SURVIVING A

FOR MORE ESCAPE PLANS.
CONSULT CRIMETHINC COM

(((((Three Who Fought the Law and Wonl)))))

Grand juries serve the state as a sort of auxilary legal proceeding to force
people to inform on each other. A grand jury isn't a criminal trial; there’s
no judge present, It takes place entirely in secret. As a witness, you can't
even obtain transcripts of your testimony:

Only the prosecutor and the jurists are allowed in the room with the
witness. The jurists are chosen according to the prosecutor's agenda and
not screened for bias. The grand jury doesn't have to inform you about
the details of wha they are investigating; you have no way to know what
information might be incriminating for you or another person.

Grand juries suspend Fifth Amendment rights. They can subpoena you
and give you “immunity” in order to force you to testiy;if you refuse, they
can jail you for up to eighteen months. This immunity does not protect
you from prosecution; it only stipulates that the information you person-
ally provide cannot be used against you, although the same information
provided by someone else can be.

Allthis explains why people who do not want to be complicitin enabling
the state to persecute communities refuse to give any information to a
grand jury whatsoever. You never know what detail might be used against
someone else. Even if no one is guilty of any crime, providing information
10 a grand jury can result in ongoing legal harassment that can ripple out
and affect many people.

Grand juries serve to gather information on dissidents far beyond what
police and prosecutors could gather on their own; they have been used
to isolate, divide, and destroy social movements since the 1960s. Grand
juries are currently being used to target anarchists, anti-fascists, and indig-
enous water protectors who struggled at Standing Rock

If you're subpoenaed by a grand jury and you decide to resist, you have
two options: show up in court and refuse to testify, then serve fime in
prison for contempt, or go on the run before your first court date. The
following stories are from three comrades: Esme, who served prison time
for resisting; Devlin, who went on the run rather than resist; and Cora,
who was the partner of 2 grand jury resister and supported them before,
during, and after imprisonment

We're deeply inspired by the choices these people made in resisting the
state. We hope thal if you ever have to face a grand jury, criminal charges,
or police harassment, their words will give you strength and fith in your-
self. It can help to learn from the experiences of those who walked in your
shoes before you—to know that you are not alone.
(((((A Knock on the Door)))))

ESME: | remember when those douchebags first came to my door. 1
particularly remember the tall man with sharp features and creepy blue
eyes. He knocked on my door at 6 am. When I answered, still half.
asleep, he said, “Oh, hi, sorry to wake you. I saw through your window
that you were sleeping. You know this is my least favorite part of the
job.” He was there to subpoena a friend of mine. I slammed the door
in his face. Over the following months, my friends got served their
subpoenas and had to go to court dates. 1 helped to organize support
for them. At the time it felt like an agent was lurking behind every cor-
ner—and the tough part was sometimes they were

CORA: I was awoken that morning by my partner, who was in shock.
Federal agents had come looking for a friend and former housemate
of ours. They wanted to serve him a subpoena to testify before a grand
jury. The days that followed were a flurry of hushed conversation, larg;
er displays of solidarity,crying, and panic.

Our house was awkwardly built with four doors to the outside and
many windows. It wasn't the greatest layout for feeling protected when
paranoia struck. I was home alone one evening when I heard car doors
slam outside our house. This wasn't strange for our neighborhood, but
my fear of the feds turned every sound into impending arrest or another
subpoena. This time, it was federal agents. A group of five medium-to-
large men with flashlights, in black clothing, began assessing our home
from the outside, starting near my partner's bedroom door, around to
our backyard, around the side yard and completing the circle
up front. I stayed hidden. I was afraid they would
enter the house, thinking it to be empty,
and comer me there alone—but
they only scemed inter-
ested in our yard
and our home'
exterior.

It was after this
thatall of us—my part-
ner, and housemates

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and I—decided it was absolutely necessary to move. They had already
subpoenaed the people they had originally been searching for. Why
were they still coming around? What did they want with our house?
We weren't under the illusion that a new house would provide more
safety, but the anxiety mounting in that space was beginning to feel
overwhelming and we needed a change of environment. We found a
new home quickly and eagerly moved in. We had just begun to settle in
when the FBI visited us again.

ESME: One day two men were lurking outside my house. I pushed away
what I thought was an irrational paranoia. I et myself believe they were
Mormon missionaries. I walked outside to my car and they addressed
me by my name. I shut the car door and ran into my backyard. I couldn't
think fast enough. I fumbled with the latch on the gate and they yelled
affer me that they had positvely identified me, so the subpoena had been
officially served. I turned around and grabbed it out of their hands. They
offered to take me into the grand jury right then. I didn't answer them,
but walked into my house and burst into tears. I remember crying and
repeating the words ‘I don't want to do this, I don't want to do this” over
and over again as my friends read the subpoen. I knew what it meant
by that point, as several of my friends were already in jail over this shit. It
never occurred to me to do anything other than resist, but I was terrified.

CORA: When my partner was issued a subpoena it felt like a night-
mare. It was the same grand jury that had already subpoenaed our
friends, who were now serving jail time for resisting. None of us felt
we had the tools to navigate what was ahead of us. I treated it like a job,
because there was so much we didn't know.

