'Cop City' activists speak out on RICO charge: 'Such obvious state repression'

Earlier this month, 61 protesters opposed to the "Cop City" police training center in Atlanta were indicted on Georgia racketeering charges after violence erupted.

The state's attorney general alleged the defendants are “militant anarchists” who were part of a violent movement that stoked unrest during the racial justice protests of 2020.

According to The Guardian, the charges signal the largest criminal conspiracy case ever leveled against a protest movement -- charges that author Will Potter says are unprecedented.

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“It’s no exaggeration to call this a watershed moment in the history of civil liberties in the US,” Potter said.

The 61 are being charged under Georgia’s RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) law, which is usually used to take down organized crime groups. Former President Donald Trump is also being charged under the statute in regards to the election interference case against him.

After breaching the site of the proposed training center, activists began hurling bricks, rocks and Molotov cocktails at police who were stationed nearby, prosecutors claim. Surveillance footage showed construction equipment burning out of control as activists in black clothing went into the fenced construction area to vandalize the site.

At the time, 23 were arrested and charged with domestic terrorism by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Speaking to The Guardian, defendants in the Georgia RICO case say the uncertainty of their futures is "the terrifying part.”

One defendant, using the alias Wisteria, said she was charged with throwing Molotov cocktails and glass bottles at police – accusations she says are untrue.

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Another defendant, Vienna Forrest, who was accused of burning construction equipment, says she was arrested “basically because I was in the area."

"Forrest, who is trans, was called into the DeKalb county jail’s medical office on Christmas Eve and asked to reveal herself in order to demonstrate that she had not undergone a sex change operation. She was then put in solitary confinement in a cell nearby, where someone had scratched in the mirror: 'The doctor is killing me,'" The Guardian's report stated.

"Over the next four days, Forrest banged on the door of her cell many times to get someone’s attention. She asked why she was in solitary confinement and got no answer. At one point, she looked at a broken shower head in the cell and 'thought of hurting myself,' she said."

Julia Dupuis and Charley Tennenbaum were arrested after they put flyers on mailboxes in the neighborhood of one of the state troopers who shot and killed Manuel Paez Terán, calling him a "murderer."

Tennenbaum said the indictment, and the case ahead, were “hard, sad and frustrating … It’s such obvious state repression, and didn’t have to be like this.”

Read the full report at The Guardian.