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      Black Georgian men helped Biden win the White House – are they losing faith?

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      Morehouse College, a 156-year-old Black men’s liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia, has produced graduates such as Martin Luther King and Spike Lee. It has been an essential campaign stop for Democratic politicians such as Barack Obama, John Lewis and, last September, Kamala Harris.But as another presidential election looms, Joe Biden can take nothing for granted here. “A resounding no,” was 28-year-old Ade Abney’s verdict on whether the US president has delivered on his promises to Black voters. “I voted for Biden in 2020 but next year I don’t know who I’m going to vote for. It probably will not be him.”Georgia is among half a dozen swing states that will decide the all-important electoral college next November. Despite its history as a bastion of conservatism in the south, Democrats have scored notable wins in presidential and Senate elections in recent years. African American voters have been fundamental to that success, with Biden securing 88% of the Black vote in 2020.But opinion polls suggest an erosion of support for the president. An October survey by the New York Times and Siena College found that, while 76% of Black voters in Georgia favour Biden, 19% prefer his likely rival Donald Trump – an unprecedented share for a Republican in modern times. It was enough to give Trump a six-point lead in the state overall.The current shift is particularly acute among Black men for reasons that include a perception that Trump would cut taxes and offer better economic opportunities. Abney, a Morehouse graduate who now works at the college, said: “I was in a barbershop and the barbershop conversation was how they like Trump.“The reason was at least when he was in office they felt as though they were able to make more money. A lot of people attribute that specifically to him. A lot of that conversation was pretty clear in terms of OK, well, I had more money when he was in office so I want him back.”Standing beside Abney at the tree-lined college entrance, Dejaun Wright, 23, offered even sharper criticism of Biden. “There’s a lot of broken promises, a lot of a lack of integrity,” the philosophy student said. “He campaigned on promises such as student loan forgiveness and every instance where he’s shown interest in that, he’s always applied a caveat: oh, well, I said student loan forgiveness, but I only forgive $10,000.“A lot of the things that he promised he’s offered either with a caveat or he just hasn’t offered at all. It’s a slap in the face. If you are going to build a campaign and then build a presidency off of lies, or at least not keeping your promises, then I don’t know if I can trust you again.”At liberal colleges such as Morehouse, there is also rising discontent over 81-year-old Biden’s staunch support for Israel, even as it unleashes an aerial and ground blitz against Hamas that is causing thousands of civilian deaths and a humanitarian disaster in Gaza.Wright added: “I’m not appreciative of how vocal he’s been in his blind support of Israel. No sense of criticism there whatsoever. He’s actively been ignoring all of us. We’ve all been saying we don’t support this war in Israel. We don’t like our tax money funding a genocide like this, especially considering the amount of debt we have.”Black men do still vote overwhelmingly Democrat, and it’s only a small segment who might be turning away. In 2020 87% of Black men supported Joe Biden, which although down slightly from the 95% who voted for Barack Obama in his first campaign was better than the 82% who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016. (Black women support Democrats even more strongly: in 2016 and 2020, 94% and 95% voted for Biden.) Only 12% of Black men voted for Trump in 2020 and no Democrat has attracted less than 80% of Black voters since the civil rights era.Small numbers could nevertheless make a big difference. Like Florida in 2000 or Ohio in 2004, Georgia has become a closely fought battleground that could decide the presidency. In 2020 Biden won the state by a margin of just 11,779 votes, or 0.24%, becoming the first Democrat to carry the state in 28 years. Trump’s false claims and efforts to overturn the result led to criminal charges and a potential trial next year.Democrats’ gains continued two months later, when Raphael Warnock became the first African American from Georgia elected to the Senate and Jon Ossoff became the state’s first Jewish senator. Last year, Warnock won re-election in a runoff against the Republican Herschel Walker, an African American former football star who failed to make significant gains among Black voters.But Stacey Abrams, bidding to become America’s first Black female governor, was defeated by the Republican incumbent, Brian Kemp. In the House of Representatives, the far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene cruised to re-election. The state remains so finely balanced that even a fraction of Black voters switching to Trump, voting third party or simply staying at home on election day could make all the difference.Cliff Albright, a co-founder and executive director of the Black Lives Matter Fund, does not believe there is more of an enthusiasm gap now than at the same stage in 2019, when Black voters were unexcited about Biden. “People confuse electability for enthusiasm,” he said. “We weren’t that enthusiastic and we’re still not that enthusiastic. But that’s not news.“It’s just showing up differently because we’re a year out from the election. My prediction is that as we get closer, that pragmatism will set back in and people will start to realise more that this is not a referendum about Biden. This is a choice between this person and the one that we know is anti-us or somebody else who’s equally as bad.”Albright does not believe polls that say Trump will improve on his share of the Black vote next time. But he acknowledges that Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza could hurt him among young Black voters, especially with independent candidates such as Cornel West offering a clear alternative by demanding a ceasefire.“A lot of Black folks see ourselves in the Palestinian struggle,” he said. “A lot of us view that as a David and Goliath situation, a colonial situation. We see ourselves in what’s happening. When we see armed military using teargas and rockets and all that, we also see the George Floyd protests and ourselves going up against tanks and police forces.“There’s some very strong feelings about what many have called a genocide that is taking place in front of our eyes. Not only are you supporting the Israeli government’s ability to carry out this war but you are literally transferring more and more money so that they can do so. It’s not just political cover. It is actual financial and military support.He continued: “You get the Black folks, especially younger Black folks, that are like, ‘you keep saying you don’t have money for us but you’ve got money to go over here to kill some other folks that actually look like us.’ People can say, ‘oh, Trump would be worse,’ but that doesn’t change that what these folks are seeing right now is not Trump doing it. They’re seeing President Biden do it and so that is going to impact.“And many of these young folks, once they turn you off, you’re done. He could come back next month and increase the student debt cancellation. He could come up with some new gun legislation. He could go even further on some of the climate change issues. But many of these folks that right now are furious about what’s going on in Gaza, none of that would change their minds. They’re that mad.”Israel is not the only foreign policy issue weighing on Black voters. While his unwavering support for Ukraine’s war against Russian aggression – Congress has already allocated $111bn in assistance – has earned global plaudits, it appears to be playing differently in some African American communities.Kendra Cotton, chief executive of the New Georgia Project (NGP), a non-partisan organisation that works to empower voters of colour, said she didn’t think much of Ukraine until she “saw all of the African immigrants getting kicked off those trains. Then my eyes glassed over and I was like, this ain’t my problem and I didn’t want anything to do with it.“While I empathise with what’s going on in Ukraine, what I know is, if my Black behind was over there, they’d have kicked me off the trains too, so good luck to you.”She added: “We have people under these overpasses right here living in tents … People are trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents.“So, when you’re talking about billions in aid leaving the country, people don’t know how to qualify that in their minds: OK, but what are you doing domestically? Because when you talk about domestic issues, all you hear is we ain’t got it, there’s no money for that.”The NGP has registered almost 50,000 voters this year as it continues to fight voter purges in the state. In a September survey it found approval of Biden’s job performance down to just 61% among Black Georgia voters, and only 45% of Black 18 to 24-year-olds. Keron Blair, chief of field and organising for the NGP, argues that the White House has less of a policy problem than a communication one.He said: “I talk to people who’ve had thousands of dollars in student loans forgiven. We hear from people who got money directly into their pockets because of IRA [Inflation Reduction Act]. We hear from communities that have received resources for infrastructure. We see the broadband initiative.“That has not been communicated in a serious and strategic way to voters and so people are always going to ask, I voted last time, what happened? If they don’t know the things they are seeing and experienced are the result of choices made by the administration, they’re going to feel like not much has shifted.”Indeed, the gap between positive economic data and a sense of malaise on the ground is evident among Black voters. Gregory Williams, 37, a health coach, said: “The economy doesn’t feel like it’s strong. Everything feels out of whack. Inflation is crazy. Cities that are far out are expensive. Everything is just up right now. It’s hard to even get a loan for a house. Atlanta has the most evictions it’s ever had in its history.”Williams does not rule out voting for Trump. “It depends if he makes sense. He might not be saying what people want him to say but there’s a lot of things that he does and it seems like it helps. It gets a visual effect. People see things happening.”Jasper Preston, 35, a programme director at a homelessness non-profit, added: “Biden’s presidency has been an absolute nightmare for me personally. All the progress I made becoming more financially secure has been completely undone. I find myself worse off than during the Obama years and that has caused quite a setback. I have four children so it’s been very unpleasant trying to make ends meet.”Preston is a longtime Trump supporter who was ridiculed for it by his siblings living on the South Side of Chicago. But not any more, he said. “One privately gave me a call to very secretly admit that she is no longer a Democrat and will be voting for Trump in this upcoming election. She can’t tell anybody around South Side Chicago because, well, it’s South Side Chicago.“The same for my other siblings in Chicago as well as in here in Georgia. People are realising, ‘Oh, my wallet has definitely been drastically affected by this new administration, and all the promises they made based on skin colour turned out to be lies, and apparently promises about skin colour don’t make for a good president.’”In his victory speech after winning the 2020 election, Biden acknowledged that when his campaign was at its lowest ebb, African American voters stood up for him. “You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours,” he promised. In his inaugural address two months later, he named racial justice as one of four national crises that would take priority during his administration.While Biden has poured money into historically Black colleges and universities and appointed record numbers of people of colour as judges, efforts at police reform or to protect voting rights have stalled in Congress. When the president travelled to Atlanta last year to make his most aggressive case yet for reform of the Senate filibuster rule, some campaigners boycotted the event.Shelley Wynter, a conservative radio host and member of the Georgia Black Republican Council, said: “A Biden partisan person will tell you all these things that he’s done, but none of it was specifically for Black people. If Ukraine gets attacked and you can find billions and billions of dollars to send to Ukraine, you could have sent money into inner-city urban areas to say, ‘Hey, let’s do this.’”He continued: “If I vote for you and I’ve continuously voted for you and I’m the strongest, most loyal base of voters that you have, and you’ve still got nothing specifically for this group yet you can do stuff for other people, that’s why people are shifting, particularly Black men.“I equate what’s going on to what happens in a Black church. If you go to an average Black church, you’re going to see 90% women, a sprinkling of men. Most of those men are going to be older guys. Men are raised in a church and they see the ministers driving a Rolls-Royce while they are still in a hooptie struggling, and they start to get turned off and they stop going.“But their wives continue to go. That’s what the Democratic party is becoming: a party of Black women and a sprinkling of Black men, because Black men are going to Trump, they’re not going to the Republican party – and it’s a big difference.”Wynter argues that many have come view to Trump’s racism as a myth, empathise with his legal troubles and dismiss dire warnings that he would behave like a dictator in a second term. “It’s like, ‘I’m already living in a dictatorship, I’m already oppressed as a Black man, so all those things that they’re saying about Trump don’t resonate because I’m already there.