 Hey everyone, I just wanted to let you know about another podcast I've been listening to lately. It's called Democracy-ish, and it covers stories like the one we're covering today on Don't Call Me Resilient. The hosts, Danielle and Wajahat, break down the chaotic politics in the US from a black and brown perspective. They keep things real, and they have a great goal, to envision a multiracial democracy that actually works. Anyways, I like it, and I think you might too. You can find Democracy-ish wherever you get your podcasts. From The Conversation, this is Don't Call Me Resilient. I'm Vinitha Srivastava. During a time period, particularly in 2020, when there was an upswing in that movement, when people were talking about abolishing the police, about defunding the police, finding alternatives to public safety, the city apparatus, the state, instead of doing any of that, decided to double down here in Atlanta and dust off the idea of a cop city, a large-scale militarized police base that was meant to learn tactics and strategies on urban warfare, crowd control, civil disbursement, which was meant to move against community organizers and activists. Earlier this week, nearly five dozen people appeared in a courthouse outside Atlanta, Georgia to answer criminal racketeering charges brought against them by the state. The charges are related to protests against a proposed paramilitary police and fire training services facility that's been nicknamed Cop City. Cop City is a project that the Atlanta Police Association started fundraising for in the middle of the 2020 Black Lives Matter nationwide protests. Georgia prosecutors have called the demonstrators militant anarchists, but many of those charged say they were simply attending a rally or a concert in support of the Stop Cop City movement. The protesters, their lawyers and their supporters who rallied outside the courthouse this week say the government is using heavy-handed tactics to silence the movement. The RICO charges brought against the demonstrators essentially accused them of being part of organized crime and carry a potential sentence of up to five to 20 years in prison. Legal experts worry about the type of precedent this might set for our right to protest. It's a case a lot of people are following nationally and internationally for that reason. Today we have one of the leaders of the Stop Cop City movement with us. Kamau Franklin is a longtime community organizer and the founder of Community Movement Builders. He is also a lawyer and was an attorney for 10 years in New York City with his own practice in criminal, civil rights and transactional law. He now lives in Atlanta. Also joining us is Zora Ahmed, assistant professor of law at the University of Georgia, a former public defender in New York. She too has been watching this case closely. So yesterday on Monday, November 6th, activists appeared in court to answer the charges against them related to their activism against what's known as Cop City. Kamau, you were there, you were at the courthouse. Can you tell us what the feeling was among the protesters and their supporters? I think the feeling amongst the protesters and supporters was one of, we have your back. We see you! We love you! We see you! We love you! We see you! We put on, we as well as the other collectives and organizations and individuals, a rally and demonstration beforehand, which was really festive. There were some powerful speeches made as defendants walked in, they walked in under an arch way that was created and to the tune of... You won't break my soul! You won't break my soul by Beyonce. So shout out to the Beehive. So that was something that was trying to give some energy to folks as they fight some really serious charges. And most of the folks who've been arrested and charged, not only are facing Rico charges, but a lot of them are facing domestic terrorism charges. There's white collar charges associated with several folks and there's other criminal charges associated. So we understand that a lot of the folks and activists and organizers and everyday people, just to point out, is that a lot of the people who were arrested were not people who had been organizing and cop city work for any extensive amount of time. There were people who actually just came down to participate in a week of action or who came to their first protest who had no idea that part of participating in these actions or to participate against cop city meant that they were going to be charged with domestic terrorism and then later Rico charges. What the Rico, can you explain what that is? For folks who don't know what that is? Rico is a racketeering charge that says that there's a criminal enterprise that is afoot that's been identified by the authorities. If you are someone who's standing out and watching as well as someone who is considered to be accused of committing a murder, that you could be all charged along the same lines as part of this criminal conspiracy. And so for the purposes of this Rico charge, they are equating organizers and activists who for the first time in their lives came to a music festival as being involved in a criminal enterprise. This criminal enterprise is not something that's traced back directly to cop city, but that's traced back directly through their own indictment as the movement that's been opposed to police violence since 2020. I say that because their indictment states very clearly that the so-called criminal enterprise in their mind started the day George Floyd was murdered by the police. They mark that as the beginning date of the so-called criminal enterprise. And so it's very important to keep that in mind that they're not just criminalizing the stop cop city movement, they're criminalizing the entire movement against police violence that's been afoot for the last several years, but particularly that had an upswing and movement activity after