ESME: I called a public defender and explained the situation. I told him
that I intended to not cooperate. He said in a condescending tone, “Oh
you can't just NOT cooperate with a grand jury subpoena.” I explained
that I knew exactly the consequences: cightcen months max n jail for
civil contempt, and that I was prepared to doit. I told him that if he was
going to represent me he would have to respect that. After that he never
questioned my resolve once. Ultimately, I would have to educate him
about how grand jury resistance works.

CORA: It surprised me how litle the defense lawyer understood about
grand juries. Maybe that was just me giving too much credit to lawyers,

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cause I was like, you go to school for eight years for this, you should
know what's going on. It boggled my mind. Luckily, we were able to
talk to other, radical lawyers. There wasn't a lot of information online,
and a lot of it was contradictory. So we talked to lawyers who had explic-
it experience in political cases. Its not that our lawyer was incompe-
tent, i’s just that grand juries are so outside the scope of regular court
cases—to the point that the lawyers can't even be in the room.

ESME: Just like my lawyer, my parents initially encouraged me to
“consider my options.” I told them flatly that I knew I was going to go
1o jail over this and that if they wanted to visit me while I was in jail
they were going to need to respect my decision. In this one conversa-
tion, our relationships changed from a parent/child dynamic to one
of adults. Being clear and upfront with both my parents and lawyer
about how this was going to go it made it much easier for all of them
to support me in the ways I needed. This meant they never pressured
me to cooperate even if they didn't understand my ethical reasons for
non-cooperation.

CORA: No one knew how long punitive detention for refusing to co-
operate with a grand jury subpoena would actually be. One isn't sen-
tenced to a particular length of time, but attorneys told us that cighteen
months was the maximum. We were told to expect the maximum be-
cause of my partner's public refusal to cooperate and the over political
nature of the investigation. We went from meetings amongst friends,
to meetings amongst family, to meetings with attorneys, to phone calls
with comrades trying to gather as much information as possible in the
short time before inevitable incarceration. We stayed busy.

The wait was agonizing. No matter what we did amongst friends,
amongst our political milieu or in our romantic relationship, | never
felt prepared to have my partner’s physical and emotional presence
stripped from my life. I never felt prepared to watch them experience
detention and isolation. We talked with people who had experienced
similar repression, made plans for communication, strengthened
our relationship while supporting one another through the trauma
of uncertainty and constant harassment from the State. We made
big banners for demonstrations and, afier, hung them in our house
as encouragement. We even got married in order to grant ourselves
some luxuries and legal rights regarding prison visits and attorney-cli-
ent privileges.

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ESME: We'd had some time to talk out scenarios before this happened,
and we decided to get married—not out of love, but practical necessity.
We knew that was the only way Cora would be able to visit me. They
would continue to be an unwavering support person to me through
the hard months to follow. Thankfully, they were not the only person
torise to the occasion. Many friends and loved ones showed up to hold
me up and support me. Friends would come by our house and drop
off food and treats and gifis on the regular. This isn't o say everything
was rosy—the stress of the time definitely reverberated throughout our
friendships. Many stepped up to mediate conflicts—it really did take an
extended community to support us.

CORA: In those days leading up to Esme’s incarceration, we were hard-
Iy ever alone. It would have been casy to be isolated as a couple, to feel
trapped in this intense experience that was effecting the two of us most
intensely, but luckily that didn't happen. I think that's part of why our
relationship has stayed as strong as it is through all o this—even when
friends couldn't always show up in the ways | wished they would, we
were really held by a large community.

(((((Threats and Pressure)))))

ESME: After the subpocna, the prosecutor hurled all kinds of threats
at me. I was told I would be charged with criminal as well as civil con-
tempt and other crimes if I refused to cooperate. The paranoia that had
been a dull roar in my mind increased to full-blown panic. I blamed
myself for lack of vigilance for letting myself get subpoenaed. I had
been anxious before, but now I started to experience more intense pan-
ic. It was getting more difficult to determine which fears were worth
paying attention to.

‘We knew from affidavits in the case that some of us had been followed,
so it would make sense to believe I was being followed. Sometimes I
would see an SUV with government plates parked outside my house—
but that blue-eyed man who came to my door the first time had been
driving a beat up old Pontiac. So there was really no way of knowing
how deep the surveillance went.

Sometimes clearly absurd fears would enter my brain and I couldn't
push them away. Once I was driving and heard a series of ticks and

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beeps. I began to fear a bomb had been planted under my seat. 1
sat stopped at a red light and considered my options. I was almost
certain this wasn't real, but the Feds had bombed Judi Bari’s car this
way in 1990. But surely I was not as high a priority as she had been.
Waiting for the light to turn, I couldn't reason my way out of this. I
pulled over into a Burger King parking lot and got out of my car. I
walked a safe distance away | waited a few minutes before cautiously
approaching the vehicle again. I checked under the seat, then under
the car itself: nothing. I felt the seat for anything inside it: nothing. I
got back into my car, took a deep breath, and got to work just a couple
minutes late.

