The push to criminalize mutual aid crumbles in a hail of courtroom absurdity, police lies, revelations of retaliation and lawsuits

Above: Art at the Aston Park build camp and mutual aid event in December 2021. The police crackdown would eventually see 16 locals hit with absurd felony littering charges. Photo by Veronica Coit

After two weeks of pretrial hearings and jury selection, the trial of two defendants charged with “felony littering” came to a sudden halt in late April, in an incredibly absurd display that revealed Asheville police and prosecutors as incompetent as they are cruel.

The two mutual aid workers, among 16 arrested in the aftermath of the late 2021 Aston Park Build event, never should have been on trial at all. They were accused of “felony littering” — a charge not used by local law enforcement in nearly a decade — for having art and mutual aid supplies in a public park. In reality they were attacked for being involved in organizing that challenged city hall’s vindictive crackdowns on the unhoused.

This spring the cops’ blatant mishandling of evidence — destroying some and failing to turn other key evidence over — was the main culprit in this never-ending state repression fiasco.

Originally the trial was to resume around this time, but it’s continued to be pushed back farther and farther. Now it’s set to resume late summer or early fall, not least because one of the main prosecutors had to take time out to put Blade journalists through a rigged show trial.

Meanwhile the prosecutions have continued to fall apart without anyone even setting foot in a courtroom. In June the Blade uncovered documents showing that the city’s own solid waste supervisor had directly contradicted the police’s narrative, literally writing “clearly, these folks weren’t littering” in emails to the city manager. She also wrote that police chief David Zack and p.r. flack Kim Miller weren’t telling the truth and that the APD had, for over a decade, consistently refused to prosecute actual felony littering even when the culprits were known.

Earlier this month defendants announced that the ACLU would be adding a retaliation claim to the existing lawsuit opposing the defendants’ unconstitutional three-year park bans. The claim states that the “differential, adverse treatment” involved in the bans violates the mutual aid volunteers’ rights under the First and Fourteenth amendments.

Readers, when we initially started reporting on these trials we expected to do weekly dispatches. But this got disrupted for multiple reasons, including the legal quicksand that the trial ran headlong into, our whole co-op having to bring our reporting to a halt to deal with the bench, then jury, trial of this reporter and Veronica Coit and the new information that constantly kept emerging. We’re a small organization with a shoestring budget, and while we do a lot with that sometimes we’re simply well past capacity with everything we have to face.

But the story of how the mutual aid trials ground to a halt is worth coming back to for many reasons, including what happened after proceedings were paused. In its combination of official retaliation, utter incompetence and push to render illegal any political activity local governments don’t like it’s a revealing story about Asheville in this time.

Comedy of errors

The second week of the mutual aid trials, the one that would prove its final one for the time being, reignited a process that failed in the first one – picking a jury. But this would not last. On April 12, the same day that District Judge Calvin Hill was unjustly convicting Blade reporters by claiming they weren’t journalists, defense attorneys in the felony littering case had just received an evidence cache of some 250 images for the first time.

And when they sought more images from a phone — whose contents police had used to press charges against 16 defendants early last year — it was nowhere to be found. While in storage, its lithium battery had expanded, destroying it and upending the opportunity to proceed to trial anytime soon.

What’s left over was Asheville police’s belief that mutual aid volunteers were growing “increasingly militant,” crumbling upon examination and without the full chat threads from which those assertions were supposedly based. This is the same department, it must be noted, that considered this reporter tied to “anarchist extremist groups” — and so subject to an illegal search warrant — for running a public social justice calendar.

It was a busy week, as defendants also became plaintiffs as ACLU announced its initial legal suit against Asheville government, and some of its top officials, for banning the mutual aid workers from public parks, some of them secretly.

How we got here

The exceedingly rare felony littering charges concern an art party and encampment at Aston Park in the week leading up to Christmas of 2021. On the first day, Asheville police informed those camping in the park that they would be charged with trespassing should they remain past the park’s closing time of 10 pm. This flew in the face of APD’s standard operating procedure at the time, which mandated campers be given seven days before eviction would ensue.

Locals returned to the park other nights that week to build art, provide mutual aid to campers, and create signs that called attention to rampant gentrification and Asheville government’s vicious denial of funds for low barrier code purple shelters that protect houseless people from brutal temperatures.