“‘So now let me pay attention to the things that I really care about, which is my money, and this guy allows me to keep my money in my pocket. Tax cuts, less regulations for the entrepreneurial-spirited guy.’ That’s what they see. It’s a real tangible thing. ‘In 2019, I had X amount of money after I got paid every two weeks. Now I have less. It’s very tangible. I can see it, I can feel it. You telling me he’s evil? I can’t see or feel that. But I can see more money in my pocket.’”Democrats acknowledge the work that must be done to rebuild Biden’s 2020 coalition. Earlier this month his election campaign released a new ad, “List”, making the case that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act are helping people in African American communities. Despite worrying polls and signs of donor fatigue, the party is on a winning streak in recent elections and ballot measures on issues such as abortion rights.Back at Morehouse, there are still plenty of students keeping faith with the president. Damarion King, 18, studying political science, said: “I believe Joe Biden is doing a fantastic job, passing so many bipartisan bills. I don’t think his age is a factor in this election, at least for me. He’s doing the job. He’s doing his work for the people of America and I strongly support him.”King is sceptical that Black men who voted for Biden in 2020 will defect to Trump next year, not least because of the former president’s 91 criminal charges. “Anybody in the Black working class who’s saying that Trump is a better businessman is wrong. He’s gone bankrupt multiple times. He can’t be that great of a businessman.” More

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      Rudy Giuliani ordered to pay $148.1m in damages for lies about election workers

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      A Washington DC jury has ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay $148.1m to two Atlanta election workers after he spread lies about them, one of the most significant verdicts to date seeking accountability for those who attempted to overturn the 2020 election.The verdict follows a four-day trial in which Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, her daughter, gave haunting details about the harassment and threats they faced after Giuliani falsely accused them of trying to steal the election in Georgia. The women, who are Black, described how they fled, are afraid to give their names in public, and still suffer severe emotional distress today. Their lawyers asked the jury to award them each at least $24m in damages.“Most days I pray that God does not wake me up and I just disappear,” Shaye Moss said on Tuesday in testimony that frequently turned tearful.In her testimony on Wednesday, Freeman said she had been “terrorized”.“I don’t have a name any more,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t know who I am.”Their lawyers had asked the eight-person jury to award them at least $48m in compensatory damages and to use their discretion to grant additional punitive damages.The case is the latest in a series of cases in which plaintiffs have used defamation law to push back on lies spread about them since the 2020 election. The voting equipment vendor Dominion settled with Fox for $787m earlier this year in a defamation case. Freeman and Moss also have a pending lawsuit against the Gateway Pundit, a far-right news outlet. Last year, they also settled with One America News, another far-right outlet. Civil rights groups are turning to defamation law as a new tool to ward off misinformation.The lies about both women were a cornerstone of efforts by Giuliani and Trump to try to overturn the election results in Georgia. On 3 December 2020, Giuliani tweeted a selectively edited video that he claimed showed Freeman and Moss wheeling suitcases full of ballots out from under a table after counting had concluded for the night. The accusation was quickly debunked by Georgia officials, but Giuliani continued to spread the lie. He also accused them of “passing around USB ports as if they’re vials of heroin or cocaine”, when Freeman was passing Moss a ginger mint.Almost immediately, Freeman and Moss started to receive death threats through the mail, email, social media and voicemail. Many of those racist messages were displayed and played in court this week.Giuliani refused to turn over documents as part of the case and conceded earlier this year that he made false statements about the women. US district judge Beryl Howell found him liable of defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy. The only question for the jury to decide was how much in damages Giuliani should pay.Joseph Sibley, Giuliani’s attorney, conceded to jurors in his opening statement that his client had done something wrong by making false statements. But over the course of the week, he sought to distance Giuliani from the threats and harassment that resulted from the false statements. He also argued that the tens of millions of dollars they requested were not proportional to the harm they had suffered.Giuliani did not do himself any favors when it came to his defense. After proceedings concluded on Monday, he spoke to reporters on the courthouse steps, where he insisted that what he had said about Freeman and Moss was true. Sibley said earlier this week that Giuliani intended to take the witness stand in his own defense, but he reversed on Thursday and decided not to.From the outset, lawyers for Freeman and Moss made it clear that the case was about repairing the reputations of their clients and sending a message to other powerful figures that they could not make similar false claims without consequences.“Send a message. Send it to Mr Giuliani and to any other powerful figure who is considering taking this chance,” Michael Gottlieb, one of the attorneys for Moss and Freeman, said in closing arguments.It was a message Moss herself emphasized in her testimony on Tuesday.“We need to make a statement. We need to ensure that the election workers that are still there don’t have to go through this. Hopefully by hitting someone in their pockets, for someone whose whole career has been about their pockets, we will send a message,” she said. More

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      Pro-Palestine protester self-immolates outside Atlanta’s Israeli consulate

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      A protester with a Palestinian flag self-immolated on Friday outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, injuring a security guard who attempted to intervene, authorities said.The person, whom officials did not identify, is in critical condition, the Atlanta police chief Darin Schierbaum said at a news conference. The guard’s condition was not immediately clear.“We believe this building remains safe, and we do not see any threat here,” the chief said. “We believe that was an act of extreme political protest.“The protester arrived about 12.15pm ET at the office building – which houses the consulate as well as several businesses – and used gasoline, police said.The FBI’s Atlanta office said it was coordinating with local law enforcement. The consulate and the Israeli embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Israel resumed its military offensive in Gaza on Friday after talks to extend a week-long truce collapsed.Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas after the militant group attacked southern Israel on 7 October, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.More than 15,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s assault, Palestinian officials say, which has destroyed much of the territory.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe conflict has prompted hundreds of protests and rallies across the US, both in support of Palestinians as well as Israelis. More