George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rashard Brooks, and others were murdered in 2020. Take your knee off our necks! Take your knee off our necks! Take your knee! It's so intense that these everyday people, as you say, to go to a protest and hold a sign or I've read in many articles, sit on a blanket and participate in the protest that way. What seemed like a civil right in the United States and yet they're facing domestic terrorism charges and criminal conspiracy charges, how much prison time might they face? It might be upwards of 15 or 20 years that they are facing the district attorney, the prosecutor yesterday offered the first plea deal and these will change over the next several months, but they actually offered a plea deal which was, if I'm not mistaken, like five years of actual jail time or prison time and then another five years of probation. The fact that the criminalization is taking place and the seriousness of the charges, again, and I just wanna make sure this is clear for folks, you had people who showed up at a music festival, were surrounded by the police. ID's were checked. If your ID was in state, you were actually released. If your ID was an out of state ID or you were arrested and charged with domestic terrorism and now part of those charges include the RICO conspiracy charges. So this is definitely a criminal conspiracy by the state authorities against movement. That's clearly what's been happening here. You had 61 folks in the court, November 6th, but there are actually more than 200 criminal acts that the protesters face. Zora, can we talk a little bit about this? Is this a new thing or is this something that's been a pattern in the US? The nature of RICO and the nature of conspiracy are crimes that allow the government to charge you for the criminal activity of another person. Because you're associated with someone else, you can be criminalized for their acts because ostensibly you've reached some kind of agreement, you're a part of some enterprise that you've agreed to a pattern of criminal activity. Now all of these connections though in this indictment are tenuous because as Kamau is mentioning, the so-called criminal enterprise is a legitimate social movement. So merely agreeing that black people should not be massacred and killed by the police is this conspiracy that they're alleging. So this is very clear sort of constitutional violation. Agreeing to a political movement should not be the basis of criminal conspiracy and yet that's what it's doing. An enterprise has to be a criminal enterprise. We're talking about people agreeing to do something illegal but what is this enterprise? The enterprise is people mobilizing, assembling, organizing, being in solidarity with each other. The theory of liability permits groups to be criminalized. But what's unusual here is that because the contours of this criminal enterprise and of this agreement merely being in the place is gonna be enough for the state to criminalize you, allows for 61 people to be criminalized. But the thing is that based on their theory, anyone who agrees with Cop City's movement could be criminalized. So 61 is a ton of people and you could see the court bursting at its seams to be able to accommodate these people. That doesn't have the space, doesn't have the power to do this. You could see the obscenity of this mass indictment and yet the theory that the indictment lays out potentially puts all of us on the hook which is I think really scary. So the court is coming up with all kinds of ways administratively to how to deal with this massive group of lawyers, people in court. And so they heard the court heard defendants in groups five by five, arraignments in math. They're supposed to be an individualized hearing. Each lawyer is supposed to have their moment in court but the court can't accommodate that. So the lawyer is having to argue together, agree. Okay, you argue this case. It's really complicated and the court understands that. The problem is who is gonna bear the burden of this mass indictment. The prosecution right now has it easy. They can make this big, huge allegations that potentially criminalize us all and it's gonna be the lawyers that are gonna have to figure out how to coordinate action to assert each individual defendant's rights not to be bullied by the court that administratively will not know how to deal with this. The courts are already in a state of crisis everywhere in the country, particularly after COVID but particularly in Fulton, particularly in Atlanta where people are dying on a weekly basis. The court backlog is tremendous and then you have 61 people where the judge is saying, I don't know how I'm gonna do a single hearing with regards to a speedy trial which is like a pretty administrative thing. Who's gonna bear the burden of this? I think is really worrying of this mass indictment and unfortunately the prosecution should really have the burden to show that actually this is a case and not just a persecution. But right now it's the lawyers and obviously the people accused that are bearing that burden of this very messy document. So I have to ask like that grade four question. Why is this happening? Zora, can you explain a little bit as to why now? I think there's a now question but I think there's also a question of the longer history of all the tools that have been afforded to prosecutors that legislators have given. RICO conspiracy. Conspiracy is a deeply problematic doctrine that criminal law professors across the country will be like, this is a problem. And then you add RICO. So all the tools that have been in existence that prosecutors have at their disposal and then you have a Republican attorney general who has faced no pushback from a democratic Atlanta leadership that agrees that these are not respectable lawful protesters. You have a bipartisan consensus against the activist queer non-binary