There Are 'Making A Murderer' Protests Right Now

On Friday, there was quite a scene outside the Manitowoc County courthouse in Wisconsin, and if that name sounds familiar, you probably already know why ― protesters gathered to call for new trials for Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, the central figures in Netflix's hit true crime documentary Making a Murderer. And if you're curious what it looked like, you're in the right place: Here are some photos from the Manitowoc County protests.

Make no mistake, if you're basing your expectations of the sorts of teeming, thirty-rows-deep protests that you may have recently seen on the news, you'll be disappointed. The on-the-ground movement behind Avery and Dassey doesn't quite have the broader salience or urgency of, say, anti-police violence and racial justice protesters, and that's reflected in the smaller crowd, and less overt tactics ― to this point, nobody is blocking freeways or bridges to protest for the pair's innocence.

But it's still noteworthy. Hitting the streets in support of two convicted murderers, however flimsy you might consider the evidence against them to be, is not a cozy or socially comfortable act. Simply put, there was some tension on the scene in Manitowoc ― the assembled protesters were met with some pushback from counter-protesters who believe that Avery was rightfully convicted of the murder of 25-year-old Teresa Halbach, which made for some clashing, dissonant chants. Here are just some of the sights from the Manitowoc County protests on Friday.

1. "Poor People Lose"

It's basically one of the signature statements in the entire series, which Steven Avery told his mother on the phone after being charged with murder in 2005: "Poor people lose. Poor people lose all the time."

2. Outside The Courthouse

Despite the fact that Avery's case was tried by Calumet County district attorney Ken Kratz, the trial was indeed held inside the Manitowoc County courthouse, with Judge Patrick Willis presiding.

3. "Injustice Anywhere Is Injustice Averywhere"

This little piece of wordplay is derived from a famous, oft-repeated line in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter From a Birmingham Jail": "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

4. Outside The Manitowoc County Sheriff's Office

If you watched Making a Murderer, this building ought to look pretty familiar: the Manitowoc County Sheriff's office. For the record, the sheriff's office is the primary law enforcement agency represented in the documentary ― the Manitowoc County Police Department is a separate entity, as they it stressed on its Twitter account last month.

5. "We All Live On Avery Road"

Avery Road was the name of the street that led to the family's auto salvage yard, where Halbach's abandoned RAV4 was eventually found following her disappearance.

6. Anonymous For Avery?

The hacktivist group Anonymous can't be summed up by the actions of any one person or member. But they've been visibly linked to the Avery case in the weeks following Making a Murderer's release ― members of the group had claimed that they'd be releasing evidence supporting the idea that Avery was framed, although seemingly nothing ever came of it.

7. "Set Brendan Dassey Free"

The name Brendan Dassey sometimes gets short shrift in all the high-profile conversation centered around Making a Murderer, but he wasn't forgotten by the assembled demonstrators. Dassey's advocates have argued that his confession of involvement in Halbach's murder (he was 16 at the time) was false, and the result of a coercive interrogation.

Image: Making a Murderer/Netflix