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      Why is Georgia prosecuting leftwing activists with the same law as Trump? | Akin Olla

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      Within weeks of each other, Donald Trump and 61 leftwing activists were indicted under criminal conspiracy laws in Georgia. What may feel like a victory for centrism and justice is actually a dangerous conflation.The protesters are part of the Stop Cop City movement, fighting to prevent the construction of a new police urban combat training facility over what the Muscogee Creek people call the Weelaunee forest outside of Atlanta. One protester has already been killed by police, with an independent autopsy detailing that they probably had their hands up when they were shot 57 times.Georgia has expansive anti-racketeering laws, originally created to fight the mafia; the state’s Republican attorney general, Chris Carr, has decided to stretch these laws far past what could reasonably be considered their intended purpose. While the former president was indicted for an alleged conspiracy to literally overthrow the government, many Stop Cop City protesters are facing similar charges for such acts as receiving reimbursements for glue and food and raising money to bail others out of jail.The indictments against the protesters are a naked attempt to destroy a grassroots social movement. Worse, they create a precedent that will allow both Republicans and Democrats to further their separate tracks of crushing any public opposition to government policy.Cop City was first planned in 2017 but only gained steam following the 2020 Black liberation protests. Instead of addressing the myriad of issues that Atlanta residents face, the city backed the giant police and fire training facility, which was proposed by a rightwing police foundation funded by corporations like Home Depot and Wells Fargo. A large network of organizers and activists, from faith and environmental groups to socialist parties and anarchist collectives, got together to protect the forest. They used a range of tactics, from occupying the land to knocking on the doors of neighbors to inform them about the construction.It was the occupations of the forest and disruption of construction, traditional tactics of environmentalists, that triggered a police raid that led to officers shooting 26-year-old Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán. Police claimed Tortuguita shot first, wounding police officers, but one autopsy denies that Tortuguita could have been holding a gun and an officer was recorded on video during the incident saying: “You fucked your own officer up,” implying that the police may have been in a friendly-fire incident.Following Tortuguita’s death, organizers mobilized hundreds of people to city hall to speak in a record-breaking 14 hours of public comment, but the Atlanta city council ignored the anti-Cop City groundswell and went on to approve $67m of public money for the project.A coalition within the movement switched strategies and moved to put the construction to a referendum; thus far the coalition has submitted petitions signed by over 100,000 Atlanta residents – a gobsmacking fifth of the entire city. In response, the city has prepared a series of roadblocks to ensure that no resident will have a say in this process, a move that some residents are calling voter suppression.The indicted Stop Cop City protesters are being charged under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (Rico) act, an extension of a federal law created under Richard Nixon to crush the Italian American mafia. For those unfamiliar with The Sopranos and the trials and tribulations of the mob, Rico statutes target the unique structure of the mafia, a hyper-centralized organization with an insulated leadership that can’t be caught up in street-level crimes. The laws allow for different crimes to be linked together and used to prosecute an entire organization at the same time, with increased charges for everyone involved. These increased charges also make it easier to coerce lower-level mobsters to snitch on their higher-ups.While Trump’s alleged conspiracy – a centralized operation with vague attempts to obscure the leadership – fits the bill, the Stop Cop City movement is the opposite. It is neither centralized nor a criminal organization. While some activists have engaged in acts of sabotage to protect the forest, it is absurd to consider their activities as constituting a criminal organization, unless you consider all protest movements illegal. But these indictments basically do just that – tying together acts like passing out flyers, providing legal support and literally writing the letters “ACAB” into an amorphous nonsensical conspiracy.This, of course, has been the unfortunate trajectory of such indictments and anti-protest laws since the mass protests following George Floyd’s murder in 2020. Because Georgia prosecutors can’t name a clear command structure like one might do with the mob, the indictment of the Stop Cop City activists is focused on the alleged anarchist ideology of the protesters and their desire to create a better world.The indictment lists things like “mutual aid”, essentially inter-communal charity, as if they are acts of terrorism or equivalent to shaking down store owners for protection. In the words of Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law expert interviewed by the New York Times, the document “seems like an indictment of an ideological disposition”.It is hardly surprising when rightwing forces use the law to shut down progressive protest; what is unsettling here is the complicity of supposedly liberal Democrats. Unfortunately the Stop Cop City indictments fit neatly with the increasingly reactionary and anti-democratic behavior of Democratic politicians in Atlanta and elsewhere. (Recall Joe Biden’s past comments about “antifa” and his desire to increase funding for police.)There is a growing conspiracy to use violence and coercion to take over the country, but the instigators are figures of the right like Trump and Ron DeSantis and organizations like the Proud Boys. As prices and temperatures rise, leftwing movements will be necessary for our collective survival. Framing progressive activists as equivalent to gangsters and rightwing insurrectionists is a dangerous path that will birth a system even worse than our already cracking capitalism.