left. I think also just putting in a picture like who was in court yesterday. This were like a bunch of young folks who are non-binary bright colorful clothes in a room of suits. That's who's being prosecuted. So I think why now? That's just a beginning of come out. We'll have I think a much better deeper analysis of this. Yeah, maybe we can turn to come out and we'll just take a little step back as you were saying Zora. There's the why now right now but let's take step back a little bit and what led to the situation come out. You mentioned 2020 George Floyd. So maybe you can take us back to the beginning. What exactly is Cop City? When was it introduced? Who was involved? Part of the why now to make sure that I cover a little bit of that is because of the effectiveness of the ongoing anti-police brutality, police violence movement. The fact that during a time period, particularly in 2020, when there was an upswing in that movement, when people were talking about abolishing the police, about defunding the police, finding alternatives to public safety, the city apparatus, the state, instead of doing any of that, decided to double down here in Atlanta and dust off the idea of a cop city. A large scale militarized police base that was meant to learn tactics and strategies on urban warfare, crowd control, civil disbursement, which was meant to move against community organizers and activists. On top of that, the very issue that organizers were complaining about the abuse and the use of police to solve issues that they do not solve in our communities, that this was going to be doubled and tripled under this police force in Atlanta. And the idea of cop city is that it's not only going to train the police in Atlanta, but it's going to train police across the state and across the country and have international connections, particularly the IDF of Israel. So that all of these different policing agencies were learning similar tactics and strategies and exchanging ideas on how to suppress larger local populations, particularly populations of black and brown people. When we heard about cop city shortly thereafter, the 2020 uprisings, we understood that the idea of this facility wasn't just about training the police, but it was a further mechanism of control over communities. And when you add on top of that, the placement of cop city was a place in a forest area we've dubbed as Wallani Forest in Southeast Atlanta, which was a forest that's been connected to an adjacent black working class community that was designated to remain a forest to be a place of campsites, walking trails, parks for young people. All of these plans were laid out, but they were scrapped after the 2020 uprisings when the Atlanta police foundation dusted off this idea of cop city. And that would be the place where they would have control over 300 acres of that land immediately de-forest 90 acres of that land, put multiple gun ranges at its very early conceptions, Black Hawk helicopter pads, again, extensive militarized, they say themselves, paramilitary training facilities, military grade training facilities, that this was basically the coming together of a nexus of policing tactics and strategies to again, subvert and destroy movements against police violence and to continue over-policing of our communities. You mentioned the Atlanta police foundation, but the Atlanta police foundation weren't the only ones involved. So can you tell us who some of the other players are? Not only do we have the Atlanta police foundation, but we have private corporations and foundations that have been funding the Atlanta police foundation. So the same corporations and foundations who are once screaming Black Lives Matter immediately when they saw the pushback around how policing is done in our communities, they started to fund the Atlanta police foundation. And that is not unique. These police foundations have been around for a long time, but they were relatively speaking smaller funding mechanisms for police departments. But after killing a Mike Brown and the cry for defunding or using resources in different ways, policing agencies, corporations, city, state, local, federal governments, hatched plans in which they started making these police foundations central arms of funding police agencies. And if any city, any municipality dare even thought that it could do anything around decreasing police funding, that they had an alternative mechanism already in place to make sure that funding is there. And the Atlanta police foundation is responsible for the surveillance that happens in Atlanta as the largest surveilled city in the United States. And it ranks fifth in the world of surveilled cities. Those cameras, the connections, the hookups were all done through the Atlanta police foundation. The Atlanta police foundation engages in real estate buy where it buys homes for individual police officers, particularly in Black communities where they're paid an extra fee to basically spy and give reports on activities within those communities. And so not only are they in control of cop city and the lobbying efforts that take place in order to make cop city happen the money they get from the city itself, but the private foundations, the private corporations which all put money into the Atlanta police foundation which is now the second largest police foundation financially in the country, only outside of New York. Azora, you wanted to add something to that. What we're dealing with is both short term investments in policing and then there's longer term ones like when Kamau talks about Atlanta as one of the most surveilled cities, the legacy of the war on terror is so apparent in everything that is motivating this police training facility, the intense militarization, the militarized surveillance, the Gilly program as Kamau mentioned with these exchanges between police departments and armies in a country that subjects