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Category: Protest

  • Cody Bloomfield on Anti-Activist Terrorism Charges

     

    Time: Georgia Is Using a Domestic Terrorism Law Expanded After Dylann Roof Against ‘Cop City’ Protesters

    Time (5/4/23)

    This week on CounterSpin: Do you care about environmental degradation? Then you care about Cop City. Do you care about violent overpolicing of Black and brown communities? Then you care about Cop City. Do you care about purportedly democratic governance that overrides the actual voice of the people? Then you care about Cop City.

    But be aware: Your concern about Cop City, and its myriad impacts and implications, may get you labeled a domestic terrorist. The official response to popular resistance to the militarized policing facility being created on top of the forest in Atlanta, Georgia, is an exemplar of how some officials fully intend to bring all powers to which they have access, and to create new powers, to treat anyone who stands in opposition to whatever they decide they want to do as enemies of the state, deserving life-destroying prison sentences. So if your thoughts about Cop City don’t motivate you, think about your right to protest anything at all.

    We’ll talk about anti-activist terrorism charges with Cody Bloomfield, communications director at Defending Rights & Dissent.

          CounterSpin230519Bloomfield.mp3

     

    Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent media coverage of Israel’s “crisis of democracy.”

          CounterSpin230519Banter.mp3

     

    The post Cody Bloomfield on Anti-Activist Terrorism Charges appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Inside climate activists’ uneasy relationship with ‘net-zero’

    In the premier episode of Apple TV’s climate show, Extrapolations, it’s 2037 and Earth is in turmoil. Global temperatures have reached record highs. Wildfires rage on every continent. People lack clean drinking water, while a stone-faced billionaire hoards patents to life-saving desalination technology. 

    People are understandably upset. Because it’s nearly a decade and a half in the future, protests now include towering holograms and desperate calls to limit global warming — which has long since blown past 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) — to  2 degrees C. One thing is eerily familiar, though: In one scene, demonstrators chant “net-zero now!” — a catchphrase with origins at the end of the last decade. 

    To some, this is a surprising slogan to hear today, let alone in 2037. Although the concept of global net-zero is rooted in climate science, today’s carbon neutrality pledges from individual governments and corporations have been criticized in some quarters as a “con,” because they allow polluters to continue emitting greenhouse gases. The carbon offset projects that are supposed to neutralize all those residual emissions are often questionable, if not a sham.

    “If today’s version of net-zero is still the rallying cry for climate action 15 years from now, we are in big, big trouble,” said Rachel Rose Jackson, director of climate research and policy for the nonprofit Corporate Accountability. “I hope we’re headed down a different path.”

    Just what that path looks like, however, remains a matter of debate.

    The concept of net-zero is rooted in the climate science of the early 2000s. Between 2005 and 2009, a series of research articles showed that global temperatures would continue rising alongside net emissions of carbon dioxide. The “net” acknowledged the role of long-term processes like deep-ocean carbon uptake, in which the seas absorb the pollutant from the air. These processes occur over decades, even centuries.

    The term “net-zero” doesn’t appear in the Paris Agreement of 2015, but it was at about that time that it went mainstream. Based on recommendations from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, countries agreed in Article 4 of the accord to achieve a “balance” between sources and sinks of greenhouse gas emissions during the second half of the century.

    So far, so good; this is relatively noncontroversial. “Global net-zero is nonnegotiable if you’re serious about climate targets,” said Sam Fankhauser, a professor of climate change economics and policy at the University of Oxford. Where things start to skew, however, is when individual countries and businesses adopt net-zero targets for themselves. “That’s where you leave the science and get into the realm of policy and opinion,” Fankhauser said.

    Sweden became the first country to legislate a midcentury net-zero goal in 2017. Since then, that target has exploded in popularity, almost to the exclusion of other pledges. Some 92 percent of the global economy is now covered by a patchwork of such commitments, made by entities including 130 countries and 850 of the planet’s largest publicly-traded companies. 

    Protesters hold signs urging keeping fossil fuels in the ground
    Protesters at a 2022 conference in Belgium titled #GoNetZeroEnergy, attended by companies including Total, Shell, BP, and Saudi Aramco.
    Philip Reynaers / Photonews via Getty Images

    Fankhauser considers that good news. “None of those firms or organizations had any targets at all before, so they’re moving in the right direction,” he said, although he added that there’s lots of room for improvement in the integrity of those promises. A global analysis published last year found that 65 percent of the largest corporate net-zero targets don’t meet minimum reporting standards, and only 40 percent of municipal targets are reflected in legislation or policy documents.

    Others, however, have harsher words for something they consider little more than “rank deception” from big polluters. With heads of state and fossil fuel companies pledging net-zero yet planning to expand oil and gas reserves, Jackson said the logic behind carbon neutrality has been “completely lit on fire” by greenwashing governments and corporations. “They have entirely co-opted the net-zero agenda,” she said. 

    At the heart of the issue lies that little word, “net,” and the offsets it implies. When companies or governments can’t get their climate pollution to zero, they can pay for offset projects to either remove carbon from the atmosphere or prevent hypothetical emissions — like by protecting a stand of trees that otherwise would have been razed. Under ideal conditions, a third party evaluates these offsets and converts them into “credits” polluters can use to claim that some of their emissions have been neutralized.

    The problem, however, is these offsets are too often bogus — the market for them is “honestly kind of a Wild West,” said Amanda Levin, interim director of policy analysis for the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council. For projects claiming to avoid emissions, it’s difficult to prove the counterfactual: Would a given forest really have been cut down without the offset project? And carbon removal schemes like those based on afforestation — planting trees that will store carbon as they grow — might last only a few years if a disease or forest fire comes along.

    Levin said polluters too often use poorly regulated and opaque “junk offsets” to delay the absolute emissions reductions required to combat climate change. Although the IPCC includes offsets in nearly all of its pathways to keep global warming well below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), experts agree those offsets should be considered a last resort used only when it’s no longer possible to further cut climate pollution. 

    “Net-zero does not mean that we don’t have to take steps to directly reduce our emissions,” Levin said. 

    Many, many others — from environmental groups to scientists to policymakers — agree. Where opinions differ, however, is what to do about it. Many net-zero critiques are paired with suggestions for reform, like a 2022 report from a U.N. panel that blasted nongovernmental net-zero pledges as “greenwash.” It recommended tighter guidelines on reporting and transparency, as well as new measures to ensure the integrity of offsets.

    Aerial view of a forest fire
    The Hennessey Fire in California, where wildfires have burned more than 80 percent of the state’s 100-year “buffer pool” of forests designated as carbon offsets.
    Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

    Carbon Market Watch, a European watchdog and think tank, takes a slightly different approach. In a February letter to members of the European Parliament, the organization called for a total ban on “carbon neutrality” claims for companies’ products, arguing that such boasts give consumers the false idea that business as usual can continue without adverse impacts on the climate or environment. 

    “To say that you neutralize your climate impact by investing in an avoided deforestation program halfway across the world? That’s not scientifically sound,” said Lindsay Otis, a policy expert for Carbon Market Watch. “It deters from real mitigation efforts that will keep us in line with our Paris Agreement goals.”

    To Nilles, it’s not necessarily offset projects that should be banned. Although she acknowledged that many are problematic, she said mitigation efforts like reforestation can have “a potential real-world benefit,” and it would be a mistake to stop funding them. Instead, she considers this a communication problem: Rather than allowing companies to claim carbon mitigation projects cancel out residual emissions, Carbon Market Watch favors a “contribution claim” model, in which polluters advertise only their financial support for such projects. Some carbon credit sellers like Myclimate are embracing a version of that model, as is the global payment service Klarna.

    Carbon Market Watch distinguishes between “carbon neutrality” claims, which describe companies’ products and current environmental performance, and “net-zero” claims about what companies say they’ll do in the future, as in “net-zero by 2050.” It says the latter are still permissible, but only if backed by a detailed plan to quickly drive down emissions and not offset them.

    On its face, this is similar to an alternative benchmark that has gained popularity in recent years: “real zero,” which involves the rapid elimination of all fossil fuel production and greenhouse gas emissions without the use of offsets. At least two major companies, the utilities NextEra and National Grid, have eschewed their own net-zero goals in favor of real zero. However, some environmental groups — including a coalition of 700 organizations from around the world — take the concept further. They see real zero as a whole new lens with which to view equitable climate action, one that rejects a single-minded, technocratic focus on greenhouse gas emissions. 

    “The real zero framing puts at the center not just the urgency” of climate mitigation, “but also fairness,” said Jackson,the policy director at Corporate Accountability. She and others say real zero is an opportunity to reorient the international climate agenda around new priorities, like funneling climate finance to the developing world and protecting Indigenous land rights. It also sets faster decarbonization timelines for the biggest historical polluters and demands that they pay reparations to communities most harmed by the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

    It’s a far-reaching and ambitious agenda, and its calls for climate justice are broadly supported by experts and policy wonks. Still, some push back, returning to the idea of net-zero as a global necessity. 

    Wind turbine and coal plants
    A lone wind turbine set against cooling towers of coal-fired power plants in Germany.
    Sean Gallup / Getty Images

    “While real zero is a valuable guiding light, net-zero is still a worthy and necessary goal,” said Jackie Ennis, a policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Her modeling shows that even the most ambitious carbon mitigation scenarios will require offsets for the hardest-to-abate corners of the economy, which she defined to include waste management and animal agriculture. She pointed to work from the independent Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market to define criteria that define a “high-quality” offset — including whether it contributes to sustainable development goals and doesn’t violate the rights of Indigenous peoples.

    According to Fankhauser, the “gold standard” here is geological removal, in which carbon is drawn out of the atmosphere and locked up in rock formations. This technology can’t yet handle even a tiny fraction of the planet’s overall carbon emissions, but experts say it could one day enable offsets that are less prone to double-counting and more likely to sequester carbon for the long haul.

    Fankhauser suggested a sort of middle ground between real and net-zero, in which governments set different decarbonization targets for different sectors: net-zero for those like shipping and steel-making for which zero-carbon alternatives aren’t yet viable, and the total elimination of emissions for the rest of the economy. Some jurisdictions already do something like this. The economy-wide net-zero target set by New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act prohibits offsets for the power sector and caps them at 15 percent for the state’s overall emissions by 2050. That means 85 percent of Empire State emissions reductions must come from actually reducing emissions. 

    “That’s a perfect example of how policymakers are trying to constrain the use of offsets so they’re being used where it’s most valuable,” said Levin, with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

    More global efforts, however, are hard to come by, likely because there’s so much contention around the net-zero agenda. One thing people seem to agree on, however, is that the status quo is not working. Although thousands of companies and governments have pledged to reach net-zero sometime in the next several decades, the planet is still on track for dangerous levels of global warming — 2.8 degrees C (5 degrees F), to be precise. That’s more than enough to “cook the fool out of you,” as one protester in Extrapolations so eloquently put it.

    “The current trajectory is one of failure,” Jackson told Grist, though she said it’s not too late to turn things around. “The money exists, the technology exists, the capacity exists — it’s only the lack of political will. If we’re brave enough to alter course and redirect toward what we know is needed, then a totally different world is possible.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Inside climate activists’ uneasy relationship with ‘net-zero’ on Apr 11, 2023.

  • Anti-Protest Laws Are Not About Safety, They Are About Silencing Dissent

    At least 42 people who have protested the building of an 85-acre, $90 million police training facility in Atlanta, Georgia, have been charged with domestic terrorism. While demonstrators always fear being criminalized for exercising their constitutional right to stage protests, being charged with domestic terrorism has a particularly chilling effect. The move to charge protesters with domestic…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Radical eco-activists have made it into mainstream fiction. Is reality next?

    It’s hard to think of something more wholesome than gardening. But the New Zealand gardening collective at the heart of Birnam Wood, a new political thriller by the Booker Prize-winning author Eleanor Catton, have a rebellious streak. The guerrilla gardeners trespass on unused land to grow carrots, cabbages, strawberries, and other crops. They tap private spigots and snipe the occasional tool from a shed in a wealthy neighborhood, imagining themselves as environmental revolutionaries.

    Bookshelves are beginning to teem with radical environmentalists. In the sci-fi writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, a group called the Children of Kali target conspicuous “carbon burners,” knocking jets out of the sky and sinking yachts. A purported ecoterrorist also drives the plot of the mystery Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer, sending the main character on a risky mission into the world of wildlife trafficking. Then there’s Stephen Markley’s novel The Deluge, released in January, where a group of climate radicals called 6Degrees tries to avoid detection by the surveillance state as they instigate attacks on oil and gas infrastructure.

    That eco-sabotage has captured so many authors’ imaginations seems to reflect a broader frustration with governments’ failure to rein in carbon emissions — a feeling that decades of peaceful protest weren’t enough, and the world is out of options. It has propelled climate fiction, once a niche genre, into the mainstream. Think of The Overstory by Richard Powers, a sweeping novel that follows activists who seek to save trees at all costs, employing human barricades, tree-sitting, and arson. It won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and generated glowing praise from Bill Gates as well as Barack Obama, who said it “changed how I thought about the Earth and our place in it.” 

    History suggests that fictional stories about eco-sabotage, sometimes called “monkeywrenching” after Edward Abbey’s book of the same name, could inspire people to try something similar in the real world.

    “The world right now is ripe for radical activism,” said Dana Fisher, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland. Last week, a report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the risks from climate change — both present and future — were even more severe than previously thought. In the last year alone, heavy rainfall submerged a third of Pakistan with massive floods and China endured a heat wave more intense and longer-lasting than any in recent history. The panel of scientists called for a “substantial reduction” in the use of fossil fuels, with the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres declaring that the world needed a “quantum leap in climate action.” 

    Yet earlier this month, the Biden administration approved the Willow project, a ConocoPhillips oil drilling operation that could release up to 260 million metric tons of carbon over its lifetime. For progressive groups in the United States who spent recent years working with the Biden administration to pass the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, the single largest climate package in the country’s history, it felt like a betrayal — one that might lead to a shift in tactics.

    “I mean, everybody knows that we are nowhere near where we need to be,” Fisher said. “And so the natural progression is you’re going to see folks, particularly young people, rise up.” 

    A stack of books includes The Long Take, Milkman, Washington Black, Everything Under, The Mars Room, and The Overstory.
    The Booker Prize shortlist of six books including The Overstory are arranged during a press conference in London, September 20, 2018. Jack Taylor / Getty Images

    Apocalyptic storylines have long dominated environmental fiction — including Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road — a frame that’s tailor-made to ramp up concern about planetary crises. “I think that a lot of climate fiction has been perhaps stuck in this mold of cautionary tales, of bad climate futures,” said Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, an English professor at Colby College in Maine.

    Now reality is doing the work that fiction once did. With a quorum of Americans sufficiently frightened about the world’s trajectory — a full quarter of the population is now “alarmed” about climate change — writers are branching out. Authors are modeling for readers a transition from “apathetic awareness” to “meaningful action” by showing different kinds of political engagement, Schneider-Mayerson said.

    That might explain the variety of unconventional activism in recent novels, such as the guerrilla gardeners of Birnam Wood and the utopian commune in Allegra Hyde’s Eleutheria (2022). Hyde’s novel follows a woman who joins a camp of eco-warriors in the Bahamas, after she read a guide to fighting climate change called Living the Solution. “I felt like a lot of climate fiction that I was encountering was purely apocalyptic,” Hyde told Grist. “But I wrote this because I wanted to use fiction as a space to imagine other possibilities, imagine utopian possibilities, and maybe open up that imaginative space for people.”

    Eleutheria was inspired in part by The Great Derangement, a nonfiction book by the Indian author Amitav Ghosh published in 2016 that bemoaned the lack of serious literature about climate change, especially outside of science fiction, at the time. “I think it is a real call to arms to fiction writers to recognize how storytelling can and does shape how we live our lives in the real world,” Hyde said.

    Another inflection point for climate fiction was the widespread popularity of The Overstory, the 512-page novel that brought attention to the ways trees communicate and wound up as a global bestseller. “It wasn’t hived off into the usual silos of climate change or speculative fiction, but was treated as a mainstream novel,” Ghosh told the Guardian in 2020, noting that he’s seen an “outpouring of work in this area” since the book’s publication.