      Akin Olla is a contributing opinion writer at the Guardian US More

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      Activists push for referendum to put ‘Cop City’ on ballot in Atlanta

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      A broad coalition of groups in Atlanta has launched a referendum to give voters a chance to say whether they want the controversial police and fire department training center known as “Cop City” built in a forest south-east of the city.The effort requires organizers to collect about 70,000 signatures from Atlanta registered voters in 60 days. Then the question of the city canceling its agreement with the Atlanta Police Foundation to build the $90m center can be added to municipal election ballots in November.The push comes after an estimated thousand people who showed up at City Hall on 5 June proved insufficient to stop Atlanta’s city council from approving about $67m for Cop City. Meanwhile, machines have already begun clear-cutting trees on the project’s 171-acre footprint in South River Forest.The referendum faces what one organizer called “an atmosphere of repression” – including two activists being charged with felonies last week while putting up fliers, bringing total arrests since December to 50.The largest group of arrests, on 5 March in a public park in the forest near where the project is planned, was followed by local government closing the park, in effect shutting off tree-sitting protests by “forest defenders” that had gone on for more than a year.“We’re at the stage where they’ve pushed people out of the forest, they’ve arrested people … they’ve fenced off the forest, they’ve even begun clear-cutting,” said Kamau Franklin, founder of local group Community Movement Builders. “We’re at the stage where the most direct, legal mechanism to stop this project is by referendum.”Cop City came to global attention after police shot dead Manuel Paez Terán, an environmental protester, in a January raid on the forest – the first incident of its kind in US history. The state says Paez Terán shot first and a special prosecutor is evaluating the case.Meanwhile, the movement opposing the project has drawn a wide range of people locally, nationally and internationally who oppose police militarization, urban forest destruction amid climate change and environmental racism. Most residents in neighborhoods surrounding the forest are Black.Most of the organizations driving the referendum are also Black-led, including the regional chapter of Working Families Power, Black Voters Matter and the NAACP. Officials from the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, down to the mayor have consistently referred to opposition against the center as the work of white “outsiders”.“That narrative is false,” said Britney Whaley, regional director of Working Families Power. “This has been national, but it’s also been community-grown for a few years now.”Ashley Dixon, an Atlanta-area organizer, has led canvassing efforts to inform neighborhoods around South River Forest about the center for nearly a year. Her team has spoken to more than a thousand people. About 80% opposed the project once they knew about it, she said.The only academic poll on the issue to date, from Atlanta’s Emory University, showed slightly more Black respondents opposed the project than supported it, with the opposite being true for whites. Atlanta’s population is 48% Black.The idea for the referendum came from one that succeeded in stopping a spaceport from being built in coastal Georgia, said Will Harlan, founder of Forest Keeper, a national forest conservation organization. “To me, Cop City is the most important issue in conservation in the south-east,” Harlan said. “A referendum is the smartest, most democratic solution … [and] a way to find resolution and closure.”Although the 2022 spaceport referendum affected a county of only 55,000 people, similarities between the two controversies point to the role voters can play when other efforts fall short.In that case, local officials “dug their heels in” and stopped responding to press requests or providing transparent information to the public, said Megan Desrosiers, who led the referendum. In the case of Cop City, the Atlanta Police Foundation has stopped answering press requests for at least a year, and the city of Atlanta was recently discovered to be understating the project’s cost to taxpayers by about $36m.The project is planned on land the city owns that is located in neighboring DeKalb county. Because of Atlanta’s ownership, only Atlanta voters can participate in the referendum.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlthough the city’s voters haven’t seen an effort like this before, California has a long record of asking voters to decide on environmental issues, said Keith Mako Woodhouse, author of The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism.Over time, industry and political opponents have wielded tactics ranging from creating competing propositions to airing ad campaigns to discredit environmentalists, he said.“There’s always going to be scary counter-arguments. It’s a matter of coming up with clear messaging” to be successful, he added.Organizers of the Cop City referendum pointed to the state’s heavy-handed approach to protesters as a primary concern. There have been 42 domestic terrorism charges to date. A bail and legal defense fund’s members were also arrested and the state added fundraising to its criminal description of the training center’s opposition.In that context, it took about a dozen attempts at finding a legally required fiscal sponsor for the referendum, which may need as much as $3.5m to reach success, said spokesperson Paul Glaze.Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter – one of two organizations that agreed to take the sponsorship role – said the recent Atlanta Solidarity Fund arrests were done “to send a message, in hopes it would have a chilling effect. We’re not naive about what the threats are – but we believe our community cares about this issue.”Getting into Atlanta’s communities will take a massive campaign, said Mary Hooks, national field secretary for Movement for Black Lives and part of the team overseeing the signature gathering. Hooks hopes to get canvassers into at least 200 of the city’s 243 neighborhoods, and said more than 3,000 volunteers had already signed up.“This is an opportunity to protect direct democracy … when so many people are being left out,” she said. More

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      Atlanta approves funding to build ‘Cop City’ despite fierce opposition

