I went to DC with several other journalists to report on Trump's ascent, following a year of bubbling anti-fascism against his campaign. I currently enjoy the haven of a newspaper willing to hire lawyers who bite back, but last January I was a freelancer using vacation days from my full-time job to go witness history. This was a completely uncharted assignment: How violent could this get? Would American jackboots try to stomp me in the streets? In the end, it didn't matter whether I presented myself as a journalist on J20 or that I only carried a sandwich and a notebook; white supremacists wound up messing with me anyway for over a year afterward by working with authorities to prosecute and harass me. I pitched a dispatch soon after getting released from jail, but pulled it for legal concerns.