On day four police Capt. Mike Lamb, in daylight hours, made the wild promise of felony littering investigations should locals not pack art supplies and leave Aston immediately, even though they were breaking no laws and were still well within normal park hours. On Christmas night police arrested six, targeting Blade journalists first “since they’re videotaping” before dragging people out of tents. But state repression was just ramping up.

Weeks later police, pursuing a different charge, raided a volunteer’s house and car and confiscated a laptop and phone, which they were able to access. Claiming mutual aid volunteers were growing “increasingly militant in their chats,” they pursued felony littering and “aiding and abetting” charges on 16 of them.

After four pled guilty to lesser charges earlier this year. Twelve defendants remain. With the first two defendants now waiting months to see their trial resume, ten others wait as well, as the wasteful and retaliatory attacks on mutual aid and protest get yet another extension.

Voir dire gets dire

“Many of the decisions you make in your life depend on circumstantial evidence.”

– prosecutor Katie Kurdys, trying to spin the obviously false “felony littering” charges to potential jurors.

During the first week of trial the district attorney’s office failed to gather a jury pool sufficient for selection. On Monday, April 17, selection finally started when 78 potential jurors entered the courtroom.

Jurors confirmed or denied their basic availability for the trial. Once the first set of jurors were seated in the jury box, Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Grant explained “what you have watched, read and seen is not under oath.”

And thus it would be up to the lawyers to prove or cast doubt on the charges at hand. A series of early victories would follow as the defense ferreted out biased jurors with seemingly little effort.

Assistant DA Katie Kurdys — who would later be co-counsel for the persecution of Blade journalists — began her questioning, asking if jurors knew any of the individuals involved in the case, what they did for a living, etc. She then asked questions such as, “Do any of you volunteer in the community?”, “have you ever called the police?”, and “what was the nature of that interaction?”

One potential juror worked as an interior designer. Her work occasionally brought her inside the offices of the police department, and on April 17, she expressed that she supported “those entities very strongly,” marking herself as one of the first to eventually be struck “for cause” based on overwhelming bias.

Both the persecution and the defense were endowed with a total of 12 peremptory challenges per side. Different from “for cause” challenges, these can be used without explanation to remove a potential juror.

Kurdys talked about the concept of “circumstantial evidence” on April 18 after announcing the previous week that the state didn’t plan to pin certain weights brought into the park on either defendant. This would seem necessary in a trial concerning felony littering, which is defined as dumping waste in excess of 500 lbs.

After a different juror on Tuesday noted that she’d never called the police, Kurdys asked, “Is that a conscious decision?”

The woman volunteered with BeLoved weekly, and this was too much for Kurdys, and the juror was struck.

A man training to become an EMS worker claimed one of the empty seats. Responding to questioning, he said he “holds officers to a higher standard.”

When the defense began their questioning, attorney Stephen Lindsay asked if the juror would judge the credibility of police officers in the same way that he would judge other witnesses. The juror assured that he would “probably not” give police the “benefit of the doubt”.

But as it goes, maybe he would give them the benefit of the doubt. It was at this point that Lindsay explained the presumption of innocence.

“Clear, cogent, and convincing evidence,” explained Lindsay, was used to remove children from their parents in child custody cases. “Beyond a reasonable doubt,” the standard used in this case, was the most stringent measure used in us courts.

Clearly struggling with her ability to presume the defendants innocent, the same woman who said she supported police “very strongly” on Monday now spoke up to the court about her preconceived notions and cementing what would become a “for cause” dismissal.

“Would you describe that as a strong feeling?” Lindsay asked a third juror who was now also speaking up about his inability to presume the defendants’ innocence.

The trial of these defendants in Kurdys’ words is “the most publicized trial in five years”. It’s understandable that those consuming far right messaging would have bias against the defendants.

And considering the rampant, often unhinged lies circulated by the “Asheville Coalition for Public Safety” and others who are obsessed with crushing the defendants, it’s no surprise they were so eager to share their views.

By the end of the day, three potential jurors were dismissed “for cause”, with two peremptory challenges used by the defense, and two used by the prosecution. At this time, seven jurors of the 12 jurors needed were impaneled. But all of this was about to get wiped away.

