{"id":971776,"date":"2023-01-27T11:00:27","date_gmt":"2023-01-27T11:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=420312"},"modified":"2023-01-27T11:00:27","modified_gmt":"2023-01-27T11:00:27","slug":"the-crackdown-on-cop-city-protesters-is-so-brutal-because-of-the-movements-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/01\/27\/the-crackdown-on-cop-city-protesters-is-so-brutal-because-of-the-movements-success\/","title":{"rendered":"The Crackdown on Cop City Protesters Is So Brutal Because of the Movement’s Success"},"content":{"rendered":"
The movement to<\/u> stop the construction of a $90 million police training center atop vast acres of Atlanta forest has been extraordinarily successful over the last year. With little national fanfare, Defend the Atlanta Forest\/Stop Cop City activists nimbly deployed a range of tactics<\/a>:\u00a0encampments, tree-sits, peaceful protest marches, carefully targeted property damage, local community events, investigative research, and, at times, direct confrontation with police forces attempting to evict protesters from the forest. The proposed militarized training compound known as Cop City has thus far been held at bay.<\/p>\n The Atlanta-based movement should be seen as an example of rare staying power, thoughtful strategizing, and the crucial articulation of environmentalist politics situated in anti-racist, Indigenous, and abolitionist struggle. Unsurprisingly, however, significant national attention has only been drawn to the forest defenders in the last week thanks to the extreme law enforcement repression they are now facing.<\/p>\n A forest defender was killed by police last Wednesday, and a total of 19 protesters now face capricious and ungrounded domestic terror charges for their involvement in the movement \u2014 a rare deployment of a state domestic terror statute<\/a>, threatening to exhaust and crush a resilient and developing movement.<\/p>\n On Thursday, Georgia\u2019s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp announced<\/a> a \u201cstate of emergency\u201d in response to the protests in downtown Atlanta in the week following the killing of the protester. The executive order grants the governor\u2019s office extensive and preemptive repressive powers, including the ability to call on as many as 1,000 National Guard troops to quell protests at any moment.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an unprecedented level of repression,\u201d said Marlon Kautz, 38, an Atlanta-based organizer with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund<\/a>, which provides bail funds and legal support to protesters who are targeted for involvement in social movements, including against Cop City.<\/p>\n \u201cAt this point the police seem to be charging every protester they arrest with \u2018domestic terrorism\u2019 regardless of the circumstances,\u201d he said. \u201cThe other pattern we’ve noticed is they are charging everyone arrested on a given day with all crimes which happened that day.\u201d<\/p>\n Kautz told me, by way of example, that during a protest in which a police car was burned, all arrestees from the day now face arson charges. \u201cNeedless to say, the law doesn’t work this way, so we interpret this as a strategy of blatant malicious prosecution.\u201d<\/p>\n The Defend the Atlanta Forest movement endeavors to combine the tactics of, and to learn from, previous struggles \u2014 including the 2016 encampments at Standing Rock and the 2020 George Floyd uprisings \u2014 while experimenting with novel resistance compositions<\/a>. The escalatory response from police and prosecutors, on the other hand, reveals a new and troubling combination of counterinsurgent strategies.<\/p>\n The forest defenders have already faced months of aggressive policing and intimidation, which escalated into deadly violence during a multiagency raid last Wednesday. Police shot and killed 26-year-old Manuel \u201cTortuguita\u201d Ter\u00e1n. The authorities claim that Tortuiguita shot at them first, wounding an officer \u2014 a narrative fiercely challenged<\/a> by fellow activists and family members.<\/p>\n Protests and vigils sprung up nationwide<\/a> demanding \u201cjustice for Tort,\u201d while mainstream environmental organizations, including Greenpeace<\/a> and the Sierra Club<\/a>, alongside left-wing Reps. Cori Bush, D-Mo., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., condemned<\/a> the police\u2019s violence and called for an independent investigation into the activist\u2019s killing. Up until this point, they had said little about the year-plus long struggle against Cop City.<\/p>\n As forest defenders<\/u> mourn and seek justice for their fallen friend, the movement must also fight a barrage of excessive criminal charges, most notably state domestic terrorism charges carrying a possible<\/a> 35 years in prison.<\/p>\n\n \u201cSince December, the police have repeatedly stormed the forest with military-grade weapons, pointed assault rifles at protesters, fired chemical weapons at tree sitters, and used chainsaws in an attempt to dismantle treehouses with tree sitters still in them,\u201d said Elias, a 24-year-old Atlanta-based student in the movement, who asked to withhold his full name for fear of police harassment. \u201cTheir decision to create a dangerous, volatile, chaotic situation now has led to the murder of our friend Tortuguita.\u201d<\/p>\n Elias told me \u201cthe police are trying to justify their negligence by charging people with domestic terrorism. However, nothing these protesters have done even remotely resembles domestic terrorism. The police are trying to redefine terrorism to mean \u2018sitting in a treehouse\u2019 or \u2018breaking windows.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The terror charges, all handed down within the last two months, were not from nowhere. Political and business interests behind Cop City have been pushing related rhetoric for well over a year. Communications<\/a> records uncovered by activists between Cop City supporters \u2014 local self-identifying \u201cstakeholders,\u201d business owners, council members, and Atlanta law enforcement officials \u2014 show that these parties have been calling the protesters \u201ceco-terrorists\u201d since at least last April.<\/p>\n Though no one has yet been convicted on these bogus terror charges, Kemp, the governor, has readily<\/a> used the term \u201cdomestic terrorists\u201d to describe the arrestees. Kemp has also invoked the tired trope of \u201coutside agitators\u201d to delegitimize an Atlanta-based movement, which has made a point to invite activists to join from out of state. Notably, in recognition that the land on which Atlanta stands was stolen in the 1800s from the Muscogee (Creek) people, the forest protest encampment has been host to dozens of visitors from around the country who descended from the displaced Indigenous community.<\/p>\n\u201cAt this point the police seem to be charging every protester they arrest with \u2018domestic terrorism\u2019 regardless of the circumstances.”<\/blockquote>\n