Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Antifa on Trial: How a College Professor Joined the Left's Radical Ranks
QHatSecretMessages Retweeted:Eric Michael Clanton, the Ethics Instructor / Restorative Justice Explorer / Bike-Lock Batterer, was sentenced to 3 years of probation today (plus 4 days' time served) on a misdemeanor battery charge. No felony record and no admission of guilt. @popehat @associatesmind
Link to tweet
Links for the pics:
http://web.archive.org/web/20170420053311/http://www.dvc.edu/directory/profiles/clanton-eric/index.html …
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/antifa-on-trial-how-a-college-professor-joined-the-lefts-radical-ranks-630213/ …
https://publicportal.alameda.courts.ca.gov/publicportal
Link to tweet
Oops. That court docket pic was supposed to include the case number, 17-CR-016561.
Link to tweet
HOME > CULTURE > CULTURE FEATURES MAY 15, 2018 2:50PM ET
Antifa on Trial: How a College Professor Joined the Left’s Radical Ranks
Eric Clanton took to the streets with anti-fascists during a season of violence in Berkeley – and may spend the next decade in prison
By ALAN FEUER
Shortly after Donald Trump took office, the college town of Berkeley, California, found itself at war. Three violent protests broke out in the city within three months of Trump’s inauguration. In early February, a riot erupted at its famously liberal university as masked anti-fascists from the movement known as antifa attacked the student union center and stopped the alt-right agitator Milo Yiannopoulos from delivering a speech. Four weeks later, a second group of anti-fascists descended on a local public park, coming to blows with a raucous gathering of the president’s supporters. It seemed at the time that Berkeley had again become what it hadn’t been in more than 50 years – a battlefield for radicals. But the third event, Patriots’ Day, a “free-speech” rally planned for April 15th by a broad array of far-right groups, was poised to be the biggest battle yet.
Protesters from both sides showed up early that day, slowly filling Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, a landmarked greensward in the middle of the city. The police had cut the park in half with a barrier of orange plastic mesh; the left-wing demonstrators made their way to one side, the right-wing to the other. Kept at bay by riot cops, most of the participants were passionate but peaceful. A throng of Berkeley liberals, carrying signs and banners, squared off with a band of their MAGA-hatted rivals, many of whom were shouting “USA! USA!” and waving American flags. While the hostile camps initially did little more than heckle one another, as the day went on and the crowd grew into the hundreds, the threat of partisan bloodshed started rising.
Early in the fray, a group of antifa combatants, clad in ninja black, had ducked into no-man’s-land and pepper-sprayed an alt-right partisan in a Roman-era gladiator helmet. That set off a series of aggressive scrapes between the anti-fascists and some members of the Rise Above Movement, a group of white supremacists who had shown up wearing skull masks. For the next few hours, as marchers waved signs, the militants in the crowd scuffled at its edges in probing skirmishes. But at 3 p.m., there was an explosion deep in right-wing territory – some would later say it was an antifa M-80 – and the skirmishes erupted into a brawl. The men from Rise Above charged across the antifa frontline: People were body-slammed, punched in the face, kicked in the gut. Tear gas filled the air and the park became a swirling sea of fists and sticks and pipes. As a helicopter shuddered overhead, the park’s perimeter gave way and the conflagration spilled into the streets. Unable to contain the melee, the police withdrew and a three-by-four-block section of the city was consumed by open war.
....
Antifa on Trial: How a College Professor Joined the Left’s Radical Ranks
Eric Clanton took to the streets with anti-fascists during a season of violence in Berkeley – and may spend the next decade in prison
By ALAN FEUER
Shortly after Donald Trump took office, the college town of Berkeley, California, found itself at war. Three violent protests broke out in the city within three months of Trump’s inauguration. In early February, a riot erupted at its famously liberal university as masked anti-fascists from the movement known as antifa attacked the student union center and stopped the alt-right agitator Milo Yiannopoulos from delivering a speech. Four weeks later, a second group of anti-fascists descended on a local public park, coming to blows with a raucous gathering of the president’s supporters. It seemed at the time that Berkeley had again become what it hadn’t been in more than 50 years – a battlefield for radicals. But the third event, Patriots’ Day, a “free-speech” rally planned for April 15th by a broad array of far-right groups, was poised to be the biggest battle yet.
Protesters from both sides showed up early that day, slowly filling Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, a landmarked greensward in the middle of the city. The police had cut the park in half with a barrier of orange plastic mesh; the left-wing demonstrators made their way to one side, the right-wing to the other. Kept at bay by riot cops, most of the participants were passionate but peaceful. A throng of Berkeley liberals, carrying signs and banners, squared off with a band of their MAGA-hatted rivals, many of whom were shouting “USA! USA!” and waving American flags. While the hostile camps initially did little more than heckle one another, as the day went on and the crowd grew into the hundreds, the threat of partisan bloodshed started rising.
Early in the fray, a group of antifa combatants, clad in ninja black, had ducked into no-man’s-land and pepper-sprayed an alt-right partisan in a Roman-era gladiator helmet. That set off a series of aggressive scrapes between the anti-fascists and some members of the Rise Above Movement, a group of white supremacists who had shown up wearing skull masks. For the next few hours, as marchers waved signs, the militants in the crowd scuffled at its edges in probing skirmishes. But at 3 p.m., there was an explosion deep in right-wing territory – some would later say it was an antifa M-80 – and the skirmishes erupted into a brawl. The men from Rise Above charged across the antifa frontline: People were body-slammed, punched in the face, kicked in the gut. Tear gas filled the air and the park became a swirling sea of fists and sticks and pipes. As a helicopter shuddered overhead, the park’s perimeter gave way and the conflagration spilled into the streets. Unable to contain the melee, the police withdrew and a three-by-four-block section of the city was consumed by open war.
....