    Monkeywrenching is also spilling over into film. The movie How to Blow Up a Pipeline, coming out next month, is inspired by the Swedish writer Andreas Malm’s book of the same name, a manifesto that encourages sabotage and critiques the pacifism of the climate movement. The film adaption takes that idea and turns it into a work of fiction, following a group of disillusioned young people on a heist to sabotage an oil pipeline. The trailer shows them making bombs and features dramatic background music punctuated by klaxons. “They will defame us and claim this was violence or vandalism,” one activist says. “But this was justified.”

    Previous films have tended to “pathologize” activists who destroy property, psychoanalyzing them to figure out what was wrong with them, Schneider-Mayerson said. “I think maybe there’s a sense that, like, you can kind of touch these topics, but you can never endorse it.” On the other hand, How to Blow Up a Pipeline ends with “a wink and a nudge,” according to an early review of the film. “You can almost hear the movie say that the sabotage doesn’t need to stop when the credits roll,” Edward Ongweso Jr wrote in Vice.

    The idea that people might take a cue from the movie isn’t far-fetched, experts say. “I can just say for sure that there are a whole bunch of dissatisfied young people around the country,” said Fisher, the sociologist. “And if they start watching movies about blowing up pipelines, what will that do?”

    Fiction has inspired radical activism before. In 1975, the novelist Edward Abbey published The Monkey Wrench Gang (the origin of the term “monkeywrenching”). The book’s eco-warriors destroy property in an effort to save the wilderness of the Southwest, pouring sand in the gas tanks of bulldozers and plotting to destroy dams. Abbey divined that his book might generate some copycats. “This book, though fictional in form, is based strictly on historical fact,” he wrote in its epigraph. “Everything in it is real or actually happened. And it all began just one year from today.”

    It took a little longer than Abbey had predicted, but in 1979, a group of hardcore conservationists founded Earth First!, inspired by The Monkey Wrench Gang. The group became infamous for direct action to stop logging and dams, and for its guerrilla-style stunts that verged on theater. In the spring of 1981, Earth First! activists unrolled a huge black plastic tarp down the side of the Glen Canyon Dam, inspired by a similar action from the book, as Abbey looked on.

    There’s been a resurgence of interest in the radical tactics of the 1980s and ’90s. The podcast Timber Wars follows forest protests in the Pacific Northwest, and another called Burn Wild documents the story of the Earth Liberation Front — a group of monkeywrenchers that came to top the FBI’s list of “domestic terror” threats. “How far is too far to stop the planet burning?” asks the podcast’s host, Leah Sottile, drawing parallels to the modern climate movement.

    Today, protesting a pipeline can come with a lengthy prison sentence. States have passed laws with harsh penalties for blocking pipelines and other “critical” infrastructure, with Utah recently becoming the 19th state to do so. The wave of state laws proliferated after the Dakota Access pipeline protests at Standing Rock in 2016.

    While climate activists currently engage almost exclusively in peaceful civil disobedience and direct action, when law enforcement agencies mount a “repressive response,” the situation can turn violent, Fisher said. For example, the protests at Standing Rock were generally peaceful, only turning violent after security guards began threatening demonstrators with dogs and police began using water bombs and tear gas.

    To be sure, disruptive activism also runs the risk of distracting from the issues at hand, Schneider-Mayerson said. Last fall, protesters with the group Just Stop Oil threw a can of Heinz tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting, which was protected by glass, to draw attention to the climate crisis. Instead, the conversation mostly revolved around whether the activists were helping or hurting the cause. 

    Still, these new novels, by casting radical activists in a sympathetic light, might alter what people think of as an appropriate response to global warming. “I wanted to comment on the fact that the way we talk about the environment and activism has changed because activists are seen as the enemy by governments,” VanderMeer, the author of Hummingbird Salamander, said in an interview when the book came out in 2021. 

    By showing what kinds of action are possible, storytellers “can shift the Overton window a bit in terms of which tactics are considered legitimate and acceptable,” Schneider-Mayerson said. With scientists calling for massive disruptions to the status quo to minimize the destruction of climate change, he argues that “radical” environmentalism isn’t so radical anymore.

    “We’re all kind of locked in the hold of this ship, this fossil-fueled civilization that’s carrying us to a really terrible and unjust place,” Schneider-Mayerson said. “It’s pretty hard to blame people for trying to break out and make some noise.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Radical eco-activists have made it into mainstream fiction. Is reality next? on Apr 3, 2023.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Australian advocacy group condemns Indonesian crackdown on Papuan ‘democracy’ rally in Bali

    Asia Pacific Report

    The Australia West Papua Association has condemned an Indonesian crackdown on a peaceful Papua self-determination rally in Bali at the weekend after a militant nationalist group targeted the Papuan students.

    The Papuan Student Alliance (AMP) in Bali City held the rally on Saturday calling on the Indonesian government to hold a referendum for self-determination for the Papuan people.

    The theme of the rally was “Democracy and human rights die, Papuan people suffocate” but security forces broke up protest when militants clashed with the students.

    “Yet again a simple peaceful rally by West Papuans was forced to be disbanded by police because of the attack on the demonstrators by an Indonesian nationalist group,” said Joe Collins of the AWPA.

    “And Jakarta wonders why West Papuans want their freedom.”

    A spokesperson for the student group AMP said there was a lack of freedom of expression in West Papua and the human rights situation was getting worse.

    As the rally started, it was blocked by members of the Indonesian nationalist group Patriot Garuda Nusantara (PGN).

    Intelligence officers
    The AMP action coordinator, Herry Meaga, said in a statement that a number of intelligence officers had also been monitoring the clashes.

    Meaga said the students had tried to negotiate with a number of the PGN coordinators but the situation deteriorated.

    Clashes broke out between the two groups when the PGN crowd started to push the AMP group, and tried to seize their banners.

    The PGN threw stones and bottles. There were injuries on both sides as the groups clashed.

    According to an article in the Bali Express, about six people from the nationalist PGN were injured and more than a dozen from the student AMP.

    Police on standby near the location broke up the demonstration.

  • Covering (Up) Antiwar Protest in US Media – March 18 DC peace march almost completely blacked out in US corporate media

     

    In the early morning of March 20, 2003, US Navy bombers on aircraft carriers and Tomahawk missile-launching vessels in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean, along with Air Force B-52s in Britain and B-2s in Diego Garcia, struck Baghdad and other parts of Iraq in a “Shock and Awe” blitzkrieg to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and occupy that oil-rich country.

    Liberation: Thousands march in Washington, D.C., to launch new movement against U.S. empire

    Liberation (3/20/23), the newspaper of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, was one of the few outlets to cover the March 18 peace march in Washington, DC.

    Twenty years on, the US news media, as is their habit with America’s wars, published stories looking back at that war and its history (FAIR.org, 3/22/23), most of them treading lightly around the rank illegality of the US attack, a war crime that was not approved by the UN Security Council, and was not a response to any imminent Iraqi threat to the US, as required by the UN Charter.

    Oddly, none of those national media organizations’ editors saw as relevant or remotely newsworthy a groundbreaking protest rally and march outside the White House of at least 2,500–3,000 people on Saturday, March 18, 2023, called by a coalition of over 200 peace and anti-militarism organizations to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion.

    The Washington Post, like the rest of the national news media, failed to mention or even run a photo of the rally in Lafayette Park. It didn’t even cover the peaceful and spirited march from the front of the White House along Pennsylvania and New York avenues to the K Street Washington Post building to deliver several black coffins as a local story—despite the paper’s having a reporter whose beat is actually described by Post as being to “to cover protests and general assignments for the metro desk.” An email request to this reporter, Ellie Silverman, asking why this local protest in DC went unreported did not get a response.

    National press a no-show

    Code Pink at March 18 peace march

    Code Pink was among the organizers of the DC march.

    The rally, organized by the ANSWER Coalition and sponsors such as Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, Black Alliance for Peace and Radical Elders, drew “several thousand” antiwar, anti-military protesters, according to ANSWER Coalition national director Brian Becker. He said the demonstration’s endorsers were calling for peace negotiations and an end to US arms for Ukraine, major cuts in the US military budget, an end to the US policy of endless wars, and freedom for Julian Assange and Indigenous prisoner Leonard Peltier.

    Becker said that the coalition had a media team that spent two weeks on phones and computers, reaching out to national and local media organizations, including in the seven or eight other cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco, that held rallies on the same day. “Not a single member of the national press even showed up,” he said.

    Two local Washington TV stations (CBS and ABC affiliates) did do brief stories on the rally and march, but Google and Nexis searches turned up not a single major mainstream national news report on the event, though it was the second, and significantly larger, antiwar demonstration in Washington in just four weeks, and the first by specifically left-wing peace and antiwar organizations. (The first rally, on February 19, called “Rage Against the War Machine,” organized primarily by libertarians and some left-wing opponents of the US proxy war with Russia, did get a mention in the conservative Washington Times (2/19/23) and promotion a day before the event by right-wing Fox News host Tucker Carlson (2/17/22).

    “We talked to reporters and gave them details about our planning events during the two weeks before the march—the kinds of things that journalists years back used to like to attend to hear what the activists were saying and thinking, but nobody showed up from the media at those sessions,” says Becker. “I guess those who make the decisions about assignments and coverage didn’t want this event covered.”

    Shift from the ’60s

    Vietnam War peace march

    Vietnam veterans in Washington, DC, march against the war, April 24, 1971 (CC photo: Leena A. Krohn).

    FAIR founder Jeff Cohen noted a shift from the way peace demonstrations were covered in the 1960s. “Even a few hundred antiwar protesters at a local anti-Vietnam War march would get local news coverage,” he recalled:

    We weren’t ignored, but every participant complained about the quality of the coverage that so often focused on the length of men’s hair, length of women’s skirts, usage of four-letter words, etc. and not substantive critique of war or US foreign policy. National protests in DC got significant national coverage, but not friendly coverage.

    Cohen contrasted this with antiwar protests in recent decades, which have frequently been snubbed by media. “I think the ignoring of local and even national antiwar marches kicked in during the mid- and late 1980s around movements opposing US intervention in Central America,” he said.

    Noam Chomsky (who knows from personal experience the sensation of being virtually blacklisted by corporate media) was a speaker at the March 18 event. Asked to explain this latest blackout of antiwar sentiment and opposition to military aid to Ukraine, he responded, “Par for the course.” He added, “Media rarely stray far from the basic framework imposed by systems of power, as FAIR has been effectively documenting for many years.”

    Filling the hole

    WSWS: The March 18 anti-war rally and the dead end of “pressuring” the Democratic Party

    WSWS (3/21/23) was critical of the DC march for trying to change Democratic Party policy.

    Fortunately, alternative media, which have proliferated online, are filling in the hole in protest coverage, though of course readers and viewers have to seek out those sources of information. There was a news report on the march in Fightback News (3/23/23), for example, and commentary on the World Socialist Web Site (3/21/23) and Black Agenda Report (2/22/23).

    Foreign coverage of the March 18 antiwar event in the US was substantial, which should embarrass editors at US news organizations. Some foreign coverage, considering that it appeared in state-owned or partially state-owned media, were surprisingly professional. Read, for example, the report by Xinhua (3/19/23), China’s government-owned news service, or one in Al Myadeen (3/18/23), the Lebanese satellite news service, which reportedly favors Syria and Hezbollah.

    It’s rather disturbing to find such foreign news outfits, not just covering news that is being hidden from Americans by their own vaunted and supposedly “free” press, but doing it more straightforwardly than US corporate media often do when they actually report on protests against US government policy.

    Efforts to get either the Washington Post or New York Times to explain their airbrushing out the March 18 antiwar protest in Washington were unsuccessful. (Both publications have eliminated their news ombud offices, citing “budget issues.”)

    Fortunately Patrick Pexton, the last ombud at the Washington Post, who now teaches journalism at Johns Hopkins University, and writes on media, foreign and defense policy, and politics and society, offered this emailed observation about the March 18 demonstration blackout:

    I confess that I am surprised no major national news organization covered it. I know that some people look down their noses at Code Pink and ANSWER Coalition, and journalists generally are supportive of the Ukraine War, but the demonstrators have a legitimate point of view, and my general personal rule is that anytime you get 1,000 people to turn out to protest something, you should at the very least do a local story about it. I don’t know what the Post rules are today.

     

     

     

     

     

    The post Covering (Up) Antiwar Protest in US Media appeared first on FAIR.

  • Cop City Coverage Fails to Question Narratives of Militarized Police

    Protests against the construction of an 85-acre police training facility—dubbed “Cop City”—in a suburban Atlanta forest turned deadly when police shot and killed a demonstrator occupying the area. The police mobilization against the occupation involved the Atlanta Police, DeKalb County Police, Georgia State Patrol, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) and the FBI (Guardian, 1/21/23). Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, a protester known by most as “Tortuguita,” was shot at least a dozen times.

    Guardian: ‘Assassinated in cold blood’: activist killed protesting Georgia’s ‘Cop City’

    After quoting the police justification for Tortuguita’s killing, the Guardian (1/21/23) added, “but they have produced no evidence for the claim”—an observation rarely made in US corporate media coverage of police violence.

    Officers claimed they shot Tortuguita (who used gender-neutral they/them pronouns) in response to the protester’s shooting and injuring a Georgia State Patrol officer. A GBI investigation is still underway, and it remains unclear what occurred in the moments leading up to the shooting. The Georgia State Troopers responsible for Tortuguita’s death did not have body cameras. The Atlanta Police in the woods at the time captured the sound of gunshots, and officers speculating the trooper was shot by friendly fire, but no visuals of the shooting.

    Tortuguita’s death was reported as the first police killing of an environmental protester in the country’s history. It propelled the “Stop Cop City” protests into broader national and corporate news coverage. Much of the reporting—especially by local and independent outlets—was commendable in its healthy skepticism of cops’ unsubstantiated claims. But other reporting on the shooting and subsequent protests was simply police-blotter regurgitation that took unproven police statements at face value, and demonized Tortuguita and others in the Stop Cop City movement.

    Bodycam questions

    NPR : Autopsy reveals anti-'Cop City' activist's hands were raised when shot and killed

    Almost two months after the police killing of Tortuguita, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was warning against “inappropriate release of evidence” (NPR, 3/11/23).

    Anti–Cop City protests over the first weekend of March led to dozens of demonstrators being arrested and charged with domestic terrorism (Democracy Now!, 3/8/23). The following week, an independent autopsy revealed Tortuguita was likely seated in a cross-legged position with their hands raised when they were shot (NPR, 3/11/23; Democracy Now!, 3/14/23).

    The GBI said a gun Tortuguita legally purchased in 2020 was found at the scene, and matched the bullet found in the wound of the officer (Fox5, 1/20/23). But accounts from other protesters, statements from Tortuguita’s family and friends (AP, 2/6/23), and Atlanta Police bodycam footage have cast doubt on the cops’ claims that Tortuguita shot the officer (Democracy Now!, 2/9/23).

    ABC (2/9/23) described the video, which includes the voice of an officer seemingly responding to the shootout by saying, “You [expletive] your own officer up.” The Intercept (2/9/23) added that the same officer later walked up to others and asked, “They shoot their own man?”

    Both outlets do their due diligence in clarifying that the officer was speculating, and that the GBI’s investigation is still underway.

    Truthout (2/10/23) also included another quote from the bodycam footage in the moments after the shooting:

    In one video, after gunshots ring out through the forest, an officer can be heard saying, “That sounded like suppressed gunfire,” implying the initial shots were consistent with the use of a law enforcement weapon, not the Smith & Wesson M&P Shield 9 mm the GBI alleges Tortuguita purchased and fired upon the trooper with, which did not have a suppressor.

    The piece noted that the sound of a drone can be heard in the background, indicating there may be more footage of the incident that the GBI has not released. An article in the Georgia Voice (2/16/23) also mentions the suppressed gunshots referred to in the videos.

    Trailing behind Fox

    Blaze: 'This isn't protest. This is terrorism': Five Antifa extremists charged with domestic terrorism, pulled down from their treehouses

    The Blaze (12/16/22) shows how to present people sitting in trees as a clear and present danger.

