Activists who take their message to the streets should be pleased with an historic settlement agreement reached last week between the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) and the federal government with national implications. After nearly 13 years of litigation, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of the Interior agreed to “significantly change the handling of mass protests in the United States,” according to PCJF.
"You will never make as much money as you will in a crisis."
These words were a reflection by Ezra Berkley Nepon, fundraiser extraordinaire who led a drive in the summer of 2000 to quickly raise bail and legal defense funds for more than four hundred activists who were arrested, overcharged, and many of whom in that moment were being abused in jail.
Nepon and others raised $200,000 in total, most of which happened during the “crisis” of people being abused in jail and held on bails as high as $1 million, unprecedented at the time for political protest arrests.
Now you can find out how Nepon and others did it!
Mass Arrests to Mass Resistance: From the RNC 2000 to Today
Over the last year, people across the country have taken to the streets in numbers unseen for decades to demand an end to police killings of unarmed people of color.
Meanwhile, the corporate media has forced the public to turn to the spectacle of presidential elections and all of its inanity. Inevitably, the movements seeking justice for those murdered by police and the media circus of presidential politics will meet in the streets of Philadelphia and Cleveland, the host cities of the 2016 Democratic and Republican National Conventions, making it a good time to reflect on the history and lessons learned from past political mobilizations.