Experiences like this helped me develop a framework for how to
handle these kind of fears. I created a set of four questions, and for
cach one I'd either ask a friend’s advice or imagine what advice they
might give. The questions were:

1. How likely is it that what I fear right now is real? What evidence do
I have for it> Has this happened to others?

2. If what I fear is real, how serious of a threat s it to me in this situ-
ation?

3. Can this situation be addressed? I there anything that I can do to
make myself safe from this?

4. How costly or inconvenient is this precaution? Is this response
illegal? Could I get hurt or get in more trouble?

Using this framework, it made sense to get out of the car to check for
2 bomb. Though the likelihood of the threat being real was remote, the
precaution I took was low cost and only made me slightly late to work.
Having this structure helped me feel like I was doing all I could to keep.
myself safe.

Often, in scary repressive situations people oscillate between fecling
strong fear and then pushing it out of their mind—without taking basic
precautions to handle what they're afraid of. Dealing with repression is
about risk management. We can't be completely safe from the state or
from the far right, but there are steps we can take to mitigate some of
the potential harm. Since then, I've used this framework with house-
holds and other groups to assess risk from both feds and neo-Nazis.

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CORA: As Esme’s court date approached, we rented a hotel room with
friends and talked all night. It was moments like this that kept us go-
ing, and something worth doing if you're facing any kind of repression,
because everything will feel ke shit. In hindsight, I realize there are a
few things I would have done differently, especially around asking for
support. | mean we got amazing support, especially all the fundraising
and one friend who gave us a few hundred dollars to cover Esme’s rent
and car insurance and stuff. At the time I didn't want to ask for sup-
port just for me because it felt like a finite resouce. Thinking about
asking close friends for more than just basic friendship felt like taking
something away from others. I didn't really realize how the experience
was affecting me. I also don't know how receptive I would have been to
someone saying “this is just time for you.” On a certain level, I wasn't
able to do all the intense support I was doing and also check in with all
my emotional needs. Esme was the same way, and we brought that out
in each other. We both stayed really task-focused.

ESME: That night in the hotel I could feel my freedom slipping out
from under me. | hadn't seriously considered going on the run, but in
that hotel room it suddenly scemed so appealing. How was I going to
walk into the hands of my enemies the next day, when I could just as
casily breath the free air for another day? I thought about trying to live
underground in the States or leave the country and start a new life un-
dera different identity—but both would have to be indefinite if not life-
long exile, which seemed hard to imagine. Jail ime at least had a max
of eighteen months, and it seemed like most people usually did more
like six. And I could get letters from my loved ones, something much
harder to pull off from underground. So, going on the run seemed like
the harder option, although it perhaps represented an even larger mid-
dle finger to the law. I reconciled myself to my choice.

I spent the night embracing my friends and watching Mean Girls 1
and 2 (spoiler: the second one is terrible, don't bother). I appeared at
the courthouse the next day delirious from lack of sleep but ready to
face my incarceration.

ALANIS: Devlin is someone who faced the same dilemma and made
the only other honorable choice.

DEVLIN: I didn't decide to become a grand jury resister on the day
the federal agents emerged, scemingly out of nowhere, forcing their

1
subpoena into my unwelcoming hands. Decisions like this are rarely
made in the moment. For me, it would be more reasonable to say I
started to make this decision five years before I was subpoenacd, when
1 frst learned of Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar. At the time, he had just
been sentenced to eleven years and three months for resisting grand
juries in New York and Chicago. A fighter for Palestinian liberation,
Dr. Ashaar was jailed several times between 1998 and 2007 on civil
contempt charges. These were intended to coerce his testimony to a
perennial grand jury investigating Palestinian nationals on racketeer-
ing charges. As exhausting as the protracted struggle must have been,
Ashqar was unyielding in his defiance, refusing to implicate anyone,
saying in court that he refused “to live as a traitor or as a collaborator.”

In 2007, the case came to a head. As they admitted defeat in tum-
ing Ashqar into a state agent, the law played their final trump card: a
punitive prison sentence, meant to strike fear into all of us watching
from the sidelines. For me, as I'm sure for many others, it didn't have
that effect.

I was in awe of Ashqar, of his contempt, in the choices he made to
reject his status as innocent witness and take on the complicity of sol-
idarity. Resistance felt alive and real to me in that moment. I decided
then that if ever I was called upon to resist a grand jury, a thought that
scemed impossibly far away to a young anarchist who had yet to sce the
inside of a jai cell, | would try to breathe as much fire into the legacy of
grand jury resistance as I was capable of.

I wanted my resistance to be as defiant as it could be. I didn't want it
to be based on the fact that I was “innocent,” but rather to be a clear and
outright refusal of everything they wanted from me. I hoped that this
complete defiance would inspire others as Dr. Ashqar had inspired me.

I also thought about it from a security standpoint: my brain was
like a hard drive that stored valuable information, and I had no way of
knowing what stray detail I remembered could be used to incriminate
comrades of mine. So my perspective was that the best way to prevent
the state from having access to that information was not only to encrypt
the information (stay silent) but also to never give them physical access
to the hardware (in this case my body). Thus, I went on the run.