    A Nexis search of  “Cop City” reveals that prior to Tortuguita’s killing, coverage of the protests, which have been going on since late 2021, had been relegated to mainly local outlets and newswire coverage. There were, however, a handful of notable exceptions, including the Daily Beast (8/26/21, 9/9/21, 12/14/22), Politico (10/28/21), Atlantic (5/26/22, 6/13/22), Guardian (6/16/22, 12/27/22), Rolling Stone (9/3/22) and Economist (9/27/22).

    Right-wing outlets like Fox News (5/18/22, 5/20/22, 7/1/22, 12/16/22, 12/29/22, 12/29/22), Daily Mail (5/18/22, 12/15/22, 12/16/22, 12/17/22, 12/19/22), Blaze (12/16/22) and Daily Caller (12/15/22) all demonized the protesters, often referring to them as “violent” and affiliated with “Antifa” (which, for the record, is not an organized group, but an anti-fascist ideology).

    In the first few days following Tortuguita’s January 18 shooting, coverage on major TV news channels and national papers was scant, with most centrist outlets trailing behind Fox in the volume of coverage. A Nexis search for the terms “Tortuguita,” “Terán” or “Cop City,” from the day of Tortuguita’s death (January 18) until the end of January, found that Fox covered the shooting and protest more than all the other national networks combined, dominating the conversation with a pro-cop spin. It raised the issue on eight shows, while CNN covered it four times, ABC and CBS once each, and NBC and MSNBC not at all. Meanwhile, USA Today offered no coverage and the New York Times ran two articles. A separate search of the Washington Post, which is not on Nexis, brings up three articles, one of which was an AP repost.

    Beyond the police version 

    Democracy Now!: Atlanta Police Kill Forest Defender at Protest Encampment Near Proposed “Cop City” Training Center

    Kamau Franklin (Democracy Now!, 1/20/23): “The only version of events that’s really been released to the public has been the police version.”

    Independent and local outlets generally led the way in reporting on Tortuguita’s killing. A couple days after the shooting, Democracy Now! (1/20/23) dedicated an entire segment to the murder and movement. Host Amy Goodman interviewed Atlanta organizer Kamau Franklin, who wrote an article headlined “MLK’s Vision Lives On in Atlanta’s Fight Against New Police Training Facility” (Truthout, 1/17/23) the day before Tortuguita was shot.

    On Democracy Now!, Franklin said:

    The only version of events that’s really been released to the public has been the police version, the police narrative, which we should say the corporate media has run away with. To our knowledge so far, we find it less than likely that the police version of events is what really happened…. As the little intel that we have, residents said that they heard a blast of gunshots all at once, and not one blast and then a return of fire. Also, there’s been no other information released. We don’t know how many times this young person was hit with bullets. We don’t know the areas in which this person was hit. We don’t know if this is potentially a friendly fire incident. All we know is what the version of the police have given.

    Many other local and independent outlets also reported on Tortuguita’s death with a healthy dose of skepticism of police claims. Shortly after the killing, the Bitter Southerner published a piece by journalist David Peisner (1/20/23), who had been covering the Stop Cop City protests (12/23/22) and had spent extensive time interviewing the activist. Peisner’s article is essentially a eulogy for Tortuguita, vouching for their character and quoting pacifistic statements they made in interviews. Peisner wrote:

    “The right kind of resistance is peaceful, because that’s where we win,” they told me. “We’re not going to beat [the police] at violence. They’re very, very good at violence. We’re not. We win through nonviolence. That’s really the only way we can win. We don’t want more people to die. We don’t want Atlanta to turn into a war zone.”

    Piesner acknowledged the possibility that Tortuguita may have been disingenuously advocating peaceful protest, but made clear he saw no evidence of that.

    A letter to the editor on Workers.org (2/8/23) pointed out how police’s unproven claims and charges of violence against Tortuguita served to dampen publicity and reduce sympathy for them. Julia Wright’s letter also called out the double standard in dozens of land defenders being charged with “terrorism,” unlike the Capitol insurrectionists, whose deadly riot sought to dismantle US democracy:

    The postmortem image of Tortuguita has been twisted and exploited to make them look like a “terrorist,” whereas none of those who invaded the Capitol were charged with or sentenced for terrorism.

    Local Atlanta news outlet 11Alive (2/6/23) reported that Tortuguita’s family was publicly questioning the police-driven narrative of their child’s death, and demanding more transparency from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. While outlining the official narrative, the outlet also offered significant space to those contesting it.

    Claim becomes fact

    Fox News: Democrats largely silent on anti-police violence in Atlanta after night of chaos, smashed windows

    Fox News (1/22/23) condemned Democrats for not speaking out against broken windows in Atlanta.

    Other outlets, however, were far less skeptical of the unsubstantiated law enforcement claims, whether presenting claims as facts or simply not challenging those claims.

    In its report on the killing, Fox Special Report (1/20/23) played a soundbite from the GBI’s chief: “An individual, without warning, shot a Georgia state patrol trooper. Other law enforcement personnel returned fire in self-defense.” The segment went on to play a short soundbite of unidentified protesters urging people not to believe the police narrative, but correspondent Jonathan Serrie’s outro implied that he did believe it:

    Top Georgia officials, including the governor and director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, say they embrace the right to protest, but cannot stand by when protesters resort to violence and jeopardize innocent lives.

    Just a few hours later on Fox (1/20/23), police claims had become fact, with a brief update beginning, “In Georgia, a protester shot a state trooper without warning.” There was no mention of the incomplete investigation underway, nor the protesters’ accounts.

    After further protests, the Wall Street Journal editorial (3/7/23) accused the “left” of “justif[ying] a violent assault on a police-training site,” saying that “Cop City” was under siege from “Antifa radicals.”

    The Journal relied entirely on official accounts of the protests, reporting only the police’s account of events that day:

    Authorities say Terán refused to comply with officers’ commands and instead shot and injured a state patrol trooper. Officers returned fire, striking Terán, who died on the scene, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The investigation isn’t finished, but the bureau says the bullet “recovered from the trooper’s wound matches Terán’s handgun.”

    As of this writing, even with the most recent autopsy results suggesting Tortuguita’s cross-legged, hands-up position at the time of their death, neither the police’s nor the activists’ accounts have been proven. Still, the Wall Street Journal has already made clear which narrative it finds newsworthy.

    Vandalism as ‘violence’

    A lack of skepticism of official accounts was not limited to right-wing media. The New York Times (1/27/23), reporting on Georgia’s governor calling in the National Guard amid the protests, wrote, “The authorities claim that Terán fired a gun at a state trooper during a ‘clearing operation’ in the woods before being killed by the police.” No sources were quoted who questioned that claim.

    WaPo: Violent protests break out in Atlanta over fatal shooting of activist

    The Washington Post headline (1/21/23) implied that protesters were violent—though the only attacks on people described in the piece were police tackling demonstrators.

    Covering the protests after Tortuguita’s killing, the Washington Post (1/21/23) made the actions of protesters rather than police the issue, with the headline “Violent Protests Break Out in Atlanta Over Fatal Shooting of Activist.” While the headline implies that the protesters were violent, the only attacks on other humans described in the piece were police tackling protesters. The Post included no reports of protesters committing bodily harm, but parroted Atlanta’s mayor referring to property damage as “violence”—elevating vandalism over assaults on people. (FAIR—2/6/18—has documented that news media do not commonly refer to other, apolitical instances of property destruction—such as sports fans celebrating a win—as “violence.”)

    Only toward the end of the article, below a featured image of a car on fire and descriptions of smashed bank windows, did the Post add that the Atlanta police chief “emphasized that those who caused property damage were a small subset among other peaceful demonstrators.”

    The headline “In Atlanta, a Deadly Forest Protest Sparks Debate Over ‘Domestic Terrorism’” (Washington Post, 1/26/23) implies the protesters’ actions were deadly—but the only people who caused death were the police who shot Tortuguita.

    Another Post piece (3/6/23) offered history on the construction of Cop City and the movement against it under the headline “What Is Cop City? Why Are There Violent Protests in an Atlanta Forest?,” but prioritized depicting the demonstrations as “violent” over describing the shooting that led to the backlash in the first place, using the adjective three additional times in the piece.

    (It also referred to Tortuguita using he/him pronouns, though that has been corrected.)

    “State authorities claimed self-defense and said that Paez Terán purchased the gun that shot a Georgia State Patrol officer, but the shooting is under investigation,” the article said, without mentioning the protesters’ claims, or the bodycam footage.

    Holding back evidence

    NYT: A New Front Line in the Debate Over Policing: A Forest Near Atlanta

    A New York Times overview (3/4/23) gave a detailed account of how police say Tortuguita was killed—but not what protesters say happened.

    Some coverage that did mention the doubts of Tortuguita’s family and supporters failed to explain the evidence that could back their claims. In a New York Times report (3/4/23) that attempted to put the protests in context, the only person quoted supporting Tortuguita’s innocence was their mother. The piece quoted Belkis Terán describing her child as a “pacifist,” and mentioning the first independent autopsy revealed 13 gunshot wounds—but made no mention of the bodycam evidence that suggested the officer may have been shot by friendly fire.

    (The second autopsy’s results that indicated Tortuguita was likely sitting cross-legged with their hands up when they were shot were not available when this article was published. At the time of this article’s publication, the Times has not published any articles on the second autopsy’s results.)

    The mourning mother’s grief adds emotion to the story and briefly paints Tortuguita in a sympathetic light, but her claims are not granted the same amount of authority and credibility as the cops’ assertions, which are offered in detail:

    The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is looking into the shooting, has said that on January 18, as the police sought to clear the forest of protesters, Tortuguita fired first “without warning,” striking a trooper. Officers returned fire, according to the authorities.

    Despite the investigation being incomplete, the police narrative is still able to stand alone, without any mentions of opposing allegations and evidence.

    Ignoring recent history

    NBC: Environmental protests have a long history in the U.S. Police had never killed an activist — until now.

    To draw a sharp contrast between police treatment of  Cop City opponents and earlier environmental protests,  NBC (2/5/23) had to ignore precedents like police at Standing Rock sending two dozen Indigenous water defenders to the hospital in a single event (Guardian, 11/21/16).

    Even after the GBI’s report comes out, journalists should clearly present the evidence supporting protesters’ and police narratives, given police’s well-documented record of lying in reports, affidavits and even on the witness stand (New York Times, 3/18/18; CNN, 6/6/20; Slate, 8/4/20).

    In early February, NBC (2/5/23) reported that Tortuguita’s killing was the first of an environmental activist, but made this police killing seem like a fluke. “Police have often been important intermediaries in environmental protests,” the article’s subhead claimed. “In a forest outside Atlanta, they were opponents.”

    If you read the story, though, a source acknowledges that “there’s a long history of law enforcement confronting direct-action environmentalist activists and those confrontations turning hostile.” Going back to the 1980s, activists who engaged in civil disobedience “were sometimes dragged away and thrown in vans, sometimes pepper-sprayed.”

    To claim that the violence at Atlanta represents an “unprecedented” escalation, as the article argues, requires ignoring recent history like the suppression of the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock. There police used water cannons, pepper spray, tasers, sound weapons and more against peaceful—mostly Indigenous—protesters, in one incident injuring 300 and putting 26 in the hospital (Guardian, 11/21/16).

    Regardless of who shot the first bullet, the story of Tortuguita’s death is about protests against militarized policing being met with more militarized policing, which ultimately resulted in a fatal shooting. Unquestioningly spreading unproven police claims is not only irresponsible, it misses the story’s entire point.

    The post Cop City Coverage Fails to Question Narratives of Militarized Police appeared first on FAIR.

  • Protesters dressed as chickens mimic battery farm in a Morrisons foyer

    Animal rights group Open Cages has staged an in-store protest at a Morrisons in Wood Green, London. The protest was the largest of its kind for the group.

    It was aimed at “eliminating cruelty from the UK’s chicken industry”. Open Cages claims that the supermarket chain’s chickens are not being kept in cruelty-free conditions.

    Morrisons: activists squeezed in like chickens

    Referring to it as a protest of “unprecedented scale”, Open Cages said:

    Shutting down the store’s entrance, the activists have ‘squeezed’ into the narrow lobby to highlight how chickens sold in Morrisons are typically raised in overcrowded sheds with less than an A4 sheet of space each in their final weeks of life

    People dressed in chicken costumes against a Morrisons sign

    The protest took place on Saturday 25 March and involved 60 activists. In a press release, Open Cages said a number of animal rights groups are calling on Morrisons to sign the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC):

    Open Cages, the RSPCA, Compassion In World Farming, The Humane League UK and many other leading animal protection charities want Morrisons to sign the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC) in order to address the ‘extreme suffering‘ faced by the retailer’s basic label chickens.

    People in chicken costumes protesting inside a Morrisons store

    The group added:

    More than 300 companies in Britain have already signed the BCC, including retailers Marks and Spencer & Waitrose and major fast food players such as KFC, Subway and Domino’s Pizza.

    Morrisons’ animal welfare policy permits chickens to be kept in conditions of up to 19 birds per square metre.

    It said that according to the RSPCA, “a lack of space for chickens” can cause:

    higher rates of death, skin infections, heat stress and ammonia burns from the birds laying in their own waste. The restricted movement exacerbates welfare problems associated with breeding chickens for fast growth. Known as ‘Frankenchicken’, the RSPCA calls this practice ‘unacceptable‘ Morrisons is yet to announce any plans to end either of these practices.

    People in chicken costumes protesting inside a Morrisons store

    Open Cages also notes that:

    over 300,000 people have signed Chris Packham’s petition asking Morrisons to sign the Better Chicken Commitment.

    You can sign the petition here.

    Opposing cruelty

    This is not the first time Open Cages has taken action against Morrisons – but it is its biggest demo yet. On 7 February, the group staged protests in London, Glasgow and Cornwall:

    Open Cages has also been doing some ‘brandalism’, adding campaign slogans to Morrisons posters:

    It also has a dedicated website where people can read about the extent of Morrisons’ alleged animal cruelty. You can visit the website here.

    Morrisons has defended itself. It told London News Online:

    We care deeply about animal welfare. All our regular chicken is raised to above Red Tractor standards; we are also the only retailer in Europe to ask our fresh chicken suppliers to require chicken to be born into the barn in which it will be raised by 2025. 80% of our fresh chicken meets this standard already. We also actively monitor for any malpractice in our supply chain; we will never tolerate it or look the other way and if we ever find it, we will act swiftly and decisively.

    Profiting from “ruthlessly intensive chicken farming”

    The group has claimed that “Morrisons deceives customers on animal welfare“. It adds:

    Morrisons claims to offer a range of chicken that adheres to the Better Chicken Commitment. However, to adhere to the BCC a company must commit to switch 100% of its chicken supply to higher standards. Morrisons’ range is speculated to form as little as 1% of its total chicken offering. This approach has been branded as ‘superficial’ when as much as 95% of Morrisons’ chickens still remain in the same intensive conditions as before.

    Open Cages co-founder Connor Jackson has said of the most recent protest:

    The idea of this action is to illustrate how chickens live before arriving on a Morrisons shelf. 78% of Brits oppose cruel farming practices. And the shocking truth is that Morrisons, a company that boasts about its high animal welfare credentials, is secretly profiting from some of the most ruthlessly intensive chicken farming practices available. So we feel forced to take drastic measures in order to warn consumers about what they’re really buying… Morrisons must stop ignoring the cruelty in its supply chain and sign the Better Chicken Commitment.

    Featured image and additional images via Tom Woollard

    By The Canary

  • French police accused of using excessive force during pension protests

    Human rights watchdog say people angry at Macron’s pension law had right to protest peacefully

    Europe’s leading human rights watchdog has accused the French police of using “excessive force” during protests against a fiercely contested pension law.

    Dunja Mijatovic, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, said those wishing to gather peacefully had a right to be protected from “police brutality” and attacks by protesters against officers did not justify a heavy-handed response.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ‘People Have Been Protesting Against Cop City Since We Found Out About It’ – CounterSpin interview with Kamau Franklin on Cop City

     

    Janine Jackson interviewed Community Movement Builders’ Kamau Franklin about the fight against Cop City for the March 17, 2023, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

          CounterSpin230317Franklin.mp3

     

    Janine Jackson: The clearing of land, including forests, in South Atlanta, to build a gigantic police training complex brings together so many concerns, it’s hard to know where to begin.

