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Louie French, who won the Old Bexley and Sidcup by-election earlier this month, believes taking the knee in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement had "lost its strength" but stressed he still strongly supported those who wished to carry out the gesture.

Mr French explained: I wouldnt personally look to be taking the knee.

I respect the peoples right to campaign or protest, things that people feel strongly about.

He added how he was very proud to support the England Football team, who have adopted the gesture, in order to tackle racism at home and overseas, especially when they come face to face with it at matches.

The Conservative MP said that racism anywhere was completely unacceptable in this day and age.

JUST INAshley Banjo opens up on negative comments he still receives from Diversity performance

But he claimed the gesture was a bit showbizzy now suggesting that taking the knee had lost its strength.

Asked whether he thought his comments would provoke upset in his constituency among those from BAME backgrounds, he disagreed.

He said: I have got an excellent relationship with people in all different community groups.

This is something that happens on the football pitch - I am not a footballer, I am here in Westminster.

READ MORE'Use brown belt Tory by-election candidate puts foot down to defend UK's green spaces

The England Football team adopted taking the knee before their Euro 2020 matches.

The gesture is now repeated before Premier League games.

Players vowed to continue the gesture through the 2021/2022 season.

In a statement in August, Premier League players said: "We feel now, more than ever, it is important for us to continue to take the knee as a symbol of our unity against all forms of racism."

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'Lost its strength' Conservative MP says he wouldn't 'take the knee' as it is 'showbizzy' - Daily Express

Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and thats what this is all about. And we fight, we fight like hell.

Former President Donald Trumps speech on January 6 may have set off a violent siege of the U.S. Capitol, but it also framed the mission.

In 2021, the Southern Poverty Law Center entered its fifth decade standing up for the powerless and exploited, focusing on impact legislation in Childrens Rights, Economic Justice, Immigrant Justice, LGBTQ Rights, Voting Rights and Criminal Justice Reform.

While more than a dozen U.S. states, including Florida and Georgia, implement laws that make it harder for citizens to vote we fight.

While migrants continue to be turned away at the Southern border we fight.

As verdicts continue to render signs of systemic racism we fight.

Here are some of the most memorable events in the fight for justice that occurred in 2021.

A mob breached the halls of Congress on January 6 to prevent U.S. lawmakers from certifying the Electoral College vote.

Five people died. About 140 police officers were assaulted during 187 chaotic minutes.

The siege of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., pointed to a troubling trend: While the Southern Poverty Law Center tracked a variety of extremists and far-right and anti-government groups, such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, a large number of those arrested in the aftermath were not affiliated with a specific hate or anti-government group.

Some of the accused insurrectionists include individuals aligned with QAnon, an umbrella term for a spiderweb of right-wing conspiracy theories.

While a Select Committee of Congress attempts to make sense of the mayhem that transpired, federal prosecutors have charged almost 700 people with violent crimes that range from conspiracy to destruction of property.

On Jan. 14, Kelvin Silva one of many Black men held at a remote immigrant prison in Georgia faced deportation because of an archaic and racially inequitable law known as the Guyer Rule that prevented him from becoming a U.S. citizen as a child, even though his father was a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Were it not for the Guyer Rule, Silva who was born in the Dominican Republic but grew up in the United States would have automatically gained citizenship when he was just 11-years-old.

The SPLC and its co-counsel continue to represent Silva in a federal court challenge that claims the Guyer Rule which since 1940 has prevented U.S.-citizen fathers, but not U.S.-citizen mothers, from passing their citizenship status to foreign-born, nonmarital children is unconstitutional because it discriminates based on gender and race.

The SPLC, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), ACLU of Georgia, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), and law firms WilmerHale and Davis Wright Tremaine filed a federal lawsuit against Georgias sweeping new law that makes it much harder for all Georgians to vote, particularly voters of color, new citizens and religious communities.

The lawsuit challenges multiple provisions in Georgia law S.B. 202 signed by Gov. Brian Kemp following record turnout of voters, particularly Black voters, for the 2020 presidential vote and 2021 runoff elections.

A federal court in December rejected three motions filed by the State of Georgia, county defendants and intervenor defendants which include the Republican National Committee and other campaign arms of the Republican Party to dismiss the case.

