Speaker 1: Just a note before we start that this episode contains
Speaker 1: depictions of police violence. Please take care while you listen.
Speaker 1: In twenty seventeen, developers announced plans to build on an
Speaker 1: eighty five acre wild space in the middle of Atlanta.
Speaker 1: The plans included a massive, ninety million dollar police training
Speaker 1: facility that Atlanta residents started to refer to as cop City.
Speaker 1: The forests, which people refer to either as the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Forest or Walloni Forest, was full of trees that helped
Speaker 1: to clean Atlanta's air and water and provide green space
Speaker 1: for the surrounding neighborhoods, which are predominantly black and brown communities.
Speaker 1: Activists also argue that reducing the city's tree canopy makes
Speaker 1: it hotter, and that construction of the Cop City training
Speaker 1: center is polluting local waterways and the reduction of green
Speaker 1: space there will hurt nearby property values. That's all before
Speaker 1: we get into the concerns about building a massive police
Speaker 1: training center in the middle of a majority black and
Speaker 1: brown community. Since the plan was announced, Atlanta residents have
Speaker 1: been pretty outspoken in their opposition to it, but despite
Speaker 1: overwhelming public disapproval of the plan, the city went ahead
Speaker 1: with it. By this point, this season, this pattern is
Speaker 1: probably starting to sound pretty familiar. Concerned citizens avail themselves
Speaker 1: of all the legal options they have to oppose a
Speaker 1: polluting project. They attend meetings, they write to politicians, they vote,
Speaker 1: they hold rallies and marches. When none of it works,
Speaker 1: some people go home, and some people build camps. In Atlanta,
Speaker 1: opponents of Copsody began to organize under the slogan Defend
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Forest. Some of the activists involved started to
Speaker 1: camp out in the woods. Others brought food to the
Speaker 1: campers or supported in other ways. Some protesters escalated things
Speaker 1: a bit, damaging construction equipment, breaking windows, and guming up
Speaker 1: the ATMs of the banks financing the project. The response
Speaker 1: by local and state police surprised everyone. Beginning in December
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, authorities began aggressively cracking down on copcity protests.
Speaker 1: They ultimately charged forty forest defenders, protesters and organizers with
Speaker 1: domestic terrorism. In September twenty twenty three, the Georgia Attorney
Speaker 1: General charged sixty one cop City opponents with criminal racketeering.
Speaker 1: It was so over the tops that almost every media
Speaker 1: outlet covered it, and when they did, most were more
Speaker 1: critical of the police than they were of the protesters.
Speaker 1: Here's a bit from NPR reporter Odette Yusef story.
Speaker 2: For example, Alex Papali traveled to Atlanta in March. He
Speaker 2: says he just wanted to learn firsthand about the movement
Speaker 2: that has come to be known as Stopcop City. He
Speaker 2: never expected to end up in jail for three weeks
Speaker 2: and ultimately charged in a massive racketeering case.
Speaker 3: It's absurd.
Speaker 2: Papli is one of more than twenty people arrested after
Speaker 2: attending an outdoor protest concert. He says he doesn't know
Speaker 2: most of the others who were detained that night, or
Speaker 2: the dozens of others who've been indicted along with him.
Speaker 4: You know, I can say with certainty that I'm not
Speaker 4: involved in any conspiracy of this kind.
Speaker 2: But in its indictment, the State of Georgia claims that
Speaker 2: the defendants were all part of a well organized conspiracy.
Speaker 5: As the indictment asserts, members of Defend the Atlanta Forest
Speaker 5: subscribe to a philosophy of anarchy that.
Speaker 1: Was Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr. You heard at the
Speaker 1: end there talking at a press conference about the Rico
Speaker 1: charges and that language he uses describing Defend the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Forest as quote unquote having a philosophy of anarchy that
Speaker 1: didn't just come from nowhere. Our senior editor, Allen Brown,
Speaker 1: has been reporting on the criminalization of activism in the
Speaker 1: US for about a decade. When she started to see
Speaker 1: some of this type of language and certain tactics show
Speaker 1: up in the Cop City crackdown, she wondered if and
Speaker 1: how federal agencies were playing a role. So she submitted
Speaker 1: some public records requests and what she got in response
Speaker 1: was pretty eye opening. For months leading up to the
Speaker 1: arrests of Cop City protesters, the Department of Homeland Security
Speaker 1: was regularly sending out reports warning Georgia and Atlanta authorities
Speaker 1: about Defend the Atlanta Forest and their anarchist and extremist tendencies.