    NPR : Autopsy reveals anti-'Cop City' activist's hands were raised when shot and killed

    NPR (3/11/23)

    The January police killing of a protester and environmental activist known as Tortuguita, whose autopsy suggests they were sitting down with their hands raised when cops shot them multiple times, is a flashpoint illuminating a constellation of harms proposed by what’s been dubbed “Cop City,” as well as resistance to them.

    Our guest is in the thick of it. Kamau Franklin is founder of the national grassroots organization Community Movement Builders, and co-host of the podcast Renegade Culture. He joins us now by phone from Atlanta; welcome to CounterSpin, Kamau Franklin.

    Kamau Franklin: Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

    Cop City seems to bring together so much that is wrong and painful for Black and brown people. But we can actually start with the land itself. The place where this paramilitary police camp is planned has some meaningful history, doesn’t it?

    KF: Yeah, this land, which has been dubbed by us the Weelaunee forest, was originally the home of part of the Muscogee nation. The Muscogee nation was the native occupiers of that land, the original occupiers of that land, and they were removed in an ethnic cleansing war by the United States from that land and pushed off.

    And since that time period, the land has been used, initially, partly as a plantation, where enslaved Africans were brought to the land and made to work on that land. Later, the land was transferred into a prison farm, where working-class people and poor people and, again, particularly Black folks were put on the land to continue working for the state at, obviously, no wages, being punished and harassed and brutally treated.

    The land has also served as a youth imprisonment camp, and the police have done trainings on that land.

    So that land has been, over a time period, used for the brutal and harsh treatment of Black people in particular, but also of poor and working-class people.

    One quick thing I want to say, also, is that that land, in terms of it being a forest before the invention of Cop City, was promised to the adjacent community, which is 70% Black, as a recreational and park area, particularly as the land re-forested itself over time, park areas where there were supposed to be nature trails, hiking available, parks available, and when the idea of Cop City arose, from the Atlanta Police Department, the City of Atlanta and the Atlanta Police Foundation, all of those plans were scrapped immediately, without any input from that adjoining community, and instead they decided to move forward with this idea of Cop City.

    New Republic: Atlanta’s “Cop City” and the Vital Fight for Urban Forests

    New Republic (3/9/23)

    JJ: I think that’s why folks are talking about, I’ve heard a reference to “layers of violence” at work here. And I think that’s what they’re getting at is, there’s what this place would be for, its purpose, and then there’s also the process of how it is being pushed on people that didn’t want it. And then there’s also the physical, environmental impact of the construction. It’s a lot, and yet they’re all intertwined, these problems.

    KF: Yeah, this is a perfect illustration of how the state, vis-a-vis the city, the state government and even, in some ways, the federal government, operate in tandem, and a lot of times, most of the time, it doesn’t matter what party they are, but operate in tandem at the whim of capital and at the whim of a, relatively speaking, right-wing ideological outlook.

    And, again, it doesn’t matter which party it is we’re talking about. It doesn’t matter whether or not those folks are Black or white, but an ideological outlook that says overpolicing in Black and brown communities is the answer to every problem.

    And so here in particular, you talked about the process. This process of developing Cop City came after the 2020 uprisings against police violence, the 2020 uprisings that were national in scope, that started after Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and, here in Atlanta, Rayshard Brooks was killed by the police, and it caused a massive uprising and movement across the nation again.

    The response by the authorities here in Atlanta was to push through their plans on building Cop City, to double down on their efforts, again, to continue the overpolicing of Black communities, particularly here in Atlanta. Atlanta is a city that is gentrifying at an astronomical rate. It’s gone from a 60% Black city to one that’s less than 50% in only a matter of 20, 30 years, all of that under Black leadership.

    It’s a city that, in terms of those who are arrested, 90% of those who are arrested in Atlanta by the police are Black people; its jails are filled with Black people.

    And so this is a city that doubled down on police violence and police militarization after these uprisings.

    In addition, we feel like the part of Cop City, in terms of its militarization—over a dozen firing ranges, its mock cities to practice urban warfare, its military-grade structure that it’s bragging about—the fact that its past facility is called the Paramilitary Center, and this one is also going to be a paramilitary center.

    In its earliest iterations of what it was supposed to be, it included a landing pad for Black Hawk helicopters, something they’ve now said that they’ve taken out.

    This, for us, has been put forth to harass and stop future mobilizations and movements and uprisings against police brutality and misconduct.

    Guardian: ‘Cop City’ opposition spreads beyond Georgia forest defenders

    Guardian (2/9/23)

    It was pushed through the City Council. Seventy percent of the people who called in on the night of the vote voted against Cop City, but yet the City Council members decided to still enact this. And so this has been run over the heads of the community, without community input.

    And it is something that we think is dangerous for both the overpolicing, and, as you restated earlier, the environmental concerns of stripping away a forest of 100 acres immediately. This particular area is something that is given to having floods. Once they start stripping even more of the forested area away, there’s going to be even more and increased floods.

    The loudness of the shooting, the other things that’s going to be happening, this is going to be something that’s extremely detrimental to the environment, and the continued degradation of the climate, if it is allowed to take place and happen.

    JJ: I think folks listening would understand why there are multiple points of resistance, why there are a range of communities and folks who would be against this. Some listeners may not know, people have been protesting Cop City for years now.

    But now, Tortuguita’s killing amid ongoing protests has given an opening for corporate media to plug this into a narrative about “violent activists” and “clashes.” And this is par for the course for elite media, but, and I’m just picking up on what you’ve just said, it’s especially perverse here, because we’re seeing community resistance and rejection of hyper-policing presented as itself a reason for more of that hyper- and racist policing. It’s a knot. It’s a real complicated knot here.

    KF: No, you’re exactly right. And we should say, again, that people have been protesting against Cop City since we found out about it in 2021. And our protests have been, since its beginning, met with police violence.

    When we were protesting at City Hall, doing petition drives, town halls, contacting our legislators, when all that was happening and we were doing protests at City Hall and other places, the police would come and break up our protests.

    They conducted over 20 arrests during the early stages of our protest movement against Cop City. At that particular time, people were being arrested for charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, obstruction of governmental administration.

    LAT: The latest epicenter for anti-police protests: ‘Cop City’ in Atlanta

    LA Times (3/15/23)

    After they passed the resolution to grant the lease to the Atlanta Police Foundation, and part of our tactics began to have—there were folks who moved to the actual forest and became forest defenders as an act of civil disobedience.

    Then the policing agency in Atlanta basically hooked up and created a task force. So the Atlanta Police Department, DeKalb County Police Department, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security actually formed a task force where they first began having discussions on bringing charges of state domestic terrorism.

    And so in December of last year, they conducted a raid in the forest and arrested approximately five or six people. And those were the first folks who were charged with domestic terrorism.

    On January 18, they did a second raid, and they charged another five or six folks with domestic terrorism, and that was the raid in which they killed Tortuguita, the forest defender, activist and organizer who, again, as you pointed out earlier, through a private autopsy done by the family, because the Georgia Bureau of Investigation refuses to release information on their supposed or alleged investigation into this matter, the private autopsy is the first indication we have that the police narrative on how they were killed was a complete lie.

    Tortuguita was sitting cross-legged and hands were up to protect their face from the firing directly into their body, they were hit approximately 13 times. And it may be more, but the second autopsy could not determine which were exit wounds and what were entry wounds.

    After the killing of Tortuguita, another six or seven protesters were arrested at a rally downtown. And then this past Sunday, during our week of action against Cop City, another 35 arrests took place; 23 of those people were charged with domestic terrorism.

    So we now have approximately 41 or 42 people who have been charged with domestic terrorism. And this is a scare tactic meant to demoralize the movement. And it’s also meant to criminalize the movement in the eyes of the larger public.

    And this is something that’s been a tactic and strategy of the state since day one. But with the help, as you said, of corporate media, they’re trying to get this narrative out there. And we’re left to fight back against this narrative, which is obviously untrue.

    JJ: And it’s been long in the works, and long on the wish list. I remember talking to Mara Verheyden-Hilliard about J20, about people who had been arrested protesting Trump’s inauguration, and the slippery tactics that, not just law enforcement, but also the courts were using to say, you were near a person or dressed similarly to a person who we believe committed a crime against property, and therefore you are swept up in this dragnet and charged with felonies, and with a lifetime in prison.

    And let’s underscore, it’s a scare tactic. It’s a way to keep people in their homes. It’s a way to keep people from coming out in the street to use their voice on issues they care about.

    Kamau Franklin

    Kamau Franklin: “These domestic terrorism charges are purposely meant to put fear in the heart of organizers and activists, not only on this issue, but in future issues.”

    KF: Yes, definitely. I think it’s important what you pointed out, I’m sure viewers may have seen pictures of property destruction.

    And, again, this movement is autonomous, and people are engaged in different actions. We don’t equate property destruction with the violence that the police have rained on Black and brown communities over centuries, to be clear; we don’t equate the idea of property destruction with the violent killings that led to the 2020 uprisings and the prior violent killings by the police of unarmed Black people over, again, decades.

    But what’s important to point out even in these arrests, is that the folks who have been arrested and charged with domestic terrorism, who are actually involved in acts of civil disobedience at best, the people in the forest who were arrested during the first two raids we spoke about, were people who were sitting in tree huts and sitting in camps under trees, that police had no evidence whatsoever to suggest that they had been involved, either at that time or prior, in any destruction of property.

    And even if they did have such evidence, then the correct legal charge would be vandalism or destruction of property. These domestic terrorism charges are purposely meant to put fear in the heart of organizers and activists, not only on this issue, but in future issues, when the state levels its power, it’s going to say that you tried to, and this is how broad the statute is, attempt to influence government policy by demonstrative means—so civil disobedience can be interpreted as domestic terrorism.

    And this is the first time in Georgia that the state statute has ever been used. And the first choice to use it on are organizers and activists who are fighting against police violence.

    JJ: And are we also going to see, I see Alec Karakatsanis pointing out that we’re also seeing this line about “outside agitators.” You know, everything old is new again. In other words, all these old tropes and tactics, it seems like they’re all coming to the fore here, and one of them is the idea that this isn’t really about the community. This is about people who are professional activists, professional troublemakers, and the phrase “outside agitators” is even bubbling up again. And that’s a particular kind of divide-and-conquer tactic.

    KF: Most definitely. We should be clear that the heart of the Stop Cop City movement has been organizers and activists and community members, voting rights advocates, civil rights advocates, who have either been born or who have lived in Atlanta for a number of years.

    But that movement has welcomed in people from all across the country to try to support in ending Cop City, whether or not that’s national support that people give from their homes, and/or whether or not that’s been support that people have traveled down to Atlanta to give support to either forest defenders or the larger movement to stop Cop City.

    We see the language of “outside agitators” as being, as you said, a trope that is born from the language of Southern segregationists, that were used against people like Dr. King, the civil rights movement, Freedom Riders.

    And so when we have Black elected officials parroting the language of Southern segregationists, it tells us how far we’ve come in terms of having representative politics, where basically you have Black faces representing capitalism, representing corporations, representing developers who have turned their back on the working-class and poor Black communities who they’ve helped pushed out of the city, in favor of these corporations, and in favor on strengthening a police apparatus that, again, is going to be used against every Black community that they claim to represent.

    JJ: Well, finally, one of the corporate investors in Cop City, along with Home Depot and Coca-Cola and Delta, is Cox Enterprises, which owns the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which I understand is editorially supportive of Cop City.

    I wonder what you’re making of local media that may be in contrast to national media or international media. And then, as a media critic, it’s strange, but a lot of what I want to say is, don’t follow them, don’t look to media to tell you about what’s happening, about what’s possible, about who matters, because it’s a distortion.

    So I want you to talk a little about the resistance for folks, but also, maybe they’re not seeing that resistance in their news media, and there are reasons for that.

    KF: We have a couple of reporters, I’ve singled them out, who have attempted at least to give a fair hearing to the struggle around Cop City.

    However, the overwhelming local reporting has been in favor, and has led continually with the police narrative, with the city narrative, with the state narrative on this benign training center, as they present it, and these “outside agitators” we spoke of earlier, organizers who are coming in. That’s been the central narrative.

    So even when we talk about police violence, they never use the term “police violence.” They only use “violence” in conjunction with the organizers and activists, that’s whether or not a so-called peaceful protest has been taking place and the police arrest organizers. And that’s whether or not there’s this quiet civil disobedience by staying in the woods. Anytime organizers or activists are brought up, they don’t hesitate but to use the word “violence.”

    AJC: Crime wave should spur action on center

    Atlanta Journal-Constitution (8/21/21)

    And so we understand that not only the media that’s directly connected to Cox, which is a funder of the Atlanta Police Foundation and a funder of Cop City, and, as you stated, editorially, has put out four, five, six, editorials that have all been supportive of Cop City, and that have all tried to label organizers and activists as “violent.” But other corporate media, local corporate media, has been on that same bandwagon, except for a few notable exceptions.

    We’ve gotten much better press, much, much more favorable hearings, that at least tells our side, from national media, from outlets who have a perspective and understand what organizing and activism and capitalism is vis-a-vis the way the society works, and from international media.

    The things that have helped us get the word out to talk about the struggle has been media platforms like this, and others which have a perspective that understands the role of the United States, and the United States government entities and corporations, and how the world is run.

    Without that perspective, we would be completely at a loss to get the word out in any way that could be considered fair and/or accurate.

    Truthout: Atlanta Was a Constitution-Free Zone During “Stop Cop City” Week of Action

    Truthout (3/14/23)

    JJ: You want to shout out any reporters or outlets? I would say Candice Bernd at Truthout has been doing some deep and thoughtful things on it. And, internationally, I’ve seen a few things. But if there are reporters or outlets that you think deserve a shout out, by all means.

    KF: The Guardian has done a good job of representing organizer and activist concerns. As you said, Truthout. Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, as a podcast, has done a fantastic job. Cocktails and Capitalism has done a fantastic job. We’ve had some good reporting in Essence magazine, actually.

    And so there have been outlets that have given us, again, a fair hearing on our views on the history of policing, on understanding capitalist development and capital development and corporate development here, not only in Atlanta, but in other urban cities across the country.

    And so we thank those outlets for at least the opportunity to give voice as we fight back against a dominant corporate narrative that is all about supporting the police, supporting violent and militarized policing, and supporting the continued criminalization of movements that fight against it.

    JJ: We’ve been speaking with Kamau Franklin. He’s founder of the national grassroots organization Community Movement Builders. They’re online at CommunityMovementBuilders.org. He’s also co-host of the podcast Renegade Culture. Kamau Franklin, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

    KF: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

     

    The post ‘People Have Been Protesting Against Cop City Since We Found Out About It’ appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Judge Denies Bond for 8 People Rounded Up in Mass Arrest for Opposing Cop City

    In Atlanta, a judge has denied bond for 8 of the people indiscriminately arrested at a music festival against the proposed “Cop City” police training facility in the Weelaunee Forest. Jailed since March 5, they are charged with domestic terrorism based on scant evidence like muddy clothes or simply being in the area at the time of the festival. We’re joined by Micah Herskind…

    Source

  • Daughter of Danish-Bahraini rights activist offers to take his place in prison

    Maryam al-Khawaja says she fears her father Abdulhadi’s health is deteriorating and condemns Denmark for inaction

    Human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja’s health has suffered so much inside a Bahraini prison that his daughter Maryam has offered to trade places with him. She fears that without urgent action, her father will slowly die behind bars without being able to see his family.

    “I don’t know how much longer my dad has. I spend every day dreading each time the phone rings, as it might be someone calling me to let me know my dad is no longer around,” said Maryam. “I know he has serious health issues and the authorities are using [lack of] access to proper treatment as a method of punishment. I don’t want to wait around for my dad to be released to us in a coffin. I can’t do that.”

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • How the FBI used ‘Cop City’ protests to snoop on activists in Chicago

    This article was produced in partnership with the nonprofit newsroom Type Investigations, where Adam Federman is a reporting fellow. Subscribe to their newsletters here.

    Last summer, a “Chicago Against Cop City” Twitter account was created and began sharing information about a campaign unfolding some 700 miles away. Its first tweet, posted on July 18, promoted a talk at a community bookstore on Chicago’s west side featuring activists involved in the ongoing effort to protect a public park and forest in Atlanta, Georgia. The speaking event — one of several the activists conducted across the country that year — was designed to raise awareness about the planned conversion of 85 acres of urban forest into a police training center that activists have dubbed Cop City.

