It’s unlikely that Paul and Scottie know each other or have even heard of each other. Paul is an anti-racist skinhead in Brisbane, Australia; Scottie is a hip-hop MC and Black Lives Matter activist in Los Angeles, USA. But what brings them together here in this update is that they both physically stood up to violent fascists in their communities; got arrested by the police for doing so; and are free today thanks in part to the intervention of The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund.
We didn’t report on Paul’s situation previously (for reasons explained below). Paul is a SHARP skinhead in Brisbane, Australia and the front man for Permanent Revolution. A while back, a few of the local SHARPs were having a quiet beer at a local venue when a concerned staff member told them that a pack of Proud Boys (yes, they’ve spread down there, too!) were outside. The venue had banned Proud Boys and other hate groups and staff had been assaulted by members of the far right in the past. Paul and his mates wentout to have a, um, honest and frank discussion with the Piss Boys, which ended in Paul being done up on assault charges.
Around that point, the Defence Fund stepped in to make sure Paul could afford a decent lawyer to represent him in court (we didn’t post about at the time because we didn’t want our support to interfere negatively in the outcome of his case). Unfortunately, Paul was forced to plead guilty to some of the assault charges but in his sentencing earlier this month, Paul got off with a community service sentence instead of jail time (and tbh, Paul probably would’ve volunteered to do community service anyways!).
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles:
Scottie Tripn is a well-known and well-respected Black Lives Matter supporter and antifascist activist. On January 6 of this year, MAGA chuds in LA decided to attack people downtown while their friends went to DC to try to overthrow the democratically-elected US government. Scottie was there to help protect the people the chuds were trying to target and in the fracas, one chud fucked around by spraying him with bear mace and found out. Scottie came out of that on top only to have LAPD clowns hit him up with bullshit charges after the fray.
Scottie needed thousands to hire decent defense lawyers and the Defence Fund were among the first to step up and do what we could to make sure that happened. This week, that support & solidarity paid off!
Paul and Scottie are anti-fascists #9 & #10 who’ve avoided a prison sentence this year thanks in part to receiving funds from us to hire good legal counsel. We haven’t kept track but off-hand we could probably point to a dozen others over the years that could say the same thing! What’s the lesson here? Our project of international anti-fascist solidarity keeps anti-fascists in their communities – where they belong – instead of rotting in prison! That’s as good a reason as any for you to make a contribution to the Defence Fund today!
The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund 
You must be logged in to post a comment.