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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

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Margaret Aislinn Channon, a 26-year-old Tacoma resident was sentenced to five years in prison in March 2022. She was charged with five counts of arson after setting five Seattle police cars on fire during a protest on May 30, 2020. Upon her sentencing, then U.S. Attorney Nick Brown said that the right to protest and call out injustice is one of the dearest and most important rights we enjoy in the United States: "But Ms. Channon’s conduct was itself an attack on democracy. She used the cover of lawful protests to carry out dangerous and destructive acts, risking the safety of everyone around her and undermining the important messages voiced by others.”

Devinare Antwan Parker, 31, was sentenced to two years in prison in June 2023 for bringing a homemade firearm to a protest in Seattle on May 31, 2020. The charge was “unlawful possession of a destructive device.” Parker threatened to kill police at the time, and was arrested after he threw a can of beer at a police officer's face.

Isaiah Thomas Willoughby was arrested for attempting to set fire to a wall of the East Precinct in June 2020. Willoughby reportedly piled up debris next to the police station, soaked it in gasoline, and set it on fire. People nearby put it out. Willoughby was sentenced to two years in prison.

The last defendant facing federal charges for crimes committed during the racial justice protests of 2020 in Seattle was sentenced on Wednesday to just over three years in prison. Justin Moore, 35 of Renton, previously pleaded guilty to possessing destructive devices. On Sept. 7, 2020, Moore brought 12 Molotov cocktails made from beer bottles and gasoline to the Seattle Police Officers Guild headquarters during a protest. Surveillance video shows a hooded and masked Moore lugging the explosives outside the headquarters, which was the target of numerous attacks during the 2020 protests.

Jacob Greenburg, 19, the stepson of former Kirkland State Rep. Laura Ruderman, was sentenced to five years in prison, in line with what prosecutors recommended. Greenburg was charged with first-degree assault, first-degree attempted arson and first-degree reckless burning.

A federal judge on Friday sentenced Samuel Elliott Frey, 20, of Brooklyn Park, Minn., to more than two years in federal prison for setting fire to a health food store during the riots that followed the May 25, 2020, murder of George Floyd by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

A Minneapolis man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for starting a fire inside Target headquarters during a riot in August 2020, U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger announced Wednesday. Leroy Lemonte Perry Williams, 37, was convicted on one count of arson for the incident in October last year.

Just this month, a man was sentenced to four years behind bars and ordered to pay what his attorney said is likely to exceed $1.5 million in restitution after pleading guilty to inciting a riot last spring in Champaign, Illinois. Shamar Betts, who was 19 at the time, posted a flyer on Facebook on May 31, 2020, that said “RIOT @ MarketPlace Mall” at 3 p.m. and instructed people to bring “friends & family, posters, bricks, bookbags etc.” He participated in the looting, went live on Facebook during the riot and bragged about starting it, authorities said. More than 70 stores were looted, and the riot caused $1.8 million in damage, prosecutors said.

Victor Devon Edwards, 32, was given his sentence of over eight years in prison followed by two years of supervised release by U.S. District Judge Patrick Schlitz, after Edwards was convicted by a jury in August on one count each of rioting and arson.

I can keep going if you really want me to—there were over 100 felony convictions in Minneapolis alone—but I think you get the point. Hell, Los Angeles had a special task force set up to identify people who committed crimes in the riots.

J6ers got felonies simply for walking through an open door.

You make it sound like this is some unusual gross injustice. But if you look at the Pennsylvania laws for Criminal Trespass:

(a) Buildings and occupied structures.--

(1) A person commits an offense if, knowing that he is not licensed or privileged to do so, he:

(i) enters, gains entry by subterfuge or surreptitiously remains in any building or occupied structure or separately secured or occupied portion thereof; or

(ii) breaks into any building or occupied structure or separately secured or occupied portion thereof.

(2) An offense under paragraph (1)(i) is a felony of the third degree, and an offense under paragraph (1)(ii) is a felony of the second degree.

Of course, DC is not Pennsylvania, and their comparable statute is only a misdemeanor, but that's what the people who merely entered were charged with. The ones who were charged with felony Obstructing counts had some kind of aggravating circumstances going against them, like remaining in the building after specifically being told to leave or engaging in behavior that delayed the police attempts to get everyone out. And even then, I don't see how it's relevant to the point that it justifies pardons, since those convictions were overturned by the Supreme Court. And I still don't see how that justifies pardoning people who committed more serious crimes. If this is really just a tit for tat response to partisan pressures, then Trump should also pardon those I listed above who were convicted of Federal crimes, no?

re-arrest every single one of them on new charges and throw the book at them. Get a warrant and crawl through every device and account they they have, and search all their belongings for any antifa-related items.

And charge them with what, exactly? Having antifa-related items? In the case of Jan 6, entering an open door in that case was clearly a crime, and the people charged clearly committed it. The perpetrators were arrested on the basis of actual evidence, and the investigators were willing to present that evidence in court They had them dead to rights, and the smart ones took pleas. A lot of them were incredibly stupid, though, making inane arguments that they seriously thought the building was open to the public, or sovereign citizen bullshit. The George Floyd protestors who were arrested and charged with misdemeanor or summary disorderly conduct, failure to disperse, loitering, or similar offenses were arrested in public areas where it isn't illegal to be. Prosecutors would have to show, for instance, that the assembly was illegal (which requires them to prove a risk of unlawful conduct), that a dispersal order was issued, that the person charged would have heard the dispersal order, and that the person was given a reasonable opportunity to leave.

The problem with the 2020 arrests was that most of them weren't made in strict accordance with the law, but were mass arrests used as a crowd control tactic. If you've never been involved in a protest and seen this before, and officer or officers will make the arrests and load everyone into a paddy wagon, staying behind to continue to work crowd control. Once everyone arrives at the station they are all charged with some low-level misdemeanor and released after a few hours. Police generally didn't prosecute these cases because they weren't prosecutable. The once exception was Detroit, whose mayor, Mike Duggan, was a former prosecutor dedicated to making an example (though it should be noted that the rioting in Detroit was limited to a couple broken windows on police cruisers and some objects being thrown). I pity the poor ADA who had to tell the judge that he couldn't produce bodycam footage, or a police report, or even the name of the arresting officer. He had to endure this humiliation dozens of times in a row and watch the cases get dismissed for lack of evidence until the DA got the point and dismissed the remaining cases.

You make it sound like this is some unusual gross injustice. But if you look at the Pennsylvania laws for Criminal Trespass:

For which walking through an open door does not qualify.

Margaret Aislinn Channon, a 26-year-old Tacoma resident was sentenced to five years in prison in March 2022. She was charged with five counts of arson after setting five Seattle police cars on fire during a protest on May 30, 2020.

5 counts of arson and got a lighter sentence than people who just walked through a door.

The charge was “unlawful possession of a destructive device.”

This is an ATF/NFA charge, not related to rioting.

I don't know what gives you the idea that an open door would not qualify. The statute makes no mention of doors, and only requires that you know that you're not supposed to be in there. If I walk down the street and see a house with an open door and I just walk in I'd be guilty of criminal trespass. If I opened a closed door a breaking would have occurred and the offense would be upgraded. The statute is specifically written to cover cases involving open doors.