ESME: On the morning of my court date, my parents, my partner, my
lawyer and I got coffee across the street from the courthouse. My law-
yer noticed a stocky man with a military haircut holding a newspa-
per in front of his face and staring at us. My lawyer said we should

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talk outside. For my parents, this one fairly minor act of surveillance
scemed to shatter their cherished view of a benevolent government.

A number of people had shown up to the courthouse to support me,
including some older folks who had done support for grand jury resist.
ersin the 70s. I met two who had been part of an urban guerrilla group
back then and wished me their support. One of them told me about an
oath that they used to say to each other back in the day:

Ifever I should break my stride, or falter at my comrade’s side
‘This oath shall kill me.

If ever my word should prove untrue, should I betray the many or the
few

‘This oath shall kill me.
Ifever I withhold my hand, or show fear before the hangman
‘This oath shall surely kill me.

It was powerful to feel like included in a tradition of resistance, even
if some of our political inclinations were different.

I walked in to the courthouse with my lawyer. We were led to the
third floor where two men introduced themselves as prosecutors. One
of them was the man with the creepy blue eyes and sharp features I had
scen months earlier on my doorstep. When my lawyer introduced him.-
self, the blue-cyed man identified himself as the lead agent on the case.

I remained silent while my lawyer schmoozed with the prosecu-
tors, and then I entered the grand jury room with them. My lawyer, of
course, had to stay behind.

‘The room resembled a community college classroom. It had an over-
head projector and the dozen or so jurists sat in chair/desk combos
arrayed in rows facing me. I was at the front of the room as though I
was a guest lecturer. The prosecutor asked me my name and date of
birth. I told him. Then he asked me where I worked and I figured it
was as good a time as any to start resisting. | stammered out a refusal.
He then asked me a slew of questions: peoples names, where I was
on certain dates, where others were on specific dates. With growing
confidence, I refused to answer each question. As I wasn't allowed to

)
have my lawyer present or record any of the questions, I would ask
for a break affer every three questions and go into the other room and
write them down so I wouldn't forget them. This way I could share
what they were asking about with everyone else, and make this secret
process more transparent, Leaving the room frequently was also a way
of demonstrating to my lawyer and others that I wasn't answering their
questions, so there would be no doubt.

After a dozen or so questions and refusals, the prosecutor said he
had heard enough. As I got up to leave the room, a jurist in the front
xow smiled and raised his fist in salute to me. I still wonder to this day
what that guy's deal was. Maybe he had something to do with the out-
come of things? But I may never know—that's the thing about repres-
sion, there are so many bizarre unknowns that you just have to accept.

After that I was taken in front of a judge, granted immunity, ques-
tioned by the grand jury again and refused again. By the time all this
was over the workday was over and I was given another court datea few
weeks away. It felt a bit anti-climactic. I had prepared myself to go to
jail. T had packed up all my stuff, found someone to rent my room, and
now I had to go back to my house where I no longer really had a room
and kill time until I went to jail.

As I waited, I searched for ways to prepare for what really can't be
prepared for. I talked to more former political prisoners who offered
incredible advice and emotional support. I made plans with my part-
ner, parents and friends about my support.

‘After another court date I was given a self.xeport date and at g am on
a grey morning, after all that waiting, 1 gathered with a small group
of comrades and my parents to say goodbye. As the time approached
for me to go in I started to hug people goodbye I started crying and an
older comrade grabbed me by my shoulders and looked into my tear-
filled eyes and said “Hey, you've got this! Seriously, don't doubt it for a
second, you've got this!”

‘That phrase would come back to me ofien in the following months.

(((((Jail Time)))))

CORA: I wasn't prepared for what it would feel like to have my part-
ner be so physically absent from my life. While Esme was in jail, I
focused all my emotional energy on supporting them. This involved

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Ajury of your peers

writing long letters every day, micro managing their support, talking
with friends about our visits, meticulously planning my trips to visita
tion and really trying not to plan for life affer they got out. I tried not
to think about the future. They could be in for over a year, and at the
end of that could end up indicted as part of the ongoing investigation.
‘There was also the fear that I would be indicted as a result of the grand
jury's findings. The future was so unclear that the present was all 1
could grasp.

Iburied myself in work every other day of the week. Shortly after my
partner’s subpoena, I took on a second full-ime job. I used my Go- to
70-hour work week as a way to exhaust myself and dissociate from the
trauma I was incurring. It gave me purpose while I felt aimless and
heartbroken. I withdrew from many friendships and stayed firmly in
high-functional crisis mode. If you had asked me at the time what kind
of support I needed, I wouldn't have been able to say. I feltlike any care
someone gave me was taken away from Esme. In retrospect, I'd do a
few things differently. But | do think it was important for both of us to
focus on practical details and things we could control. It wasn't until
much later that we both realized how not okay we had been.

