Three community organizers with PRO Gainesville, a grassroots group, protested a Confederate monument in downtown Gainesville in the summer of 2020, when people were gathering around the country to protest symbols of the Confederacy.
In Denton, a series of protests led to the removal of the Confederate soldier monument from the Courthouse on the Square lawn on June 25, 2020.
A few days after their late August 2020 protest, PRO Gainesville’s Amara Ridge, Torrey Henderson and Justin Thompson, who lives in Denton, were arrested by Gainesville police on misdemeanor charges for obstructing traffic. Police claimed they were ignored when they told the protesters to get out of the roadway.
In August 2022, Thompson and other organizers claimed they had briefly stepped in the road to avoid a big puddle and armed counterprotesters. It took a jury just 15 minutes to convict them and sentence them in to seven days in jail and a $2,000 fine. Their convictions were upheld by the 7th Court of Appeals in Amarillo in November 2023.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas called it a “pivotal case for free speech rights in Texas” in a news release in January.
Now it looks as if the PRO Gainesville community organizers will be serving their seven-day jail sentences for obstructing traffic before the U.S. Supreme Court reviews or decides the merits of the case, which they appealed to the higher court in January.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court denied the ACLU of Texas’ emergency application for a stay on the community organizers’ jail sentences, according to a July 17 email from the ACLU of Texas.
“Three community organizers from Gainesville, Texas will soon be incarcerated for organizing a peaceful civil rights march,” Savannah Kumar, an ACLU staff attorney who’s representing the protesters, said an email to the Denton Record-Chronicle on Wednesday. “... Our clients are devastated about being separated from their families and put in a cell for simply exercising their First Amendment rights.”
The start date for their jail sentences hasn’t been announced yet, according to the ACLU of Texas.
In a message Wednesday to the Record-Chronicle, Thompson said they might have to report to jail as early as next week.
“They couldn’t hang us from a tree for dissenting as they did to Unionists during the Great Hanging of 1864,” Thompson wrote. “Instead, we are sentenced to jail for peacefully protesting the legacy of the Confederacy, with the state and county officials demanding we serve our time now, before the U.S. Supreme Court has time to decide whether to grant a review.
“It serves as a stark reminder of the ongoing battle to uphold justice and freedom in the face of forces that seek to suppress them.”
Both the ACLU of Texas and Thompson hope the Supreme Court will review the case and correct what they consider an injustice.
As the ACLU mentions in its online guide to protesters’ rights, “Your rights are strongest in what are known as ‘traditional public forums,’ such as streets, sidewalks and parks.”
“Organizers of protests should not lose their freedom merely for exercising their fundamental right to free speech,” Kumar stressed in the email Wednesday.