Palestinians to illegal occupation. I think we have to see this as the war on terror come home and the way that this picks up on a legacy of the war on drugs as well with militarization and the 1033 program. I think cop city is a perfect encapsulation of all the ways in which policing is inherently violent within the United States. And the opposition I think has been really successful in drawing attention to the long history of the violence of policing and its linkages. Those transnational linkages when you talked about Israel and the Israeli forces, I couldn't help but think about the RCMP in Canada because I'm based in Canada and the increased surveillance tactics used on land back defenders here in Canada. There is increased militarization of our police departments as well across the country. And I'm sure that there is some connection there. We were talking about a little bit about the history of some of these state enterprises that target organizers and activists. The war on terror was mentioned and we should also mention COINTELPRO, right? The Counter Insurgency Program of the 1960s and 70s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was the lead arm but on behalf of the federal government to basically stop movement organizing at that time which meant it was targeting organizations as distinct as the Black Panther Party, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Dr. King's Organization, the NAACP, the Weatherman Organization, SUNY Democratic Society Organization, AIM, the American Indian Movement. When movements rise up to talk about political repression, police repression, ways in which resources are distributed, the state counters with its own tactics which are usually around criminalizing dissent and over-arresting and over-policing communities where dissent comes from. We're in that period as we speak and these recall charges and domestic tourism charges are a clear indication of where the state is willing and able to go in order to suppress movements. And again, this comes from both Democrats and Republicans as it has historically come from both sides of the aisle when their larger interest is keeping in power capitalist resources, development arms, military structures and fighting back against people who are saying that there's gotta be other ways in which we structure society. So I think it's just very important to keep in mind. This case has intense implications not just in the state of Georgia but across the country nationally, internationally through your talking about this attempt to muzzle dissent, what kind of legal precedent does this set and what implications does it have for the future for movements? I can start with you, Zora. I think what's been really distressing around these cases is these are incredibly difficult, intricate cases to fight back against. And it requires a really robust criminal defense bar, public defense bar in a context in which public defense throughout the country is in crisis and it has been in crisis since the 1960s but particularly after COVID, we're having people leaving en masse because the work is so difficult at a time when the state is using the criminal law to prosecute people, to prosecute dissent, to prosecute broad diverse coalitions against police brutality where the state is essentially proving its own case, proving the case of the protesters. The protesters are pushing back at this criminalization. The state's response is aggressive criminalization proving the very legitimacy of those grievances. This is not the first kind of these cases. After the 2020 uprising, there was prosecutions in Arizona. Folks were successful in pushing back. Those lessons are now being learned and applied here in Georgia. So I think the courts have always been a battleground criminalization. It's always been a tactic for repression. I think that these charges are going to require lawyers not only be ready to take on these cases but we're gonna need lawyers that are in tune to the movement demands and we're going to need lawyers to step up. And that's difficult in a context in which the most likely people to take this on are public defenders and they're dealing with difficult cases. So this is a crisis of criminalization on top of a longer crisis of criminalization. And we have to address both because these are political protesters, yes, and prosecutions, but then there's a longer context of mass criminalization that's happening and those are interacting and they're gonna use the terrible conditions of jails against these people. And I think we need to be attuned to both levels of repression. Kamau, do you have anything to add to this? Yeah, I think the only thing I'll add is what's going to be needed also is a continually strong movement. That's not just here in Atlanta but across the country that reacts to this, that sees this, that calls this out, that's willing to participate in their own actions to show that not only these defendants but the larger movement against Stop Cop City is something that people take on as part of their own movement. What happens here is going to be transported out to other places depending on what works here. Don't think that other law enforcement agencies and groups aren't having meetings about what's gonna happen in Atlanta with these cases. What is it that they can bring to their own jurisdiction to make movements stop in their tracks as they threaten them with criminal charges which in effect put people's lives on hold and threaten people with long jail terms for things that they came for one day to support, right? So the scare tactics are obvious and so it's gonna take larger movements. It's gonna take the infrastructure building. I think that it is currently happening here in Atlanta. Everything from a bail fund that's been around for a long time to the Southern Center for Human Rights which is helping to support matching defendants with