Conspiring for the Future
This week the state of Georgia took drastic steps to send a message to those who object to police violence. Using the unique RICO laws of the state, and what appears to be the same grand jury that indicted President Trump, the republican governor and attorney general are attempting to confuse and intimidate people who are organizing for justice.
There is no question that this action is also intended to de-legitimize the efforts of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Her RICO indictment of former President Donald Trump brings the most cogent and forceful charges documenting a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.
The symbolic nature of the indictment of the forest defenders was clear in the framing of the charges. The date the alleged conspiracy emerged was May 25, 2020, the day the Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd. In the indictment, 61 activists are accused of creating a “criminal enterprise” to Stop Cop City. All the people indicted are members of Defend the Atlanta Forest. They are accused of conspiring to prevent the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center by conducting, coordinating, and organizing acts of violence, intimidation, and property destruction. They are labeled as anarchists, anti-police, and anti-business, as though these beliefs are somehow crimes.
These new racketeering indictments come along with charges of domestic terrorism, arson, and money laundering. The illegal activities include such things as passing out flyers that challenge to powers of the police.
As an indication of how politically charged and legally shaky these charges are the DeKalb County prosecutor, Sherry Boston, has refused to participate in the prosecution and indicated broad concerns with the charges.
Speaking on Democracy Now, Stop Cop City organizer Keyanna Jones explained the heart of the activities now being called a criminal conspiracy:
People were indicted for handing out flyers. And what those flyers contained, first of all, messages that say stop Cop City, messages that give details about what Cop City truly is, that it is not just a public safety training facility, that it is actually a militarized training facility that would destroy 381 acres of forest land in a Black neighborhood, where the city of Atlanta essentially had no jurisdiction in DeKalb County, but somehow backroom deals were made and laws were broken in order to acquire the land. Some of the flyers actually named the murderers of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, known as Tortuguita.
Those of us in Detroit should recognize these tactics by the state of Georgia as the usual weapons of state power, aimed at those who seek justice and question the powerful. Those who conspired to organize peaceful protests day after day in our city were brutalized by police. Ultimately the city was forced to settle a million dollar lawsuit because of its violations of basic rights. Still, the most visible members of those protests face continued criminal charges. They were labeled Marxists and anarchists with the clear implication that those beliefs are somehow illegal. In the course of the legal battles, the City, also claimed the activists were engaged in a civil conspiracy to do violence. The charges were tossed out as “bizarre.”
The structures of power need not conspire to raise the same arguments across the country. Such thinking is commonly shared and has been employed since the first voices were raised against injustice. Those of us who believe a better world is yet possible must continue to conspire, dream, organize, inform, protest, and build that future.