A Letter For Karen: Mercy For the Nonviolent January 6th Protestors

Karen and Rob Jones with their grandchildren

I was recently asked to write a letter for Karen Jones, an elderly woman who got mixed up in the January 6th protests.

I think January 6th was awful — and there’s a fair case to be made that I, a cofounder of Clearview, helped identify many of the malefactors that day. I don’t regret doing that.

A focus on the Boomers who were victimized rather than the spy masters who manipulated the least of these on social media or on cable television isn’t where we want to go.

I don’t go for that sort of thing. It’s time to bust the people who paid for the buses, the spies who infiltrated the crowd, the violent people who clashed with police but let’s let the grandmas do community service and work to mending our country’s divide.

Karen already volunteers at a camp for Gold Star children.

If you are so moved by Karen Jones’s story please help her defray the cost of her legal bills.

Dear Judge Howell,

I have known Karen Jones for more than ten years now. She was there for me when I moved across country. She was there for me when my wife left me. She was there for me when I got sick and she’s been there for me when I have been depressed and suicidal. So it’s only fitting that I am here for her now. 

In the interests of justice I am asking you to be merciful as regards her and her husband. 

She has been a surrogate mother to me and to so many people wherever she goes. Though she doesn’t have much, she shares with all who come. And where she goes, her loving, disabled husband is sure to follow. 

I have known Karen to be a model citizen, a generous friend, a loving grandmother. She is a nonviolent, pacifistic free-wheeling hippie, the likes of which we don’t really see all that often these days. She sincerely believes that the country she grew up in is in rough shape and she showed up on January 6th to make her voice known. 

No one could have know how contentious the events of January 6th would turn out to be. When she asked me if I thought she should go I said that I didn’t see anything wrong with nonviolent protest though I didn’t think it would change the outcome. Little did I know how badly January 6th would go. 

I feel tremendous guilt for not encouraging her and her husband to stay home. 

These days Karen and I don’t see eye to eye politically but I have no doubt that her heart was in the right place on January 6th even if her body was in the wrong part of the Capitol. 

As a cofounder of one of the facial recognition companies essential to identifying rioters on January 6th I can tell you that Karen Jones wasn’t among those who came spoiling for a fight. I believe her when she said she came to the Capitol to protest but not to cause a disruption.  Karen has a deep respect for law and order. I’ve seen it myself.

To be sure there are a lot of people who went to the Capitol to cause mischief. She is a deeply curious woman and she has a knack for meeting and chatting with some of the most influential and downtrodden people in her community. 

Were you to give her community service I doubt very much would change as she already volunteers at battered women’s shelters, the Salvation Army, and the community service board in her town. 

She is nonviolent. She is kind. She is opinionated. She is energetic. In another time and place we might have even called her an American original. 

She spends her retirement doing stand up comedy and making people laugh, playing with her grandchildren, and loving her country. 

In the interest of justice I’m asking that you please be compassionate and merciful with Karen Jones, a woman so many of us regard as a second, or mother we never had.

Thank you for your attention,

Charles C. Johnson