lawyers, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. I just want to mention a couple of those highly resourced structured organizations which have actually thrown down during this time period the Center for Constitutional Rights. We're gonna have to make sure that that movement infrastructure is well built, taken care of and ready to support organizers and activists who are taking the lead on the ground to fight back against things like Hop City to brought out communities. There's a lot of weight to this conversation and yet you're continuing in your fight about this. Come out, you know, you're talking about looking at this in a hopeful way and you're using what's happening right now as a startup point for a week of action. How are you dealing with your own spirits with those around you? How are others helping to keep people charged up? How is this resistance continuing? From my point of view, as someone who's old, I've been organizing for about 30 years, I tried to reassure not only myself but others with just the idea we have each other, we are in community, we are building community. If all the struggles or issues I've ever been involved in, this Hop City struggle has been the richest organizing campaign fight that I've ever been involved in and that's because of the diversity of tactics and strategies, the diversity of organizations and individuals involved. Everything from voting rights organizations to anarchist groups, there's just been a plethora of different kind of people who innately and immediately saw what Hop City was about. Environmentalist community folks who saw what Hop City was about and even though our organizations or as individuals we don't normally always work together or even see eye to eye on politics and strategies. There was a base level of understanding around not only what this was about, but the types of ways in which individual groups and individual actors would participate in it and we would not, on our other ends, even if we did not engage in certain actions or tactics or strategies, would not be calling each other out but we would be supportive and working with each other. Remember, this is a movement that has not only seen these political arrests but we've actually had an organizer killed by state authorities in the forest as a forest defender. And so I think that kind of tremendous resolve has been here. It shows the strength of movements and organizations and to be quite honest, the fact that the state has used the tactics that it has to destroy this movement, it also shows the effectiveness of not only what this movement brings around Hop City, but potentially what this movement can mean for other actions here in Atlanta and for other ways to organize movements across the country. So I think that part is what keeps me going. I think it's what keeps other organizers going and to know that we're all interacting and interrelating and trying to bring together these struggles. Thank you. Azora, do you want to add to that? I agree with everything that Kamau said and what's amazing is the genius in this movement. I mean, the ways that in an anecdote, the emergence after the RICO indictments that organizers put forward, their own RICO, right? The people's RICO, the humor, the satire, also the deep linkage that for us to breathe in this world, literally breathe in Atlanta, requires the forest to be preserved and the police not to exist, right? The way that the linkage of what a politics of life are I think is so hopeful. The organizers in Hop City have really, I think provided a template for what intersectional coalition, coalitional movements look like. Also, the state has been so greedy. The state has put forward a very flimsy document. You can see that it's trying to bite off more than it can chew. And these are winnable cases. I have a deep feeling that these cases will be defeated because the creativity, the resilience, and the genius is really on this side. There's a ton of hard work, dedication, and genius on the side. So that really keeps me hopeful and it has an irresistible attraction that will spread. Already people are looking to Atlanta as a model for organizing. I have learned so much and I know that a lot of people will continue to learn a tremendous amount from organizers who are not old but well-experienced like Kamau. That's good, I like that better. Thank you so much, both of you. I appreciate very much what you're doing. I'm really, really just in awe. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate you having us covering the story. Thank you for listening. This was a challenging story to dig into. The tactics of the prosecutors in Georgia felt more overwhelming the more I read and I really appreciated hearing such energy and positivity from both Kamau and Zora. Not to mention their spot-on analysis. I'd love to hear from you. If you feel like dropping me a note, you can find me on Instagram at Don't Call Me Resilient podcast or email me at dcmratheconversation.com. And by the way, we got some good news this week. We've been nominated for a Canadian Podcast Award in the category of Outstanding News and Current Affairs. It would be great if you have a few minutes and can sign up to vote for us because every little win counts. Don't Call Me Resilient is a production of The Conversation Canada. It was made possible by a grant for journalism innovation from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The series is produced and hosted by me, Vinitha Sribasthava. Our associate producer is Athika Khaki with additional research on this episode by Bokeh Seisi. Remitula Sheikh does our sound design and mixing. Kikuchi Memme is our student producer. Our fabulous consulting producer is Jennifer Morose and Scott White is the CEO of The Conversation Canada. And if you're wondering who wrote and performed the music we use on the podcast, that's Zaki Ibrahim. The track is called Something in the Water.