They Printed a Zine. The DOJ Gave Them 450 Years. (ft. Melissa Gira Grant)

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**Melissa Gira Grant** (1:15)
One of the elements of this conspiracy that they pointed to was people had the phone number for jail support and mutual aid written on their arms, which is super conventional at protests now. It has been going back to 2011 at least. That's the first time I saw it sort of en masse during Occupy Wall Street in New York. The reason people do it is because police scoop people up. This isn't like paranoid, this isn't criminal, right? This is a completely normal behavior and it's a situation that's actually been created by the government.
That effort to protect each other, being characterized as an evidence of a crime is... You see that again in Prairieland, it's just then they threw the terrorism charge on all of them. In Cop City, they also tried to charge them as domestic terrorists and use that narrative, but those cases have started to fall apart.

**Katelyn Burns** (2:05)
Todd Blanch, is that the fucker's name?

**Christine Grimaldi** (2:07)
I believe so.

**Katelyn Burns** (2:09)
So Christine, today we are going to talk about a group of activists in Texas who have been collectively sentenced to over 450 years in prison for going to a protest at which a police officer got shot.

**Christine Grimaldi** (2:29)
Some of them weren't even at the protest.

**Katelyn Burns** (2:31)
Some of them weren't even at the protest. I would say this is one of the scariest cases, attacks on free speech in American history, and we need to talk about it.

**Christine Grimaldi** (2:44)
So Kate, who are we canceling today?

**Katelyn Burns** (2:46)
We are canceling the Prairieland Excessive Prosecutions.

**Christine Grimaldi** (2:51)
Yes.

**Katelyn Burns** (2:52)
Hey, everyone. I'm Katelyn Burns.

**Christine Grimaldi** (2:54)
And I'm Christine Grimaldi.

**Katelyn Burns** (2:56)
And you're listening to Cancel Me, Daddy.

**Christine Grimaldi** (2:59)
The show where we take a closer look at all the panic around political media.

**Katelyn Burns** (3:04)
With thoughtful analysis.

**Christine Grimaldi** (3:05)
And verbal shitposting.

**Katelyn Burns** (3:08)
Christine, we have a big one. One of our most important episodes, I would say.

**Christine Grimaldi** (3:13)
One of the ones that's terrified me the most.

**Katelyn Burns** (3:16)
Yeah. So we have a very special guest and mutual friend of ours, Melissa Gira Grant from The New Republic, who has done some fantastic coverage about Prairieland. This is something that we wanted to talk about for a while. And finally, now that the vacations and summers are all over for us, we are finally getting into it.

**Christine Grimaldi** (3:39)
And I think it comes at a really prescient time.
Todd Blanch was just confirmed by the Senate, what was it, like four o'clock in the morning over the weekend, something like that, as Attorney General. These prosecutions have mostly or if all predated him, but things are going to get scarier with him if that's even possible.

**Katelyn Burns** (4:01)
Yeah. And we don't talk about him too, too much in the interview, but just to let you know, Todd Blanch is all on board for these excessive prosecutions, where you had eight people sentenced to 450 years in prison. He said, the sentences handed down to Diane McQuither and Tifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities will face swift and uncompromising justice, said acting Attorney General Todd Blanch, who is now the confirmed Attorney General of the United States. Their violent extremism has no place in our country and the Department of Justice will continue to aggressively investigate, disrupt and prosecute those who threaten law enforcement officers or undermine the rule of law.
Well, so that's what we got. That's so Todd Blanch is the big bad of the episode.