Learning From the Lines Drawn in the Sand: A Response to Fire Ant Movement Defense

This response is published anonymously and intended to be part of the current dialogue surrounding the harms of talking to the state surrounding the Prairieland cases. It's writers have been active in prisoner support, defendant support, and anti repression for several years, strongly support the DFW Support Committee and have a lot of for respect Fire Ant Movement Defense. If there was no respect present, this response would have been much shorter. Building, maintaining, and supporting infrastructures that can sustain mass anti repression campaigns and support cases like this with many defendants is an extremely important and useful thing, as we have seen in the recent cases in Minneapolis, politically targeted cases like Prairieland are only going to increase in frequency and audacity. Projects like Fire Ant Movement Defense are vital, which is why it is so important that our values regarding anti-repression have strong foundations and consistency.

Regardless of any betrayal felt by the movement at large, the people most affected by the actions of Meagan Morris in the hours and days after her arrest are her codefendants, some of whom may never have been identified or charged without her voluntary disclosures to law enforcement in the early days of her detention. Meagan and her codefendants are still facing state charges, and are currently incarcerated. All communications between them are monitored and it is extremely unsafe for anyone still facing charges to offer a negative opinion, or instructions for others, regarding those who informed on them. The people most affected do not have the ability to speak freely on the topic, and it seems Fire Ant has chosen to speak for them. Other former political prisoners, Eric King, Brian DiPippa, Krystal DiPippa, and Richard Hunsinger, have at this point publicly offered their perspectives on the forgiveness of those who informed on others, and they are unanimously opposed to the perspective offered by Fire Ant. In the interrogation room, Meagan Morris characterized Benjamin Song's actions as an excuse to shoot people. She also disclosed details about the personal life of her ex partner Autumn Hill. Since we cannot safely ask Song and Hill how they feel about this, it makes sense to defer to comrades who have experienced incarceration and betrayal in the past and can now speak for themselves.

In Manufactured Betrayal, Fire Ant Movement Defense points out factually that all of the defendants were tortured and humiliated in a manner designed to break them into pleas and testimony. They do not mention that Meagan was arrested within hours of the Prairieland Detention Center Protest, and that her initial disclosures to investigators happened the next morning. It is without doubt that the hours of her detention leading up to those disclosures were awful, but it is not accurate to paint a picture of weeks of torture breaking someone when it was merely hours for Meagan, followed by an additional request to speak to law enforcement within the next few days.

Manufactured Betrayal, in the piece's efforts to downplay the actions of Morris, compares her voluntary testimony to the non cooperating plea deals taken by Rowan Gibson and Rebecca Morgan, arguing that taking a non cooperating plea deal is similar to voluntarily disclosing information about others to law enforcement. They do not argue that these non cooperating plea deals were damaging at trial. However, Morris's statements to law enforcement in the first days of the investigation were read in court by the investigating officer, and directly contributed to the investigations and indictments against Benjamin Champagne Song, Rowan Gibson, and Morris's ex partner Autumn Hill. It is dishonest at worst and naive at best to compare the actions of Gibson and Morgan to the actions of Morris. The implication is that anyone who might condemn Morris's actions must also condemn Morgan and Gibson. They state that "some in the movement" have characterized Morgan and Gibson's plea deals as potentially damaging, while presenting an argument in favor of forgiving Morris that "some in the movement" would likely wholeheartedly reject as well. While Fire Ant concedes that Morgan and Gibson's plea deals were not used against the other defendants at trial, the idea that they might be is hung out in comparison to Meagan's testimony, which absolutely was used in trial and in the preceding investigations and indictments. A hypothetical is being used as a comparison to the actual evidence presented at court.

The statement says that "Many people will demand that she (Morris) pay for her choice", and argues that she is already paying for it with her 50 years sentence. There is no disagreement here that she is paying for it. What does Fire Ant mean when they hypothesize that people will demand she pay? What have we, 'the movement', done to her? What capacity do we even have to punish her? The movement has raised over $200,000 toward the collective defense of all the Prairieland Defendants. Since there is no public accounting of how that money was used in the defense (we are not arguing that there should be such an accounting, we think discretion is important), it is completely worth assuming that we 'the movement' have already significantly materially supported Morris through contributing to the shared defense fund, through printing and sharing support materials that bear her name as well, for holding letter writings across the country (and across borders), and for raising as much awareness as we can for the entire case and all of the defendants supported by the DFW Support Committee. We have not punished her. The state has. It certainly seems implied that the ask is that support for Meagan continue now that the sentencing is over, and now that it is abundantly clear that her decision to eventually stop collaborating did not lessen the harm to anyone. This is different from asking that she not be punished. It is asking that she be rewarded.

