Cop City protesters charged with racketeering as Georgia takes hard line
Protesters gather in Atlanta's Gresham Park in June to protest against the proposed ‘Cop City’. Photograph: Steve Eberhardt/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock
Some of 61 defendants charged also face money laundering and domestic terrorism charges for environmental protests
by Betsy Reed
Dozens of activists who oppose a controversial police and fire training facility in Georgia known as Cop City have been charged with racketeering, appearing to confirm fears from civil rights groups that prosecutors are stepping up an aggressive pursuit of environmental protesters.
A total of 61 people – most not from Georgia – were indicted for violating the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act last week, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Some of the defendants face additional charges of money laundering and domestic terrorism, the newspaper reported.
In July, a coalition of groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote to the Department of Homeland Security decrying tactics used in authorities’ surveillance of the environmental protesters, and their use of the label “domestic violence extremism” for opponents of the $90m facility under construction on 85 acres of the South River Forest near Atlanta.
The letter warned of the “dangers of … vague, overbroad, and stigmatizing terms like ‘domestic violent extremist’ and ‘militant’ to describe individuals who may be engaged in protected first amendment activity”.
The US constitution’s first amendment protects Americans’ rights to free political speech and assembly.
The most recent indictment was filed by the Georgia attorney general’s office in Fulton county last Tuesday, the AJC reported, and follows months of often violent protests at the site and in downtown Atlanta.
In June, Sherry Boston, district attorney for DeKalb county, in which Cop City is located, announced she was withdrawing from criminal cases tied to protests, citing differences with Georgia’s Republican attorney general, Chris Carr, over how they were being handled.
At that stage, more than 40 people had been charged with domestic terrorism following incidents in which fireworks and rocks were thrown at police. Police vehicles and construction equipment were also vandalized.
“It is clear to both myself and to the attorney general that we have fundamentally different prosecution philosophies,” Boston said. The move handed Carr’s office sole responsibility for charging and prosecuting cases.
Protesters have complained of intimidation and heavy-handed action by police, and the shooting death of an environmental activist, Manuel Paez Terán, in a January raid by officers on a camp at the constriction site. Investigators claimed Paez Terán, who was shot 57 times, fired first, but an autopsy found no gunpowder residue on the activist’s body.
Paez Terán’s death was believed to be the first of an environmental campaigner by law enforcement in the US, reflecting what campaigners say is an escalation in the criminalization and repression of those who seek to protect natural resources.