‘Plaintiff era’

“Plaintiffs in this case are individuals who regularly volunteered their time and efforts to provide food, supplies, and vital support to unhoused people in Asheville. They were banned from parks after they were charged with felony littering while participating in peaceful demonstration to protest the City’s treatment of unhoused people. The protests and gatherings involved demonstrations where Plaintiffs and other community members came together to distribute mutual aid, create art, and to demand that the City provide resources and shelter for unhoused people.”

– The ACLU of North Carolina announcing its legal action against Asheville city government and officials

The next day, April 19, the ACLU of North Carolina officially announced legal action against Asheville city government, city manager Debra Campbell, police chief David Zack and parks and rec director Tyrell McGirt, claiming these officials violated plaintiffs’ First Amendment protest and due process rights.

The rescinding of the bans and restitution for damages are among the requests of the now 15 defendants turned plaintiffs. The heading on the statement by defendants and supporters from that day reads simply and proudly: “and we enter our plaintiff era.”

Upon initial filing, the lawsuit only mentioned 14 plaintiffs. A fifteenth would be amended into the filing after Asheville Parks and Recreation refused to rescind a three-year ban on a volunteer who had only found out they were banned from parks this March.

Asheville government says it issues one-year bans on individuals alleged to have committed misdemeanors in city parks. But after pleading to misdemeanor “conspiracy to commit felony littering” in April and submitting affidavits suggesting their access to parks was necessary for their job, instead of finding their ban amended (and ended), the former defendant found the parks and rec department cruelly insistent upon their three-year ban remaining unchanged.

“The City of Asheville’s decision to ban individuals from Parks and Recreation spaces will remain in place,” McGirt replied to the defendant via text according to the amended lawsuit. So, the ACLU decided to add another plaintiff.

The attacks against these mutual aid volunteers have shocked and dismayed many residents since the very beginning. Outside of the gentry and the far-right these persecutions are not popular. But the roll out of park bans in March and April of 2022 marked a flashpoint in the cases, with due process violations laid bare and the city government’s obvious retaliation bubbling to the surface.

According to a trove of documents acquired in a public records request, council members Antanette Mosley and then-Vice Mayor Sheneika Smith discussed an Asheville Area chamber of commerce meeting on January 14, 2022. Mosley texted, “[Chamber CEO Kit Cramer] wants to know if people who are arrested can be banned from certain locations.”

That same day, about an hour later, Asheville police announced the arrests of three volunteers, citing their most recent out of state addresses as an “outside agitators”-style smear despite many living here for years.

Then on January 23, Council member Sage Turner labeled those demonstrating and providing mutual aid in Aston “problem children” in a text exchange with Smith.

Discussing a food sharing ban proposed by city hall in the wake of the crackdowns, Turner followed, “if permitting is the only way to get them to stop, so be it.”

Fortunately the food sharing ban that was soundly rejected by dozens of commenters at a council meeting days later. A petition against the ban was supported by over 3,000 residents. The attacks on mutual aid, journalism and basic human kindness may have the backing of local government, but they sure as hell aren’t supported by the people of this city.

Less than two months later the first of the letters banning felony defendants from parks for three years were sent out. Two defendants wouldn’t discover that their bans were in effect until December of 2022, with an aforementioned third finding out about theirs in March.

The Asheville Free Press called attention to these park bans in an April 23, 2022 article citing multiple lawyers’ opinions that the measures were illegal and that defendants’ First Amendment rights were pretty clearly in the crosshairs.

Defense attorney Martin Moore, quoted in that article, said “this extrajudicial process does not afford the usual protections of a civil or criminal case, places the burden on the accused to prove their innocence, does not allow them to see the evidence against them, and allows APD to punish them for a crime which has not yet been indicted or convicted.”

Only 10 of the 15 plaintiffs discovered they were banned in time to appeal those decisions, with many never informed at all. But as Asheville government legal staff and police officials were involved, every appeal of defendants’ park bans was – rather predictably – denied.

Now, top officials in city government are finally receiving what they deserve, a lawsuit from the “problem children” they longed to criminalize and exclude.

