After months of silence on the violent repression of activists organizing against a massive planned police militarization compound in Atlanta known as Cop City, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) has spoken up about the issue, sending a letter this week to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expressing concern over the potentiality of activists’ First Amendment rights being trampled by the…
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Millions of federal workers across the U.S. face stricter ethics requirements than those faced by Supreme Court justices, a new report finds, revealing the large insufficiencies in oversight regarding nine of the most powerful individuals in the country. A Bloomberg analysis published this week reveals that at least 2 million U.S. federal workers, of which there are roughly 2.9 million in total…
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On Tuesday, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) lifted the veil on Republicans’ war on “woke,” saying aloud what the GOP won’t admit: that their use of the word as a pejorative is just a thin disguise for their contempt toward Black people. In a House Oversight Committee hearing about environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment — a longtime milquetoast corporate initiative that’s become…
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In the latest sign that the climate crisis is here and already endangering people across the world, much of the eastern half of the U.S. woke up on Wednesday morning to find their homes blanketed in smoke as wildfires in Canada create apocalyptic scenes in major cities like New York. Wildfire smoke swept across the Northeast, Midwest and South — even stretching as far west as New Mexico — on…
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Conservatives and the far right have been waging a relentless battle to attack the LGBTQ community that has gained steam in recent years — but, despite these often frightening smear campaigns, polling has found that support for gay marriage among the public remains at an all time high. According to Gallup polling conducted last month, 71 percent of Americans say that same sex couples should…
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Merck announced on Tuesday that it is suing the government over a recently approved plan to allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, aiming to stop one of the nation’s first efforts to take a small step toward lowering sky-high drug prices in the U.S. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Washington on Tuesday, claims that the plan is unconstitutional and calls it a “sham” and…
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A state school board in Oklahoma has voted to approve what would be the nation’s first publicly funded religious school in a move that opponents, including the state’s attorney general, are saying is blatantly unconstitutional. The application to form the school, an online public charter school that would serve K-12, was submitted by the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma. The purpose of forming the…
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A prominent civil rights group is calling for a federal investigation into Georgia police’s arrest of three lead organizers for the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, a bail fund that has helped in protesters’ fight against Cop City, raising deep concerns about the state’s seeming quest to paint protesters against Cop City as “terrorists.” In a statement released on Friday, Legal Defense Fund (LDF) said…
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Far right Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has signed an industry-backed bill that will allow Florida landlords to charge renters a monthly nonrefundable fee in lieu of a deposit that opponents of the bill say is predatory and meant to exploit renters. The bill, H.B. 133, places no cap on the fee — which critics have compared to junk fees — meaning that landlords could charge as much as they choose.
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New polling reveals that a majority of Americans recognize the growing crisis of low teacher pay and poor treatment despite a rabid and coordinated right wing quest to vilify and attack teachers across the country. Last month, NPR/Ipsos surveyed two groups: 1,316 U.S. adults, and 510 U.S. grade school teachers. The poll found that nearly 7 in 10 Americans — 69 percent — say that public school…
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Five members of the Senate Democratic caucus voted against the debt ceiling package negotiated between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) and the White House on Thursday, condemning cruel provisions in the bill aimed at harming the nation’s most economically vulnerable populations. The bill passed Thursday evening 63 to 36, with Senators John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania), Ed Markey (D…
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This story originally appeared in Truthout on May 31, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
Law enforcement officers in Georgia have arrested three top organizers behind a bail fund in Atlanta that has been aiding protesters against Cop City.
Atlanta police arrested the organizers, the CEO, chief financial officer and the secretary for the group behind the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, at their homes on Wednesday morning. According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), the three were charged with money laundering and charity fraud.
Activists called the arrests an escalation in the state’s attempt to crush the Stop Cop City movement, with participants being hit with increasingly harsh charges.
“This is a major escalation — they’re arresting those who defend the arrested,” wrote Atlanta organizer Micah Herskind. “The implications of these arrests is that not only can you not protest, but you cannot defend those who are arrested for protesting. There is no first amendment in Atlanta.”
In a statement, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) spoke as though the organizers and other anti-Cop City activists were already found guilty of their charges from the GBI. He said that he was “proud” to have arrested the “criminals” who he says “facilitated and encouraged domestic terrorism,” referring to terrorism charges against Cop City protesters.
The city of Atlanta is pursuing a $90 million plan backed by both Republicans like Kemp and Democratic Mayor Andre Dickens to build an 85-acre police militarization compound in a forest in the area. If built, Cop City would be the nation’s largest police training compound, and activists say that it would only worsen brutality by local police, as evidenced by the violent response to nonviolent protesters — all while razing a forest to do so.
The Twitter account for the Defend the Atlanta Forest/Stop Cop City movement, pointed out that the Atlanta Solidarity Fund has aided in lawsuits against the Atlanta Police Department over its arrests of a journalist and protesters in the movement. “This is retaliatory,” the group wrote.
Activists have also pointed out that the GBI’s statement about the arrest, as well as Kemp’s, seem to suggest that the state is preparing to use Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charges against the bail fund, which the Atlanta Solidarity Fund has been predicting for months.
The organizers have said that the state appears to be creating a “flimsy narrative” that the group is a criminal organization. So far, over 40 activists have been charged with domestic terrorism for protesting the compound.
The Atlanta Solidarity Fund has been crucial in the fight against Cop City, helping to provide support for protesters hit with bail amounts that have sometimes exceeded $300,000, according to one of the arrested organizers.