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      The Atlanta city council early on Tuesday approved funding for the construction of a proposed police and firefighter training center, rejecting the pleas of hundreds of activists who spoke for hours in fierce opposition to the project they decry as “Cop City”.Some Cop City opponents have faced unprecedented arrests during which police have accused them under a state domestic terrorism statute, prompting a legal challenge which argues that the protesters are being unduly targeted over their constitutionally protected free speech.Tuesday’s 11-4 vote just after 5am is a significant victory for Atlanta’s mayor, Andre Dickens, who has made the $90m project a large part of his first term in office, despite significant pushback to the effort. The city council also passed a resolution requesting two seats on the governing board of a foundation dedicated to raising funds for Atlanta police.The decentralized “Stop Cop City” movement has galvanized protesters from across the country, especially in the wake of the January fatal police shooting of Manuel Paez Terán, a 26-year-old environmental activist known as “Tortuguita” who had been camping in the woods near the site of the proposed project in DeKalb county.For about 14 hours, residents again and again took to the podium to denounce the project, saying it would be a gross misuse of public funds to build the huge facility in a large urban forest in a poor, majority-Black area.“We’re here pleading our case to a government that has been unresponsive, if not hostile, to an unprecedented movement in our city council’s history,” said Matthew Johnson, the executive director of Beloved Community Ministries, a local social justice non-profit. “We’re here to stop environmental racism and the militarization of the police … We need to go back to meeting the basic needs rather than using police as the sole solution to all of our social problems.”The training center was approved by the city council in September 2021 but required an additional vote for more funding. City officials say the new 85-acre (34-hectare) campus would replace inadequate training facilities and would help address difficulties in hiring and retaining police officers that worsened after nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice three years ago.But opponents, who have been joined by activists from around the country, say they fear it will lead to greater militarization of the police and that its construction will exacerbate environmental damage. Protesters had been camping at the site since at least last year, and police said they had caused damage and attacked law enforcement officers and others.The highly scrutinized vote on Tuesday also comes in the wake of the arrests last week of three organizers who lead the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which has provided bail money and helped find attorneys for arrested protesters.Prosecutors have accused the three activists of money laundering and charity fraud, saying they used some of the money to fund violent acts of “forest defenders”. Warrants cite reimbursements for expenses including “gasoline, forest clean-up, totes, (Covid-19) rapid tests, media, yard signs”. But the charges have alarmed human rights groups and prompted both of Georgia’s Democratic senators to issue statements over the weekend expressing their concerns.The Democratic US senator Raphael Warnock tweeted that bail funds held important roles during the civil rights movement and said that the images of the heavily armed police officers raiding the home where the activists lived “reinforce the very suspicions that help to animate the current conflict – namely, concerns Georgians have about over-policing, the quelling of dissent in a democracy, and the militarization of our police”. More

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      Atlanta shooting part of alarming US crackdown on environmental defenders

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      Atlanta shooting part of alarming US crackdown on environmental defenders Twenty states have enacted laws restricting rights to peaceful protest, as environmentalists are increasingly criminalized The shooting of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, believed to be the first environmental defender killed in the US, is the culmination of a dangerous escalation in the criminalization and repression of those who seek to protect natural resources in America, campaigners have warned.The death of the 26-year-old, who was also known as “Tortuguita” or “Little Turtle,” in a forest on the fringes of Atlanta was the sort of deadly act “people who have been paying attention to this issue assumed would happen soon, with no sense of joy”, according to Marla Marcum, founder of the Climate Disobedience Center, which supports climate protesters.“The police and the state have a callousness towards the lives of those on the frontline of environmental causes and I hope this is a wake-up call to those who didn’t know that,” she said. “I hope people take the time to notice what’s going on, because if this trajectory of criminalization continues, no one is going to be safe.”Terán was shot and killed by police as officers from an assortment of forces swept through the small camp of a loose-knit activist group defending the urban forest on 18 January. Police say Terán shot and injured a Georgia state trooper with a handgun first, but the Georgia bureau of investigation has said the shooting was not recorded on body cameras, prompting calls for an independent investigation.Locator map of Atlanta, Georgia with South River forest colored in red.State and local authorities have reacted aggressively to protesters trying to stop 85 acres of the forest being torn down to build a sprawling, state-of-the-art, $90m police training complex – dubbed “Cop City” by opponents as it will feature a mock city for “tactical” exercises.Nineteen forest defenders have been charged with felonies under Georgia’s domestic terrorism laws since December. Authorities have detailed the alleged acts of so-called terror by nine of those facing charges, which include trespassing, constructing a campsite and sitting in the trees of the woodland, a 300-acre wedge of land that once contained a prison farm but is now one of the largest urban forests in the US.Brian Kemp, the Georgia governor who declared a state of emergency and mobilized 1,000 members of the national guard over the protests, has blamed “out-of-state rioters” and a “network of militant activists who have committed similar acts of domestic terrorism across the country” for the troubles.Georgia’s response to the protests follows an alarming pattern of environmental and land rights defenders across the US being threatened, arrested and charged with increasingly drastic crimes, including terrorism, for opposing oil and gas pipelines or the destruction of forests or waterways, advocates claim.‘Assassinated in cold blood’: activist killed protesting Georgia’s ‘Cop City’Read more“This was meant as a chilling deterrent, to show that the state can kill and jail environmental defenders with impunity. It reflects a trend towards escalation and violence to distract from the real issue of advancing corporate interests over lands,” said Nick Estes, author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance.The current crackdown on environmental and land rights defenders can be traced back to the aftermath of 9/11 and the expansion of the definition of terrorism which sparked a wave of arrests known as the “green scare” targeting so-called eco- terrorists.This then spurred the subsequent proliferation of state legislation criminalizing – or at least attempting to criminalize – all kinds of civil disobedience including Black Lives Matter protests and opposition to fossil fuel projects like gas pipelines, defined as critical infrastructure, essentially to protect business interests over environmental and Indigenous sovereignty concerns.