Read on Twitter
So, this happened yesterday evening. After coming home, taking a breath and sleeping on it, I'm doing a thread on what happened. This is also a thread with some thoughts on US police crushing freedom of the press, which unfortunately I've experienced firsthand in the past.
Story: We walked to DTLA, turned a corner onto Figueroa from Olympic, & got caught in a group of protesters running from cops. We were suddenly sandwiched from both sides by riot police. They made us sit. They advanced and I took this pic before arrest. I was the first arrested.
They only detained me for 20 minutes. The young protesters who were in the streets doing absolutely nothing illegal, more than an hour before curfew, were all detained and arrested. My arrest was bullshit, but so was theirs.
In total I was only gone from my apt for an hour.
In total I was only gone from my apt for an hour.
If you don't already know, I was arrested covering Trump's inauguration in 2017 (J20). The circumstances then were vastly different. I embedded with the crowd & ran with it until the end. Arrested and prosecuted, facing 70 years in prison. Wrote about it: https://thebaffler.com/latest/enemy-of-people-cantu
You'll notice in the first pic I didn't have a press pass. I also didn't have one at J20. I've found that having one makes functionally little difference in how cops target journalists, though it now appears it might actually make it worse, eg this thread: https://twitter.com/dellcam/status/1266964978164215808
There's no law mandating people carry press passes.
Yesterday a cop kept saying I needed one to avoid trouble. Police in major cities have their own news credentialing process ( https://www.rcfp.org/journals/the-news-media-and-the-law-fall-2010/police-departments-restructur/), but this is not necessary to be on the streets and perform newsgathering.
Yesterday a cop kept saying I needed one to avoid trouble. Police in major cities have their own news credentialing process ( https://www.rcfp.org/journals/the-news-media-and-the-law-fall-2010/police-departments-restructur/), but this is not necessary to be on the streets and perform newsgathering.
I posted this tweet the other day. After my J20 arrest, I felt like a canary in a coal mine. Nobody ever really did a deep dive into what mine and other journalists' arrests at that time meant for press freedom. Now we're seeing it live. TOLD YA'LL. https://twitter.com/aaron_con_choco/status/1266622917552435202
After my arrest yesterday, I came home and re-read the motion for dismissal that my attorneys drafted up back in 2018. It's a great legal document.
I encourage reporters arrested yesterday to give it a read, esp if you're facing indictment. https://theintercept.com/document/2018/01/19/aaron-cantu-motion-to-dismiss-j20-inauguration/
I encourage reporters arrested yesterday to give it a read, esp if you're facing indictment. https://theintercept.com/document/2018/01/19/aaron-cantu-motion-to-dismiss-j20-inauguration/
This part was chilling: My J20 prosecution "[told] reporters to stay home & avoid the risk of prosecution rather than to go to newsworthy events."
That's what I did last night. After being outside less than an hour, I was arrested. I went home after release. It felt cowardly.
![This part was chilling: My J20 prosecution "[told] reporters to stay home & avoid the risk of prosecution rather than to go to newsworthy events."That's what I did last night. After being outside less than an hour, I was arrested. I went home after release. It felt cowardly.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZXpk_iUwAA3b2V.png "This part was chilling: My J20 prosecution \"[told] reporters to stay home & avoid the risk of prosecution rather than to go to newsworthy events.\"That's what I did last night. After being outside less than an hour, I was arrested. I went home after release. It felt cowardly.")
That's what I did last night. After being outside less than an hour, I was arrested. I went home after release. It felt cowardly.
I ordered a pizza, had a beer, and then sobbed from PTSD. The cops won. My instinctual fear of going to the scene of a newsworthy event was justified. This is happening to other journalists. In these historic moments, we're increasingly reliant on the state for information.
This is the same state that has given millions and billions more to police over the last 30 years. ( https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-07-07/cities-spend-more-and-more-on-police-is-it-working) The same state that maneuvers tax laws and regulations for the benefit of the private equity firms gutting newsrooms across the country.
That sucks. But it's how it is now. We're approaching a way of doing things where dispatches from the field are increasingly anachronistic. Journalism is dying and there are around 6 PR flacks for every journalist. That includes flacks for municipal governments and cops.
Maybe that's ok. Maybe we don't need to know everything that happens in the streets. That's especially true if we cannot trust news orgs to use this info in a way that advances collective liberation. Journalism has mostly been a tool for white supremacy: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-whitest-news-you-know-cantu
Maybe we're approaching an info environment where people who need to know will know. De-centralized info sharing among trusted groups of friends and associates, mirroring larger trends of information silos facilitated by social media. "Mass media" is already a thing of the past.
The biggest loss here is that we lose the ability to report on what the absolutely out-of-control police in the streets across the country are doing. In the civil context, our highest court has made them even more immune from accountability than ever. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-police-immunity-scotus-specialrep/special-report-for-cops-who-kill-special-supreme-court-protection-idUSKBN22K18C
In the context of a diminishing ability to monitor and report on cops gone wild, it behooves reporters to take allegations of force and instigation more seriously than ever. It means being hypercritical of everything cops say. It means broadcasting this skepticism w/o hesitation.
We're functionality living in a police state. Black people always have, and in my lifetime police budgets have grown larger than ever. I hope in the second half of my life, we treat the duty of dismantling the police state as a matter of public health. Because it is.