“This is targeting of organizers and movements by the police and the state,” said activist Kamau Franklin, with Community Movement Builders, in a statement. “Bail funds have been a part of organizing the Civil Rights movement and labor movement. We will continue to fight back against cop city and the political arrest of our friends and comrades.”
Activists have long maintained that the charges lobbed onto anti-Cop City activists are bogus and that law enforcement are creating false narratives in order to justify the arrests.
Backing up activists’ argument is the fact that police have already been caught lying about one of the most crucial and inhumane actions taken against protesters so far: the killing of Manuel Paez Terán, whose chosen name was Tortuguita, in January. Though police claimed that Tortuguita shot first, a DeKalb County autopsy found that there was no gunpowder residue on Tortuguita’s hands when police shot them 57 times, killing them.
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Law enforcement officers in Georgia have arrested three top organizers behind a bail fund in Atlanta that has been aiding protesters against Cop City. Atlanta police arrested the organizers, the CEO, chief financial officer and the secretary for the group behind the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, at their homes on Wednesday morning. According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI)…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) released a report on Tuesday finding that the U.S. is quickly hurtling toward a child care cliff that will plunge the country even deeper into its child care crisis come September unless Congress acts. The report, released by Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee chair Sanders and member Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), finds that both families and…
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Ahead of Wednesday’s House vote on the debt ceiling deal, progressive lawmakers have introduced a pair of amendments to remove provisions that would hurt the nation’s most economically vulnerable populations. On Tuesday, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) filed an amendment to the legislation that would strike a provision buried in the bill that would restart student loan payments at the end…
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The debt ceiling deal struck between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) throws student debtors under the bus by forcing student loan payments to restart at the end of this summer with recourse for the presidential administration. The bill mandates that the ongoing student loan payment pause, which has been in place since March 2020, will end on August 30…
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As House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) scrambles to win the support of far right members of the Republican caucus for his debt ceiling deal, it is becoming increasingly clear that McCarthy may have to rely on support of Democrats to pass the package. Roughly 20 House Republicans have announced their opposition to the bill since it was released over the weekend…
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Amid the longest period in Congressional history without any raising of the federal minimum wage, new polling finds that the vast majority of voters not only support raising the minimum wage, but also nearly tripling it. According to polling by Data for Progress released last week, 74 percent of voters support raising the federal minimum wage to $20 an hour — almost three times the current level…
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The Supreme Court issued a ruling on Thursday that severely curtails the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ability to regulate water pollution in the latest of the far right justices’ crusade against environmental regulations. In a 5-4 decision, with the three liberal justices and Brett Kavanaugh disagreeing, the Court ruled that the EPA’s jurisdiction over protecting the “waters of the…
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A staggering majority of the U.S. federal discretionary budget went toward so-called defense and other militaristic and carceral programs in the past year, a new report reveals, as U.S. defense spending continues to reach new heights. According to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) released on Wednesday, the U.S. spent $1.1 trillion of the discretionary budget on militarism and…
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) has condemned Republicans’ brinkmanship with the quickly approaching debt limit after GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz (Florida) openly admitted on Tuesday that his party is approaching the issue as a “hostage” negotiation. Political commentators and lawmakers have long observed that the Republican Party’s strategy toward the debt ceiling — of demanding that Democrats…
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One of the most comprehensive data sets on abortions yet released after the fall of Roe v. Wade, released Tuesday, has revealed that legal abortions fell by over 6 percent in the six months following the ruling as thousands of people have been forced to resort to illegal means or else put their bodies on the line as states across the country banned abortion. The research, released by the Society…
Horrifying new data shows that gun deaths among U.S. children have surged at an unprecedented rate in recent years, reaching an all-time high as conservatives have worked to loosen the country’s gun laws at a record pace. Between 2019 and 2021, the number of children under the age of 19 killed by guns increased by an astounding 46 percent when adjusted for population changes, according to a Pew…
Democratic governors in three states have announced that their states will be stockpiling abortion pills after a far right federal judge issued a sweeping ruling on Friday aimed at taking mifepristone — a drug used for abortions and management of Cushing’s syndrome — off the shelves nationwide. On Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced that the state has negotiated a contract to obtain…
Last week, Republicans in the North Dakota Senate killed a bill that would have expanded a program to provide children living close to the federal poverty line access to meals at school for free. The vote was met with outcry over its cruelty, as one Senate Republican asked, “Is [children going hungry] the problem of the state of North Dakota?” This week, 13 of the Republicans who voted to kill the…
Billionaire Republican megadonor Harlan Crow rocketed into infamy on Thursday after an explosive ProPublica investigation found that he has been giving lavish gifts to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for decades now, as the Court, influenced by people like Crow, lurches further to the right. But, as a search of public donation information shows, Crow has also been quietly funding another…
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Calls for conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be impeached erupted again on Thursday after a bombshell report from ProPublica unveiled ethics violations at a level that experts say has never before been seen within the Supreme Court. According to an explosive investigation published by ProPublica Thursday morning, Clarence Thomas has accepted a huge number of lavish vacations…
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On Wednesday, Michigan became the first state to formally repeal an abortion ban after the fall of Roe v. Wade. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) signed a bill on Wednesday afternoon that the state legislature passed last month, repealing crucial parts of a nearly century-old abortion ban in the state. The bill revokes the section of a 1931 abortion law that makes it a felony in nearly all cases to…
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The vast majority of the Senate Republican caucus united last week to introduce a bill that would permanently repeal the estate tax, targeting one of the few provisions in the U.S. tax code that solely affects the richest 0.1 percent of Americans. Led by Sen. John Thune (South Dakota), the top Republican on the Senate Subcommittee on Taxation and Internal Revenue Service Oversight…
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