“The criminalization of land and water protectors and Indigenous nations using critical infrastructure security laws can be traced back to the Patriot Act. This has contributed to the current escalation as it allows the definition of terrorism to be more vague and expansive, which is intended to have a chilling effect on peaceful protesters,” said Kai Bosworth, author of Pipeline Populism and assistant professor of geography at Virginia Commonwealth University.The 2016-17 uprising against the Dakota Access oil pipeline (DAPL), which cut through the Standing Rock reservation in North and South Dakota and threatened tribal lands, burial sites and water sources, sparked a brutal response by authorities that can be seen as a before and after in how environmental defenders are policed.Law enforcement used automatic rifles, sound cannons, concussion grenades and police dogs against protesters, leading to hundreds of injuries as personnel and equipment poured in from over 75 agencies across the country. Indigenous leaders and journalists were among hundreds of arrests – including 142 on a single day in October 2016 – with scores facing felony charges and hefty fines.Cartogram of the US, with the 20 states that have enacted laws restricting the right to protest peacefully highlighted in red.Since then, a total of 20 states have enacted laws that impose harsh penalties for impeding “critical infrastructure”, such as making trespass a felony offense, or have brought in vaguely defined domestic terrorism laws that have been used to target environmentalists and Indigenous communities. Overall, 45 states have considered legislation restricting peaceful protests, and seven currently have laws pending.These laws have “been successful in really tamping down dissent and sowing fear among people”, said Marcum. Much of this fear has been fueled by the labeling of protestors as “terrorists” by senior elected figures such as Kemp, according to Elly Page, senior legal advisor at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, which has tracked the anti-protest bills.“We see autocrats around the world use rhetoric like that to clamp down on dissent,” Page said. “The widespread demonization of protestors we’ve seen from politicians who call them terrorists or a mob is incredibly harmful. I think that creates an environment where violence against protestors is not unlikely and that more of these tragedies will take place.”This lawyer should be world-famous for his battle with Chevron – but he’s in jail | Erin BrockovichRead moreMany of the states’ legislation shares language drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), a rightwing group backed by fossil fuel companies.In Florida, South Dakota and Oklahoma, for example, a “riot” is considered to be any unauthorized action by three or more people, while in Florida, Oklahoma and Iowa drivers who injure protestors blocking traffic, a common tactic used by environmental activists, are given legal immunity.In Arkansas, an “act of terrorism” is considered to be anything that causes “substantial damage” to a public “monument”, which could include graffiti. Across 17 Republican-controlled states, protesters face up to 10 years in prison and million-dollar fines for offences.The broad application of these laws, as well as accompanying legislation that criminalize people and organizations that support allegedly dangerous protestors, “chill activism and make it riskier for people to be involved in their right to protest”, said Page.“Many of the laws have language so broad it makes constitutionally-protected speech illegal,” she said. “It gives authorities discretion to apply the law to an activity they don’t like … We know fossil fuel interests are promoting these sorts of laws.”As the criminalization of peaceful protesters has spread, so has the rollout of new fossil fuel projects projects under both Democrat and Republican administrations – despite the escalation of costly and destructive extreme weather events caused by the climate breakdown.“There have been no effective federal efforts to help protesters or defend against criminalization,” said Charmaine Chua, assistant professor of global studies at the University of California. “If you’ve been paying attention at the way cops indiscriminately kill people and the virulent antipathy towards protest movements trying to solve climate change, it’s hard to be surprised at Manuel’s death but still it does feel unprecedented.”Indigenous tribes tried to block a car battery mine. But the courts stood in the wayRead moreSabine von Mering, one of around 900 protestors who were arrested for opposing the Line 3 pipeline that moves oil through Minnesota, said she was “deeply shocked” to hear of Terán’s killing but that she hoped it will galvanize more people to get involved in climate activism. “Any criminalization of protest is an attack on our democracy,” said von Mering, an academic at Brandeis University.“At Line 3 there were several cases of police being extremely aggressive and violent, it was traumatizing to witness it and I’m an old white lady – I didn’t experience the worst of it. The charges were used to intimidate and quell protest.”To critics of the fossil fuel industry, the Line 3 protests are a prime example of its ability to shape the law enforcement that is increasingly cracking down on its opponents. In 2021 it emerged that Enbridge, the Canadian company behind the pipeline, reimbursed US police $2.4m for arresting and surveilling hundreds of Line 3 demonstrators. The payments covered officer training, police surveillance, wages, overtime, meals, hotels and equipment.Steven Donziger, an attorney who was embroiled in a long-running legal battle with Chevron on behalf of Indigenous people in Ecuador, said the payments are part of a “dangerous trend” of fossil fuel influence over the functions of government and the law.“As we get closer to tipping point of no return on climate change, the effort to silence advocacy to have clean energy transition is intensifying,” Donziger said. “To attack young people who are trying to preserve a forest with a military-style assault is totally inappropriate but is unfortunately a sad reflection of where the country has gone.“For weeks these people were called terrorists, which is a complete misuse of the word. The police have been conditioned to believe these people are terrorists and what do you do with terrorists? In the US you kill them. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”TopicsEnvironmental activismUS policingAtlantaGeorgiaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Could Trump be charged for racketeering? A Georgia prosecutor thinks so