ESME: When | walked through the front door of that jail, 1 was shuttled
between various booking rooms for hours. Around 11 am, I was given a

1
ham sandwich and some pudding in a brown bag. I decided that if the
state wanted to lock me in a cage and attempt to ruin my lfe, I would
esist by making my time in jail the best thing that had ever happened
tome. I looked at that ham sandwich on white bread and decided that I
was going to cat as healthily as I could for this meal and all the ones to
follow: So1 left the white bread and pudding in the bag, It sounds weird
but this helped me feel like I was regaining some amount of agency.

‘They took me in front of a guard sitting at a desk who called himself
a counsclor. He asked me a slew of questions to figure out if I was
cligible for placement in General Population. I tried to answer every
question so that I would qualify. | remember him smirking and rolling
his eyes when I told him | was straight. But at the end he said I looked
like I was eligible for GP. He sent me back to a holding cell, then came
back a while later and inexplicably took me into the solitary confine-
ment unit and put me on cell alone status. The guards told me, “Since
you haven't committed a crime, and you're being held here coercively
not punitively, we can't house you in GP with criminals.” I responded
that my co-defendants were in GP, but they didn't offer any other expla-
nation. I found out later that at that same time my co-defendants were
being transferred to other solitary confinement units as well. Its clear
to me that the prosecutor was trying to apply exira pressure to us to get
us to break.

I woke up the next morning at 6 am o a tray of warm food being
slid through the trapdoor inside my door. I again picked through for
the less processed seeming parts and ate them, even though I wasn't
hungry and wanted to keep slecping. I figured I would take what I
could get.

After breakfast, they asked me if I wanted to go to the rec yard. I had
assumed 1 would be in this one cell all day and jumped at the oppor-
tunity to get out. They put me in what passed for a rec yard in solitary,
which turned out to be a triangular cell with chain link fence on all
sides and a vent through which cold air blew but you could see the sky
if you stood in the right place. It was barely larger than my cell and it
was so cold I couldn't really do anything other than shiver. Afier that, I
stayed in my cell during rec time.

I started journaling: planning out workouts and other selfimprove-
ment activities. In the evening a cart came by my cell and I was told 1
could pick two books from it. I picked out the longest one I could see.
‘Then scanned the titles for anything familiar, to my surprise I found an
Octavia Butler book I had been meaning to read. The familiar author

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brought warmth and joy to me when I was confiused and alone. Her
writing, bleak but yet so honest and nuanced, felt like just the emo-
tional tone I needed set going into the next few months of my life.

Tasked about phone calls and was told that could make one 15-minute:
phone call each month. It seemed unbelievable, but it was true. 1 would
have to be sustained by letters. On the third day, when I started receiv-
ing them, everything got so much better. The guards seemed resentful
of having to read all my mail but their resentment just made me feel
better and beter. The first book I received was Vida by Marge Piercy,
which follows a woman in a fictionalized Weather Underground type
group as she tries to survive living on the run. I knew some of my com-
rades who had also faced repression had gone on the run, but I had
tried to avoid any contact with them or knowledge of what they were
going through so as not to lead the authorities to them. Vida made me
feel connected to what they might be going through. The story doesn't
glorify life on the run—it left me feeling like I was the lucky one to
be safe in a cell rather than precariously waiting for the cops to come.
busting my door down like my comrades surely were.

(((((Life on the Run)))))

DEVLIN: At the beginning of my time on the run, my comrades and I
had to leave the area quickly and figure out a more concrete plan along
the way. Much of the work hinged on having a network of solidarity and
computer skills. It's actually quite a bit of work to protect yourself dig-
itally. I won't go into specifics, but the skills we needed were not those
we could have learned on a whim. We were able to do it because we had
years of experience to draw from.

Atone point, a security breach meant that we had to relocate for fear
of being tracked. We relied on the quick thinking and very generous
solidarity of comrades from all over who helped tremendously with our
transition. This type of anarchist solidarity was invaluable and without
it we would never have been able to do what we did.

Getting needs met like health care and money were major obstacles.
Over time, living in a situation not of our own choosing was physically
and emotionally detrimental. We had organized our lives around fight-
ing the state. Suddenly, when we didn't have any fight to o or deci-
sions to make, our camaraderie eroded. Bonds between close comrades

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started to break down and I felt rapped and without an outlet or shared
fight to channel my energy into.

Those stresses caused health problems which became harder and
harder to address because I was on the run. These compounding
effects became major obstacles.

Athome, I had lived through highs and lows of struggle and repres-
sion but they were shared highs and lows. All of a sudden, no one
around me understood the constant crisis I was going through or even
why I had moved to that place at all. People didn't even know my real
name, yet I was trying to build authentic bonds of camaraderie with
them.

I remember once a cop showed up at my house and they waited at
my door and wouldn't leave. My mind raced. I remembered that I had
mapped out a way to escape by jumping between roofiops, but I hadn't
tested it and didn't know if it would work. I had this internal freakout
but I quieted my fears because I would have to deal with the implica-
tions later. Right now, 1 just needed to get out. My body became weirdly
calm as I went through the house burning everything that could be
used to identify me. I also ate a package of cookies cause I didn't know
the next time 1 would be able to cat. I sent word to let friends know
what was going on, got a backpack together for my rooftop journey, and
looked out the window one last time—and the cop was gone.

