Fallout from police repression at the G20 protests in Pittsburgh

Two friends of the defenestrator collective are looking at some serious legal situations

Trev

Trev, local autonomous cop watcher often admired for his laid back ghetto fashion edge, was jumped by an army of riot cops while filming an arrest during street confrontations. Police smashed his camera, beat Trev and locked him up. It hurt to leave him in Pittsburgh for a week, but he was refused bond, forcing a small group of people to raise $15000 to get him out. As always happens when assaulted by police, Trev was charged with aggravated assault on an officer as well as other charges. While we’re confident he’ll beat these charges, Trev is facing years of prison and is looking at thousands in legal costs regardless of verdict. Since we’ve known him, Trev has been a solid, committed rebel who has stood up for others whether by documenting police harrasment his neighborhood, his movement videography, working against domestic violence in his community or through his work at a shelter.

Please support him by kicking down generously!!

You can donate to his defense by going to defenestrator.org/free_trev

Elliot

Elliot Madison, whose style of dress and demeanor may for some place him squarely in the thick of a Sherlock Holmes novel, was arrested for his role in the Tin Can Comms Collective, an autonomous communications collective who listened in on police scanners and spread news of police movements and spontaneous protest gatherings and actions via twitter to cell phones, helping many avoid situations of conflict with the police that the media had hyped ad nauseum leading up to the protests. Elliot was followed from a meeting to the hotel room from where
he and others where tweeting, served with an 18 page warrant and held on $50,000 bail, well before police had seriously attacked any protests. Elliot like Trev was also forced to pay the sum in full. The collective house where he lives put up their Queens home to get him out, only to be raided by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, days later in a 16 hour raid. Elliot is interestingly charged with the interstate rioting statute, a rarely used law which was used most famously against the Chicago 8 after the 1968 DNC.

You can support Elliot and Tortuga house by carefully following the instructions as spelled out here:
http://friendsoftortuga.wordpress.com/solidarity/