The litigation is scheduled to proceed.

More than three decades after first introduced, a U.S. House committee voted and approved legislation to create a commission to study slavery reparations for Black citizens in the U.S.

The legislation would establish a 13-person commission to study the effects of slavery and racial discrimination throughout U.S. history and recommend potential remedies, including compensation. It awaits movement in the Senate.

Reparation efforts have made progress at the local level, including in Evanston, Illinois, which in March became the first U.S. city to institute a reparations program.

A jury on April 20 found the former Minneapolis Police officer, who knelt on George Floyds neck for more than nine minutes, guilty on three counts of murder and manslaughter.

The death of Floyd, a Black man, at the hand of a white police officer in May 2020 sparked a national racial reckoning to fundamentally transform policing and end police violence against Black people.

Derek Chauvin, 45, was sentenced to serve a prison term of 22 years, six months. A federal civil rights trial for three other Minneapolis police officers Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao charged in connection with Floyds death is expected to begin in January 2022. Chauvin pleaded guilty on Dec. 15 to the federal charge, possibly extending his imprisonment by 2 years.

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which bans chokeholds and ends qualified immunity the legal protection that limits victims ability to sue police officers for misconduct awaits further action in the Senate after gaining approval in the House in March.

People continue to lay flowers on April 6, 2021, at the George Floyd Mural in Houstons Third Ward, where Floyd grew up. (Credit: Sipa USA/Alamy Live News)

About 15 months after Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man, was chased and gunned down while jogging through a neighborhood in south Georgia, state lawmakers repealed a Civil War-era law used to defend the white men charged with his murder.

The law allowed any citizen to arrest another if a crime was committed within his immediate knowledge. It was replaced by a new law, with specific language for citizen detainment under specific circumstances and prohibits the use of deadly force unless in self-defense.

Gregory McMichael; his son, Travis; and their neighbor William Roddie Bryan were convicted in November of killing Arbery, who was not armed. A graphic video showing how the three men followed Arbery and caused his death was made public following prosecutors initial dismissal of the case under the citizens arrest law.

One former prosecutor, Jackie Johnson, was indicted in September on charges she violated her oath of public office.

Small oil on canvas portraits, like this one of Ahmaud Arbery in Detroit, are part of the Healing Wall installation created by artist Carol Morisseau for the Soul of Black Folks exhibition, curated by the artist Donna Jacksons partnership with Scarab Club in Detroit. The photograph of the oil painting was taken on Feb. 4, 2021. (Credit: USATNSYNDICATION)

Following a rise in violence and discrimination against people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent amid the coronavirus pandemic, Congress on May 20 passed a bill that creates grants for state and local governments to combat hate crimes and supports a national incident-based reporting system. It also provides for additional penalties for hate-crime offenses.

The bill incorporated portions of the Khalid Jabara and Heather Heyer National Opposition to Hate, Assault, and Threats to Equality (NO HATE) Act, which was previously introduced in response to high-profile attacks on the LGBTQ, Jewish, Muslim and other communities.

The bill was named in honor of Khalid Jabara, who was killed in 2016 after months of racially charged animus directed at him and his Lebanese-American family; and Heather Heyer, who was killed in 2017 while protesting the Unite the Right white supremacist gathering in Virginia.

In 2021, the SPLC identified more than 300 public schools named for Gen. Robert E. Lee and other Confederate leaders the majority in the South. But that is changing.

More than a year after Montgomery, Alabama, officials moved to rename three public schools linked to members of the Confederacy, a committee made up of community leaders and students took on the daunting effort of narrowing the chosen favorites from nearly 2,000 public submissions. That may be the simplest task.

The Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017 forbids public schools 20 years or older from being renamed without a waiver from the attorney general, with violations incurring a $25,000 fine.

The three schools in Montgomery were named for Lee, Confederate president Jefferson Davis and Sidney Lanier, a Confederate soldier.

Upstate in Huntsville, city school officials have sought guidance from the state for renaming a high school named for Lee that was relocated in 2012.

Similar efforts have taken place across Georgia, Florida and Louisiana.

