Earlier this month, The Guardian announced the existence of the NSPM-7 Defendants Union, a new experiment in movement defense. We reached out to the organizers for an overview of their project, which we present here.

Announcing the NSPM-7 Defendants Union

National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) is a government-wide strategy to investigate, disrupt, and prosecute what the Trump administration calls “left-wing political extremism.” They have already used it to justify publicly killing Minneapolis anti-ICE rapid responders Renee Good and Alex Pretti, raiding the homes of University of Michigan students protesting the genocide of Palestinians, and re-indicting Stop Cop City protesters.

But by the tens of thousands, newly politicized people are learning to fight: Minnesotan moms tracking BORTAC agents, students throwing back tear gas outside Delaney Hall, nurses making split-decisions to help people escape from ICE. Especially in the movement against Trump’s deportation agenda, thousands of people are taking brave actions for the first time.

NSPM-7 is intended to turn their lives upside down. We want to make them stronger.

For decades, social movements have developed strategies to withstand repression, learn, and propagate revolutionary politics. Those of us who have had our homes raided, organized collective defense, resisted grand juries, built support committees, devised media strategies, and stayed active through periods of repression have something valuable to offer the growing list of NSPM-7 defendants. That’s why we built the NSPM-7 Defendants Union.

We aim to make our social movements resilient. To do so, we need to make everyone aware of Trump’s strategy to crush dissent and mount a common defense against it while recentering the discussion about what Trump calls “antifa” on our own terms, so that we can speak proudly and publicly in defense of our politics and our resistance.

The Defendants Pledge

NSPM-7 treats Trump’s adversaries as if they all comprise a single united movement. We should use that to our advantage. We want a critical mass of new defendants across the country to adopt a shared framework to fight their cases. If everyone embraces bold, political publicity and commits to collective defense, we could amass leverage across hundreds of cases.

We want you to take this pledge if you are a political defendant, if you have been contacted by the police or federal agents, if you are under surveillance, or if you believe that any of these things could happen in the foreseeable future. We take this pledge across movements, as a promise to each other.

I pledge:

• To Go Public with My Case: I will not be quiet. I want as large an audience as possible to know about my case.
• To Benefit the Movement: When I talk about my case, I will link it to the larger movement. I will use the platform of my case to spread the ideas and values of the movement, so that many more people can learn what I believe in and be inspired by those ideas as well.
• To Share Lessons Learned: I will talk openly within the movement and to the public about the repressive strategies I learn about in the course of my case, so that everyone can learn how the state is targeting activists.
• To Take the Offense: I will take an aggressive legal and media strategy to beat my case, call the state’s bluff, and politicize others.
• To Pursue Collective Defense: I will prioritize legal strategies leveraging collective defense so that we all beat the charges, together. I will encourage my lawyer to communicate with my co-defendants’ lawyers and other elements of the movement. When possible, I will utilize joint-defense agreements with my co-defendants.
• Not to Denounce Others in the Movement: I will not publicly denounce the tactical choices of anyone accused of actions I don’t personally agree with.
• Not to Cooperate with Law Enforcement: I will not cooperate with any investigatory or prosecutorial arm of the state. If I am pressured to do so, I will refuse. I will go public and tell the movement if law enforcement visits me.

Our goal is to make these ideas hegemonic. We want this pledge to reach far and wide. Print it out and read it with your friends. Paste it up at encampments. Go on the news and recite it. Distribute it at a No Kings march. Read it aloud at a court support event. Tag it across your city. Hang it by your front door. Get creative.

For that purpose, you can print out these handbills:

The NSPM-7 Repression Tracker

The Defendants Pledge gives us a common framework for resisting legal repression; the NSPM-7 Repression Tracker offers a way to monitor repression before charges are brought. The Repression Tracker is for reporting specific state investigation efforts, such as FBI home visits, subpoenas or warrants, and court summons. It collects general information already known to the police, about police activity. This data lets us develop a bird’s-eye view of the state’s investigative strategies across different regions, agencies, and movements. We hope to use this data to analyze trends of repression under NSPM-7 and create reports that are useful and actionable. If the federal government has a centralized NSPM-7 Intelligence Center, our movements should have one, too.

When federal agents show up at your house, it can feel like you are alone with the weight of the world against you. But talking openly about what you are experiencing is a way of inviting others to help you resist the pressure and to prepare themselves as well. Our problems are not individual, but shared. We organize to overcome them together.

Take a look at the NSPM-7 Repression Tracker and the questions it asks. If you have been investigated over the last year, fill it out. Share it with the people you organize with. Keep it in mind for the future. As Black Liberation Army veteran Safiya Bukhari says, “if the police know, the people should know!”

Join Us

The NSPM-7 Defendants Union aims to help defendants mount a collective defense by offering free office hours with movement lawyers; access to trainings; resources on how to set up support committees; a common framework through the Defendants Pledge; and regular media updates and analysis about NSPM-7.

We built this project because we believe that defendants can help movements. Defendants are the ones who can provide real-time information about how NSPM-7 is being used. Going public enables us to metabolize lessons, revise strategies, and take the offensive. The NSPM-7 Defendants Union will serve as a clearinghouse and connection point for those lessons. It allows different movements and political tendencies to understand themselves as part of the same struggle.

Take the pledge. Join the union. Fight back.