STOP SOLITARY CONFINEMENT IN TEXAS JAIL, FREEDOM FOR PRAIRIE LAND DEFENDANTS

BEING ANTI-FASCIST IS NOT A CRIME

Hi, this is Champagne Song, and me and my fellow Prairie Land defendants are in solitary confinement in Johnson County Jail, Texas. This is the statement that I read just before being sentenced to 100 years in prison. 

I don’t hate. I don’t hate anyone. I don’t hate cops. I don’t hate Trump. I don’t hate Nazis. My beliefs are composed thus: first, that we should help each other, and second, that we should protect one another. I never want to see anyone get hurt. I never want to see good people standing up for what they believe in, gunned down in the street. What we all saw happen to Renée Good and Alex Pretti is my worst nightmare. It was the kind of thing that I had feared for a long time, after dealing with officers who could be reckless, who could be bullies, who could be violent. But fear is not hate, sadness is not hate, and wanting people to live is not hate. And so, when I was standing in the street on July 4, 2025, in plain view, with reflective safety strips and high visibility clothing, what I saw right in front of my eyes was my worst nightmare. When I saw Lieutenant Thomas Gross, stop pursuing and point his gun at the back of a running, unarmed protester, as he testified. I was terrified. As a firearms instructor and a United States Marine Corps veteran, I understood what I was seeing. 

I knew what it meant for someone to lean hard forward into their gun to prepare for recoil, as he testified. 

As the evidence shows, I did not want to hurt anyone. I never had the intent to hurt anyone, and I tried my best to avoid anyone getting hurt. 

It is impossible to say that I was trying to ambush anyone or planning any violence, as the 26 not guilty verdicts prove. I was shocked, and surprised, and saddened. I am so grateful for what didn’t happen. I am so grateful that we are not here mourning another death and another tragedy, another Alex Pretti, another Renée Good, another Botham John, another Manuel T. Terán, another Atatiana Jefferson, another Philando Castile. 

Now, 22 people have been arrested, have been persecuted, have been tortured. For what? For nothing. None of these people really did anything, and none of these people had anything to do with what happened with me. This is wrong. This is mass punishment. This is collective punishment. This is guilt by association. This is injustice. Back in 1895, the white supremacist U.S. Senator “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman gave a speech to the Constitutional Convention of South Carolina on how to use injustice to take power. He said, “How did we recover our liberty? By fraud and violence. We tried to overcome the 30,000 majority by honest means, which was a mathematical impossibility. After bearing these indignities for eight years, life became worthless.” Now this is how men take power over others: by injustice, by fraud and violence. 

That history matters because injustice has always been dangerous. It does not only harm the person standing in court; it spreads. It teaches people to be afraid. It teaches people that the government can decide who is guilty and look for reasons afterward. First, they covered up and hid evidence. Second, they banned every black juror from both jury pools, so that there would be no one to question the police. Third, they told me I had no right to protect myself or protect anyone else. They told me I wasn’t even allowed to say the word “self-defense.” As you heard in the trial, they tortured their own witnesses, American citizens, tortured and terrorized and medically neglected. Three men, Mack Greer, James Johnson, and Carl McCray, have died here in the Tarrant County Jail in just the last week, and in this case, a 24-year-old has suffered a heart attack, and a 58-year-old grandmother said she would die from torture. Mothers, fathers, teachers, students, package workers, programmers, and engineers: all persecuted and subject to torture. 

In this case, people are being treated as if their lives do not matter. All of this is bigger than me. I know that I am the person standing here. I know that I am the person being judged, but I also know that a case like this can become a warning to everyone else.

That if you speak, if you protest, if you try to protect someone, if you are associated with the wrong idea, you can be turned into a symbol instead of treated like a human being. Nothing saddens me more than when I think about all of these different people and their different families and communities and how they have suffered and how unfairly they have been treated, just like me. Whatever’s taken from me will wind up being taken from you. It may be these 22 strangers today, but it will be you tomorrow. On June 9th of this year, the president of the Southern Poverty Law Center testified to Congress that hate has migrated into the government. Into the government. The hate is right here.

The government, in its secret motion to give me a life sentence, called me the embodiment of Antifa. What does that even mean? I am not a member of any group called Antifa. I am not a part of any terrorist organization. There is, in fact, no group called Antifa. Everyone knows that, but this government is so blinded by hate that they have arrested 22 good people for nothing, and they want to bury me with an idea. The idea that they hate is the very idea of being against fascism. What kind of people are not against fascism? What kind of people are not against the hate and war and genocide and concentration camps that the Nazis brought upon the world? What kind of people would not agree to say no kings and no fuhrers? The hate has migrated into the government. Now that hate is taking power over me. It is taking power over you, over your words and your ideas. How long until you are called a domestic terrorist too? Like the prosecutor said, if they call you a terrorist, they can take your house, they can take your car, they can take everything. 

When they killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, they went on TV, and they called them domestic terrorists the same day, within the same hour. When could that happen to you? When I was staying in my home city of Dallas for 11 days, I did fear that I might die at any moment from a government that is hateful and vindictive. I did not run because I wanted to escape responsibility. I stayed because I was determined to survive long enough to do the right thing. I don’t fear for myself now. I fear for all of you. What will you do in this time of great failures and great injustices? What will you do? How will you help each other? How will you help yourselves? 

This is Champagne Song, “Sentenced to 100 Years for Anti-Fascism.”