Speaker 1: Alleen has written a couple of stories for us on
Speaker 1: this and on those documents, including one we co published
Speaker 1: with The Guardian, so we'll link to that in the
Speaker 1: show notes. But today I asked her to come on
Speaker 1: to walk us through the history that the Cop City
Speaker 1: crackdown is kind of the culmination of, and to share
Speaker 1: some of her interviews with the folks caught up in
Speaker 1: all of it, I Memi Westervelt and this is DRILLED
Speaker 1: the real free speech threat after the break. Alian Brown
Speaker 1: brings us the story of Cop City.
Speaker 6: I'm Ellen Brown. I'm a senior editor for Drilled and
Speaker 6: I'm an investigative reporter.
Speaker 1: So for you, as someone who has looked into the
Speaker 1: crackdown protest for a long time, what did you first
Speaker 1: think when you started to see the crackdown on Cop
Speaker 1: City protesters and what did it connect to for you
Speaker 1: in terms of stuff that you'd seen before.
Speaker 6: Yeah, when I first saw that so many ponents of
Speaker 6: Cop City we're being charged with domestic terrorism in Georgia,
Speaker 6: I mean, for one, I was really surprised because we've
Speaker 6: seen lots of cases where prosecutors are using various kinds
Speaker 6: of terrorism frameworks to go after protesters, such as terrorism enhancements,
Speaker 6: which are a federal phenomenon which makes sentences longer if
Speaker 6: they're considered to be associated with terrorism. You know, we've
Speaker 6: seen the spread of critical infrastructure laws, which enhance penalties
Speaker 6: for people trespassing on the property of a site where
Speaker 6: polluting infrastructure is being built, for example. And then you know,
Speaker 6: we've seen lots of counter terrorism funding going toward monitoring
Speaker 6: people involved in property destruction related to their objection to
Speaker 6: environmental harms. I'm not aware of other cases where so
Speaker 6: many people have been charged explicitly with domestic terrorism using
Speaker 6: a state law like this, the way we have with Copcity. So,
Speaker 6: you know, I think it is distinct in a lot
Speaker 6: of ways, but it's also an extension of this longer history.
Speaker 6: And so one thing that I thought of immediately was
Speaker 6: what's known as the Green Scare. So in the early
Speaker 6: two thousands, after nine to eleven, there was this flood
Speaker 6: of counter terrorism funding, you know, authorized by Congress, all
Speaker 6: kinds of new agencies, the Department of Homeland Security, all
Speaker 6: kinds of groups formed that were all focused on countering terrorism.
Speaker 6: The FBI's focus also really shifted to counter terrorism, and
Speaker 6: that meant a lot of new focus on people who
Speaker 6: were engaged in sabotage in the name of protecting the environment.
Speaker 6: Throughout the nineties, radical group like the Earth Liberation Front
Speaker 6: Animal Liberation Front had carried out acts of sabotage that
Speaker 6: never harmed any people, but did damage property and caused
Speaker 6: a lot of concern for animal product industries, for example.
Speaker 6: And these industries kind of got together and were really
Speaker 6: pushing for the FBI and the federal government to approach
Speaker 6: these cases of sabotage as terrorism. So that kind of
Speaker 6: came to fruition after nine to eleven, and the Green
Speaker 6: Scare was one of the results of that. The FBI
Speaker 6: eventually declared that eco terrorism was its number one domestic
Speaker 6: terrorism throughout ecoterrorism as well as I believe animal enterprise terrorism,
Speaker 6: which targets businesses that harm animals. So all of these
Speaker 6: resources were going into confronting that. There were a few
Speaker 6: high profile cases where a large swath of active this
Speaker 6: were arrested at once. One of these big cases is
Speaker 6: known as Operation Backfire, you know, and people faced really
Speaker 6: draconian sentences for engaging in property damage. And again a
Speaker 6: lot of the resources that led to these prosecutions were
Speaker 6: framed as counter terrorism resources. So now flashing to today,
Speaker 6: I think one of the things that has brought us
Speaker 6: to this moment in Atlanta is backlash to the movement
Speaker 6: to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. It's also backlash against
Speaker 6: protests in the wake of George Floyd's killing by police
Speaker 6: in Minneapolis.
