [AUDIO]

• 10/15/15 | The Real News Network | Police Tactics of Mass Arrests, Violence and Overcharging Protesters First Developed in 2000 by Paul Jay

• 10/12/15 | KBOO Radio | Emma Lugo interviews Kris Hermes about Crashing the Party on Prison Pipeline [AUDIO]

• 09/23/15 | Gothamist | From Abu Ghraib To BLM: Meet The NYPD's Most Notorious Anti-Activist Cop by Adam Johnson & Keegan Stephan

• 04/09/15 | Philadelphia Daily News | Will Philly Police Pass the Protest Test? by Dana DiFilippo

• 02/13/15 | News Works | With Eyes Toward Hosting Democrats in 2016, Looking Back at Philly's Last Convention by Kate Colaneri

• 07/08/13 | Law and Disorder Radio | White-washing Human Rights Abuses and Suppressing a Popular Revolution [AUDIO]

• 02/16/12 | The Guardian | John Timoney: The Notorious Police Chief Sent to Reform Forces in Bahrain by Ryan Devereaux

• 09/20/07 | Miami New Times | John Timoney, America's Worst Cop by Tamara Lush

Banner photo by Brad Kayal