    It took less than two weeks for the FBI to flag the account, which was the focal point of a sprawling federal inquiry that collected information on several Chicago-based activist and community groups. Those groups appear to have done little more than promote or attend events affiliated with the Atlanta-area activists. According to 28 pages of FBI records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, the Chicago case file is part of a larger federal law enforcement assessment related to “Anarchist extremism” and domestic terrorism.

    The documents describe members of the Atlanta group as “Anarchist Violent Extremists” and “Environmental Violent Extremists” who are “opposed to removal of trees and park land.” These activists traveled to Chicago, the FBI states, to meet with “like minded individuals” and “provide training.” There is little evidence in the unredacted portion of the files or the public record to support the latter claim.

    Promotional material for one of the events says it featured “action steps” to help participants find their “role in the struggle.”But one of the activists who traveled to Chicago — and who asked that their name not be used given the possibility of an ongoing FBI investigation — said the events were “informational slideshow presentations” that did not involve any kind of training.

    “At no point in the presentations did we advocate for illegal activity,” they said. “And we certainly are not advocating violence.”

    Grist and Type Investigations are publishing the full documents, which were redacted by the FBI before release, here and here. The contents of the files were first reported by Unicorn Riot, a nonprofit media organization.

    Assessments are a relatively new category of FBI investigation, established under guidelines issued by the agency in 2008, that can be opened with little cause and allow for physical surveillance, database searches, and the use of informants to gather intelligence.

    Since the FBI opened its file on Chicago Against Copy City, more than three dozen activists involved in the Atlanta protests and forest defense have been arrested and charged with felonies under Georgia’s 2017 domestic terrorism law. On January 18, a law enforcement officer shot and killed 26-year-old Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, a community medic who had been an active member of the campaign, during a raid on an encampment in the forest. Autopsy results recently released by the family revealed that Tortuigita, as Terán was known, was likely sitting on the ground with both arms raised when they were shot at least 13 times. In public statements, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation maintains that Teran shot a state trooper first. However, the bureau has released only limited information, citing the ongoing investigation. Another autopsy carried out by the DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office has not been made public. 

    A Grist analysis of 20 of the early arrest warrants found that none of those charged with domestic terrorism were accused of seriously injuring anyone. Nine of the activists had simply been cited for misdemeanor trespassing, though the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has said that criminal inquiries are ongoing. The terrorism charges, according to the DeKalb County prosecutor, were based on a Department of Homeland Security designation of the Atlanta forest defenders as “Domestic Violent Extremists.” But Homeland Security, like the FBI, denies that it classifies specific groups in this way.

    Mike German, a former FBI special agent and a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, said that while there’s nothing in the newly-released FBI files to indicate that they’ve been shared with Georgia state authorities, the labeling of an entire group as violent extremists can shape the way law enforcement approaches social movements. 

    “This exact kind of loose language may lead to the mistaken assumption that that categorization has some legal effect,” German said.

    The FBI, which has a long history of targeting environmental activists, has been actively involved in the law enforcement response to the Atlanta forest defenders. According to a Georgia Bureau of Investigation press release, the FBI has been part of a joint task force intended to “eliminate the future Atlanta Public Safety Training Center of criminal activity.” In an April 2022 email, the Homeland Security Officer for the Atlanta Fire Department referred to FBI involvement in an “ongoing investigation” and described the activists as a group of “eco terrorists.”

    The heavily redacted records on Chicago Against Copy City include social media posts by a broad range of social justice and environmental organizations. Rising Tide Chicago, a group called Save Jackson Park, the South Shore Nature Sanctuary, and Pilsen Community Books, a popular gathering place for local activists and the host of one of the events, are all named in the files. In one instance, the FBI refers to the use of a source with “direct and indirect access” to activists using the bookstore as a meeting place.

    The records also highlight opposition to the construction of the Obama presidential library and the proposed expansion of a nearby golf course that would potentially require the removal of more than 2,000 trees. Save Jackson Park and the South Shore Nature Sanctuary have both campaigned to block the new golf course, which they say would destroy some of the only green space left on Chicago’s south side. The FBI concluded that the development projects in Chicago, along with the building of a police training center on the west side, were “similar” to the Atlanta construction project and could lead to “potential criminal activity.”  

    The FBI’s Chicago office declined to comment for this story.

    A spokesperson for Rising Tide Chicago said that the bookstore event and a teach-in at Hyde Park three days later were intended simply to educate people about what was happening in Atlanta. “It was a speaking tour,” they said. “It wasn’t a direct-action training. The focus was about their struggle with Cop City.”

    The spokesperson said that they don’t know who is behind the Chicago Against Cop City Twitter account, and that it doesn’t appear to be a formal group with an on-the-ground presence. It’s mostly served as a platform for sharing information about how people can support the movement in Atlanta from afar, they said. (Chicago Against Cop City did not respond to a direct message requesting comment.)

    Jeanette Hoyt, a 65-year-old teacher at City Colleges of Chicago, is the founder of Save Jackson Park. She launched the group in 2020 to oppose the cutting down of nearly 400 trees and the destruction of park land, including a beloved women’s garden, to make way for the Obama Presidential Center, which is still under construction. (According to the Obama center’s website, the women’s garden will be “restored.”) One of Save Jackson Park’s social media posts was retweeted by Chicago Against Cop City — and that was enough to land the group in the FBI file.

    “The only connection between this group and Cop City is them liking me on Twitter,” said Hoyt.

    The Rising Tide spokesperson is not surprised the FBI is keeping tabs on the group — it was formed in 2011 and has been named in other FBI investigations — but said it’s troubling that the agency would put together a dossier on organizations engaging in what are clearly constitutionally-protected activities, such as attending public events and campaigning to stop controversial development projects.

    “They are building evidence,” the Rising Tide spokesperson said. “And compiling social media posts for a narrative that they want to attach to the movement in Atlanta and attach to people who are concerned about green spaces being taken away in Chicago and I’m sure other cities too.”

    German, who reviewed the documents, said the agency made several misleading connections between the various activist groups without providing evidence to back up serious claims of potential criminal activity and violent extremism among the Chicago groups. While participants in some of the Atlanta-area protests have thrown rocks, broken windows, and burned a police car, nobody connected with any of the Chicago groups or campaigns appears to have engaged in similar tactics. In addition, the police training academy in Chicago did not require the clearing of forested land and, despite local opposition, has already opened.  

    “Making this casual reference to an unrelated group a thousand miles away is how the FBI gets itself in trouble,” said German, referring to a pattern of FBI overreach in targeting environmental groups. “I think the animus against the ideology is what’s most problematic.”

    The law enforcement response to the campaign in Atlanta has, at least for now, galvanized interest in the protest movement. Following the shooting of Terán, there were marches and vigils across the country and around the world. Affinity groups have sprung up in Tucson, Arizona; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, a growing number of environmental and human rights organizations have called on Georgia prosecutors to drop the domestic terrorism charges.

    An Atlanta resident and active participant in the campaign who has been involved in other speaking tours — but requested anonymity due to ongoing police activity — said that the crackdown on the forest defenders has only served to broaden the movement’s public appeal.

    “The characterization of people as domestic terrorists — it’s really outraged a lot of people,” they said. “Lots of people are scared by that, but also more and more people are moved by the struggle and called to participate in it.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How the FBI used ‘Cop City’ protests to snoop on activists in Chicago on Mar 23, 2023.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • ‘No Births Behind Bars’: the scandal of imprisoning pregnant women in the UK

    Content warning: This article contains mention of infant death. 

    Nearly every week another imprisoned pregnant woman gives birth in the UK. She will go into labour in her prison cell and call for help. If her call is answered, and the prison guard believes that she’s in labour, she will – after being body searched by an officer – be taken to hospital in handcuffs to give birth while two police guards stand over her. This is the best case scenario.

    The worst case scenario is when a pregnant woman calls for help and the prison guard doesn’t believe she is in labour. Or her calls for help are ignored altogether and her baby dies. So, a campaign group is drawing attention to the issue and calling for change. However, the wider context to the criminal justice system incarcerating pregnant women is one of gross negligence and abject failure.

    ‘No more babies in prisons’

    On Saturday 18 March, a group of mothers, babies and toddlers from the #NoBirthBehindBars campaign group marked the Mother’s Day weekend. They staged a protest outside the Royal Courts of Justice. It was in solidarity with imprisoned pregnant women across the UK:

    Babies, children and their parents rallied outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London to demand an end to the imprisonment of pregnant women, London, UK Saturday, March 18, 2023 The protest was organised by No Births Behind Bars and Level Up.

    The group held up signs reading “No Babies in Prisons” and “Prison is No Place for Mums and Kids”. They also sang nursery rhymes in the London drizzle. People called for no more births behind bars – while the babies and toddlers dressed in yellow and green in honour of Mother’s Day:

    Babies, children and their parents rallied outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London to demand an end to the imprisonment of pregnant women, London, UK Saturday, March 18, 2023 The protest was organised by No Births Behind Bars and Level Up.

    The protest, organised by feminist collective Level Up, called for a statutory duty for judges and magistrates to take pregnancy and parenthood into consideration when sentencing women. However, the overarching aim of the #NoBirthBehindBars campaign is to end the practice of sending pregnant women and new mothers to prison altogether:

    Babies, children and their parents rallied outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London to demand an end to the imprisonment of pregnant women, London, UK Saturday, March 18, 2023 The protest was organised by No Births Behind Bars and Level Up.

    The seriousness of the situation is reflected in recent incidents of babies dying.

    Children are dying

    In 2019, an 18-year-old woman gave birth alone, without any medical assistance, in her prison cell in HMP Bronzefield prison in Surrey. Her calls for help were ignored, and her child – known as Baby A – died. A Prisons and Probation Ombudsman report found a series of failings in the teenager’s treatment. Prison staff working on her block were not aware that she was due to give birth imminently, and no one had a full history of her pregnancy.

    In 2020, a 31-year-old woman gave birth to a premature baby in the toilet of her prison cell in HMP Styal in Cheshire. The baby died following delays in getting medical care immediately after the birth and failure to perform CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation). The mother’s solicitor said expert evidence revealed the baby could have survived if she had received immediate medical care.

    Research from the Nuffield Trust found that one in 10 imprisoned women who give birth in prison do not make it to hospital, and give birth in their cell or in transit to the hospital. Moreover, the Ombudsman report into the death of Baby A in HMP Bronzefield in 2019 found that all pregnancies in prison are:

    high risk by virtue of the fact that the woman is locked behind a door for a significant amount of time.

    Meanwhile, several countries – including Brazil and Mexico – have specific laws to prevent the incarceration of pregnant women. Yet the UK government has failed to follow suit.

    ‘Never a safe place’

    Janey Starling, co-director of Level Up, told the Canary:

    Prison will never be a safe place for pregnant woman… [However] there’s nothing that mandates a judge to take pregnancy into consideration when sentencing a woman. We know that pregnant women in prison are five times more likely to suffer a stillbirth, and twice as likely to give birth to a premature baby that will need special care. Ultimately, sending any pregnant woman to prison is a barbaric practice.

    In 2022, Level Up, the Royal College of Midwives, Tommy’s, and other organisations wrote an open letter to then-justice secretary Brandon Lewis and the chair of the Sentencing Council. It called for an end to the imprisonment of pregnant women. However, the latest figures show that 50 pregnant women gave birth within the prison system in 2021-22. So, it seems the government is doing little to prevent these vulnerable women from entering prison in the first place.

    Research from the Prison Trust shows that 72% of women sentenced to prison are given short sentences for non-violent offences. Theft is the most common offence. It estimated that around 60% of women in prison are survivors of domestic abuse. The research said 71% of them live with a mental health condition. Moreover, 48% of the women in prison committed their offence to support someone else’s drug use.

    Starling further said:

    the stories of pregnant women in prisons are often ones of poverty and trauma and a desperate need of support, not incarceration.

    Suzy’s story

    There are also significant numbers of women in prison on remand. Suzy (we’ve changed her name to protect her identity) is a 32-year-old mother from the Southeast. The courts detained her on remand during her pregnancy. She was moved several times from one group cell to another. Suzy told the Canary:

    I remember, as I was climbing on to a top bunk another inmate telling me ‘you really shouldn’t be here’. And it was so cold in my cell. It was winter and I wasn’t allowed a duvet, just a thin sheet. The prison guards wouldn’t let me go to the gym or even read my university books. I should’ve been eating for two but they wouldn’t give me any extra food. The other women were worried about me and gave me their leftovers.

    One evening I felt this terrible abdominal pain and called for help. I had started bleeding too. The officers just treated me like I was an inconvenience. Hours passed before they finally took me to hospital. I was body searched and put in handcuffs, it was so humiliating. Everyone at the hospital was staring at me. I was scared that my baby had died. In the police van on the way back one of the officers said to me casually ‘maybe it just wasn’t meant to be’. She was so uncaring. I heard them complain that this hospital visit delayed the end of their shift.

    And then the next morning, I was lying in bed, the blood was still on my sheets and the prison guards shouted at me to get up and start cleaning or they’d sanction me. Thankfully the other women came to help me clean up. I couldn’t do it by myself, I was too tired and upset. A couple of days later I went for a scan. Thankfully the baby was fine but the sonographer had to ask the two prison guards, one male and one female, to stand outside of the curtain while I received an intimate examination. That’s how invasive they are.

    Suzy was later released and found not guilty of the crime she’d been accused of. However, her story is not uncommon.

    Prisons: a ‘terrible environment’ for pregnant women

    Dr Laura Abbott is a midwife and associate professor at Hertfordshire University. She has interviewed dozens of pregnant women in UK prisons through her academic research. Abbott was “pretty horrified” by what she discovered. She told the Canary:

    I met pregnant women who had become sick and dehydrated because they weren’t getting enough food and water. Some women were not receiving medication they’d been prescribed by a doctor before they came in.

    There can be a culture in some prisons of staff making a point of not giving pregnant women any ‘special treatment’, but this is putting their health at risk. It’s also a terrible environment for their mental health. The women I interviewed experienced high levels of shame, stress and fear during their pregnancies.

    Abbott said that around 50% of imprisoned women who give birth have their applications for a space in a Mother and Baby Unit rejected. This means their baby is taken away and put into foster or kinship care. She told the Canary:

    These women are often on suicide watch, as the separation has such a severe impact on their mental health.

    A report last year by the government’s chief social worker Isabelle Trowler found significant issues and inconsistencies with the decision-making process for Mother and Baby Unit applications. Director of charity Birth Companions, Naomi Delap, told the Canary:

    I worry there are still decisions being made where the baby should not be taken away from their mother. Any separation of mother and baby has a profound impact. Even one (wrong) decision is devastating.

    Birth Companions was set up in the 1990s. It was in the wake of a Channel Four documentary that revealed pregnant women from Holloway prison were being made to give birth in shackles at the Whittington hospital in north London. Delap said a different approach is needed for both remand and sentencing:

    Practically speaking, this means a greater commitment to funding and using community alternatives, and a specific mitigating factor (for sentencing) against imprisonment based on pregnancy. Remand and recall must be actively prohibited for pregnant and postnatal women in all but the most exceptional circumstances.

    Despite all this, the government is adamant all is well with the situation for pregnant women and their babies.

    The government says…

    The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) maintains that judges already take pregnancy into account when sentencing women. A spokesperson told the Canary:

    Independent judges already consider mitigating factors when making sentencing decisions, including pregnancy, and custody is always the last resort for women.

    We have already taken decisive action to improve the support available for women, including specialist mother and baby liaison officers in every women’s prison, additional welfare observations and better screening and social services support so that pregnant prisoners get the care they require.

    However, Starling said there have been too many cases of women losing their children after short prison sentences:

    Even three months is enough time to lose your job and home. So when a woman is then released she’s been completely uprooted and lost everything.

    And it’s such a vicious cycle because to get your baby back you need to have a home… It just sends women into a spiral and rips them out from their communities and away from their support network. And ultimately, in the bigger picture, what’s it all for? Truly, what’s it all for?

    It would be great to see the government take their poverty away, not their children.