Speaker 3: I think we increasingly see both.
Speaker 6: Industry and government airing toward framing property damage related to
Speaker 6: political demands as terrorism.
Speaker 1: You spoke with some of the Cop City protesters who
Speaker 1: got kind of caught up in this big roundup. Can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit just about what kinds of
Speaker 1: things they are being charged with.
Speaker 6: Yeah, more than forty people have been charged with domestic
Speaker 6: terrorism in Atlanta related to their opposition to Cop City.
Speaker 6: A number of the people facing those charges are accused
Speaker 6: of little more than misdemeanor trespassing, or that's what's in
Speaker 6: their arrest affidavits. Anyway, we haven't seen formal indictments or
Speaker 6: a lot of these terrorism charges.
Speaker 3: There's no cases where.
Speaker 6: People are accused of seriously injuring anyone. A lot of
Speaker 6: this is kind of alleged property crime, so you know,
Speaker 6: the domestic terrorism charges are not associated with mass murder,
Speaker 6: for example, or severe injuries. A lot of it's related
Speaker 6: to property street protests, people who were camping in the
Speaker 6: forest to prevent construction of this project, and the arrest
Speaker 6: s efidavits say very little about what they are alleged
Speaker 6: to have done that amounts to terrorism, although a number
Speaker 6: of them say that the Department of Homeland Security classified
Speaker 6: the movement. Defend the Atlanta Forest as a domestic violent
Speaker 6: extremist group. You know, DHS has denied that they made
Speaker 6: that classification, although we've reviewed all kinds of documents that
Speaker 6: suggest they were finding many ways to tell Georgia that
Speaker 6: they were facing domestic violin extremists. So there's a lot
Speaker 6: of confusion about what DHS meant. In addition to these
Speaker 6: domestic terrorism charges, sixty one people have been charged under
Speaker 6: George's Racketeer, Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO.
Speaker 3: This is a law that is.
Speaker 6: Designed to go after organized crime, but here we have
Speaker 6: sixty one activists facing these charges.
Speaker 7: You ever been in the forest. Organization is not the
Speaker 7: word of it for it.
Speaker 1: Vienna Forest is one of those activists. She spent about
Speaker 1: three months camping out in the woods in Atlanta trying
Speaker 1: to stop the construction of copp City. At first, she
Speaker 1: describes it as a really joyous time.
Speaker 7: I think in a lot of ways, action camps often
Speaker 7: have this like matting pinetic pole to them, mainly just
Speaker 7: because it's you're every day, you're living out our ideals.
Speaker 7: We're taking care of each other, We're practicing and community
Speaker 7: building and building each other's capacity, taking care of each other,
Speaker 7: having communal meals and just being in a space where
Speaker 7: y'all and we share all the same values is just
Speaker 7: really powerful. And not to mention just being outdoors, especially
Speaker 7: in such a beautiful forest. There's a certain energy to
Speaker 7: a Laani that like, if you've ever been in that forest,
Speaker 7: you can just it's it's thick. You can almost feel
Speaker 7: the history of that place and all the trauma, but
Speaker 7: all the joy as well that is in that place.
Speaker 7: In Ulaani Dong Forrest.
Speaker 1: Spent most of her time working as a medic, keeping
Speaker 1: everyone fed and hanging out with her partner Manuel Paestan,
Speaker 1: who went by Tortuguita.
Speaker 7: Torti Ghita had this way about them. There's this one
Speaker 7: song that is really underplayed by Matt Rivers. So grows
Speaker 7: the flame a ballot of torti ghita, and there's one
Speaker 7: line that just really sums it up in such a
Speaker 7: beautiful way.
Speaker 5: The forest is freedom to I would say, with a
Speaker 5: heartful of fire in a face full of play.
