List Price: $22.95
Save: $11.50 (50%)

FREE Shipping on orders over $25—or get FREE Two-Day Shipping with Amazon Prime

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

Sold by Going Green 2 and Fulfilled by Amazon. Gift-wrap available.

Buy Used

$6.46

+ $3.99 shipping

Used: Good | Details

Sold by GoodwillBooks

Other Sellers on Amazon

Add to Cart

$7.47
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: Crsports94

Add to Cart

$15.11
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: indoobestsellers

Add to Cart

$22.95
& FREE Shipping on eligible orders. Details

Sold by: Amazon.com

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Crashing the Party: Legacies and Lessons from the RNC 2000 Paperback – September 1, 2015

by Kris Hermes (Author), Heidi Boghosian (Afterword), Marina Sitrin (Foreword)

2 customer reviews

See all 3 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Paperback

"Please retry"

$11.45

$5.00

$6.46

Paperback
$11.45 17 Used from $6.46 15 New from $5.00

Over the past 15 years, people in the United States—and dissidents in particular—have witnessed a steady escalation of the National Security State, including invasive surveillance and infiltration, indiscriminate police violence, and unlawful arrests. These concerted efforts to spy on Americans and undermine meaningful social change are greatly enhanced by the coordination of numerous local, state, and federal agencies often operating at the behest of private corporations. Crashing the Party shows how these developments—normally associated with the realities of a post–9/11 world—were already being set in motion during the Republican National Convention protests in 2000. It also documents how, in response, dissidents confronted new forms of political repression by pushing legal boundaries and establishing new models of collective resistance. Crashing the Party explains how the events of 2000 acted as a testing ground in which Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney was able to develop repressive methods of policing that have been used extensively across the U.S. ever since. At the same time, these events also provided a laboratory for the radical, innovative, and confrontational forms of legal support carried out by R2K Legal, a defendant-led collective that raised unprecedented amounts of money for legal defense, used a unique form of court solidarity to overcome hundreds of serious charges, and implemented a PR campaign that turned the tide of public opinion in favor of dissidents. While much has been written about the global-justice era of struggle, little attention has been paid to the legal struggles of the period or the renewed use of solidarity tactics in jail and the courtroom that made them possible. By analyzing the successes and failures of these tactics, Crashing the Party offers rare insight into the mechanics and concrete effects of such resistance. In this way, it is an invaluable resource for those seeking to confront today’s renewed counterintelligence tactics.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“An exhaustive on-the-ground account of the tools that all levels of governments now use to suppress political dissent. Although focused on the 2000 Republic National Convention in Philadelphia, author Kris Hermes identifies and documents coercive techniques employed at many other protests, both large and small. Hermes, who gained firsthand experience before, during, and after the event, also shows how dedicated jail solidarity efforts can mitigate the harmful effects of arrests and overcharging, although sometimes at great personal cost. A must-read for anyone interested in knowing the how far governments can and will go in this post–9/11 era.” —Jim Redden, author, Snitch Culture

"By recounting the story of the R2K Legal Collective supporting protesters against the 2000 Republican Convention in Philadelphia, Crashing the Party shows us some of the possibilities of legal defense, and outlines strategies to realize them (as well as the counter-strategies the state may employ)." —Kristian Williams, towardfreedom.com

"Crashing the Party is a chilling story, well told. In it are many accounts of solidarity, betrayal, bravery, and brutality." —J.E. McNeil, Friends Journal

"This unique book provides what is arguably the first in-depth examination of radical legal support in North America, an analysis framed by his meticulous recounting of the mobilization against the Republican National Convention [RNC] held in Philadelphia in the summer of 2000." —Irina Ceric, Radical Criminology

"A strategy for carrying activism onto the criminal injustice system’s own turf is more important than ever. Kris Hermes’s fine book shows us how legal collectives can continue to play a vital role." —Eric Laursen, The Fifth Estate

About the Author

Kris Hermes is a Bay Area–based activist who has worked for nearly 30 years on social justice issues and is an active, award-winning legal worker-member of the National Lawyers Guild. In May 2016, Kris was honored with the May Patriot Award from the Bill of Rights Defense Committee/Defending Dissent Foundation (BORDC/DDF). He lives in Oakland, California. Marina Sitrin is a writer, lawyer, teacher, and organizer. She is the editor of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina, author of Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism & Autonomy in Argentina, and a coauthor of They Can’t Represent US! Reinventing Democracy from Greece to Occupy. She lives in New York City. Heidi Boghosian is the executive director of the National Lawyers Guild and is the cohost of the weekly civil liberties radio show Law and Disorder in New York and over 40 national affiliates. She is the former editor in chief of the Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review and is the author of Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance. She lives in New York City.

Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: PM Press (September 1, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1629631027
ISBN-13: 978-1629631028
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 2 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,516,622 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2145 in Political Parties (Books)
- #5403 in Civil Rights & Liberties (Books)
- #122439 in United States History (Books)

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?

NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Tell the Publisher!
I'd like to read this book on Kindle

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

2 customer reviews

Review this product

Write a customer review

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Eric Laursen

From Philly 2000 to Trump J20 -- an excellent and prophetic history

January 25, 2018

Format: Paperback

Crashing the Party couldn't be more timely in the age of Trump and Sessions. Kris Hermes's book, over 10 years in the making, is an in-depth account of the legal saga that began with the repression and mass arrests of activists at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 2000. Much of the groundwork for the new style of protest policing that's since become common practice, and that reached a new extreme with the outlandish charges against activists at the Trump inaugural, was laid in Philly that summer. Fortunately, it was answered by a new style of response by arrestees and a renaissance of legal collectives that carries resistance from the streets and police wagons to the jails and courtrooms.
Hermes is an excellent storyteller and he makes a strong case that the real legacy of the RNC protests is the proliferation of legal collectives it helped spawn over the next decade, from Midnight Special in Oakland to the People's Law Collective and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in New York City. These groups not only help arrestees to better leverage their position in the jails and courts, but to use those contexts to extend their activism and build ties to other victims of the system.

Helpful

Comment

Amazon Customer

Oakland I like a sentence I read recently

October 27, 2016

Format: Paperback

Crashing The Party: Legacies and Lessons from the RNC 2000

by Kris Hermes

2015, PM Press, Oakland

I like a sentence I read recently: "The historical amnesia we suffer
serves well the state authorities, military-industrial civilization, and
capitalist thieves that control our lives and destinies." (Roxanne
Dunbar Ortiz— introduction to 'Quiet Rumors, An Anarcha-Feminist
Reader'.) We often forget our history, even recent events, and this
forgetting suits entrenched power.

Crashing The Party is a book about dissent and government
repression at a protest a decade and a half ago that couldn't be more
relevant today. It's the story of R2K Legal, a legal collective formed /by/
protesters around the protests at the Republican Convention in Philadelphia,
July-August 2000. There were many arrests. The event was called "R2K" by
activists—for Republicans 2000; like most large protests then, it had an
acronym alias. R2K Legal was run by political activists with participation by
paralegals and lawyers but equalizing involvement, to move away from
older-style legal collectives in which attorneys wielded expertise over clients.

R2K saw actions over several days by various leftist, social justice,
grassroots organizations. It included peaceful marches and rallies,
planned non-violent disruptions like sit-down blockades of streets, and
also more militant street actions.

Philly was part of a wave of large protests following the anti-World
Trade Organization events in Seattle in 1999. It was still early in the
"anti-globalization" protests which gained steam in the late '90s,
starting in England in '97-'98. There also had just occurred the 2000
Democratic Convention in Los Angeles with cop assaults on protesters and
concert-goers.

Political issues addressed at R2K were the result of conversations
criticizing the globalization movement as too focused on the new
international trade deals of governments and private capital. It was too
white, middle class, and not addressing issues of racism and the
criminal justice/prison system that affect African Americans, Latinos,
working class people. These issues were brought to the fore in Philly,
relevant because Philly is infamous for racist cops, the Mumia Abu-Jamal
case, and persecution of the MOVE organization.

The police saw R2K as a chance to thwart the success that blockades had
enjoyed in Seattle (they sent observers to Seattle). The city administration
(Democratic) had a coordinated campaign to suppress or diminish the
protests. Preparations by protesters were harassed. March permits were
refused. A big warehouse for building parade puppets was raided, 80
arrested and all the contents inside hauled into garbage trucks—
evidence destroyed.

During the convention the blockades intended to disrupt the Republicans
to highlight the various issues around racism. 400 were arrested, many
brutally, some held in buses many hours with windows closed. (It was
very hot during R2K.) In jail many dissenters were assaulted and injured
by guards. Some were held in a reopened dungeon-like prison. Prisoners
used "jail solidarity" tactics in order to stick together in the harsh
treatment. Most of those arrested had misdemeanor charges, minor or more
serious, and there were serious felony charges too. Bails were set too
high. R2K Legal also advocated a "court solidarity" method with most
defendants holding out to go to trial to seek dismissals, also to build
support from those with misdemeanors for those with felonies.

R2K Legal fought back against anti-radical propaganda by city officials
(including a hostile mayor) and by media, by doing public outreach
through press releases and press conferences. Eventually they were able
to turn the tide toward more sympathy from the press and public.

R2K Legal had to evolve to keep support up over some years of subsequent
trials and lawsuits. It was eventually successful in getting mainly
dismissals and acquittals and few convictions. The book looks at the
success of jail solidarity, court solidarity, and litigation in Philly,
also the relative success or failure of these methods at other protests.

Crashing the Party gives a detailed account of these events: the
planning, days of the protests and the long post-protest trials. It
addresses increasing state attempts to repress the growing radical
movements of the late '90s and '00s, and how such repression continues.
Other protests, before and after R2K, are mentioned: the IMF/WB in
Washington, DC—April 2000; the Free Trade Area of the Americas in
Miami—2003; the RNC in New York—2004; the RNC in St. Paul in 2008, etc.
Such comparisons give a sense of continuity and help diminish the
amnesia mentioned above.

The last chapter "A New Dawn For Radical Legal Activism" mentions some
of the various legal collectives that developed a new type of legal
support group of radical activists in the 2000s (Midnight Special Law in
Oakland, etc.). It argues for legal collectives as an intentional way
to organize activists and legal workers, with the help of lawyers, to
build solidarity among arrestees; to utilize horizontal, inclusive,
accountable, democratic methods as much as possible; to be better
prepared for repression.

The foreword is by activist writer Marina Sitrin; the afterword by Heidi
Boghosian of the National Lawyers Guild.

A shout-out to Kris Hermes for writing this, and to PM Press for
publishing it.

-Duff McIntosh

A shout-out to Kris Hermes for writing this, and to PM Press for
publishing it.

-Duff McIntosh

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway

This item: Crashing the Party: Legacies and Lessons from the RNC 2000

Set up a giveaway

Buy New

$11.45