The updated filing discusses these blatant violations of due process rights, including Asheville government’s removal of plaintiff’s rights to work, play, and protest in parks without trial:

“By maintaining and enforcing a policy that bans Plaintiffs from Asheville parks for years based on unproven allegations of wrongdoing, and by failing to provide proper notice, pre-deprivation hearings, and constitutionally adequate means of challenging Plaintiffs’ park bans, Defendants have deprived Plaintiffs of their protected liberty and/or property interests, and thus have violated Plaintiffs constitutional rights without affording them due process of the law.”

Speaking to the disproportionate ban in response to a protest and provision of mutual aid, the lawsuit states, “The [Park Ban] Policy curtails Plaintiffs’ ability to publicly exercise their First Amendment rights far more broadly than reasonable to advance any legitimate government interests. The Park Ban Policy, as maintained and enforced by Defendants against Plaintiffs unconstitutionally prevents and discourages Plaintiffs’ exercise of First Amendment rights in City parks.”

The notion of retaliation perhaps lies at the center of what could be quite the “plaintiff era.”

Indeed, the retaliation claim at last was backed up by an unlikely source: a city official, as emails obtained by the Blade, working with the Sunshine Request open records group. revealed solid waste manager Jes Foster had named actions against felony littering defendants as retaliatory.

In two June 2022 emails to city manager Debra Campbell, she explained “clearly, these folks weren’t littering,” while condemning the police department’s failure to consult her before claiming the amount of litter left by a “known” party at Aston Park in December of ‘21 was unprecedented.

“When we have asked for aid in enforcing this, we are turned down. So, this is clearly not a case of APD caring about litter. I’ll add that I really am disgusted by Chief Zack comparing that ‘litter’ to what our volunteer groups did downtown this year,” said Foster in one of the June 2022 emails.

“The lack of communication and coordination severely impacts the efficiency and morale of my division,” the solid waste manager added.

The ACLU legal team seized upon this revelation, updating their lawsuit in late June to include a claim of retaliation.

“Defendants’ enforcement of the Park Ban Policy against Plaintiffs singled them out for extreme and punitive enforcement that was not pursued against other individuals or entities engaged in littering.”

Citing the basis for the addition to the lawsuit, the team led by attorney Muneeba Talukder points out that city officials’ “animus toward Plaintiffs as activists” and their “dislike of Plaintiffs’ vocal criticism directed at APD and other City officials” spurred these actions.” And “this differential, adverse treatment of Plaintiffs violated their rights under the First Amendment and Equal Protection Clause.”

The lawsuit that was 26 pages now numbers 38 and represents mutual aid volunteers who were banned from parks for three years. Three volunteers pled to misdemeanor charges, but notably none of those deals led to reduced bans. After all, this is Asheville government we’re talking about, who since summer of 2020 has shifted sharply and vindictively conservative.

That’s not all. With the criminalization of our journalism at Aston on Christmas, 2021, this reporter and Veronica Coit were also banned from Asheville city parks for an entire year without ever receiving notice.

During their jury trial Lt. Michael McClanahan confirmed that this likely wasn’t any mistake by a lone cop, but a feature of Asheville government’s insistence on kicking every person out of parks who a single cop claims broke the law.

It’s no wonder they’re getting sued.

As those bans expired last Christmas Blade reporters are not included in the ACLU’s lawsuit at this time. That does not make what we faced any less ridiculous. Freedom of the Press Foundation advocacy director Seth Stern recently expressed surprise over the “unheard of” park bans used against Blade reporters.

“They do not fit neatly into other press freedom tracker categories, because who’d have thought they would ever happen?” Stern wondered in a May event for the organization.

Had news of the park bans been made public before they expired, “that would have created a major story,” Stern followed, pondering whether Asheville’s government intentionally withheld the information. They may also have withheld it to set up Blade reporters for arrest if they tried to cover city government meetings in-person at the civic center or at city hall, as that requires them going through park land.

And the danger to local journalism is ongoing. Eventual acquittal or no, should already criminalized Blade reporters be alleged by a cop to have committed a crime in a public park a second time, they may then face three-year bans for “repeated violations,” disrupting our news gathering to an ever greater degree.

The news from week two kept coming, but for transparency’s sake, readers, half of our collective were dragged to trial on April 19, where Judge Calvin Hill convicted our journalists’ in a show trial, basing his opinion on the far-right claim that we are not journalists. This scheduling effectively removed our collective’s ability to cover the felony trial on both that day and Thursday.

