Flanary Law Firm Walks in San Antonio’s Annual MLK March

Flanary Law Firm Walks in San Antonio’s Annual MLK March

The Flanary Law Firm participated in San Antonio’s 30^th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. March on January 16, 2017.  San Antonio does not host a traditional parade like many other cities, but rather about 300,000 people in the community meet up and walk 2.75 miles down Martin Luther King Drive, ending with a giant celebration.

The Flanary Law Firm draws inspiration from Martin Luther King, Jr. as a champion of non-violent civil disobedience in the efforts to change unjust laws. After all, he was arrested 29 times.

King also suffered under heavy FBI and NSA surveillance for years, as revealed by the Church Committee in 1975. The FBI, under the direction of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, tapped King’s phones. Seeking communists among Kings’ associates and finding none, the FBI expanded their interests into King’s personal life. They used his most personal details against him in an effort to intimidate the civil rights leader and cause him to step down.

The Church Committee’s findings revealed:

        From “late 1963” until his death in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to “neutralize” him as an effective civil rights leader. In the words of the man in charge of the FBI’s “war” against Dr. King, “No holds were barred.”

The FBI gathered information about Dr. King’s plans and activities through an extensive surveillance program, employing nearly every intelligence-gathering technique at the Bureau’s disposal in order to obtain information about the “private activities of Dr. King and his advisors” to use to “completely discredit” them.

. . . .

The FBI mailed Dr. King a tape recording made from microphones hidden in his hotel rooms which one agent testified was an attempt to destroy Dr. King’s marriage. The tape recording was accompanied by a note which Dr. King and his advisors interpreted as threatening to release the tape recording unless Dr. King committed suicide.

. . . .

Indeed, to the FBI he was a potential threat because he might “abandon his supposed ‘obedience’ to white liberal doctrines (non-violence).” In short, a non-violent man was to be secretly attacked and destroyed as insurance against his abandoning non-violence.

Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, 1975−76 (Church Committee), Book II, Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, 29−30 (footnotes omitted).

To think the government is above this kind of behavior today is to be willingly naïve. Black Lives Matter protesters are intensively surveilled and unduly arrested in their quest to hold district attorneys offices and police departments accountable for police shootings. The FBI has deployed “Stingray” devices—capable of sucking up all cell phone data in the area by emulating a cell phone tower—against peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters. On top of it all, as they did back in the 1960’s, law enforcement agencies refuse to be transparent about their spying activities.

The Flanary Law Firm is here for the protesters, freedom fighters, and dissenters. We share your passions and will partner with you if you are unjustly arrested or targeted by the government.