It is worth examining the difference between accepting Morris as a supported defendant when she initially chose to stop cooperating and reject a plea, and arguing now that she receive support as a prisoner. It made some sense at the time that one less cooperating witness at trial could be helpful (from a perspective strictly of legal strategy). We are unaware of a similar circumstance where a collaborator turned their coat twice in a case against anti-fascists. As a legal strategy, it had some merit to accept her back hoping that her not taking the stand could help the remaining defendants. We now know that it did not. Everyone who went to trial got the maximum sentence. Arguing for her continued support as a prisoner despite her collaboration can only logically serve to retroactively justify the decision to support her as a defendant, but laundering this tactical gamble causes us to lose a collective learning opportunity. The lesson here is what Eric King, Brian and Krystal DiPippa, and Richard Hunsinger have already said, there is never a justification for speaking to law enforcement. Meagan Morris has proved through her actions and her trial that there is no going back and undoing the damage of willing collaboration. She tried to undo it and she could not.

Manufactured Betrayal includes this paragraph "But at this moment, thousands of inexperienced new participants are flooding into the fight for liberation. We probably won’t be able to educate all of them before they find themselves in confrontations with the state. Some of them will experience intense repression designed to scare them into cooperating before they fully understand the political implications, the options available to them, or their basic rights. When they find themselves staring down the barrel of a gun, some may well say something they shouldn’t. If we immediately make permanent enemies of everyone who do so, this may further endanger others." This is a case for tolerance and forgiveness of people who betray others, whether out of fear or ignorance. Why not instead shout the lessons we have learned from these cases as loud as we can to reach as many as we can? Every new comrade must be taught there is no going back from snitching. That is why it is unforgiveable. The existing incentive structure to discourage snitching to save one's own skin is called solidarity. Just because a defendant later chose not to benefit from the harm she caused her comrades does not mean she is deserving of the same solidarity offered to those she harmed and those who stayed true.

Manufactured Betrayal, while arguing that taking a plea deal could harm the movement as a whole, pushes a far more harmful suggestion, that we build not only an offramp from collaborating with the state, but also leave the door open to return to the movement. If this suggestion were to be embraced and practiced, our entire immune system of trust would erode. Activist spaces that allow back in those who have betrayed them can never be assumed secure. There is a popular chant "No one talks, everyone walks", and Prairieland only enforces that generational wisdom. People talked, and no one walked. There is far more value in re-learning this lesson than attempting to justify the legal strategy of accepting her back into support. We just watched that strategy fail.

The piece concludes "We must hurry to adapt to this new era of repression. We must educate as many people as possible about the crucial importance of refusing to answer questions from police or federal agents, we must build awareness about grand juries and how to resist them; above all, we must establish stronger legal support infrastructure, including media outreach, to put at the disposal of everyone who may end up in the crosshairs of the state." We could not agree more. And that starts with drawing clear lines in the sand about snitching.

Never talk to cops.

Some notes on Abolitionism,

Abolition and Anarchism are not interchangeable terms, despite sharing many of the same ideas and adherents, and though the word abolition is often used in arguments for us to forgive those who have wronged us or our communities, it is important to clarify what the ideological frameworks of abolition are, so we do not misuse these terms to excuse behavior that hurts others. Abolitionism is a framework of critique against the state's carceral systems that challenges us to build a world that does not outsource punishment for harm to cops, judges and prisons. Abolition asks us to consider the root causes of harm and seek avenues of actual repair. Abolition does not mean no consequences for harm. Abolition does not mean blanket forgiveness and acceptance back into the community. It means that individuals who have harmed others do not deserve to be caged and deprived of humanity. We do not believe that Meagan Morris deserves what is happening to her and everyone else. But we did not do this to her, her former partners in the state did. Refusing to embrace someone who has snitched does not violate our abolitionist principles.