And it was on Wednesday that the emergence of a trove of evidence the defense had yet to receive in the “felony littering” case threw the whole trial into an even deeper quagmire.

Where’s the evidence?

“Normally, when the state says it’s ready to go, that means it’s ready to go — it has all its evidence, it’s turned over everything it’s supposed to turn over. This just seems to be one problem after another.”

– Attorney Stephen Lindsay in an interview with the Asheville Citizen-Times

The April 19 revelation that the prosecutor’s office had failed to relay a trove of evidence to the defense heaped additional doubt onto the DA’s case, paused jury selection, and laid the groundwork for another motion for dismissal by the defense.

Asheville police officer Samuel DeGrave claimed in his testimony that he’d received an error message while uploading 257 pieces of evidence he’d collected and had just assumed that it would make it to Kurdys who could then give it to the defense attorneys. He was wrong.

While going through and describing these newly provided photos, DeGrave said obtaining evidence from the Signal encrypted messaging app was “novel.” He testified that he’d never heard of the app, which reached 40 million active users in 2021.

The defense repeatedly called attention to DeGrave’s lack of experience. He had joined APD in 2019, and, as an injured patrol officer, turned detective and is now an acting sergeant. After the vengeful department lost 40 percent of its officers, those like him are apparently what they have left.

Some messages saying “Read more” had no additional photos to give full context to the provided signal chats, “which could show the difference between a felony and an infraction” indicated Perez, according to the Citizen Times.

Without crucial context under one particular “Read more” message, the intent of the event could not be defined.

On Thursday, April 20, defendants and supporters described this sizable cache of late evidence in a public statement:

“Many of the photos came from the intensive APD surveillance of the “streetside” distribution of food, clothing, and camping gear that happened each week in Aston Park (before APD banned most of the people who did that work from all parks), and surveillance of the (Until We’re All) Free Store, which ran a free grocery pick up/delivery program.”

Images of this surveillance were extremely low quality.

Even still, as defense lawyers would point out on April 21, mutual aid workers at Aston set up additional trash receptacles during their streetside events. This information was part of the surveillance files that were initially excluded from the discovery.

“They took the vast majority with them,” DeGrave admitted, agreeing that mutual aid volunteers weren’t leaving piles of trash in Aston after Streetside events.

Proving felony littering requires proving the defendants’ intent, and so far, the police and the prosecution were only proving themselves as incompetent as they were cruel.

Up in smoke

“As of April 21, [the phone] was being stored in a metal trailer outside the evidence room, [Asheville police captain Joe] Silberman said at the hearing.
The news left defense attorney Catherine Perez incredulous.
‘For all we know, it could be catching fire right now,’ she said.
Could other phones in the evidence room also have batteries that were unaccounted for, and be at risk of exploding? Perez asked.

‘Yes,’ Silberman said.”

— From an April 25 Citizen-Times report on the back-and-forth at the trial

One might say that accessing additional context underneath “Read more” links on a messaging app may be as simple as returning to the phone where messages were accessed. But this is the Asheville police department, notorious for its evidence room scandal that rocked the department and ended the careers of some of its top officials in the early 2010’s.

So it turned out the key phone on which so much of the state’s case rested was utterly destroyed, so this was no longer possible. Evidence that could have finally absolved the defendants could not be retrieved, because while stored in the APD’s custody, the phone’s battery had expanded, breaking the phone.

While cross examining evidence room supervisor Juan Perez, the defense pointed to the fact that rubber covers on phones can harm the phone’s ability to regulate temperature. Perez. who is supposed to safely store evidence for a living, testified that had never heard of rubber cases helping to cause this malfunction. Perez’s testimony also revealed the evidence room’s lack of protocols for ensuring phones are both appropriately charged and turned off while in storage.

No, reader, we are not making any of this up.

The defense continued to shine a light on APD’s glaring mistakes and prejudice. In earlier testimony DeGrave had claimed there were 10,000 images in the submitted evidence. On Friday April 21, he corrected himself, saying there were more like “2,000, I think”, saying the earlier claim was a “misstatement.”

