The letter I wrote to the judge in charge of our 1A protest court case

written by ethos while facing 19 months of state repression from the SF DA

Dear Judge,

I write this to you first and foremost as a human being. While this doesn’t seem like something that needs to be presented as a fact, in today’s era of the rise of fascism and the epitome of white supremacy, where the courts and law enforcement have been used as political theater to show the worst of humanity, this seems like an important statement to make. I am a human being who was has always been determined to learn from the past mistakes of my parents, my grandparents’ generations and those that came before that allowed for the Holocaust of the global majority in WWII and so many other atrocities.

Time and time again, growing up in this world of many injustices and implications of white supremacy that was first established in this very country through the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans that were forcibly brought to this country, I am often faced with the questions, “what would I do if I was faced with such injustices? What would I have done if I was alive during Nazi German times? Would I allow for what is being ‘criminalized’ through racist and eugenized mindsets to reign free? Or would I do more than my grandparents, who fought in WWII, and stand up against injustices against humanity?”

When it came to my time to decide on where I would sit on the right side of humanity, in the rise of a horrific and egregious genocide being funded by American tax dollars and being used as a showroom of Billionaire tech, and now witnessing Gestapo-like kidnappings of Black, brown and queer people on a daily basis being livestreamed in the palms of our hands, my answer is and has always been clear. My answer used to be one that I thought American values embodied, which led to me enlisting in the U.S. Army for a 6 year contract. These values of which could be defined as anti-fascist and standing up against genocide and injustices, which I know understand was the starry eyed, Marvel superhero perspective that is not the reality of the truth of this country and how it uses law enforcement and the courts.

But as I have grown up, through 9/11, the War in the Middle East that took millions of Arab civilian lives, climate change and disasters, and now the genocide of Palestinians in the most horrific, unhinged way possible, as a Millennial. Time and time again my generation has seen the American systems and institutions having an inability to reflect and take full responsibility for being violent towards working Black and brown class citizens they deem inferior; denying that we are indeed the first apartheid state that was rebranded as “Jim Crow” and the “War on Drugs”; and we have enforced a culture that has deemed global superiority based off creating a superiority complex based off of white-skin, cisgendered expression and heteronormative love, excluding a large portion of humanity in order to maintain dominance and control of a few elite over the global majority.

This supremacist outlook on life is what led myself and my comrades to stand and use our First Amendment rights to speak out against unjust government, misusing and misallocating our tax dollars to continue to create a world where conflict and disagreement are solved through guns and missiles, rather than dialogue, compassion, empathy and understanding. I know that I felt that I had no other choice but to do the things that I have done, which is stand up against one of the greatest stains on humanity since the Holocaust, that being there on April 15 was a moral obligation not just to humanity as it stands now but to future generations that are to come and my children and their children and the many i hope are able to come after if we, as a collective, take a stance against a cosmology that endorses and perpetuates separation, violence and destruction of our finite planet.

What I have witnessed and experienced in the last 3 years since fighting for the liberation of Palestine will forever change me. To be charged and treated as a criminal by the “justice” system for simply providing medical aid and protection for the working class citizens who want more to life than the destruction of our planet and the mass genocide of Black and brown people across the globe just so the Billionaire class can access and siphon more of the limited resources that will line their pockets more, while accelerating the destruction of this planet, further disappoints me about this country that I swore to protect and serve.

To witness child traffickers and predators get less sentences and charges than we have is not justice, its immoral ineptitude and a takeover of the immoral of our supposed “moral” and “ethical” “justice system”. How are real criminals getting away with real crimes because of their association to a foreign entity or access to wealth or the color of their skin? How can we continue to perpetuate a system that labels a human being “criminal” and throws them away forever? How can we continue to direct our tax dollars to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, all the while the current administration is criminalizing being poor while forcing poverty upon the working class? How can a justice system continue to punish a group of non-violent, peaceful protesters, while the DA was given diversion for corrupt use of power to harm a citizen due to a personal vendetta?

Every person who is remembered as “great” in this country once took the same stances and asked the same questions of our systems and institutions; Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Huey P Newton, Martin Luther King, Jr. Assata Shakur, and many others. They took a stand before it was too late and the State assassinated or criminalized them. We as students of life and of the real history of this country recognize and warn that the time is approaching and if not has already arrived of a fascist takeover. But it is important to note that Black, Indigenous brown and queer people of this country have been experiencing this country’s fascism from the moment the colonizers came with their ships. They did not discover the United States, they conquered it through violent demand of obedience, which is exactly what the DA is recapitulating upon the GG26 at this time with these egregious charges and drawn out court case. The demand for obedience. They were prepared to face the consequences while also maintaining hope that someone would write good law and precedent setting course for reparations and radical justice for marginalized people in this country. They hoped that this time, the justice system would be an exception in the face of white supremacy.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution was written by activists, and taken from the Iroquois nation’s Great Peace Treaty, who rebelled against monarchical control of this country and guaranteed citizens of this nation the right to stand up, speak up and do so without the criminalization of a government gone rogue. It states, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

And the First Amendment explicitly states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

A Gallup poll conducted between July 7 and 21, 2025, found that only 32% of U.S. adults approve of Israel’s military action in Gaza, the lowest level of support since Gallup began asking the question. Disapproval has climbed to 60%, marking a sharp shift in public opinion. Among adults under 35, approval drops even further, with only about one in ten expressing support. The American government is not acting in the interests of the American people.

My actions were taken out of a deep love for humanity and the future of this world. My actions always have a consequence and I am always prepared to accept them. I hope that my actions also ripple out to the world to create a more just and equitable world where all children get to play outside without fear of missiles, drones and bombs targeting them and the ones that they love. I hope that my actions will end the world where problems are solved through genocide, colonization and hatred. I hope that we will see a better world to come as our children, their children and seven generations after.

So I ask, please allow me and my comrades who have important work to do for those future generations to be free and to drop our charges. Do not allow your court room to continue to be political theater for a foreign entity that has infiltrated our government through Super PACs making a mockery of what a justice system should be in the values of justice and liberty for all. Do not allow the DA to waste another moment of your’s and our’s time to politically intimidate residents of the Bay Area who just want a better world than what the billionaire and politician class are offering us. We have a moral obligation and you do too, as a human in this human species.

Thank you for listening and From my Ancestors to Yours, Let us be Liberated.