How the Sovereign Citizen Movement Convinces Desperate Parents to Ignore Laws
The message at the seminar was enticing: If you filed documents using peculiar language—invoking, for example, the jurisdictions of the air and water—you didn’t have to wear masks on planes. You could get pulled over for speeding and not show your driver’s license. You could squat in a building and legally own it in just a few months. In fact, many U.S. laws simply didn’t apply to you at all.
“The ultimate goal is to be free, to be the king,” said David Straight, a white-bearded man with a bald eagle on his belt buckle. An audience of 20 sat rapt and took notes as Straight spoke. The cost of attendance was $200. “When the bailiff says, ‘All rise,’” he continued, “I lean back in my chair and put my feet up. I’m the boss.”
Straight is part of a political underground known for unusual courtroom antics. They’re called Sovereign Citizens by the judges and attorneys they antagonize, but they call themselves many names: free men on the land, Natural Persons, or, in Straight’s case, American State Nationals. The gist is that a secret body of laws has been hidden from the people. Harnessing it—typically in strangely worded legal filings but sometimes also in armed confrontations with anyone perceived as a threat—can set you free.
The movement is as decentralized as you’d expect from a group that hates being subject to any government. Some sovereigns are tax protesters, others obsess over capital letters and hyphens in laws. Some sovereigns sport DIY license plates, others peddle get-out-of-debt hacks. There are both white nationalist sovereigns and Black nationalist sovereigns. Recently, a band of the latter, who pledged allegiance to a Moroccan state, engaged the police in an armed, nine-hour standoff on the I-95 in Massachusetts.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/5db8ak/sovereign-citizens-movement-attacking-child-protective-services
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