Defense Attorney Catherine Perez asked that day if there was evidence suggesting defendants planned to clean up after events at Aston Park.

“I don’t recall,” DeGrave responded, unable to say for sure without a major source of evidence in the case.

The defense explained that DeGrave mentioned Streetside distribution 15 times in earlier testimony, but until week two of the trials did not provide images of the Streetside messaging thread. Conversations, it was said, started in one thread and finished in another, but the additional context was never provided – and now it seems can’t be provided.

“So there may have been messages in between that we don’t have,” asked Moore. DeGrave then nonchalantly responded, “it looks like that.”

Captain Silberman testified, ridiculously, that DeGrave’s string of errors were attributed to his rush to return to active patrol duty.

Defense attorneys, however, used words like “inexperience”, “negligence”, and “recklessness” to describe the phone’s destruction. Considering the egregiousness of these failures, Attorney Moore said Asheville police’s actions were in “bad faith.”

This is the Asheville Police Department.

‘Increasingly militant in their chats’

“Still unknown is whether the prosecution will face sanctions for the series of egregious discovery violations that resulted from the APD’s gross mishandling of evidence.”

– May 4 statement by defendants and supporters

The newest trove of evidence also included information providing additional context to messaging threads used to press charges against the defendants. The ways that Asheville police wildly misinterpreted message exchanges is especially alarming and indicative of a vengeful department.

Central to the cross-examination were questions about harm reduction work, which city hall has previously attempted to shut down in West Asheville by targeting Firestorm and the Steady Collective.

Moore questioned DeGrave about the inclusion of texts having to do with members of the Streetside Signal thread discussing safer drug use. Asked if messages could align with harm reduction work, DeGrave agreed that this was probably what was happening. DeGrave had looked into supposed drug distribution, but had found nothing.

The words “shooting straight” were brought up by police in supposed relation to firearms training (which is by the way guaranteed by the 2nd amendment even when its leftists training in self defense). But this wasn’t even a conversation about guns – it was about safe substance use.

The warrants also alleged that providing aftercare for arrestees included such dastardly acts as providing access to a hot tub.

DeGrave had claimed in the warrants for members’ arrest that members of ASP were growing “increasingly militant in their chats” by — horror of horrors — “distributing pamphlets,” which is also legal.

In fact the pamphlet DeGrace brought up was linked, even in the police’s assertions, to only one of the defendants who had already pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Police had access to that defendant’s laptop and phone, but never found any evidence of a conspiracy to commit arson.

Casting a wide net, police have attempted to criminalize sixteen people for multiple crimes they’ve failed to prove any one of them have committed.

Warrants had mentioned defendants raising money in relation to events at Aston, which Catherine Perez explained was raised using “proper channels,” something DeGraves didn’t counter.

But to DeGraves all of this, in the way cops commonly view all organizing they don’t like as vaguely illegal, this “indicated that there was more going on here.” Along with the selected jury, this evidence fell apart on the stand.

No one can deny that there is ‘more going on here,’ but the police in particular are the ones who have been caught scheming.

On Friday, April 21, Judge Grant officially dissolved the partially-selected jury. However, she followed, “I’m not going to dismiss the case,” still electing to let another jury decide defendants’ fate.

Who is Asheville for?

“DA Williams’ decision to take felony littering defendants and leftist journalists to trial has left local attorneys scratching their heads, especially amid a growing backlog of untried murder defendants.”

– Asheville Citizen-Times reporter Ryan Oehrli on April 25

The trials of the remaining 12 felony littering defendants will possibly resume by the end of this summer and will very likely extend into the fall. The costs to local coffers, government personnel, potential jurors, and locals’ rights and autonomy continue to mount, just as cracks in the prosecution’s case continue to spread.

“After 78 potential jurors took days off from work, arranged childcare, rescheduled medical appointments, and answered deeply personal questions in front of 100 people; and after 15 months of all of us being under 3-year bans from public parks, and with 12 people still under indictment for a felony, with no end in sight for either us or the mountains of public money this is costing Asheville,” read the April 21 defendants statement, “[t]he wastefulness of it all is just staggering.”

Nevertheless, Aston felony defendants’ have officially entered their ‘plaintiff era’ and — with supporters — have coalesced around a new name, Parks are for Everyone, to represent their defense against state repression and support for a city that opens its parks and cares (and allows care) for its residents, especially its most marginalized.

