For taking pictures? She's charged with a hate crime for taking pictures? Of things that are happening. And publishing them?
Is this America?
this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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The charge is aggravated second degree harassment with hate crime enhancement.
The complaint is that the defendant took pictures of the vandalism of the NYT building, where red paint was splashed on the building along with messages protesting NYT's coverage of Gaza. Think along the lines of, "you're complicit. Etc etc."
The defendant didn't do any vandalising, just "harassed" whom? The NYT? By posting photos or messages to a social media account.
The hate crime part is presumably charged as some kind of antisemitism angle.
Overall this seems like a pretty slam dunk first amendment deal, but I didn't get all the facts. In order to stand up against the 1A, the harassment case has to look more like "yelling fire in a crowded theater" than it does now.
They're trying to claim because they were there when some or all of the vandalism occurred, and took photos of it and republished on their social media the next day, that they were in on it. Which might make sense if they weren't a respected photojournalist.
If y'all aren't calling friendly journos before actions you're doing it all wrong. If a tree falls in a forest and all that.
But like, actual journalists like this one seemingly is.
Pictures of people protesting Israel's ongoing genocide which the USA is funding.
Fucking Nazis doing Nazi shit. If NYT had any guts, they'd condemn this type of shit on the front page and keep up the pressure until they drop the insane charges.
The NYT sold out a long time ago. I wouldn't work for them under the presumption they'd have my back. Shit, I hope everyone is keeping their sources truly anonymous, because I wouldn't put it past the editors to drop dimes to get in better with Trump.
The NYT sold out a long time ago.
Yeah like at least a hundred years ago.
All they were good at back then was talking about the hats people were wearing. They’ve always been a trash rag.
And who do you think is providing the political capital to push this prosecution?
You think they’re building all them shiny new prisons just for immigrants?
So refreshing to read a news article with a video that harmlessly scrolls away and doesn't follow you as you swipe saying "me, me, me, don't read the words, watch me, I'm a video, so I'm the most important thing on the page, don't try and scroll past me. Me me me me me."
Thank you, advocate.com for respecting my wishes about what to look at.
Nobody seems to be talking about how these charges are coming out of the Manhattan District Attorney's office. I wonder who decided to bring these charges.
would the charges be coming from elsewhere in any other situation? i'm not huge into criminal law but that seems standard policy
I'd assumed this was coming from the federal government after Trump's new mandate to go after "left wing domestic terrorists" but instead it's coming from the Democratic leadership of NYC using similar rhetoric to Trump's.
I dont find it all too surprising, but it's yet another bullet point on the list demonstrating that the Democratic party is far more aligned with Republicans than with the American people.
part of me sees it as a "lets set this up so we look like we're complying but the case is too stupid to succeed" thing, but i have been accused of being a tad pollyannaish in the past.
Wait so NYT is bringing the charges against her? Bc she saw it happening and posted a video of it?
That’s how I read it. Sure seems like NYT wouldn’t want to put reporters at risk of criminal charges just for documenting what they see but here we apparently are.
Also hate crime? Against whom, exactly?! Oh right, corporations are people and basically the most protected class (behind, maybe, billionaires).
Its NYT, they would throw everyone the fascists are after into the camps personally to mantian their false narrative of "neutrality".
It's a criminal complaint by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, not the NYT.
But who actually pressed charges? In another story it says the photojournalist had made other posts naming the editor.
Edit: sorry I think this is confusing. I meant a post she made naming an editor had been included in the complaint. Not that they had accused the editor of pressing charges. I added a comment below with a link to the story.
I don't know how it works in NY, but where I am, for charges like "hate crime" it would be the police. You would report some initial incident and the cops would decide whether to press charges and what charges to press (from experience with my brother)
But who reported her as part of the crime?
I don't have access to anymore information than you do. Presumably either the NYT did or the cops found it themselves
Can you link me that story? I know people at the times who would hate this
Wilkinson, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, was charged with one count of Aggravated Harassment in the Second Degree as a Hate Crime. Police cited Wilkinson’s presence as a photographer at an incident of vandalism at the New York Times headquarters in Manhattan on July 30, as well as their alleged reposting of social media comments critical of Times staff members with alleged pro-Israel bias or connections.
The complaint primarily accuses Wilkinson of posting “a threatening social media message targeting the Jewish editor of the New York Times,” as summarized in a court record. Wilkinson allegedly shared screenshots of an X post that read “They hanged newspaper editors at Nuremberg.” The complaint said Wilkinson captioned the screenshots with the phrase “Looking at you [Joseph Kahn],” referring to the Times’s executive editor. Another post attributed to Wilkinson criticized conservative Times opinion columnist Bret Stephens, who has denied that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. Hyperallergic has not independently verified the existence of the posts.
Last month, protesters doused Kahn’s apartment building in red paint in an unrelated action, which prosecutors referenced during Wilkinson’s hearing even though the photographer has not been charged with any involvement in that incident.
How exactly is the sexual orientation of the person in question relevant?
Edit: So the article linked in the post is from a news website about LGBTQ+ people and subjects, so it is relevant to them that this is happening to a queer person (at the very least it justifies them writing about it), hence why that person's sexual orientation is in the title.
Since this forum has the rule that posts pointing to news articles should have the title of the article, that's how here - were there is no reason to care about a person's sexual orientation if what happened to them has no relation to it - we ended up with a post that mentions characteristics of a person which in this context (not an LGBTQ+ news website) are wholly irrelevant for that piece of news.
I think it is relevant given that the authoritarians running the government have made their stance on the LGBTQ community pretty clear. Perhaps this person would have still been arrested had they not been queer, and because we have no way to check whether that would be the case, it is important to keep that possibility in mind. However, it's definitely relevant when we are considering the kinds of people who tend to be targeted when authoritarianism creeps forward.
It's also relevant because I would expect that a queer person may face worse treatment in the justice system. The same could be said for other people who this administration is targeting. For example, if the person was a US citizen who was descended from Mexican immigrants, then I would definitely consider that relevant to their arrest, even if it had nothing to do with their "crime"
That's purely speculative and just fishing for connections (plus this Administration's overt hate is for Transexuals rather than the entire LGBTQ community - I believe there even are overtly Queer people amongst the Republicans - so you're having to reach out to overbroad classifications to try and make it fit your speculation).
If there was an indication that this person had been targeted due to their sexual orientation, then absolutely pointing it out is relevant, otherwise it's just pure, unadulterated speculation (as there is no evidence of it whatsoever) to claim this one detail about this person is what makes all the difference.
It could be it, but then again it could be a lot of other things:
Does this person have immigrant friends? Maybe better point it out.
Brown eyes? Oh, shit, this administration has attacked lots of people who have brown eyes.
How about romantic history? Maybe they shun the romantic approaches of somebody who worked or ended up working with the Feds.
Do they speak Spanish? Have they wrote articles criticizing this administration? Do they loudly support Zohran Mamdani?
All those things are coulds, so why is "sexual orientation" a more relevant "could" than the others?
Sexual Orientation is somewhere in the second or third line amongst all the other "maybe this could have had some influence" things and thus is no more relevant by itself than any of the other hundreds of possibilities unless there are actual indications (not just "it feels like it might to me") that it was important in the decision to charge this person.
It's here in the title because it's in the title of the original news piece, and it's there because that article is in an LGBTQ+ Community news website, were it absolutely is relevant to point out that this person is Queer since it shows a news piece about what's happening to this person might be of special interest for that community because of being a members of said community.
Fascists.
Nazis hate free speech
This Nazi administration is doing everything they can to squash any & every single thing that doesn’t line up with their hateful views.
Who is Kahn? Confusing article.