In November, however, Georgias public university system ignored the recommendations by an advisory group convened by the Board of Regents to rename 75 buildings and colleges that bear the names of Confederate leaders, segregationists and proponents of slavery.

In a statement rejecting the proposal, the board said, The purpose of history is to instruct. History can teach us important lessons, lessons that if understood and applied make Georgia and its people stronger.

Like in Alabama, a 2019 law in Georgia outlaws the removal or defacing of monuments to the Confederacy.

Fair Elections Center and the SPLC filed a lawsuit to challenge Florida Senate Bill 90, an omnibus voting rights bill that, among other things, requires civic organizations engaged in voter registration activities to provide misleading information to voters that the organization might not submit their registration application on time and to direct voters to the online registration portal.

The complaint was filed on behalf of Harriet Tubman Freedom Fighters Corp., a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that focuses its registration efforts on new voters, particularly youth, communities of color and returning citizens.

The complaint challenges the new laws misleading disclaimer and disclosure requirements and alleges that the new law is void for vagueness under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, compels speech in violation of the First Amendment, and prevents organizations from exercising their First Amendment expressive and associational rights.

Spurred by advocates and the Congressional Black Caucus, on June 15, the Senate unanimously passed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, establishing Juneteenth (June 19) as a federal holiday.

It was the first national holiday established since Martin Luther Kings Birthday in 1983.

Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. Its name stems from June 19, 1865, when more than two years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation enslaved Americans in Galveston, Texas, finally received word that they were free from bondage.

Amy Donofrio a 13-year, nationally recognized educator was banned from her Jacksonville, Florida, classroom in March after declining to remove a Black Lives Matter flag above her classroom door at Riverside High School, which until recently was named Robert E. Lee High School in honor of the Confederate States Army leader who was an enslaver and white supremacist.

In April, the SPLC and Scott Wagner and Associates, P.A. filed a lawsuit against the Duval County Public Schools seeking to reinstate Donofrio to her teaching position and requested a court order banning school policies that prevent educators from exercising their First Amendment rights. The district settled in August, but Donofrios contract was not renewed.

Teacher Amy Donofrio stands outside Robert E. Lee High School in Jacksonville, Florida. (Credit: Evac Movement)

A 12-ton statue of Confederate States Army leader Robert E. Lee that was erected in Richmond, Virginia, in 1890 was removed to the celebratory cheers of activists.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam had ordered the statues removal a year earlier amid the nationwide protest movement, but litigation halted plans until a state Supreme Court ruling allowed its removal.

The statue, listed since 2007 in the National Register of Historic Places, was one of the largest Confederate monuments remaining in the United States. Symbols of the Confederacy have been identified in 36 states and the District of Columbia as well as Puerto Rico. See our map.

The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Aug. 24 would have updated the Voting Rights Act (VRA) to strengthen sections of the 1965 law that were gutted by the Supreme Courts 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision that required the U.S. Justice Department preclearance before some states could change voting laws.

This year, 19 states have passed 33 laws making it harder to vote.

On Nov. 3, U.S. Senate Republicans voted to block debate on the bill and prevent it from receiving a floor vote.

Kyle Rittenhouse, armed with an AR-style automatic rifle, said he went from his home in Antioch, Illinois, to Kenosha, Wisconsin, to protect property during a night of protesting there in the summer of 2020 over the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white police officer. But Rittenhouse, then 17, said he came under attack, and fearing for his life, shot three men.

Rittenhouse, now 18, was charged with homicide, attempted homicide and reckless endangerment for killing Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and wounding Gaige Grosskreutz, 27. Rittenhouse, like his victims, is white.

After nearly 3 1/2 days of deliberations, a jury on Nov. 19 cleared Rittenhouse of all charges.

The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse will add fuel to the fire of armed radicalization of America, said SPLC president and CEO Margaret Huang. That a while male youth can travel across state lines, armed with an assault rifle, and engage in armed confrontation resulting in multiple deaths without facing criminal accountability, is the all-too-familiar outcome in a country where systemic racism continues to rot the system.