Friends later found out through social engineering that the cops
were involved in something entirely unrelated, and we were able to
retumn to that spot. Even so, it was incidents like that that shook my
nerves so much. The simple act of interacting with a cop—something,
many people would consider routine—would have completely changed
my life at that time. I lived in constant fear of having to interact with
law enforcement.

I'see how I needed every moment of that build up, all of the reinforce-
ment of self that I put into the previous ten years to get me through
the experience intact. When the focus of the radical left had moved
on to the next crisis, when I hadn't seen my dearest friends in years,
when I was puking blood from a mysterious illness with no way to see
a doctor, when I didn't even have my own name to give coherence to
my words, what I did have to hold onto was the promise I had made to
myself—and implicitly to all others engaged in struggle—that I would
put everything I had into the fight. Prolonged psychological dissonance
can really disorient, subjecting what seems like our strongest founda-
tions to deterioration. Anarchy became the one place to which I could

"
recede that remained intact; resistance struggles the thread that con-
nected my past to a possible future.

(((((Maintaining Mental Health)))))

ESME: As the days became weeks, I got some basic stuff on commis-
sary and had a routine planned in half-hour increments so I would al-
ways be busy. I was teaching myself to eat and write with my left hand,
practicing Spanish in the evening, reading Foucault in the morning,
writing three long letters after dinner, and starting to meditate.

My cell looked west out over a park, but the tiny window was opaque
and foggy. There was one corner, though, where the clear epoxy that
sealed the window hadn't been fogged over. Through that tiny gap 1
could make out two trees in the distance on a hill, silhouetted against
the sky. I would watch them for hours as the light changed. I still feel
a happy sense of nostalgia when I think of how beautiful those two
trees were. Since my release I've gone back and tried to find them, but
none of the trees really seem right. Maybe they have been cut down, or
maybe I imagined them.

Every now and then the guards would transfer me to another cell
None of the others had a view like the first one. One cell was so cold
my bones ached from the pain of i, and I couldn't sleep. I asked for
a second blanket but they never gave me one. This was the hardest
time: I felt 5o alone and sad, and not being able to sleep much made
everything harder. If 1 slept during the day when it was warmer, I'd
be up awake at night with no light, unable to read or distract myself
from my thoughts, which were often dark. When the dark thoughts
came, I would do ten burpees and then sit for a minute and scan how
1 felt, and do it again, as necessary. As bad as that was, I could hear
other inmates having harder times—once I heard one pounding the
walls and screaming about being suicidal. A unit of cops in riot gear
beat them until they were quiet. Incidents like this were impossible
o ignore, because they stood out so starkly from the monotony of my
days, but cach time they happened I was plunged into much darker
thoughts.

After the cold cell I was transferred to one with a window that faced
awall, and no mirror. This detail may seem insignificant, but my abil-
ity to sce my reflection had previously allowed me a sense of identity

1]
that was suddenly lost. Without an image of myself or a companion,
my mind became a stranger and stranger place. I looked inwards and
saw nothing. So instead I turned to my letters. It was these correspon-
dences that gave me a sense of self. 1 was not an island but an amalgam
of my relationships, conversations, and collective passions. Whether I
was working out, meditating, cating, reading, or writing letters, I was
doing it to strengthen my interactions with the outside world. 1 ived off
of the letters, zines and books I received.

Right when I'd learned how to handle the cold isolation and identity
arisis of solitary confinement, when I felt ready to endure this for the
next sixteen months, I was transferred to General Population.

It was nothing like what you see on television.

People were initially suspicious of me, as I didn't have the normal
paperwork that other inmates had. My story didn't quite make sense to
some. Most people had never heard of civil contempt. Once I was able
1o show them a newspaper clipping about my case people started to
trust me. Then I met an older bank robber, John who said he had been
in prison in the ‘70s, the same prison, in fact, as the ex-urban guerrilla
folks who had come to my court date and shared their oath with me.
1 asked John if he knew those people and he did a double take. He
said, “Holy shit, you're into that stuff2” I said "No, no, no, they are just
friends of mine—but we believe in a similar cause.”

After that John, dedicated himselfto looking out for me. He said that
he missed the old days of principled convicts who didn't betray cach
other and he saw me as staying true to that legacy, I was flattered.

I made other friends in general population, kept up with my work-
outs, started to fall behind on my correspondence, played cards, tried
10 explain anarchism to people and generally had an OK time. One
thing that I found difficult to navigate ethically was racial politics. 1
am white and thus I had to sit with white people at lunch, watch the
white TV, etc. I tried my best to buck these rules and build friend-
ships with people of color, since I'm ideologically opposed to white
separatism—moreover, some of the other white inmates were affili-
ated with white supremacist gangs. One way | managed to do this,
oddly enough, was by hanging out with evangelical Christians. The
Christians were organized on a multiracial basis. Though I didn't go
1o their Bible study I would work out with them, and play cards and
chess with them.