    A ‘stain’ on the justice system

    This Mother’s Day the #NoBirthsBehindBars campaign had its first birthday. Over the past year campaigning mothers and babies held protests at Parliament Square, the Royal Courts of Justice, and even staged a breastfeeding ‘sit in’ at the MoJ. But as Aisha Dodwell, one of the campaigning mothers, told the Canary:

    It’s a stain on this country’s justice system that we need to even be protesting to demand no more babies be born in prison.

    Ultimately, the campaigners hope that next Mother’s Day there’ll be no need to protest. They hope the government sees sense and stops sending pregnant women to prison altogether. You can sign the campaign’s latest petition here.

    Featured image and additional image via Elizabeth Dalziel 

    By Kate Bermingham

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Nationwide Protests Demand End of Big Bank Funding for Fossil Fuel Expansion

    We speak with Third Act founder Bill McKibben and Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous about protests they’ve organized today across the United States to demand the four biggest banks — Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo and Bank of America — stop financing the expansion of fossil fuel projects. This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: The United Nations has issued a…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Cops directly to blame for the far right organising a second racist protest at a Newquay hotel

    Content warning: This article contains mention of rape and sexual assault

    The far-right is once again targeting refugees in a hotel in Cornwall. However, this time the police and the media are to blame, for helping to spread misinformation. Meanwhile, anti-fascists are once again taking a stand as the far right plans to descend on Newquay in another racist onslaught.

    Racists will target the Beresford Hotel in Newquay for the second time in just over a month. The Home Office is housing refugees there. The far-right action comes after police arrested and charged a man with rape – and media outlets like CornwallLive reported on it. As its website noted:

    A man has been charged in connection with the rape of a woman in Newquay on Sunday, March 12.

    Ghenadie Babii, 38, of Narrowcliff, Newquay, has been charged with rape and appeared at Bodmin Magistrates’ Court today (Friday, March 17) where he was remanded in custody. The case was sent to the crown court at a later date.

    However, this is not the full story.

    The far-right: mobilising again in Cornwall

    Cops released a statement, which they’ve since deleted, giving Babii’s address as “Narrowcliff”. This is the same road the Beresford Hotel is on. Local media then published the statement in articles. Far-right groups, as well as other individuals, immediately latched onto the fact the suspect was from Narrowcliff – and assumed he was staying at the Beresford Hotel. They then organised a second protest – scheduled for Sunday 26 March at 10:30am – based on this racist assumption.

    Of course, it’s now come to light that Babii was not staying at the Beresford Hotel – nor is he a refugee. CornwallLive reported on Monday 20 March that:

    Moldovan national Ghenadie Babii, 38, of Narrowcliff, Newquay, was charged with rape and appeared at Bodmin Magistrates’ Court on Friday (March 17) where he was remanded in custody…

    CornwallLive has confirmed that his address is not the hotel but another property in the area. Babii was in this country legally on a short-term visa.

    Yet as of 9am on Tuesday 21 March, the far-right demo was still happening. However, the protest brief had changed to remove reference to the fascists’ assumption about Babii. Still, though, the cops are partly to blame for this demo even happening. Grassroots coalition Cornwall Resists told the Canary:

    Devon and Cornwall police are responsible for massively stoking community tensions in Newquay. The rapist was not in the hotel or even a refugee. How could the police screw up this badly? They should have known this would inflame community tensions. Publishing the address “Narrowcliff” when they know the hotel has been subject to a concerted far-right racist smear campaign is disgusting and staggeringly incompetent.

    So, Cornwall Resists have organised a counter-protest on 26 March, meeting at 9:30am. However, larger questions still need to be asked of the police’s conduct, as the incident encapsulates cops’ institutional racism and misogyny.

    Cops and media: stoking far-right racism

    Cornwall Resists told the Canary:

    Our thoughts are with the survivor of this attack who now, thanks to the police, has to face the devastating trauma of her assault being publicised, lied about and politicised by the far-right.

    Our thoughts are with the refugees in the hotel, who are once again facing hate because of the lies of fascists and the racist ignorance of a police force who don’t give a shit about their welfare.

    Like other forces across the UK, Devon and Cornwall police is institutionally racist and misogynistic. Black people in Cornwall are 14 times more likely to be stopped by the cops. The force showed its contempt for Black people when a sergeant who shared a vile meme of George Floyd’s death, kept his job. Just weeks ago, another cop from the force was charged with rape and sexual assault. In February, a report found that the police were often failing “to record reports of violent crime including harassment, stalking, controlling and coercive behaviour and domestic abuse”. It further found that it “does not always accurately record” reported incidents of rape, and the recording of crimes against children were also a concern.

    Moreover, local news outlets should not have just published the cops’ statement without questioning the address. Cornwall Resists told the Canary:

    We would also like to know why the press release was taken word-for word with no questions or editing. Only the police are given the privilege of having their statements covered word-by-word. Our own statements aren’t treated like this, nor would we expect them to be. However, any local journalist or editor should have been aware of the current tensions around Narrowcliff and taken the decision to edit this information out of the press release.”

    Misogyny and racism

    Furthermore, there’s also the survivor of Babii’s alleged rape in all of this. CornwallLive reported that the cops are appealing for witnesses:

    Senior investigating officer, Detective Inspector Chris Donald. said earlier today: “Our enquiries remain ongoing in relation to this case and we are really keen to identify and speak to a person who may have seen or heard something which may assist our enquiries.

    Through CCTV enquiries we believe a person was fishing on the beach in the early hours of Sunday and I would ask them to get in touch with us. I’d also ask that anyone else who was in the area and may have relevant information, to please get in touch.

    Anyone with information which may assist this appeal or the wider investigation is asked to contact police on 101 quoting log 158 12/3/23.

    As Cornwall Resists summed up:

    While our focus is now on opposing the racists who’ll continue using this smear to push their vile agenda, it’s important that we remember that it is the police who’ve enabled this situation and who will to be blame if anything happens in Newquay on Sunday.

    So, once again, the far right will be descending on Newquay to hurl racism and intimidation at refugees. However, the wider context here is that the cops should have known this would be the result when they published Babii’s address. Yet they chose to do it anyway. This shows the cops’ complete lack of concern for refugees after the first far-right protest. The police’s actions also show their lack of concern for the survivor of Babii’s alleged rape. However, they also sum up the police’s mentality more broadly: anyone who isn’t white or one of them gets second-class, thoughtless treatment – especially women and Black and brown people.

    Featured image via Cornwall Resists

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Tories are getting splashback for their ‘flotilla of poo’

    Activists, including Extinction Rebellion (XR), have once again awarded a blue plaque to the Conservative government for its commitment to Britain’s waterways. What is that commitment, you may ask? Well, according to the activists themselves, it’s a commitment to turn our pleasant blue waterways into literal “open sewers”.

    Extinction Rebellion help with an ‘inflatable poo flotilla’

    The action was organised by Dirty Water – a group made up of XR, as well as “local health professionals, a group of cold water synchronised swimmers, samba drummers and our very own mermaid”.

    A press release from the group noted:

    The Dirty Water campaign returned to Bristol today to unveil a giant satirical ‘blue plaque’ on the cascade steps near Bristol Harbour, accompanied by a flotilla of inflatable poo, dead fish and other pollutants to draw attention to the alarming levels of untreated sewage, agricultural pollution and industrial waste that are routinely poured into our rivers and coastal waters.

    [The group] congregated at 10am  to hear speeches and watch Bristol Green Party leader Emma Edwards unveil the plaque whilst the Cascade steps were decorated with various representations of pollution (which too frequently goes unnoticed) before heading out to talk to the public about the problem and distribute stickers which include a smaller version of the plaque.

    Dirty Water began its campaign in January by affixing blue plaques along the River Avon near Conham River Park, around the Harbour, and along the River Frome. The group recently took action at the headquarters of Thames Water and Southern Water. The Canary reported that the group gave its first blue plaque out to Jacob Rees-Mogg – namely for his ‘commitment to filth‘:

    The latest plaque is linked to what Dirty Water refer to as “a recent disappointing decision taken by government”. It reads:

    THE UK GOVERNMENT Extended the deadline for all of our rivers and coastal waters to achieve ‘good’ ecological and chemical status by almost 40 years(from 2027 to 2063)

    “Horror”

    Dirty Water Bristol spokesperson Daniel Juniper said:

    We’ve watched in horror as our rivers and seas have become open sewers since October 2021, when the government voted down a proposal to stop water companies pumping waste directly into our rivers and seas. They justified this by claiming that the proposal was too expensive. These plaques shine a light on the government’s failure to protect our waterways, the natural world, and all of us.

    Olympic Gold Medal canoeist and campaigner Etienne Stott said:

    It’s disgusting, literally, to think what’s being pumped into our rivers. The government and the water companies aren’t going to clean up unless ordinary people put pressure on them. Extinction Rebellion can’t do this alone. We need everyone who cares about our rivers and seas to stand up with us and speak out.

    According to Dirty Water Bristol:

    Today is just the first part of a bigger campaign to protect nature and our waterways.  More actions will be taking place over the coming months.

    You can join in by visiting here or signing up to the Dirty Water action network.

    Featured image via Dirty Water Bristol

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Tory attacks on civic freedom see UK downgraded in new report

    Tory attacks on civic freedom have seen the UK downgraded in a new joint report due to restrictive public order laws. International non-profit organisation Civicus and the Bond Charity have warned that new policing laws merit the UK’s recent classification as a state where freedom is “obstructed”.
    Additionally, the report highlighted the state’s response to climate protests as a reason for the downgrade. The UK now sits alongside Hungary, Poland, and nearly 40 other states with poor records on civic freedom.

    Public order laws

    Freedom monitor Civicus publishes The People Power Under Attack report annually. The authors warned that:
    New powers that restrict the right to protest have led to the UK being downgraded from ‘narrowed’ to ‘obstructed’.
    Their critique focused on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and the Public Order Bill:
    Two pieces of legislation we’ve written about and have been advocating against- the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and the Public Order Bill – give extensive new powers to police and the Home Secretary and feature heavily in the UK section of the report.
    Furthermore, it stated that the authorities have targeted climate change protests in particular:
    In addition to the legislation, the report emphasises how climate and anti-racism protesters are being targeted by police, with legal observers experiencing high levels of intimidation, harassment and aggression.

    International issue

    The authors warned that authoritarianism was a real danger:

    The types of legislation and rhetoric we are seeing in the UK now can lay the foundation for further restrictions in the future; clampdowns on charities and protesters can quickly become clampdowns on anyone who dares to think differently.

    Bond CEO Stephanie Draper said that the UK public order laws were becoming “increasingly authoritarian”:

    The downgrade reflects the worrying trends we are seeing in restrictions across civil society that are threatening our democracy.

    That freedom is under attack in the UK will come as no surprise to those paying attention. This new downgrading should send shockwaves through politics. However, with an opposition obsessed with playing to Tory voters, it remains to be seen if it will.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Nigel Mykura, cropped to 770 x 403, licenced under CC BY 2.0.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Protesters are targeting the greedy landlords who are killing the planet

    On Tuesday 14 March, protesters from Housing Rebellion will meet in London to conduct “unannounced site visits” of property companies and landlords. The move is set to shine a light on practices which aren’t just bad for tenants but also deadly for the planet:

    Rebellion against landlords

    Housing Rebellion is a new offshoot of Extinction Rebellion (XR). The group exists to highlight the fact that many of the anti-tenant policies that landlords get away with are also having an enormous impact on the environment. The protest will coincide with the opening day of MIPIM (Le Marché International des Professionnels de L’immobilier). This is the “world’s largest property fair”, according to the group. They add that MIPIM has:

    controversially attracted politicians from across local and national governments to strike lucrative deals with private companies on public land and housing.

    The organisers also said:

    The agenda has lots of guff about climate change and affordable housing, but according to ‘London at MIPIM’ their aim is to promote the “investment potential the city is able to offer global capital”.

    We suspect Global Capital measures their investment returns in cold hard cash (not in units of carbon saved or in the number of people securely housed), so Housing Rebellion has decided to take a closer look at some of these companies being courted by our elected representatives.

    The protesters outlined some of the survey questions they intend to pose to the companies:

    1. Is this company involved in the demolition of social housing? displacing communities and leading to the waste of huge amounts of embodied carbon.
    2. Does this company create new buildings which use polluting resources and building methods? instead of prioritising refurbishment, recycling and sustainable materials.
    3. Does this company engage in shameless greenwashing? Eg. talking about zero-carbon buildings without accounting for any of the emissions created by the materials or building methods in construction, resulting from demolition, or paid for by ‘carbon offsets’; talking about biodiversity while felling mature trees.
    4. Does this company create housing which is unaffordable to the majority of people? leading to even greater waste of resources by selling to speculators and wealthy elites who use them as second homes, luxury holiday lets, or even leave them empty as a store of wealth.
    5. Does this company recruit staff who have previously worked in local government or pay huge donations to sitting politicians? undermining democracy and corrupting the planning process to prioritise profit over the interests of people and our planet.

    The organisers also outlined their demands – termed “Enforcement Actions” – for when companies were found to be at fault:

    1. SHUT THEM DOWN

    2. Refurbish Don’t Demolish

    3. Create low-energy, low-cost, warm, dry homes for all

    4. Housing for people and planet not profit

    Speaking out

    A press release from Housing Rebellion featured quotes from those who’ve chosen to speak out against landlords.

    Among them was Andrea, who works with homeless people in London:

    I am protesting against the developers because the housing they’re building is unaffordable, unsafe and leading people to be placed outside of their community networks because they can’t afford to live in these homes

    Meanwhile, Johnnel was angry that his home is due to be demolished by a housing association:

    Despite the ongoing whopping cost of living crisis battering the wallets and purses of everyone, Peabody still has greedy eyes on our properties – not to improve them for us, but to drive us off and use the land to build more expensive housing beyond the pockets of the residents. This is an unfit dreadful project in this economic turmoil and only callous people can advocate this madness.

    Likewise, Alex’s landlords recently evicted them in a no-fault eviction:

    I’m protesting against developers because since being evicted with eleven others from my home of two years in Wimbledon, I have looked at new developments in south London in vain for a new home, discovering they are a pyramid-selling scheme; shared ownership is for people with a minimum income of £30,000 nearly twice my income, and rented flats have required an income of £8,000 more than my teaching assistant salary.

    Finally, Sabine is campaigning for her estate in Lambeth to be refurbished not demolished:

    Savills is a yellow thread that runs through the destruction of social housing in Lambeth and other local authorities in the UK. The company submitted to the Government a paper on unlocking huge revenue by redeveloping council estates that has also fed into local government policy. It carries out housing stock assessments for councils and advises them on their future housing plans. At the same time, Savills has a massive portfolio of investors ready to benefit from the thousands of luxury homes built in these developments.

    The action will take place at 12 noon on Tuesday 14 March in the Millennium Gardens beside Waterloo Station (opposite the Old Vic).

    Featured Image via Ben Allan – Unsplash

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The far-right have increased their anti-refugee activity – but what of the left’s response?

    The far-right mobilised at least five anti-refugee protests in the past week. Fortunately, they were met by anti-fascist resistance at most of them. However, one of the demonstrations clearly showed the tactics that groups like Patriotic Alternative use to infiltrate local communities. It also served as a lesson in what anti-fascists should not be doing.

    The far-right: posing as “locals”?

    As the Canary previously reported, on Saturday 25 February far-right anti-refugee protests took place in Newquay and Skegness. Now, fascists have upped the ante.

    On Monday 27 February, an anti-refugee demo took place in Kegworth, Leicestershire. Here, the Home Office is housing refugees in a local hotel. The media reported that a local resident organised this demo. However, left-wing groups disputed the claim on social media, with some saying the far-right had organised it:

    However, other groups said the far-right infiltrated the protest:

    Anti-racism protesters came out and were trying to persuade any local residents to think again about their opinions:

    The far-right also gathered on Friday 3 March in Bangor, in the North of Ireland:

    Then come the weekend, at least two far-right protests took place on Saturday 4 March. One was in Dover, where around 100 fascists came out, but they were countered by anti-fascists:

    Predictably, some on the far-right were claiming the protest was organised by “residents”. But a quick scan of social media shows this wasn’t the case – with far-right groups from Portsmouth and as far away as Yorkshire represented. Images online show some of the fascists doing Nazi salutes after the protest. However, anti-fascists mobilised well, with various groups like Stand Up To Racism, Care 4 Calais, and Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) coming out.

