At this point and with all that’s happened over the last couple of years, there’s pretty much nothing anti-fascists can do publicly without the police trying to fuck it up.  Whether they’re pressing absurdly trumped-up charges against anti-fascists or allowing armed fascist gangs to attack anti-fascist protestors and then arresting the anti-fascists when they try to defend themselves or attacking anyone standing in the way of an illegal march of Islamophobes or pointing assault rifles in the face of unarmed antifa or colluding with neo-nazis in trying to frame anti-fascists on fabricated bullshit or doxxing anti-fascists  or very literally trying to murder anti-fascists, the police have been very clear in their actions about which side they’re with (which is a little weird considering how often extreme right bigots have tried to murder law enforcement, but some people just can’t seem to choose good friends, right?).

Just when we thought there’s nothing else the kkkops could possibly do to the people trying to defend their communities from the bigoted violence the police do sweet FA about, cops in North Carolina set a new low.  A few days after students there successfully toppled the Confederate “Silent Sam” statue that had blighted the campus for over a century, Defend UNC decided to celebrate with a “Nazis Suck Potluck and Food Drive.”  Some neo-confederate asshats showed up in tiny numbers early on the day of the event but quickly scurried away when they saw how badly they were outnumbered & outmatched by Defend UNC.  Not the cops, though.  Police from at least five different agencies showed up dressed like they were deploying to Iraq and, with the threat of a clash now gone and everyone safe, immediately began to confiscate food donated for the food bank drive and throw it away.

You read that right: finding no potential conflict between anti-fascists and bigoted extremists, the cops decided they could best “protect and serve” by confiscating and disposing of food donated for a food drive.

Of course, that’s not enough bullying for five different police agencies, so they escalated the situation by running towards a table of people eating and randomly tackling and arresting eight people, some for the crime of asking why their friends were being arrested or why the police were confiscating food donated to a food bank.

It should be inconceivable that we should be asked to help pay for the legal defence of some people who committed the crime of collecting food to donate to a food bank and having a picnic, but this is the dystopian Bizzaro world of 2018 where those activities are considered crimes if they’re done by anti-fascists.  So we kicked some cash in to help get those charges dropped.  If you’d like to do the same, here’s a crowdfunder you can contribute to.

If you’d like to help us defend anti-fascists arrested for future charitable activities and community work, please make a donation to the International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund today!

How was your summer?  Here’s what we got up to:

• We helped a couple of Russian antifascists get settled in a new country after threats from neo-nazis and their police collaborators forced them to flee as refugees;
• We helped pay the court fines for a German anti-fascist convicted of the heinous crime of throwing an egg;
• We helped with the legal defence of an Oregon anti-fascist that is accused of expressing her community’s collective disapproval of the opening of a shop run by a violent white supremacist gang.
• We assisted with the repairs and fortification of a German community center after it was broken into and trashed by a gang of armed neo-nazis;
• We contributed to the legal defence for residents of an Melbourne housing complex who were faced with a rabid mob of Islamophobic goons threatening their existence;
• We ponied up half of a lawyer’s retainer for a NYC antifascist that was arrested after escorting two belligerent bigots away from a protest against ICE after the racists started throwing fists;
• We chipped in to help pay off the fine a Philly antifa received for allegedly “modifying” a mural to the city’s most notoriously racist police chief;
• We sent material aid to support Portland antifascists arrested and/or injured after facing down armed alt right clowns & their kkkop collaborators not once but two times this summer;
• We aided a Georgia anti-fascist who was attacked by police and arrested on bullshit after trying to speak to them in order to de-escalate a situation where they were pointing assault rifles in people’s faces;
• We helped an antifa in Berkeley who came out to defend his community from a fascist march only to have the cops break his collarbone, arrest him, and doxx him;
•   We supported a server who lost her job after Proud Boys fuckjobs crashed a DSA meeting at her bar, then racially and sexually harassed her all night.  When Louisville antifa showed up and had an open and frank discussion with the assholes and police subsequently turned up along with the ambulances, the server refused to snitch and her boss fired her (we got a lovely thank you note from her the next week!).

In other news, the Defence Fund really hit the big time when nazi online toilet paper roll Breitbart singled us out as a target for their followers to attack.  We’re happy to report that the coverage resulted in an immediate bump in donations – enough to make withstanding the resulting litany of anon abuse, doxx attempts, and death threats that worth it.  We were actually happy with the Breitbart thing – it shows that even the neo-nazis recognize the value of what we’re doing if they’re so intent to try to stop us.  We’re much happier with them spending their time & effort to come after us than, say, plotting to murder journalists or beating people to death or stabbing women at a reproductive rights demonstration or stabbing refugee children or bombing a safe house for transgender people or murdering a 13-year-old girl – all of which also happened over the summer.

If what we did over the summer and what we do year-round is something that you would be proud to support, then support us!  Today is the day to do that.