In some ways time went by fast as I started to build real friendships
with other inmates based on emotional support and vulnerabiliy. 1 was

L]
also able now to have hour-long contact visits with my partner and my
family

CORA: The waiting room, the same room where I last saw my partner
before they were taken into custody, was grey. The walls were large,
painted brick interrupted by the occasional bulleted list of rules and
expectations. I always arrived right when visitation hours began. We
waited there until the guards called visitors up in groups to go through
security.

I and a handful of others, ofien families with children, were led
through a long series of heavy doors to the visitor area. As we entered
the room, I watched as people recognized one another, briefly hugged
and sat to talk with their incarcerated loved ones. I didn't see my part-
ner, but thought maybe they would be one of the few inmates trick-
ling in. Over the following few minutes, my mind went directly to the
worst-case scenarios. | knew they were in solitary confinement. Were
they hurt? Were their visitation privileges rescinded? Did I misunder-
stand the visitation guidelines?

A guard came from behind and asked me to follow him. I wasled into
a small room off the main visitation room. This room had two small
television screens with telephones attached. The visitation wouldn't be
in-person but over the screen. My heart sank as | waited for a famil-
iar face to appear on the screen. Their body was small on the screen,
the camera was an awkward distance from where they sat. This made
our communication feel less personal. I remember moving closer and
dloser to the screen instinctively, rying to hear their words more clearly
and see their face more clearly. The visit was brief. It was hard to know
what to talk about with one another. I can't quite remember how long
visitations were, but I do remember that video visitation was shorter
than in-person ones. Our time together was via video for the majority
of their incarceration. Two visits in a row, the video wasn't working, so
we could only communicate over the audio.

(((((Release))))

ESME: At a certain point, my co-defendants had all been released af-
ter refusing to cooperate. 1 was the last of us left inside. Afier a few
more months the judge finally determined what my comrades and 1

m
had known: that my incarceration had become punitive since there was
no way I was going to cooperate. Much earlier than I'd expected, I was
released back into the world.

CORA: I had almost no warning that Esme would be released. It was
sosurreal. It might have been the day before, or the day of—I ended up.
getting a call for our friend letting me know. I was preparing for cigh-
teen months; we'd gotten married, 1 had my schedule down for visi-
tation. We had a system, and we'd been getting good at it, and then it
was suddenly over. I hadn't planned for what would happen afier. 1 felt
like if I started to think ahead, Id get caught up in longing for that. So
when they were released, I didn't even know what to do. It was hard to
even fecl relief,since the grand jury was still convened and the possibil-
ity of fiture subpoenas and indictments still hung over us. It scemed
impossible that three or four people would be incarcerated over this for
months and no indictments would follow. Esme was home for now, but
would it even last> Or would I be the next one taken in? A lot of us had
experienced being detained or mass arrested, things that were a direct
result of certain conflcts with the police and state, but this felt like a
different category. It's not like there was a sentence to be served and
then it was over. We had no timeframe for how long we had to wait
One lawyer identified the date they thought the grand jury convened,
but because they could always reconvene and subpoena more people, it
never felt like there was an end. It just hung over us until it eventually
dissolved into our past. But I put it in the back of my mind because
there wasn'ta lot I could do except keep functioning.

ESME: The shock of release was intense. Riding in a car felt so bizarre. I
had lost so much weight none of my clothes fi. I had picked up strange
mannerisms and new anxieties. But | was overjoyed to be with my
comrades in the flesh again. The collective trauma we all experienced
brought us much closer and forged powerful bonds that continue to-
day. Some of my friends would stay on the run for years afier, but that's
another story. There were some who betrayed their comrades and capit-
ulated to the state’s demands. I won't waste my breath on them, except
0 say that their mistake was tremendous. They lost all their friends
and endured just as much trauma as any of us, but they cut themselves
off from any support because they chose to throw others under the
bus. Not only was their decision unethical, but in the end it wasn't even
self-serving. My experience was painful and lifechanging. Many years

Ll
have passed and I'm still healing from it, but I do not regret my deci.
sions for an instant

(((((Afterwards)))))

CORA: Now that this is as behind me as it will ever be, I can see the ways
ithas shaped me. I moved out of town and onto a farm, in part because of
my fear of the police. I had so many traumatic experiences about having,
them in my home. On the other hand, I feel much stronger and more
capable than I did before—specifically, I know exactly how to do this and
Icould do it again. I know how to navigate the prison system, and I have
much more empathy for incarcerated people. When I write them letters
now, it feels more personal. I'm also proud of how I was able to build
relationships that held a foundation for us all to hold each other through
this experience. It helped us get out of the theoretical realm and solidify
what we really think and believe. Being able to watch someone I love so
much make those decisions based on their personal beliefs was inspir-

ing. We can also say of course we would never crack, but it's interesting,
1o see someone actually rise to that challenge. It made it seem possible
for me, because I was terrified I was going to through the same thing,

ESME: When I first got out, I thought I was fine. It wasn't until years
later that I realized how not okay I had been. Thanks to therapy,

hallucinogens, learning about trauma, writing and the loving patience
of friends I've healed a lot. I'm forever changed but in many ways | am
stronger and I'm able to come to anarchist struggles with a focus and
intention that I learned from my experience.

