One Hundred Years in Prison: A Precedent Aimed to Kill Democracy
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A man got sentenced to 100 years in prison this week. Seven other people got 30, 50, and 70 years apiece. Their crime, in the government’s own words, was being “antifa”—a word that has no legal definition, no membership roster, no headquarters, and no leadership, because it isn’t an organization. It’s a stance rooted in antifascism. And the government just proved you can sentence people to a century in a federal prison for holding one.
On July 4th of last year, a group of about a dozen people showed up outside the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas— an ICE facility—to stage what they called a noise demonstration for the immigrants detained inside. By the end of the night, a police officer had been shot, and the government had decided it knew exactly what kind of people these were: antifa. This week, eight of them were sentenced to between 30 and 100 years in federal prison for holding that label. I’m not here to relitigate the night. I’m here to tell you what those sentences mean for every single one of us who has ever shown up to a protest, posted a black square, donated to a bail fund, or said the word “abolition” out loud.
This is bigger than eight defendants. This is a test run for something far more sinister and reaching.
Here’s the part that should stop you cold: the longest sentence ever handed to anyone anyone for the January 6th insurrection, an actual armed mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol to overturn a presidential election, was 22 years—given to Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio. That sentence later got wiped out via a pardon on Trumps first day in office. Twenty-two years, then erased, for trying to violently overturn American democracy. Thirty to one hundred years, with appeals already being fought, for a handful of people the government decided to call “antifa and domestic terrorism.” Sit with that math. That is not a justice system calibrating punishment to harm. That is a justice system calibrating punishment to who you are and what the state has decided you represent.
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