About Eras
Abolitionism & the Slave Power (1850–1861)
The Haymarket Affair & the Anti-Anarchist Era (1886–1903)
The First Red Scare (1917–1920)
World War II: Japanese Incarceration & the First Smith Act Trials (1941–1945)
McCarthyism (1947–1957)
COINTELPRO (1956–1971)
The Vietnam War Era (1964–1975)
The American Indian Movement & Wounded Knee (1973–1977)
The Reagan Era (1981–1989)
The Anti-Globalization Movement (1999–2001)
The War on Terror (2001–)
The Green Scare (2005–2010)
Occupy Wall Street (2011–2012)
Ferguson & the Movement for Black Lives (2014–2016)
Standing Rock & the #NoDAPL Water Protectors (2016–2017)
J20: The Inauguration Day Prosecutions (2017)
The George Floyd Uprising (2020)
The Stop Cop City Era (2022–)
The Trump-Era Crackdown on Palestine Solidarity (2024–)
Civil Rights & Black Power
ERAS
Repression in the United States arrives in waves, and each wave shapes a generation of political prisoners. The period that produced a person's case usually predicts the framework used to prosecute them — the same conspiracy and seditious-libel doctrine that imprisoned Wobblies in 1918 was reapplied to Black Panthers in 1969, Plowshares activists in 1981, ALF defendants in 2006, and Stop Cop City defendants in 2024.