DEVLIN: Afier several years had passed we assumed that the grand
jury had ended, since usually they have expiration dates. But even so
lawyers I had talked to suggested that if I ever interacted with police
again in my life I would certainly go to jail—so the question of coming
out of hiding could not be taken lightly. But the life I was living on the
run felt so difficult and I didn't feel like I could keep living it. I had
repressed my feclings during this time so much that I had in a sense
lost my ability to feel, I started taking more and more dangerous risks
because I didn't sce the point in anything,

But some part of me was aware of the selfdestructive path I was on
and I discussed it with my comrades. We made the decision that the
cost of staying underground was no longer viable.

None of this is to say that it was all bad. It's easy to emphasize the
negative, but there were so many incredible high points I may not
have experienced otherwise. Like when I drove for hours in a car full
of friends and swam with dolphins in the ocean I remember thinking,
“I'm supposed to be in jail right now!” It made the joy feel that much
more intense.

Returning to my life flt like exiting one dream world for another. My
first runin with the police felt like the real test of whether or not things
could settle down for me for awhile. I had no idea if I would be in jail
just for a few hours or if I would be in there for way longer. I wondered
to myself, “What do the cops know? How much info did they share
between agencies?” But in the end I was released.

Coming back to my life and seeing people was hard, seeing how their
lives had moved on. Distance had grown between us. I had to imme-
diately find a job and a place to live. I got a bizarrely normal job in an
office and just went through the motions of a functioning person. Over
time, it's grown to feel more and more like my lfe again.

1 still feel rootless and disconnected in big ways at times, but I'm
starting to feel comfortable with that. I have been able to make deep
friendships with people all over, engaged in disparate but consistently
inspiring work. I feel appreciative of the people and struggle around
me even if I don't entirely know where I belong. I embrace emotional-
ity and a more communicative process of dealing with the difficulties of

a@
lifelong anarchist struggle. I expect to face harder things in the future
than my experience on the run and I think now I'm more prepared to
deal with what may come. I feel really strong now and as committed
to my poliics as I ever was. In some ways | feel less isolated that I did
before I went on the run.

Being on the run brought contradictions between many of us,
between who we wanted to be and who we are on the surface. So many
people set aside their own needs and did support to make resistance to
repression possible. At the same time, there were people who I feel let
us down and that added to the pain of the whole experience.

I£ 1 had to offer anything resembling advice to someone who was
thinking about grand juries or repression more generally, from the
comfort of a home or stable life, it would be to decide right now who
you are going to be. Know what your struggle looks like and spend
every fucking day building that context in one way or another. If you
are serious, you will be tested. In those moments, you can lean on the
continuity of your resistance, and on the rest of us and our experiences.
You, too, will b fanning the flames of someone clse’s defiance.

o
NORTR- CAROLINA
*ROIDTS
QF\M\B JUKT

Our thanks to all of these comrades for sharing their stories with us. State
repression affects everyone, even those who aren't directly in the line of
fire, but there are ways to survive. Years afier the ordeal, Devlin has reas-
sumed every aspect of ther old identit, as far as the state is concerned,
and has a decent paying tech career, despite their stint on the run. Esme is
directing amateur theater companies, and Cora i tending to animals on a
farm while studying to be a nurse practitioner. Esme and Cora’s relation-
ship with each other and with most of the friends who supported them
through this time is stllincrediby strong.

s Devin said, if you're serious, you will be tested. We may not all face
the same kinds of repression, but it’s easy to live in fear when we see what
happens to our comrades. We hope these stories have given you some
tools and perspectives to use if you or your friends are ever in this situa-
tion. As a side note, Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar, who was such an inspiration
to Devlin, was released this June!

Part of how the grand jury holds its power is through secrecy. The people
in charge of these proceedings want us to be mystified and terrified. They
want us to live in fear, knowing that fear can keep us docile and contained.
The more we learn about how grand juries work and how we can keep
ourselves whole and sane as we navigate them, the less power they can
hold over us.
“The state demeans everything that we hold
dear when they threaten us in this way. The
most free and wild thing we have in this world
is our love for each other, and we know that
our health, our safety, and our liberation can
only exist in a world without their cops, their
courts, and their cages. Our strength lies in
knowing that we can provide that for each
other, and that nothing they offer or threaten
is worth betraying our commitment to our
communities.

“As state repression escalates, I know that
all of us are struggling with the trauma and
the grief that comes from the forces we fight
against, and the vulnerability that we feel to
the state in its despicable efforts to attack us.
What I also know, what I believe with all my
heart and everything I have, is that we have
the strength we need to take care of each other
and to fight back until we win.”

-Katie Yow, ncresiststhegrandjury.com
FOR MORE RESOURCES

ON RESISTING GRAND JURIES:
SAYNOTHNG NOBLOGSOFE/AAND- LAY-ESOLACES/

new york city anarchist black cross
Eo.u office box 110034
rooklyn, new york 11211