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The last remaining defendants in the J20 trials, who faced a raft of charges related to a mass arrest on Inauguration Day, can breathe a sigh of relief. Last week, federal prosecutors decided to drop all remaining felony charges against the protesters, who faced decades in prison for rioting and conspiring to do the same. To defenders of First Amendment rights, the government’s failure to win convictions was a victory: The prosecutors’ novel theory of collective liability — that mere presence at a demonstration in which property damage occurred constituted a planned criminal offense — fell apart. The cases were an outrage and an embarrassment from the moment D.C. police swept up over 200 people on the corner of L and 12th streets in Washington — a protest in which I took part, but was not arrested. Prosecutors scrambled and made underhanded moves, including withholding evidence and using far-right propaganda as purported evidence of a conspiracy. Despite the complete absence of any convictions at trial, the government did notch some victories against the defendants. The prolonged and failed prosecution — an ordeal for those who lived through it — drained resources for activism from day one of Donald Trump’s presidency.

The J20 prosecutions were a troubling example of how the government will use the idea of the “bad protester” to shut down dissent.

Yet the J20 narrative is more complex than a simple victory for protected speech over government repression. It was a troubling example of how the government will use the idea of the “bad protester” to shut down dissent. Aaron Cantú, a journalist and J20 defendant who was among the last to have his charges dropped, tweeted, “The state shamelessly weaponized the ‘good protester/bad protester’ narrative in this case. It’s time to put it to rest.” This effort will not end with its failure to convict the J20 arrestees: Just this June, Republicans on Capitol Hill introduced the Unmasking Antifa Act of 2018 in the House Judiciary Committee. The bill is unabashed about its target. It calls for fines and a prison sentence of up to 15 years for anyone who “injures, oppresses, threatens, or intimidates any person” while wearing a mask or disguise — a bill that telegraphs the government’s future attempts to prosecute the masked protesters they failed to criminalize on Inauguration Day.

There can be no mistake that the Unmasking Antifa Act seeks to further criminalize anti-fascist protests against far-right extremists and neo-Nazis — it’s right there in the name. “It seems to be a way to prepare for the next J20-style repression to actually work,” Mark Bray, author of “The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” noted in a report from the Black Rose Anarchist Federation. That anti-fascist demonstrators frequently wear masks for fear of harassment and retaliation from white supremacists unveils an irony in the bill’s focus on “antifa”: Many pre-existing state laws that make wearing masks illegal in certain contexts were aimed at Ku Klux Klan members. While anti-masking laws are not uncommon and have often been used in the past to arrest leftist and anarchist protesters, the weight of sentencing proposed in the new bill raises the stakes considerably and exemplifies efforts under the Trump administration to protect the speech of fascists and condemn that of anti-fascists. Legislative proposals of this sort illustrate that the government’s delineation of the “bad protester” during the J20 trials is far from put to rest and is firmly focused on the left. The prosecution in the J20 cases attempted to paint every arrestee as a “bad protester,” in most cases drawing only on the fact that a defendant wore a mask, dressed in black, and remained in the march from its start to its end in police nets. For the majority of the defendants who engaged in no property damage at all, it might have been tempting to assert that they were in fact the law-abiding “good protesters,” while actively condemning and drawing attention to the actions of a few window-breakers. Yet the J20 trials provided an anecdote, a lesson in collective resistance, and a refusal to allow government and law enforcement narratives about “good protesters” and “bad protesters” to prevail. While many will disagree with the ethics or value of property damage as a protest tactic, the defendants’ united front meant the government could not weaponize co-defendants to bolster their weak case.

“Two-hundred-plus people resisted these charges and got out. Our solidarity inside and outside the courtroom saved us and protected each other.”