“Because we are now plaintiffs as well as defendants, and because the original protest and subsequent state repression both hinge on the question of whose space is public space (particularly parks!), we are using this language,” reads the June 28 defendants’ statement.

With the retaliation claim now added to their lawsuit, additional and pleasant surprises may soon be in store. Calling the email exchange between the city’s solid waste manager and the city manager “remarkable”, the group in its July 5 statement follows:

“For our part, it is so heartening to see this City employee lead with their ethical commitments; so much of what we see in public records requests are Council members and City staff saying a lot of gross stuff. And, since we have our own experience of how the City treats people who complicate its tourist-centered, ‘progressive’ public image that has generated so much money (mostly for people who already have it), we also worry about this person’s job.”

After a year and a half of betrayal by council members who ran on social justice platforms and a “progressive” city dedicated to criminalizing homelessness, mutual aid and journalism, the worry isn’t exactly invalid.

Indeed, this is all happening at a time when city hall is once again renewing its push to make both poverty and aid to the poor de facto illegal. Last week, city council member Maggie Ullman, in an act of stunning cruelty, pushed “making it illegal not only to panhandle but illegal to give to panhandlers.”

That said, these institutions, especially the police department and DA’s office, are determined but aren’t omnipotent. Civil servant laws offer significant protection to such officias, and any action against Foster would be grounds for multiple lawsuits on top of the ones city hall’s already facing. Talk about wandering into a quagmire.

Foster’s ethical compass is notably unusual in a city government whose department heads’ only defining commitments seem to be to petty cruelty and lining the pockets of the wealthy.

So we arrive at a central question: what organizations and individuals are driving these escalated attempts to criminalize mutual aid? At this point, city council members and city staff across multiple departments are complicit as hell. The Chamber of Commerce may also be involved.

Regardless of any information still to surface, the road ahead remains difficult for those who’ve seen their acts of love and care viciously criminalized.

So far 12 of the 16 defendants have weathered the enormous pressures to plead to these bizarre charges. They shouldn’t let up.

Just as press freedom violations become legal precedent if plead, so do crackdowns on mutual aid. There is no denying the toll taken by felony charges pressed for over a year and a half. But the defendants’ patience and determination continue to cost the state as its blatant errors and retaliation come more clearly into view.

Had all sixteen pled guilty this news would have been buried long ago. But now we see an increasing number of locals realizing what’s going on.

The Blade has also seen this response to the state dragging our journalists through two trials. Forty five press freedom organizations, civil liberties groups and media outlets called on Williams to drop the charges against our journalists in early May. Even famous actor John Cusack decried the Asheville officials’ attacks on the press.

After Rutherford County Judge Tommy Davis, brought in for this case, refused to instruct a jury to consider press rights, Blade journalists were convicted again. With the explicit and immediate support of many of those same organizations, the journalists are appealing that verdict.

Defendants winning but once can add important barriers to governments’ decisions to press these attacks in the future, while legal suits can make up for some of the serious damage these institutions.

Periodically, the defendants have been raising funds for their ongoing legal needs.

Despite intensified state repression that has targeted volunteers and unhoused people at their new mutual aid distribution events under the Lexington Avenue bridge, the aforementioned Streetside group is still fighting state repression.

Mutual aid and action are necessary in support of unhoused and struggling locals in a time of increased attacks by those who preside over the “worst place to live.” Ending the attacks on protesters and volunteers is a central part making Asheville better.

It’s a part of making Asheville for those who actually live here, for those who struggle in the face of profit led displacement, and for those on the margins who still survive despite the gentry institutions that constantly insist on their destruction.

While the Blade is independent of any of the groups involved in organizing the event or fighting the ensuing cases, when it comes to police attacking locals for the horrible crime of feeding the hungry and sheltering the unhoused there is zero doubt which side we’re on.

May the day come soon when defendants officially enter their “acquitted era” or better yet “case dismissed era” and finally bury this grim charade with some hard-fought victories.

—

Matilda Bliss is a local writer, Blade reporter and activist. When she isn’t petsitting or making schedules of events, she strives to live an off-the-grid lifestyle and creates jewelry from local stones

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