A group of 23 people have been charged with “domestic terrorism” by authorities in the United States following a months-long movement against the construction of a police training facility in a forest in Atlanta, Georgia. The arrests were made during a festival near the site of the proposed complex, which has been dubbed “Cop City” by opponents who have sought to end the project since 2021. Protest groups have disputed the police’s characterisation of events that led to the arrests of 35 people late on Sunday. The Defend the Atlanta Forest coalition said around 1,000 people had been gathered at the festival when a group of approximately 350 to 400 protesters marched to the construction site. Atlanta police claimed that “a group of violent agitators used the cover of a peaceful protest” to attack construction equipment and police officers. The clashes were the latest in an ongoing standoff over the planned $90m facility, which was approved by the Atlanta City Council in September 2021 and is set to sit on 34.4 hectares (85 acres) of land within the South River Forest in Atlanta’s unincorporated DeKalb county.
Opponents of the facility argue that it would irreparably harm the area’s environment and that it would be surrounded by majority-Black neighbourhoods, communities that they say already face over-militarised policing. The protest movement gained national attention in January when environmental activist Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, known as “Tortuguita”, was fatally shot in a police raid on protesters. Authorities initially said the officers fatally shot Teran after the 26-year-old shot a state trooper. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation later contradicted that description of events. Lawyers for Teran’s family have called for answers and said that an independent autopsy showed Teran had been shot 12 or 13 times. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is still investigating the killing.
Kei, an organiser with the Weelaunee Coalition, which organises with educators, students and neighbours but was not involved in Sunday’s festival, told Al Jazeera she was present when the arrests began. She said the “beautiful” day of music and art quickly turned chaotic when authorities entered the festival area and started to detain people. She noted that the arrests came at the beginning of a planned week of action against the project. At least one person was tased and tackled, added Kei, who declined to give her full name for fear of retribution.
The latest incident comes days after several civil liberty and human rights organisations urged Georgia’s attorney general and several lower-level officials to drop the “domestic terrorism” charges that had been lodged against 19 protesters prior to the most recent arrests. The groups, which included Human Rights Watch and chapters of the National Lawyers Guild, noted that the individuals were charged under a 2017 Georgia domestic terrorism statute, which employs an “unusually broad” view of domestic terrorism that includes any felony aimed at disabling or destroying “critical infrastructure, a state or government facility” with the intent to “alter, change or coerce the policy of the government”. The charge carries a sentence of five to 35 years. The organisations argue that it violates the defendants’ First Amendment rights under the US Constitution, which protects the right to free speech, press and assembly. They added that some of the earlier arrest warrants had erroneously said that the federal Department of Homeland Security had categorised the Defend the Atlanta Forest group as “domestic violent extremists”. The groups have called for the charges to be dropped in order to avoid downstream adverse effects on First Amendment freedoms.