    It was a similar story in Carlisle on 4 March. The organised far-right were out protesting about refugees, while claiming it was locals marching – and anti-fascists were there to stand up to them:

    Infiltrating communities and exploiting racist sentiment

    Then, on Sunday 5 March, fascist group Patriotic Alternative mobilised in Erskine, Scotland. Again, the protest was about the Home Office housing refugees in hotels. As the Morning Star reported, the group was:

    led on the site by the ex-British National Party activist Simon Crane, [and] were accompanied by a handful of local residents after it characterised the refugees in the hotel as “200 fight-age men” on social media.

    What the Morning Star crucially noted, though, was just how groups like Patriotic Alternative infiltrate local protests and feed racist sentiment:

    Local residents on both sides began a dialogue about their mutual concerns during the gatherings, discussing worries about local housing, education and service provision.

    As dialogue broke out, it was interrupted and shouted over by PA members… PA activists began to make their way to their cars when the meeting in the middle took place.

    The point being that this age-old tactic from the far-right doesn’t change – except in the age of social media, fascists have another platform to promote their agendas. The far-right exploits the fact that the UK is inherently racist and colonialist, in an attempt to turn protests into violence.

    Refugees welcome – but the left must involve themselves in communities, too

    Meanwhile, anti-racists are trying to build constructive dialogues with locals:

    This is not the end of the far-right marches either. One is happening in Staffordshire on Saturday 11 March, with a counter-protest set to take place:

    Fascists also have trans people in their sights on 11 March. Another anti-Drag Queen Story Time protest will be countered by anti-fascists:

    Getting on the streets and opposing the far-right is crucial, wherever they mobilise in the UK. However, it is also important that left-wing activists don’t just bus themselves in, wave some placards, and then walk away again. There needs to be engagement with local communities at the grassroots.

    Local residents need to see that there’s an alternative to the fascist rhetoric of groups like Patriotic Alternative. This will only happen if anti-racists involve themselves in local communities. Otherwise, busloads of left-wingers descending on communities is hardly likely to create lasting change – and will only end up weakening anti-fascist arguments.

    Featured image via Stand Up To Racism – screengrab

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Trump Supporters Reportedly Banned from DeSantis Book Signing

    Supporters of former President Donald Trump are accusing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) of being anti-free speech after security at a mall where DeSantis was doing a book signing instructed them to disperse. DeSantis, who is seen as a potential challenger to Trump for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, signed autographs for his new book at a mall in Leesburg, Florida, on Tuesday.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Following Walkout, Students and Educators Keep Resisting DeSantis’s Censorship

    Gov. Ron DeSantis is taking full advantage of the Republican supermajority in Florida’s state legislature. The governor continues to introduce what advocates call fascist censorship laws that recall Germany’s Hitler-era systematic erasure of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC experiences. Bills to “stop wokeness” in Florida’s education system have multiplied since the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” law and Stop WOKE…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Living in Britain, fighting for rights in Iran: ‘the lives that are lost are not in vain’ – video

    Haleh, an Iranian woman who has lived in Britain since the age of 15, says ‘our lives have changed forever’ after the brutal murder of a young woman in Tehran last September. Mahsa Amini was arrested by the Iranian morality police for wearing her hijab ‘improperly’, but collapsed and died in custody a few days later. Her death sparked huge international outrage and protest. In the UK, the Iranian community continues to turn out weekly to show solidarity with the movement in Iran, spearheaded by women and teenagers, demanding fundamental rights for women and pushing for a change in Iranian leadership. We join part of the British movement, an activist group called United4Mahsa, to see how members are showing support and spreading awareness about the situation in Iran

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • UK government climate ‘aid’ set to displace indigenous villagers in India

    This is the first of a five-part investigation into how UK government climate finance aid is grabbing land, displacing communities, and furthering colonialism in places like Badi, India – under the guise of renewable energy like solar. You can read part two here. 

    We are saying with folded hands that the only thing that we want is our lands to be saved. And if not land, then at least our houses.

    The Canary spoke to a member of the remote Badi village in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. He wished to remain anonymous for his safety and for the safety of his family and other villagers. As a dairy farmer, he grazes his cattle on primarily government-owned land. His community’s main livelihood is agriculture on this shared commons. The village has been around for 600 years, and families like his have cultivated and raised livestock on the commons for multiple generations.

    But his is one of at least 20 families set to lose their homes, land, and livelihoods to a solar park. It will be constructed on 1,066 hectares, spanning three villages in the district of Neemuch.

    Project documents suggest that the community in Badi village will have less than 60% of their total land remaining.

    The villagers include members of Dalit, indigenous Adivasi, and other marginalised groups. A group of twelve villagers spoke to the Canary. They said that:

    We are losing all our agricultural land in the process, we are losing [our] entire agriculture.

    We will have no option other than moving from this native place and moving to some bigger city to find work or earnings. We will have to migrate.

    The project will likely force the Badi dairy farmer, and other villagers not directly displaced, to migrate. This is because they will lose their agricultural lands and land-based livelihoods.

    UK climate aid funding a solar park

    Across the planet, nations are increasingly turning to solar energy to meet their energy needs. Countries are making the transition to these ‘green technologies‘ to stay in line with the Paris Agreement goal. It states that countries need to make clear efforts to keep global average temperatures well below 2°C, above pre-industrial levels.   

    As part of the agreement, countries with more financial resources and who historically bear larger responsibility for the climate crisis, are also providing funds to less industrialised nations to help them in their energy transition.

    But to meet these climate goals, the UK and other industrialised nations are placing the burden of this energy transition on land-based communities elsewhere. At home, the UK government bans solar parks from farmlands. However, its climate finance funds them on the agricultural and common lands of rural communities in India. It is outsourcing its climate ‘mitigation’ commitments to indigenous communities in the countries least responsible for the crisis.

    UK climate aid is partly funding the solar park in Neemuch. It’s financing the project through the Clean Technology Fund (CTF) – a multilateral climate fund. The World Bank set up the CTF in 2008, and it has since received contributions from 15 industrialised nations.

    The Clean Technology Fund

    The CTF aims to aid less industrialised countries in their efforts to transition to cleaner technologies. The World Bank acts as trustee and administers the fund. It provided a US $100m loan to the project, split between the CTF ($25m) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).

    According to the project’s Resettlement and Livelihood Restoration Plan (RLRP), the solar park at Neemuch will physically displace 23 families from their lands and homes. It will also displace the livelihoods of a further 202 households. The UK is partially funding two other solar parks in different districts in the state of Madhya Pradesh through the same CTF project. Alongside the solar park at Neemuch, this will physically and economically displace over 850 households. Overall, this affects the indigenous and land-based communities across twenty-five villages. The eight transmission lines for these projects, which transport the solar power elsewhere, will economically displace nearly 2,000 more families.

    The displaced households should receive financial compensation for the acquired land. World Bank policies also state that the projects should offer them new land or economic opportunities. These include employment, support for starting a new business, or training. But this has not always been the experience of the communities displaced by these large-scale solar parks across other parts of India.

    Insufficient compensation

    Gaurav Dwivedi is associate director at the Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA) in India. He says that land-for-land compensation is never offered for these large-scale climate projects in India. Dwivedi has studied and produced a report on another solar park in Madhya Pradesh. The same CTF project as the three upcoming solar parks also partially funded this project. Dwivedi says of land-for-land compensation:

    In the context of massive land acquisition for renewable projects, India does not have that kind of adequate vacant land. The land required would need to be acquired from agricultural communities. With this constraint it is difficult to provide land for land as per the law to every affected family, resulting in cash compensation to affected families. This also means people lose permanent sources of livelihood.

    The dairy farmer who wished to remain anonymous, and the other Badi villagers that the Canary spoke to, confirmed that land-for-land compensation had not been offered for the solar park at Neemuch. To date, they have also yet to receive any compensation. Project documents suggest that compensation should be provided in advance of any loss of access to land, but the dairy farmer says that:

    Ten percent of the land is already acquired and the rest of the land is in the process. So 90% of the land is in the process of acquisition, but as of now, we haven’t received any rehabilitation or compensation.

    Local administration employees in JCB bulldozers clear a local farmer’s land for the Neemuch solar park in the early hours 28 January 2023, Kawai village (adjacent to Badi).

     

    Even if the financial compensation arrives, the loss of their agricultural and pastoral lands and associated livelihood means that displacement from their community is still a likely outcome. The dairy farmer explained that this has already happened for some in his community, whose land the project acquired early:

    The people whose land is already snatched away, those people have no other option except to work in factories or in construction.

    Broken promises, broken climate aid

    At other climate projects in India, promised jobs within projects have not materialised for the communities economically displaced by them.

    Dwivedi explains that he and his colleagues did a fact-finding mission in 2019 to the partially CTF-financed Rewa solar park project. They found the company had not fulfilled its employment promises:

    Some of the people on the ground said that they had been given assurances that they will get jobs within the planned [project] like cleaning, security guards, and contractual work. Despite these assurances local people claimed that they were not given these jobs. They said that many of the contract labour were employed from outside, and local people hardly got any jobs, not even unskilled labour work like cleaning and security guard.

    Badi villagers are concerned that they are facing a similar situation. Rewa Ultra Mega Solar Limited (RUMSL), is the project developer for the solar parks at Rewa, Neemuch, Agar, and Shajapur. According to the villagers the Canary spoke to, it has yet to offer employment to anyone in the village. The dairy farmer told us:

    We haven’t been offered any work in the solar plant. No one is offered any work. The administrative person, he once said that they might be offering some job or something, but as of now, there is no lead, nothing has happened in that direction.

    Compensation is not enough

    The villagers are anxious about the loss of their land. They explain that the compensation won’t be sufficient to maintain their quality of life. An anonymous Badi village member said:

    The compensation won’t be enough, because agriculture is a sustainable thing.

    While the agriculture sustains his livelihood and feeds his family and community every year, the compensation will eventually run out. He adds that:

    The money is not sufficient, because this land is in a remote area. And when you talk about pricing of the remote area land, it would be very low as compared to other areas. So whatever amount we would be getting, it won’t be enough or sufficient enough to settle somewhere else.

    Already there is scarcity of work, so if we are going to leave our agricultural land, our ancestral homes, it is very difficult to get a home. It would be really, really difficult for our families to settle into a new place, find new work.

    The climate land grab intensifies

    Since the Canary spoke to the Badi community, the situation on the ground has intensified.

    In early October 2022, officials for the company arrived at Badi to continue demarcating the land for the solar park. Over two hundred villagers came to the site in protest. A local administration officer came to the scene to mediate. Villagers continued to protest undeterred until they vacated the land. 

    Farmer and village politician Balkishan Dhakad has been protesting the land acquisition with others from his community. The local administration have begun to acquire his land in Kawai, the village adjacent to Badi. So, Dhakad is fighting the acquisition in the local court, which had issued a ‘stay order’ pausing the acquisition. The local administration ignored the court order. Villagers contacted the Canary to inform us of the unfolding situation. They told us that before dawn on 28 January 2023, the local administration arrived with large numbers of police officers in riot vests and helmets. They used JCB bulldozers to clear Dhakad’s chickpea crop. 

    ‘It’s our livelihood’

    On the same day, local farmers began a picket outside the District Collector’s office. They were there to protest the seizure of Dhakad’s land. Dhakad has been farming the land there for 60 years. However, the local administration says he is encroaching and that the land is owned by the government. The protest ended on 2 February after six days of picketing the local administration. 

    The nearby community in Badi says that they still haven’t heard any news on compensation for their land. When the Canary spoke to them, they said: 

     All we need is land in compensation of land. We don’t need anything else. We are happy, whatever project comes, whatever it is, but all we need is a place where we can do agriculture. At least we should get land in compensation of land, wherever, because that’s our livelihood.

    Local farmers protest outside the local administration office after one farmer’s land was forcibly cleared of crops and access restricted. Sign reads: “Long live farmer unity. Forced occupation of hundreds of bighas of land. The court also ordered the Neemuch district administration to acquire hundreds of bighas of land owned by village farmers of tehsil. Against destroying crops and houses, wells and tube wells. Indefinite strike and unrest. From 28 January Location: Outside the [District] Collector’s office”.

    Take action for Badi

    The UK government and World Bank’s support for this project shows that they are using climate aid to continue an exploitative and extractive capitalist agenda. Climate aid and policy is failing the very people it should help most. 

    The government of India may have greenlit the solar parks at Neemuch, Shajapur, and Agar. However, there is still time to take action for the communities the projects will impact.

    Write to your MP and ask them to raise the issue of UK climate aid funding these solar parks. Contact the UK government and tell it to ensure companies pay fair compensation to these communities. Tell the UK government that future international climate aid should not fund projects which affect communities in this way. 

    One thing is for certain: whether an open-pit coal mine or a solar park, people on the ground will continue to resist. They will fight this new face of colonialism – as communities have always done. The struggle for liberation from colonial climate aid starts in the communities battling these projects. It starts with them stopping governments and corporations dispossessing them of their lands and livelihoods. We owe them our solidarity.

    Part two of this series will further examine the colonial basis of climate policies driven by the UK in India.

    Featured image via Hannah Sharland 

    Additional images via Canary sources

    By Hannah Sharland

  • XR Bristol protest calls for ‘fair travel, not air travel’

    Environmental activists from Extinction Rebellion (XR) have once again stopped the Airport Flyer shuttle service in Bristol. In part, they’re protesting the reduction in public transport like buses which don’t support the carbon-intensive air industry. It goes further than that, however, as the XR Youth Bristol (XRYB) activists also have a list of demands:

    XR: “fair travel not air travel”

    The protest follows similar actions covered by the Canary on Saturday 5 November and Saturday 5 December:

    XRYB announced the latest protest in a press release:

    At 12:30pm today, youth environmental activists blocked an Airport Flyer bus on Bedminster Parade on its way to the City Centre, after the airport was given permission to expand by the High Court at the end of last month.

    Activists from Extinction Rebellion Youth Bristol (XRYB) blocked the bus’ path by standing around it with banners (including one reading ‘Fair Travel not Air Travel’) as it attempted to leave the stop in Bedminster.

    According to XRYB activists, no passengers on the bus were at risk of missing flights as it was returning from the airport to the City Centre.

    Back in November, the action took place days before the High Court heard arguments on Bristol Airport’s expansion. The Canary reported at the time:

    On 8 and 9 November, the High Court hears arguments on the expansion of Bristol Airport. XRYB points out that the expansion will significantly increase the quantity of carbon dioxide and equivalent greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year. XR Youth previously held a ‘die-in’ protest inside the airport terminal in March.

    Fair buses

    The protests were both part of XRYB’s ‘Free Buses, Fair Buses’ campaign that was launched in June. Alongside other groups, XRYB forms part of the ‘Reclaim Our Buses’ campaign – a coalition pushing for bus franchising in the West of England. Franchising in this instance would mean an end to unfettered deregulation, with councils regaining control over how bus services are run. An open letter to the relevant local authority reads:

    The private bus companies are entirely profit-driven, so they’re justifying the bus cuts with the falling passenger numbers, rising fuel and wage costs, and driver shortages that make the services unprofitable with no regard for the public need. Further, the financial support from the government during the pandemic will soon end and the private bus companies are not obliged to continue running services that don’t make them profits. This deregulated market is always at odds with the bus services that many in our communities need to get to work, school, shops, and health centres.

    The idea has recently received public support from several prominent figures, including Bristol South MP Karin Smyth and Green Party co-leader and councillor Carla Denyer.

    According to XRYB:

    FirstBus recently announced the cancellation of nearly 1,500 bus services a week across Bristol, continuing until at least April. This follows on from plans to cut up to 18 bus routes across the West of England … whilst also increasing the frequency of Airport Flyer buses from Bristol from every 20 to every 12 minutes.

    Free bus travel

    XRYB’s demands to the West of England Combined Authority and its constituent local authorities are:

    Free buses: Free bus travel within the West of England (including North Somerset) for all those under the age of 25, all students, and all apprentices.

    Fair buses: A consultation and public forum is run to identify improvements to bus routes that would best serve communities.