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      Could Trump be charged for racketeering? A Georgia prosecutor thinks soFani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, appears poised to use the states’s Rico law to convict the ex-president An Atlanta prosecutor appears ready to use the same Georgia statute to prosecute Donald Trump that she used last year to charge dozens of gang members and well-known rappers who allegedly conspired to commit violent crime.What is Georgia’s Trump election inquiry and will it lead to charges?Read moreFani Willis was elected Fulton county district attorney just days before the conclusion of the 2020 presidential election. But as she celebrated her promotion, Trump and his allies set in motion a flurry of unfounded claims of voter fraud in Georgia, the state long hailed as a Republican stronghold for local and national elections.Willis assumed office on 1 January 2021, becoming the first Black woman in the position. The next day, according to reports, Trump called rad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, urging him to “find” the nearly 12,000 votes he needed to secure a victory and overturn the election results.The following month, Willis launched an investigation into Trump’s interference in the state’s general election. Now, in a hearing on Tuesday, the special purpose grand jury and the presiding judge will decide whether to release to the public the final report and findings of the grand jury that was seated to investigate Trump and his allies.Willis, who has not shied away from high-profile cases, has made headlines for her aggressive style of prosecution. Willis was a lead prosecutor in the 2013 prosecution of educators in Atlanta accused of inflating students’ scores on standardized tests. More recently, Willis brought a case against a supposed Georgia gang known as YSL, including charges against rappers Yung Thug and Gunna.Though the cases of teachers forging test scores and the alleged crimes of a local gang may, on their face, seem to have nothing to do with the alleged election interference of a former president, Willis is alleging that all of these cases illustrate a pattern of organized crime.The first two cases fall under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or Rico Act. Though no official charges have been brought in the Trump investigation, experts believe that Rico charges are a very real possibility for the former president.“Among the things that are considered racketeering activity in the state of Georgia is knowingly and willfully making a false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation in any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of state government,” said Clark D Cunningham, a professor of law at Georgia State University. “If you do that, you’ve committed a racketeering activity. If you attempt to do that, if you solicit someone else to do it or you coerce someone else to do it – it’s all considered racketeering under Georgia law.”Georgia’s Rico Act, which dates back to 1980, can be used more broadly than the more strict federal Rico statute, Cunningham said. Prosecutors can bring charges under many different state and federal laws to allege a pattern of misconduct, and convictions carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Willis praised the utility of Georgia’s law.“I have right now more Rico indictments in the last 18 months, 20 months, than were probably done in the last 10 years out of this office,” she said.Willis’ office declined the Guardian’s request for an interview, saying she would not speak to the media in the days before the 24 January hearing. While the tools she would use if she chose to prosecute Trump are still unknown, she has reportedly said she is considering using the state’s Rico law.In 2021, she hired Rico expert ​​John Floyd to serve as a special assistant district attorney to work with lawyers in her office on any cases involving racketeering.According to Cunningham, Willis’ use of the Rico Act to prosecute Trump would be a “stroke of genius”. She is not only well-versed in what it takes to get results through the state’s vast Rico Act, but as a prosecutor and now district attorney, Willis “cut her teeth” on major, politically divisive cases using the statute.“She’s received criticism that she’s prosecuting cases that are too ambitious or that there’s too much of a conspiracy alleged, but she’s shown in these cases that she’s able to use Rico to prosecute all the way to the top,” Cunningham said.As he explains, Rico was initially established as a way to prosecute gang and organized crime activity when leaders at the top of organizations typically did not directly commit crimes themselves but instead had others of “lower ranking” do it.“There appear to be clear criminal activities, and [no matter] whether or not the person at the top, in this case, Trump, was directly involved in each activity or not, if he participated in what is shown to be a racketeering organization, which “Stop the Steal” might be, and conspired with others, participated directly or indirectly, he can be shown to have violated the Rico law,” he said.A key element of prosecution under Georgia’s Rico Act is the need to illustrate a pattern. According to an analysis from the Brookings Institution, Trump’s repeated calls to election officials, targeted written correspondence, false allegations and supposed coordinated attempts to provide fraudulent electoral certificates constitute a pattern of misconduct.“The statute recognizes that if violations of individual criminal statutes by a single person are bad, an enterprise that repeatedly violates the law is worse and should be subject to additional sanction,” the analysis states.Members of the special grand jury were able to issue public subpoenas of pivotal players in the alleged conspiracy, the only public element of the investigation so far. Some of those subpoenaed would otherwise likely be uncooperative and offer limited insight. Those subpoenaed include Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, and Georgia governor Brian Kemp.Most of those subpoenaed in the case have provided significant pushback. They have cited partisan political motivation as a driving force of the case, rather than an unbiased application of the law.Though Kemp vehemently denies widespread election fraud during the 2020 election and went toe to toe with Trump to confirm the state’s election results, he has not been cooperative in the inquiry. In one of Kemp’s attorney’s filings in response to his subpoena, he accused Willis’ probe of being politically motivated, hinting at a partisan bias. “Unfortunately, what began as an investigation into election interference has itself devolved into its own mechanism of election interference,” he said.While the special grand jury proceedings are confidential, there is speculation as to how Willis will proceed following Tuesday’s hearing, Cunningham said. But given her history of using the Rico Act, he said it’s likely she will string together “all kinds of different events over the span of a number of months, which by themselves might seem innocent or not seem worthy of prosecution”, to create a “convincing narrative that this was a conspiracy to ultimately undermine American democracy”.TopicsGeorgiaAtlantaDonald TrumpUS elections 2020US politicsfeaturesReuse this content More