If you’re new to actions with an arrest risk and you don’t have experienced protestors with you, there’s stuff you can find online about having a legal team, writing the name of a lawyer on your body, saying NOTHING to the cops except the name of your lawyer, etc. That’s all good advice.
But let me give you a bit of advice that is just as essential as all that:
If one of your comrades gets arrested, and you know they can be held for 6, 9, 12 hours, depending on where you are, you get a group of people together and you wait outside the police station.
You may be tired, you may be stressed, it may be freezing, you may need to take turns, but you take whoever can still physically and mentally bear it and you go to that police station and you wait for your comrade. You can spend the time taking care of each other, drinking hot drinks, doing whatever gets you through, but you wait.
And when your comrade gets out, you make sure they do not walk home alone in the dark thinking about the fucked up experience they just had, you make sure there’s a big fucking crowd of their comrades there to greet them with hugs and hot drinks and a cigarette if they smoke.
And whether the arrested comrade that just got out is happy or sad or pissed off, you take that for what it is and give that space and you support that. And you get them a hot meal and you hang out with them and you offer to let them stay at your place or you stay with them so they don’t have to spend that night alone with their thoughts.
You do this every damn time, regardless of whether you really like that comrade and regardless of how you feel about the thing your comrade got arrested for, regardless of how often they’ve been arrested. Because you never know how shitty their experience is going to be in there this time.
Trust me. This is absolutely essential. Once you’ve been arrested and have felt the difference between walking home alone or having your friends waiting for you, you’ll understand.
Be good comrades
I can’t stress how important this is. When my father and I were arrested in Seattle some years back for agitating for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, we were greeted outside the jail by the event’s organisers. They cheered us, had cokes and munchies for us. They drove us to our car and, during the drive, asked if we wanted to stay the night in Seattle with one of the organisers, they filled us in on what had happened after our arrests, they asked about and listened intently to what we experienced from arrest to release. They did so much so well that when another call went out for potential arrestees, we were amongst the first to raise our proverbial hands.
Read the post. Re-read the post. Remember it. And, when the chance comes, do it.
When I was arrested at a Black Lives Matter protest a few years ago, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice were doing Jail Support when I was finally let out of One Police Plaza at around 6am.
They had gotten a klezmer band to stand along the hill you have to go up to leave the jail, and as I walked to where the volunteer lawyers were waiting (they were there to make sure all 200+ people who were arrested that night would be represented at their later hearings. They also were surrounded by volunteers who had food, phone chargers, directions to all the nearby subway stops, and one of them let me borrow her phone to call my mom when I got frustrated with how slowly my phone was charging) the band played music, cheered and applauded.
Honestly? That band playing klezmer for me as I left jail, cheering me on and making me laugh… it’s a memory I really treasure.
It’s also one of my mother’s favorite stories. Before I told her about that band, she got so upset and agitated whenever anything reminded her of my arrest. She’d freak out, cry, start fussing over me, and so forth. After I told her about the klezmer band though? It became something she’d tell her friends about, over and over again, laughing each time. She stopped calling me to beg me not to go and protest every time she knew a big one was happening, and instead would call to make a joke about how if I want to listen to klezmer she has some CDs I can borrow.
When I think about that night, rather than any of the many many terrible things that happened from the moment the cops grabbed me onward, the first thing I remember is the klezmer, and how it made me laugh, and the popcorn someone gave me as I gave the lawyers my name and info, and the kindness of strangers.
After the dehumanization of even a few hours in police custody, those volunteers made me smile, and gave the night a new fun and funny angle to be remembered from. I actually laugh when I think about that night, thanks to them.
Jail Support is a beyond vital part of protesting. It really really is.
That sounds like it’s really dangerous to go and protest. We’re still talking about the US, right? It’s just that I’m from Germany and it’s kinda unfathomable to me that you have to mentally prepare yourself for the possibility of being arrested whenever you go to a protest
Hey there,I wrote the original post based mostly on my experiences in the Netherlands and Germany, though it has much wider application.
Preparing to get arrested for a protest in Germany is super common if you are an antifascist planning to block and run off fascists, an anticapitalist planning to protest a capitalist conference, a refugee rights activist planning to prevent a deportation, a squatter planning to prevent an eviction, a climate activist planning to prevent the destruction of an ancient forest. Or an anarchist doing all these things.
Basically any time your activism is more concrete and confrontational than politely asking for the baddies in parliament to change their mind about destroying your lives.
We do prepare to get arrested and we do have legal teams and jail support set up for that in advance. It’s never fun but it’s something we see as a necessary part of creating real change and once you’ve experienced getting arrested it becomes easier to deal with each time.
If you go to a protest in Germany like the ones I listed above, there is a very big chance that the pre-action briefing will have a Legal Team that informs you which lawyer you should ask for, about what to expect if you are arrested and where you can sign up on a list that says what the legal team should do if you are arrested (bring my medication, tell my boss I’m sick and can’t come to work, etc.). There’s also a big chance that the legal team or a special Jail Support team will be waiting at the police station to welcome back anyone released from arrest. And there is a smaller but still decent chance that there will be a Support & Recovery team ready to help you process intense experiences and avoid long term mental health repercussions from that experience.
We have these systems of support in place because we know our actions involve the risk of arrest. We need these systems of support to continue our work.
Things often go wrong when activists who usually don’t get arrested during protests (let’s say, a mainstream LGBT rights groups) gets into a situation where arrests happen (let’s say, they’re forced to defend themselves against fascists) and the organization doesn’t know how to respond.
If there is no legal team and no legal briefing, activists are likely to talk to police instead of a lawyer and get tricked into incriminating themselves. If there is no Jail Support and no Support & Recovery, activists are more likely to be left with mental health problems and drop out of activism entirely. An activist groups’ first experience with arrest can often do a lot of damage this way. That is why it is important to know this shit even if you think your kind of protesting doesn’t involve arrests. Because some day it might.
QueerAnarchism 