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California
Political repression plays out state by state — shaped by local institutions, prosecutors, and movements for defense. These are the documented political prisoners and cases the census holds for California.
793Documented
19In custody
706Released
9Awaiting trial
Eras of repression in California
Where California’s entries fall across the census’s historical eras.
1910s 164
1970s 123
1930s 97
1960s 85
2000s 72
1950s 66
Documented cases
793 entries in the census — every one stays in the record, whether the case is open or closed.
F
Fred Mermon
Released
Fred Mermon was one of the railway shopmen convicted in the frame-up that grew out of the 1922 nationwide shop...
C
Claude Merritt
Released
Claude Merritt was imprisoned at San Quentin State Prison during the era of California's criminal-syndicalism...
B
Brian Thomas Mettenbrink
Released
Brian Thomas Mettenbrink is an Anonymous hacktivist who was charged as part of a group who conducted a DDoS at...
R
Robert Middaugh
Released
Robert Middaugh was an anarchist who served a three-year sentence stemming from a clash with police during the...
L
Luther Mincy
Released
Luther Mincy was a CAWIU organizer, one of the eighteen indicted at Sacramento in July 1934 for criminal syndi...
A
Arthur Mini
Released
Arthur Mini was a CAWIU organizer, one of the eighteen indicted at Sacramento in July 1934 for criminal syndic...
N
Norman Mini
Released
Norman Mini was a defendant in the 1935 Sacramento criminal-syndicalism trial of the leaders of the Cannery an...
R
Robert W. Minton
Released
Robert W. Minton, an IWW member from Sacramento, received a five-year prison sentence, which he served in San...
B
Bella Mintz
Released
Bella Mintz was one of the staff of the communist children's summer camp at Yucaipa, California convicted in 1...
M
Mike Miskich
Released
Mike Miskich was a self-identified class-war prisoner writing to the ILD from San Quentin Prison, California i...
E
Edo Mita
Released
Edo Mita was a Japanese-American in Los Angeles whose deportation case, grounded in alleged Communist politica...
O
Omar Abdi Mohamed
Released
Omar Abdi Mohamed was a Somali preacher paid $1,700 a month by the Saudi government to promote Wahhabism at a...
S
Stephen Morgan
Released
Stephen Morgan was a British freelance photographer jailed while documenting Greenpeace’s 2001 Vandenberg anti...
C
Catherine Morris
Released
Catherine Morris is a longtime Los Angeles Catholic Worker — celebrating 50 years at the LA Catholic Worker in...
R
Roger Moss
Released
Roger Moss helped organize the CNVA Everyman anti-nuclear voyage and was imprisoned for contempt in 1962. Walt...
L
Leslie Mullin
Released
White anti-imperialist activist arrested in November 1977 in Los Angeles as one of the PFOC/LA 5 on conspiracy...
M
Michael Murphy
Released
Michael Murphy was a U.S. Army soldier and one of the "Presidio 27" — the stockade prisoners at the Presidio o...
S
Steven James Murphy
Released
Steven James Murphy, age 43, was charged in 2009 with attempted arson, possession of an unregistered destructi...
B
Bill Nandris
Released
Bill Nandris was a British Greenpeace participant jailed in California following the 2001 Vandenberg anti-miss...
F
Francis J. Nash
Released
Francis J. Nash, an IWW member from Sacramento, received a four-year prison sentence for giving testimony in c...
J
Jack Nash
Released
Jack Nash was imprisoned at San Quentin State Prison in the mid-1920s, during the era of California's criminal...
S
Samir Nazareth
Released
Samir Nazareth was a Indian Greenpeace participant jailed in California following the 2001 Vandenberg anti-mis...
J
Jerry Newson
Released
Jerry Newson was a nineteen-year-old Oakland shoeshine worker sentenced to death for a double murder, in a cas...
V
Vinh Tan Nguyen
Released
Vinh Tan Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American age 63, was convicted of misuse of a passport to facilitate an act of i...
Institutions in California
Prisons, jails, and detention centers in California that appear in the census’s case files.
San Quentin State PrisonSan Quentin, California
150 cases
Federal Bureau of Prisons
59 cases
San Quentin Rehabilitation CenterSan Quentin, California
23 cases
Presidio StockadeSan Francisco, California
22 cases
Los Angeles County JailLos Angeles, California
21 cases
Metropolitan Detention Center, Los AngelesLos Angeles, California
14 cases
San Francisco County JailSan Francisco, California
13 cases
Alameda County JailOakland, California
10 cases