As Angi DeFelippo looked in her rearview mirror and saw the caravan of police vehicles trailing her, she knew she was in trouble. But she did not think she would spend the next few hours detained at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center hungry, scared and, in her opinion, unlawfully imprisoned.
DeFelippo, 38, was arrested on April 27 for obstructing a roadway as one of the two Dallas May Day Protest organizers. Her fellow organizer, Rick Majumdar, was also arrested for the same offense. A political director for the Tarrant County Central Labor Council, DeFelippo played a crucial role in staging the peaceful protest, which advocated for expanded labor rights and opposed the Trump administration's recent policies.
“I wasn't expecting it to get that aggressive,” she told the Observer. “I wasn't expecting to spend 7 to 8 hours in jail with the option of having dirty tap water and unrefrigerated bologna as meals.”
After the protest ended, DeFelippo got in her car and said she was immediately tailed by six motorcycle cops and two police cars. She wasn’t necessarily surprised by the barrage of lights and sirens, but she wasn’t quite sure exactly what their reasoning was yet. She had exercised her constitutional right to protest, but she wasn’t speeding and didn’t even have a tail light out.
Admittedly, DeFelippo had placed her state registration sticker in the wrong location, preferring it in the top left-hand corner of her windshield rather than in the lower driver's side corner. That’s a misdemeanor charge in Texas, punishable by a $200 fine and a ticket, not by arrest. DeFelippo said officers started questioning her immediately, grasping at straws for an arrest-worthy offense before they landed on obstruction of a highway, a Class B misdemeanor punishable by jail time and thousands of dollars in fines.
A Stomp On Civil Liberties
DeFelippo had never been arrested before. She was quickly carted away to the Lew Sterrett Justice Center, where she was booked and placed in holding before being released on a Personal Recognizance bond, which allows a person to be freed from jail without posting bail under the condition they swear to appear in court. But before she left the jail, an impromptu rally formed after the original protest DeFelippo had helped arrange earlier ended.After the arrest, May Day protestors congregated outside the jail, calling for the release of DeFelippo and Majumdar. DeFelippo says that 30-40 people, some obnoxiously playing trumpets, rallied outside until just before 2 a.m., when she was finally allowed to walk out. There was also an extensive call-in campaign.
“Dallas PD started shutting off their phones, hanging up on people,” she said. “People found a secondary number. They started hanging up on that number. They started blowing up Fort Worth police.”
DeFelippo said she overheard police officers complaining about the protestors outside the justice center, citing it as a reason for tardiness and a general inconvenience.
“All that culminated in them wanting to get us out of there as quickly as possible. It's still a charge. We have June court dates, but we are hoping that these charges are dropped,” she added.
She and Majumdar also hope to receive a public apology from the Dallas Police Department, although the department has yet to contact her.
“We don't feel like these should have been arrest charges,” she said. “The roads were blocked off by [police]. Whether you have a permit or not, it's a First Amendment right. They decided that we could have the streets [due to] the size of our crowd.”
But DeFelippo says the protest started off poorly, and police aggression only increased as the day went on. DeFelippo alleges officers used unjust intimidation tactics, using unmarked vehicles and motorcycles to corral protestors.
“They started stepping up their aggression after their tactics started to work," she says. "As our group got smaller, they got more aggressive. That's when they began blocking the front streets as we were going and yelling at people not to pause, not to stop, move faster.”
DeFelippo says the Dallas Police's aggression was reflective of a general shift in the restriction of civil liberties that has been observed since President Donald Trump retook office.
“The direct targeting of organizers of events is very Gestapo, which shows the way this administration's going. We already had that issue with the attacks on federal workers, Board of Education, EPA workers, letter carriers, the immigrants… It's really showing a trend.”
When reached for comment, the Dallas Police Department did not answer questions specific to DeFelippo's accusations; instead, a spokesperson provided the following statement:
The Dallas Police Department recognizes and supports the First Amendment right to speak freely, including during protests. The Department must balance the rights of those participating in First Amendment activity with the rights of others not involved. During the May Day protest on Sunday, April 27, 2025, some participants stopped in the roadway and obstructed traffic, an offense under the Texas Penal Code, which resulted in arrests after the event concluded.
The officers assigned to the May Day protest are trained in traffic control methods to protect every participant marching as well as uninvolved motorists. Officers gave multiple warnings before and during the march to continue moving and not intentionally stop in the road. Traffic officers proactively block intersections ahead of the march, which is why it is important to keep the march moving so traffic is not severely impacted.
The officers will use all available resources to keep the participants safe and away from the danger posed by marching in the street, including using police cars at the rear of the march to prevent any vehicles from endangering the march, and having traffic officers “leapfrog” past the marching group to block an upcoming intersection. The tactics used are not designed to be intimidating; instead, they are intended to allow people engaging in First Amendment activity to continue doing so safely.
When a person participating in First Amendment activity intentionally stops in a roadway and fails to listen to lawful orders from police to continue moving, they are at risk of being arrested; the same applies for drivers who intentionally block or stop traffic with their cars. Both instances occurred during the May Day incident.
The March Goes On
Before her arrest and eventual release, DeFelippo organized another protest in Fort Worth on May 1, but the events in Dallas led her to take a backseat on May Day. Still, her work isn’t finished yet.“[Rick and I] felt like it would definitely hurt us personally if we were to be arrested and put in jail twice in a week,” she said. “But overall, this is not going to stop us. It would take a lot... The labor movement’s behind me, the community orgs are behind us. As long as people don't get scared, we'll continue organizing around these things.”
Aside from the inconveniences of being arrested and having to go to court to fight charges she doesn’t agree with, DeFelippo’s primary concern is the deeper meaning behind her arrest.
“I feel like [this] was a tactic that they're using to try to make people unsafe and stop protesting what's going on,” she said. “That's exactly what fascism wants. Fascism wins when people stop fighting back, when they stop using their voice, stop working together, when they're too scared to do anything.”