People react to the verdict in the murder trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, outside the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Nov. 19, 2021. (Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid)

A jury in Virginia found organizers of Unite the Right, a 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville, liable for damages and ordered them to pay more than $25 million to victims.

The nonprofit organization Integrity First for America (IFA) brought the lawsuit against 24 individuals and organizations, who unapologetically acknowledged their racist and antisemitic beliefs but denied a conspiracy. A few cast the trial as a referendum on First Amendment rights.

Unite the Right, a planned protest over the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee that was to feature one of the largest gatherings of neo-Nazis, white supremacists and alt-right adherents in decades, never got off the ground.

Among those held accountable was James Alex Fields, a neo-Nazi, who was found guilty in 2018 of murdering 32-year-old paralegal Heather Heyer by driving his car into a crowd of counterprotesters following the rally. Serving a sentence of 419 years plus life, he was ordered to pay $12 million in damages.

Soon after taking office in January, President Joe Biden ended the Trump-era policy known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) in an attempt to take a more humane approach to immigration. In August, a federal judge ruled the administrations efforts did not follow proper procedure and ordered the policy's reinstatement, forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for U.S. immigration hearings.

The SPLC and immigration advocates filed an amended complaint in a class action lawsuit challenging the continuing effects of the Remain in Mexico policy, which restarted on Dec. 6 at one border location and will eventually be adopted at seven entry points, including San Diego and the Texas cities of Laredo, El Paso and Brownsville.

Photo at top: Cutouts of activists and protestors combined along with the victims of injustice they supported throughout 2021. (Credit: SPLC)

Read the original:
The Year in Review: Events that shaped 2021 - Southern Poverty Law Center

The coronavirus pandemic and lockdown rules brought police into conflict with normally law-abiding citizens, the head of the representative body for officers has said.

Restrictions imposed by the Stormont Executive to cut social contacts in a bid to slow the spread of the virus were left for police to enforce.

While the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said they adopted an approach of encouraging and explaining in a bid to make the public comply, there was also enforcement with fines handed out to those who broke the rules.

The PSNI were criticised by some for not intervening when large crowds gathered in west Belfast despite lockdown rules for the funeral of senior republican Bobby Storey.

People take part in a Black Lives Matter protest rally in Custom House Square, Belfast (Rebecca Black/PA)

(PA Archive)

Later, two officers were criticised after making an arrest at a commemoration on the Ormeau Road for the Sean Graham bookmakers shootings.

The PSNI was also criticised for handing out fines at a Black Lives Matter demonstration.

Police Ombudsman Marie Anderson found that claims the handling of the event amounted to unfairness and discrimination were justified and, while not intentional, had damaged confidence in policing among some within the black, Asian and minority ethnic communities in Northern Ireland.

Police Federation chairman Mark Lindsay said officers got no support from the Stormont Executive who set the rules as they tried to enforce them.

I think this brings us into conflict with people who would normally be law-abiding citizens, I think it has not been a good exercise for policing at all, he told the PA news agency.

If we look at a lot of the high-profile events for which policing has been quite heavily criticised, Black Lives Matter, the Storey funeral, even Ormeau, were all related to the Covid crisis and police trying to do the right thing around Covid.

The difficulty is were being asked on one hand to enforce by an Executive and by the politicians in that Executive, but when we actually do our jobs and work through the regulations we get absolutely no support from them, and I think that was very, very evident over all of those incidents I just mentioned.

For the officer on the ground, its always been about engagement and explaining the need for it, which the vast majority of people get, and I dont think there has ever been any misunderstanding if it comes to having to enforce something as a last resort, yes, of course we will, thats part of the role of policing.

Paul Givan and deputy First Minister Michelle ONeill joining other ministers in Parliament Buildings Stormont for an Executive meeting (Kelvin Boyes/Press Eye/PA)

(PA Media)

But to expect police to wade into the middle of every breach is simply unrealistic and it does policing no good whatsoever.

Its really disappointed me that Stormont havent thought outside the box of how they could do this, such as additional wardens, council staff or people working for the health department checking on the regulation. That could have been done at quite minimal cost and taken some pressure off police.

Mr Lindsay said this was also exasperated by police officers not being prioritised for Covid-19 vaccines.

