Ruckus Society & the Law: The Ghost of R2K

The Ghost of R2K: A strange tale of subpoenas, compliance and their joyful negation"
By Karl Blossfeldt (published in defenestrator magazine)

Just when you thought your court dates from the summer of 2000, were a thing of the past, you're hanging out in your house and you hear the doorbell. Who could it be? You open the door and a friendly looking man in a baseball cap asks:'Hi are you Random Name'? 'Well yes', you say thinking it's a neighbor from around the block you haven't met yet. He hands you a piece of paper with a check stapled to it and tells you it's your subpoena.

It's happened to several dozen folks around Philly, all connected to legally resolved cases from the Republican National Convention (RNC).

What we thought was a cynical act on part of the city to deal with trouble ahead of time by taking out insurance to cover civil rights lawsuits turned out to be much more. (Philadelphia was insured for $3 million for their legal defense against RNC related lawsuits and another $10 million to pay civil suits) For one, the City's law firm: Hangley, Aaronchick, Segal & Pudding are doing what they can to tap their insurance jackpot for all it's worth, wasting money as only lawyers could imagine to, including posting lawyers with cameras across the street from the old Puppet Warehouse for multiple shifts. And like legal aikido, the City has been using lawsuits brought against them for civil rights violations, many of which involved being spied on and illegally imprisoned for their political organizing, as an opportunity to continue and even increase their spying and information gathering. About a dozen organizations and numerous individuals were issued subpoenas to make video taped depositions and/or hand over documents. The documents were to relate to several Puppet Warehouse defendants named in the subpoena, to the Philadelphia Direct Action Group (PDAG) who had pulled together the August 1st actions, to trainings, spokes councils, R2K Legal and just about anything else related to the RNC in general.

During videotaped depositions (interrogations) lawyers from the City have acted aggressively, following trivial trails of conjecture to absurdity. One plaintiff in a wrongful arrest lawsuit was repeatedly presented emails from the R2K Legal listserv which she hadn't written and was questioned about them. Most questions seem to have been related to jail solidarity or the R2K Legal collective.

Unexpected to some, for whom the defiant attitude on the streets, in the jails and then in courts had been a the positive fuel of the protests, some activists have shown themselves only all too willing to provide the city's attorneys with whatever information they want.

During the RNC, John Sellers of the Ruckus Society was pulled off the street and held on $1 million bail despite his non-involvement in any organizing. Already in jail Sellers had expressed his contempt for other defendants and once on the street, Sellers didn't hesitate to throw a press conference during which he parroted the corporate-police editorial policy that violent protesters had somehow spoiled the whole action with their bad behaviour. Not long after Sellers sued the City for his wrongful arrest, a subpoena showed up at the Ruckus Society of which Sellers is director demanding they hand over all records. Without the knowledge of other Ruckus members, Sellers handed over boxes of records to the law firm which some activists say contained personal applications to attend Ruckus' direct action training camps.

Somewhat more surprising was the willingness of Training for Change (TFC) to divulge reams of documents with nothing whatsoever resembling a fight. Responding to the identical subpoena as received by numerous other organizations, TFC consulted lawyers who advised them to simply comply with the subpoena. Skylar Fern of TFC had played a highly valued secretarial role previous to the RNC for PDAG's training working group, keeping meticulous notes at meetings, reminding everyone of tasks they'd volunteered for etc. Though neither warrant nor real threat had been presented to them, George Lakey and his staff, spent hours printing out meeting notes, outlines of training workshops, handouts, schedules and compiling whatever could be found relating to the RNC and our mobilization against it; this included names, phone numbers and other information most activists surely did not expect would be so eagerly handed over to the city.

A more positive example was the R2K Legal Collective, a group of defendants, activists and lawyers who work on the legal defense and support of those arrested during the RNC. R2K refused to give any information whatsoever to the city. Citing their role as paralegal assistants to the RNC defendants' lawyers, R2K Legal invoked attorney client privilege to refuse all information and successfully fought off all depositions and demands for documents. Still, the city pulled private emails from the R2K Legal's confidential listserv off the web, information which they used to grill others not even on the listserv in separate depositions.

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) whose offices had police video team parked across the street in the weeks leading up to the RNC, refused to hand over any personal information (including the names of donors) but handed over information of an 'incredibly boring' nature: fliers, pamphlets and other publicly available information. Critical Path, an activist internet service provider refused to hand over archives of a number of email lists. Numerous individuals managed to avoid making depositions through legal action. Others chose the more simple tactic of non-violent direct inaction and ignored the subpoenas entirely.

Very scary for Philly activists is also the subpoenaing of activist and civil rights lawyers who helped defend RNC defendants. Among lawyers issued subpoenas are Roy Zipris of the National Lawyers Guild, Angus Love, Dave Rudowsky, Bradley Bridge (of the Public Defenders' Office), Joel Epstein, Larry Krasner, Paul Hetznecker, Andy Erba, and of course our favorite Stephan Presser. In addition to the deposition of our lawyers came the accusing of lawyers of conspiring with defendants during depositions at which lawyers were representing their clients. The City's lawyers reasoning that giving legal advice to activists is tantamount to helping plan the actions, ie.: conspiracy. Though these depositions weren't cases held against the lawyers in front of a judge, they were nevertheless threats to their status as lawyers (including possible disbarment) and were enough to prompt R2K lawyers to stop the depositions and demand the city's law firm be recused from the proceedings. In the meantime, the NLG is rumoured to be investigating which other non-R2K lawyers were issued subpoenas and what if any information they divulged on their clients.

Given that the subpoenas are still trickling in, how does one deal with the threat of legal action? For one it's important to remember that these city lawyers, like cops are skilled at what they do. Typical tactics they resorted to are very coplike including leading one down a path of increasingly incriminating questioning making it difficult to know when to stop. Having a defiant anti-authoritarian lawyer to challenge interrogators is of course always helpful. A no-brainer would be to regularly erase your sensitive and old emails(consider no email private). And in the matter of receiving the subpoena oneself, don't open the door for strangers and by no means accept 'paperwork' for anyone else. A legally useful tidbit of legal knowledge would be the case of Button NAACP vs the State of Alabama, which stated that membership lists of organizations need not be divulged to the State. This would have been only too easy to invoke for those who've given other people's personal information to the cops.

Both Lakey and Sellers should have known better. Their compliance puts others at risk. Given their own personal experience of being criminalized or targeted for their work they should also be fully aware that the state doesn't care about moral self righteousness of the non-violent activist. It's also crucial to be aware that regardless of ones personal sense of innocence, most of these interrogations are not meant to incriminate specifically those being interrogated. They're meant to give the city's prosecutors a deeper understanding of the larger community of anti-capitalists, social-justice advocates and political troublemakers; it's meant to enhance their love for applying conspiracy charges to people who struggle for social transformation. Every deposition is material on hand the city can call up to very selectively make claims about your character and actions. In addition, allegations are afloat that this information once collected will be handed over to federal authorities. It really doesn't matter even a tiny bit how righteous or legally 'innocent' one is, all information gathered by them is meant specifically to both shield themselves from legal reprisal and to further their ability to attack activists.

For more info on RNC related cases, the lawsuits and/or the protests against the Prison Industrial Complex during the RNC, check out R2K Legal Collective's web site at: http://www.r2kphilly.org/