    XR Youth spokesperson Torin Menzies said:

    We need to revolutionise our public transport, including vastly improving the state of the West of England’s frankly awful bus network. Sadly, FirstBus are more interested in serving the potentially expanding Bristol Airport instead of our local communities, cutting bus routes across the region whilst increasing the Airport Flyer service.

    Bristol Airport expansion will increase flights and emissions at a time of climate emergency, as well as worsening air quality, and FirstBus are actively supporting these plans. What we need is fair travel, not air travel.

    XRYB’s movement for free buses has also seen them placing temporary messages near bus stops:

    Featured image via and additional images via James Ward

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • A New Crossroads for Peru’s Fragile Democracy



    On 25 January, roughly six weeks after being sworn in following her predecessor’s removal, Peruvian president Dina Boluarte finally recognized that elections were the only way out of political crisis. Elections were rescheduled for April 2024, much earlier than the end of the presidential term she’s been tasked with completing, but not soon enough for thousands who’ve taken to the streets demanding her immediate resignation.

    Boluarte’s call for a ‘national truce’ has been met with further protests. Their repression has led to major bloodshed: the Ombudsman’s office has reported close to 60 dead – mostly civilians killed by security forces – and 1,500 injured.

    What happened and what it means

    It’s unusually easy to impeach Peru’s presidents: a legislative majority can vote to remove them on vaguely defined grounds.

    Pedro Castillo, elected president in July 2021, had already survived two removal attempts and faced a third. On 7 December he made a pre-emptive strike: he dissolved Congress and announced a restructuring of the judiciary, as former president Alberto Fujimori had done decades earlier in the ‘self-coup’ that started several years of authoritarian rule.

    Castillo announced the establishment of an exceptional emergency government where he would rule by decree and promised to hold congressional elections soon. The new Congress, he said, would have the power to draft a new constitution.

    But unlike Fujimori, Castillo enjoyed meager support, and within hours Congress voted to remove him from office. He was arrested and remains in pretrial detention on rebellion charges. Vice-president Boluarte was immediately sworn in.

    In the whirlwind that followed there was much talk that a coup, or a coup attempt, had taken place – but opinions differed radically as to who was the victim and who was the perpetrator.

    The prevailing view was that Castillo’s dissolution of Congress was an attempt at a presidential coup. But others saw Castillo’s removal as a coup. Debate has been deeply polarised on ideological grounds, making clear that in Peru and Latin America, a principled rather than partisan defense of democracy is still lacking.

    Permanent crisis

    Recent events are part of a bigger political crisis that has seen six presidents in six years. In 2021, a polarising presidential campaign was followed by an extremely fragmented vote. The runoff election yielded an unexpected winner: a leftist outsider of humble origins, Castillo, defeated the right-wing heiress of the Fujimori dynasty by under one percentage point. Keiko Fujimori initially rejected the results and baselessly claimed fraud. Castillo’s presidency was born fragile. It was an unstable government, with a high rotation of ministers and fluctuating congressional support.

    Peru: 6 presidents in 6 years

    Although Castillo had promised to break the cycle of corruption, his government, himself, and close associates soon became the target of corruption allegations coming not just from the opposition but also from state watchdog institutions. Castillo’s response was to attack the prosecutor and ask the Organization of American States (OAS) to apply its Democratic Charter to preserve Peruvian democracy supposedly under attack. The OAS sent a mission that ended with a call for dialogue. Only two weeks later, Castillo embarked on his short-lived coup adventure.

    Protests and repression

    According to Peru’s Constitution, Boluarte should complete Castillo’s term. But observers generally agree there’s no way she can stay in office until 2024, never mind 2026, given the rejection she faces from protesters and political parties in Congress.

    A wave of protests demanding her resignation rose as soon as she was sworn in, led mostly by students, Indigenous groups, and unions. Many also demanded Castillo’s freedom and government action to address poverty and inequality. Some demands went further, including a call for a constituent assembly – the promise Castillo made before being removed from office—to produce more balanced representation, particularly for Indigenous people. For many of Peru’s poorest people, Castillo represented hope for change. With him gone, they feel forgotten.

    Four days into the job, Boluarte declared a regional state of emergency, later extended to the whole country. Protests only increased, and security forces responded with extreme violence, often shooting to kill. No wonder so many Peruvians feel this isn’t a democracy anymore.

    The state of Peruvian democracy

    The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index rates Peru as a ‘flawed democracy’. A closer look at the index’s components suggests what’s wrong with Peruvian democracy: it gets its lowest score in the political culture dimension. In line with this, the Americas Barometer shows Peru has one of the lowest levels of support for democracy in Latin America and is the country where opposition to coups is weakest.

    Peru’s democracy scores low on critical indicators such as checks and balances, corruption, and political participation. This points to the heart of the problem: it’s a dysfunctional system where those elected to govern fail to do so and public policies are inconsistent and ineffective.

    According to every survey, just a tiny minority of Peruvians are satisfied with their country’s democracy. The fact that no full-fledged alternative has yet emerged seems to be the only thing currently keeping democracy alive. Democratic renewal is urgently needed, or an authoritarian substitute could well take hold.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Documents show how 19 ‘Cop City’ activists got charged with terrorism

    A burst of gunfire rang through a forest on the edge of Atlanta, Georgia, on the morning of January 18. Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, whose chosen name was Tortuguita (Spanish for “little turtle”), had been shot and killed by police officers, becoming the only known person killed by law enforcement during an environmentalist act of land defense in the U.S.

    Tortuguita was part of a loose-knit group continuously occupying the woods to stop trees from being felled by construction of a sprawling police training center known to activists as Cop City. In 2021, with little public input, the Atlanta city council approved plans for the $90 million Public Safety Training Center on the city-owned former site of Atlanta’s prison farm, which the trees had reclaimed and had previously been included in plans for a revamped parks system. (The activists call the area the Weelaunee Forest, a name from the Muscogee people who were violently forced out of the area 200 years ago.)

    Although some members of the transient and leaderless group had damaged property in apparent attempts to stymie construction, many just camped, hoping their refusal to move out of the way of the trees would prevent them from being cut down and replaced by firing ranges and a mock city where police would conduct riot training.

    That morning, members of a multi-agency law enforcement task force had moved through the woods toward Tortuguita’s tent. According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Tortuguita fired first, using a handgun the 26-year-old had purchased, and struck a Georgia State Patrol officer, who was hospitalized. No civilians appear to have witnessed what happened, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation says no body cameras captured the incident. In life, Tortuguita spoke often (and publicly) of the virtues of nonviolence, so their friends and fellow activists doubt the state’s story.

    “We have no reason whatsoever to trust the narrative that’s been given,” said Kamau Franklin, founder of the local group Community Movement Builders, which organizes with Black communities in Atlanta and opposes the police training center, citing other high-profile police killings around the country in which official narratives have fallen apart.

    While the environmental nonprofit Global Witness has documented over 1,700 killings of land defenders worldwide over the past decade, Tortuguita’s death is only the second such killing in the U.S. The first was a fisheries observer who disappeared at sea under circumstances that suggested foul play in 2015.

    On Thursday, Governor Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency in response to protests Saturday night sparked by Tortuguita’s death, during which participants threw rocks, broke windows, and burned a police car. Kemp’s order, effective until February 9, allows up to 1,000 National Guard troops to police the streets of Atlanta.

    To allies, Tortuguita’s killing was the climax of an escalation of police and legal tactics meant to stifle the wide-ranging movement to stop construction of the training center, which includes parks advocates, prison abolitionists, and area neighborhood associations. Over the course of December and January, 19 opponents of the police training center have been charged with felonies under Georgia’s rarely used 2017 domestic terrorism law. But Grist’s review of 20 arrest warrants shows that none of those arrested and slapped with terrorism charges are accused of seriously injuring anyone. Nine are alleged to have committed no specific illegal actions beyond misdemeanor trespassing. Instead, their mere association with a group committed to defending the forest appears to be the foundation for declaring them terrorists. Officials have underlined that an investigation is ongoing, and charges could yet be added or removed.

    Lauren Regan, an attorney who is the executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center, which will represent some defendants, said the charges are legally flimsy and designed to scare movement supporters.

    “It’s so next time a vigil happens, mom or the school teacher or the nurse — or someone that has higher risk of randomly getting arrested — is probably going to think twice about going,” she said.  

    “They’re going to use this to continually vilify and criminalize the wider movement,” added Franklin.

    Georgia’s terror law passed in response to high-profile mass shootings including the 2015 massacre of nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, by white supremacist Dylann Roof. The 2017 law expanded the definition of “domestic terrorism” from its original designation as an act intended to kill or injure at least 10 people to one encompassing a range of property crimes. Critics at the time, including the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that the law was bound to be used against protesters and to stifle free speech. The charges validate civil liberties’ groups concerns and offer a warning signal for lawmakers in both major parties who have repeatedly proposed federal domestic terrorism legislation as a solution to America’s epidemic of mass murder.

    Atlanta Police Department spokesperson John Chafee, on the other hand, defended the use of the law in this case. “We are hopeful the law and the possibility of being charged with this felony will be a deterrent from engaging in criminal behavior,” he told Grist. “We support the right to protest and we will work to ensure those engaged in a lawful protest are able to do so safely.”

    Elsewhere in the woods on the day of the shooting, officers tore down 25 campsites and arrested seven activists. Law enforcement also netted bystanders: One Dekalb County Police Department incident report describes two individuals walking along a river trail “in an area that is being occupied by suspects wanted for domestic terrorism.” The Georgia Bureau of Investigation recommended they be “placed in flex handcuffs and transported to the nearby command post.” Later, they were determined to be “vagrants from the city of New Orleans” and were released.

    Timothy Murphy was one of the last forest defenders standing. In the predawn hours of January 19, S.W.A.T. team members shone spotlights on Murphy as the activist perched above a treehouse, according to an incident report. Around sunrise, Murphy rappelled down the tree. Dekalb County Police S.W.A.T. members grabbed their legs, cut their harness, and booked them on charges of domestic terrorism.

    So far police don’t claim that Murphy committed any act of violence or even property destruction. Key to Murphy’s terror charge, according to their arrest warrant, is that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, designated a group called Defend the Atlanta Forest as “Domestic Violent Extremists.” In other words, Murphy appears to have been charged with terrorism on the basis of their affiliation with the forest defenders.

    In response to questions from Grist, a DHS spokesperson denied that the federal agency classifies any specific groups with this term, while also saying that it does use the term to refer to any U.S. individual or group “who seeks to further social or political goals, wholly or in part, through unlawful acts of force or violence” and regularly shares information about threats with state and local agencies.

    Regardless, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation decided that Murphy was a member of the “extremist” group on the basis of the activist’s actions: They trespassed and then refused police orders to leave the treehouse for 12 hours. As a result, if prosecutors move forward with the terror charge, Murphy will face a mandatory minimum sentence of five to 35 years in prison for what’s known as a tree sit — a common tactic among environmentalists.

    A DeKalb County arrest warrant summarizes the allegation of domestic terrorism against an environmental activist accused of trespassing.
    A DeKalb County arrest warrant summarizes the allegation of domestic terrorism against an environmental activist accused of trespassing.
    DeKalb County Superior Court

    The Atlanta forest defenders’ warrants state that Defend the Atlanta Forest earned its Domestic Violent Extremist label because members had thrown Molotov cocktails, rocks, and fireworks at police, and also shot metal ball bearings at contractors. They had also committed various acts of property destruction, including vandalism, discharging firearms at “critical infrastructure,” and committing arson of “public buildings, heavy equipment, private buildings, and private vehicles.”

    However, besides three allegations of rock-throwing, the 14 forest defenders’ warrants do not appear to accuse them of committing any of the above acts that led to the designation. Grist’s analysis of arrest warrants found that, for nine forest defenders detained during police operations in December and January, their alleged acts of “domestic terrorism” consist solely of trespassing in the woods and camping or occupying a tree house.

    A warrant following a police raid on December 13, for example, justifies a domestic terrorism charge by stating that the activist “affirmed their cooperation with [Defend the Atlanta Forest] by occupying a tree house while wearing a gas mask and camouflage clothing.” Another defendant, arrested January 18, told police that they were aware of the Cop City controversy before coming to Atlanta and had planned in advance to sleep on the land — an admission that apparently became the basis for a domestic terrorism charge. “Said defendant admitted to participating in previous protests in other states for environmental causes,” the warrant added.

    Four forest defenders charged with domestic terrorism are also accused of possessing incendiary devices or firearms or throwing rocks at fire department and emergency workers and damaging a police vehicle. One of those was charged separately with injuring an officer, who scraped and cut his knee and elbow as the defendant fled. A fifth defendant is separately accused of trying to cut the rope of an arborist attempting to remove them from a tree house.

    Six people charged with domestic terrorism during a night of protest in response to Tortuguita’s killing on January 21, including one who was also charged in the woods, face a slightly different set of allegations. Their domestic terrorism arrest affidavits point to felony charges they face for allegedly damaging a nearby Atlanta Police Foundation building and setting fire to a police car. A separate set of arrest citations is ambiguous as to whether the defendants are known to have personally carried out property damage, though one defendant is charged with carrying spray paint, a hammer, torch fuel, and a lighter as well as kicking and spitting on an officer as they were arrested.

    The initial arrest citations for domestic terrorism also state that members of the crowd “used explosives/fireworks toward police,” without indicating whether the defendants did so themselves. The street protesters’ domestic terrorism arrest affidavits state that the alleged felonies were carried out with the intention of intimidating officials into changing government policy.

    All but one of the activists arrested in the forest were released on bonds ranging from $6,000 to $13,500. None of the street protesters have been released, with four dubbed flight risks and denied bond, and two unable to pay a $355,000 bond.

    The forest defenders’ charges appear to stand on shaky legal ground. To be convicted under Georgia’s terror law, an individual must first commit or attempt a felony. Nine of those arrested in the forest are charged with criminal trespass, which is only a misdemeanor.

    Also, the acts must be intended to intimidate people, use intimidation to influence government policy, or impact the government through the use of “destructive devices, assassination, or kidnapping.” How trespassing and camping could constitute intimidation is unclear. The law does not contain language about whether associating with a “Domestic Violent Extremist” group counts as terrorism. 

    Even if the charges are dismissed on the grounds that they do not fulfill the requirements of the law, they may leave a lasting legacy. “One of the problems with state repression is the crackdown and the arrests and the jailing and the bond — for the humans that are targeted, even if they end up being acquitted, all of that takes a toll,” said Regan, the attorney.

    Although multiple environmental activists have been prosecuted under federal terrorism law in recent years, it’s been over a decade since the U.S. has seen anti-terrorism charges aimed at a broad swath of environmental activists. During a period known as the “Green Scare” in the mid-2000s, more than a dozen people associated with the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front were arrested as part of an FBI domestic terror operation. At the time, “eco-terrorism” became the Justice Department’s top domestic terrorism priority, despite the fact that those arrested had made a point to avoid causing any bodily harm even as they burned down facilities they considered environmentally destructive.

    The smaller-scale green scare that police have carried out in Atlanta in recent weeks is in some ways even more indiscriminate, since many of the alleged terrorists are not even accused of property damage.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Documents show how 19 ‘Cop City’ activists got charged with terrorism on Jan 27, 2023.

  • Lords can stop police getting pre-emptive protest ban rights, Green peer says

    Labour must whip its benches to vote against controversial proposed powers, says Jenny Jones

    Controversial proposed powers for police to pre-emptively ban protests believed likely to cause “serious disruption” could be killed in the House of Lords if Labour whips its benches to vote against them, the Green peer Jenny Jones has said.

    The powers, described as “a blank cheque to shut down dissent”, were introduced by the government this month in late amendments to a public order bill that already includes a series of anti-protest measures.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Starving for Justice in Thailand

    Two political prisoners arrested for questioning the Thai monarchy have been on a life-threatening hunger strike for over a week. The government has met their demands for the right to free expression with silence.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Activists Call for Mass Rallies on Sunday to Protest Abortion Bans

    Abortion rights activists are holding mass rallies across the country on Sunday to mark what would be the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Courtruling that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion until right-wing justices struck it down last year. In Louisiana, one of at least 13 states that banned most abortions since the ruling, Nancy Davis will be a leader at the march in the…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.