Putting us into situations which are totally out of our control which you cant put any mitigation into, close contact with people, and our Executive just say, suck it up, he said.

Earlier this month, the Policing Board was told the Police Service for Northern Ireland could lose 900 officers over the next three years due to a budget shortfall.

Mr Lindsay said the potential cutgoes deeper because modern policing is about more than just enforcement.

It covers almost every element of the fabric of our lives, we have over 2,000 calls last year where police took the place of ambulances, we intervened with vulnerable people, we looked for missing persons, we do a lot more than just investigating crime or dealing with violence, he said.

There was no surprise for officers on the ground because they hadnt seen much support for policing over the past 15-20 years.

But what you cant take away is the need for visibility, the need for police officers to respond to people whenever they need help, and that reassurance that visible policing gives.

He said there is a struggle to have a meaningful community policing model as envisaged in the Patten Report 20 years ago due to officer numbers.

Simon Byrne Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (Liam McBurney/PA)

(PA Wire)

Meanwhile, asked for his thoughts on Chief Constable Simon Byrne, Mr Lindsay said the PSNI boss engages with frontline officers, which he said is appreciated.

He said Mr Byrnes engagement with officers in Crossmaglen on Christmas Day last year was almost unprecedented, but said it turned into a PR disaster after he was photographed with officers holding rifles.

I think sometimes communication is wanting, things happen sometimes for very well thought out reasons but I think the way it is portrayed either internally or externally in the past hasnt been the best, he said.

The chief is halfway through his term now, I think we all in policing suffered from the poisonous political environment we are in, I think he has suffered more than most and some of his own making.

Link:
Virus brought police into conflict with those normally law-abiding police body - The Independent

Jussie Smollett's conviction last week for inventing a hate crime should have led to some soul-searching among the many who quickly accepted his hoax, not only as true but as evidence of the persistence and pervasiveness of white supremacy in America. It should havebut didn't. In a statement, Dr. Melina Abdullah, director of Black Lives Matter Grassroots and co-founder of BLM Los Angeles, doubled down on the movement's support for Smollett. "In our commitment to abolition, we can never believe police, especially the Chicago Police Department (CPD) over Jussie Smollett, a Black man who has been courageously present, visible, and vocal in the struggle for Black freedom," read a statement from BLM.

Supporting a hate crime hoaxter in the name of racial solidarity is a far cry from the movement's origins in 2014 to shine a light on police brutality, particularly the killing of unarmed Black men. But supporting Smollett, who made a mockery of racism, is not an aberration. Across the board, BLM has abandoned its important goal to protect Black life in order to wage a culture war about race.

The Smollett statement came after another BLM proclamationurging people not to do their Christmas shopping in white-owned stores. "When buying items, spend exclusively with Black-owned businesses from Black Friday through New Year," BLM said on its website and Instagram. As justification, the group cited a number of shootings at two Walmart locations and instances of shoppers being racially profiled for being Black.

Even if in all instances police officers' actions were criminal, the group found six cases nationally over a six year period, and in none of them was the store at fault. Moreover, four of the victims had not only committed offenses but refused to obey police orders and presented a danger.

As in the case of Smollett, BLM decided to side with the malefactors instead of with the shoppersalso people of colorthey may have been threatening.

The most critical problem and the real betrayal to Black life is BLM's resolute unwillingness to acknowledge the devastating impact of gun violence on Black communities. Whereas nationally 15 unarmed Black Americans were killed by police in 2020, there were more than 1,000 Black homicidesof which 292 were children. But even for those lucky enough to escape being killed, sociologist Patrick Sharkey has documented the serious psychological problems children experience when they hear guns fired in their neighborhoods.

And yet, despite this growing and absolutely devastating problem of gun violence in Black neighborhoods, the only people you ever hear talk about it come from the political Right. On the Left, it is routine to silence such concerns as a dogwhistle for racism Thus, the influential black magazine The Root defended Black activists' refusal to talk about it, arguing that bringing up gun violence "is the repeated sleight of hand used to distract and drown out the voices of Black Lives Matter... an oft-used 'alt-right' refrain."

And this criticism is used even when the person bringing up gun violence is Black, like actor and TV host Terry Crews who was viciously attacked after criticizing BLM for ignoring the gun violence. Typical was the response of CNN host Don Lemon: "But that's not what the Black Lives Matter movement is about, Terry. Black Lives Matter is about police brutality and about criminal justice. It's not about what happens in communities when it comes to crime, Black-on-Black crime." If Crews wanted to stem community violence, Lemon concluded, he should not expect BLM to be the venue. "Form your own movement," Lemon advised.

And this silence of Black Lives Matter and their media supporters when it comes to Black life being stolen by gun violence has shown no sign of abating, even with homicides reaching levels not seen for more than twenty years.

It's about time those who truly believe that Black lives matter, who believe in strengthening the Black family, who condemn racial hoaxes and reject demonizing all white people for the racist actions of some to separate themselves from the BLM leadership. The moral force of the anti-racist movement is being undermined by the BLM leadership. And we can't afford for that to happen.

Robert Cherry is professor emeritus of economics at Brooklyn College.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own.

See the rest here:
Black Lives Matter's Betrayal of Black Life | Opinion - Newsweek

A Pennsylvania man who planted bombs at a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020 wont spend any more time in jail after a district court judge sentenced him on Monday to time served and three years of probation.

Matthew Michanowicz, a 53-year-old Pennsylvania man, admitted he planted a backpack of explosives in downtown Pittsburgh hours after a Black Lives Matter protest in the days following George Floyds death last year.

Matthew Michanowicz, will not spend any more time behind bars in connection with leaving incendiary devices at the scene of the aftermath of a social justice protest in downtown Pittsburgh last year. (Photo: CBS Pittsburgh/ YouTube screenshot)

None of the three bombs exploded, but prosecutors say they could have hurt or killed people if they detonated.

Judge Donetta W. Ambrose sentenced Michanowicz on time served for the 18 months hes spent behind bars while awaiting trial, and three years of supervised release, starting with the first 180 days in home detention.

Michanowicz faced up to 10 years in prison for charges of illegal possession of an unregistered destructive device.

Defense attorney Ken Haber told The Washington Post Ambrose may have considered Michanowiczs mental state when she handed down the lighter sentence.

I think the judge was somewhat convinced that he had a breakdown, Haber said. The attorney said. Michanowicz was stressed at the time that he planted the devices and didnt intend for them to detonate or harm anybody, his defense claimed.

On May, 31, 2020, six days after former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin murdered Floyd, and one day after a Black Lives Matter protest turned destructive in downtown Pittsburgh, Michanowicz rode his bike to the area.

He left a camouflage backpack containing three explosive devices on 2 PNC Plaza. The next morning, police responded to the plaza over a report of a suspicious bag. Inside the bag were three homemade Molotov cocktails, police said.

Michanowicz had filled three pepper-spray containers with gasoline and stuck wicks inside.

Surveillance footage showing a man carrying the bag pointed police in Michanowiczs direction. Days later, an officer spotted Michanowicz in the same area where the backpack was found.

Story continues

He admitted he was the man seen on surveillance footage. Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives searched Michanowiczs home and found more materials similar to the ones used to make the devices, and 10 camouflage backpacks like the one planted at the scene.

Michanowicz pleased guilty in August 2021 to placing the bag filled with explosive devices at the plaza.

Around the time of the incident, Michanowicz had been having a difficult time, according to Haber. Hed recently lost his job as a medical salesman and his father and close friend had just died.

This is the product of someone who was a highly successful person who had a bit of a breakdown, Haber said.

Across the country, protesters have been sentenced to prison time for their roles in the demonstrations that spread across the country last year.

Shamar Betts, 20, was sentenced to four years in federal prison in August on charges of inciting a riot after he posted a provocative flyer on social media before a protest turned destructive in Salt Lake City, Utah.

From May to October of 2020, prosecutors filed more than 300 charges related to protests, according to The Prosecution Project.

Social media users criticized Michanowiczs sentence.

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Pennsylvania Man Who Planted Explosives After BLM Protest Sentenced to Probation, Thanks to Judge Who Was Convinced He Had a Breakdown - Yahoo News