Speaker 7: A heartful of fire and a face full of play.
Speaker 7: They were a true radical, true revolutionary in the sense
Speaker 7: of they literally lived out all their beliefs and they
Speaker 7: were so well read and had so much passion to them,
Speaker 7: but they never let the world get them down. They
Speaker 7: were always so joyous and loved sharing with their community
Speaker 7: their joy, and I think that's what really sold me
Speaker 7: on them. My first interaction with police on the park
Speaker 7: side when I was there, it was in September, like
Speaker 7: when I first got back, and they didn't enter the
Speaker 7: forest though they were just escorting some utility workers. Wasn't
Speaker 7: until my arrest to my knowledge that the police were
Speaker 7: actually in the forest on the park side, So I
Speaker 7: didn't have too many interactions with them until I got arrested.
Speaker 7: Most of the interactions I had, they were just outside
Speaker 7: of the forest and I just had to stay in
Speaker 7: the tree line and I'd be fine.
Speaker 6: When was the first time domestic terrorism or eco terrorism
Speaker 6: applied to.
Speaker 3: You know, this forest offense work.
Speaker 7: The first time I heard of it was from someone else, actually,
Speaker 7: it was another forest defender was talking about how they
Speaker 7: heard them calling as terrorists. That just seemed like a
Speaker 7: joke to us at that time. It wasn't. I never
Speaker 7: really considered the possibility of getting charged and that in
Speaker 7: the way I have until my arrest and I was
Speaker 7: in holding and they hit me a piece of paper
Speaker 7: that said a terroristic acts no bond and gave me
Speaker 7: my first appearance date. At that point, I think I
Speaker 7: still thought it was a joke, kind of hysterically trying
Speaker 7: to like laugh at the darkness, but I didn't really
Speaker 7: know what to expect. I didn't know what they were
Speaker 7: accusing me of that at that time. I didn't know
Speaker 7: what they thought I did until I heard the warrants
Speaker 7: read out to me by a public defender.
Speaker 5: Very mrslne so Bruise.
Speaker 7: A Flame.
Speaker 1: Forest was released with bond conditions that said she wouldn't
Speaker 1: use social media to contact members of Defend the Atlanta Forest.
Speaker 1: She couldn't go into the forest either.
Speaker 7: Torta Gita stepped in to make sure I wasn't feeling
Speaker 7: left behind because so many other people in the movement
Speaker 7: and just didn't want to talk to me really and
Speaker 7: for fear of the bond conditions, and so Torti Gito
Speaker 7: had just like popped by the house at random times.
Speaker 7: I remember and being out and doing errands and coming
Speaker 7: back and just seeing tork Gita sitting at the kitchen counter.
Speaker 7: Oh hi. The last time I saw tort Tiquita. They
Speaker 7: took me and two friends to get Vietnamese and Mexican
Speaker 7: food and just like getting really full and lots of
Speaker 7: get food in US as we went to this drive
Speaker 7: in movie theater and watched a really shitty horror movie.
Speaker 7: Watched that the Starlight Drive In, which was Tortikita's first
Speaker 7: time going to the Starlight which meant a lot to
Speaker 7: me because when they had didn't mention is Tortikita never
Speaker 7: really liked leaving the forest. They loved that place so
Speaker 7: much and they didn't want to leave it, but they
Speaker 7: left it for me and I will always thank them
Speaker 7: for that, because they knew I couldn't go there, so
Speaker 7: they came to me. Yeah, that Starlight drive date was
Speaker 7: the last time I saw them, and that was Monday,
Speaker 7: and they were murdered on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: When police raided the forest in January twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: they shot Tortugita, who was just twenty six years old,
Speaker 1: and killed them. Police claimed that Tortuguita fired first, although
Speaker 1: neither bodycam footage nor physical evidence from the autopsy ever
Speaker 1: backed up that claim. The autopsy did confirm, however, that
Speaker 1: tor Duguito was shot fifty seven times. It's impossible to
Speaker 1: know exactly what constellation of factors drove police to such extremes,
Speaker 1: but getting regular reports on how these people in the
Speaker 1: forest were anarchists and violent domestic terrorists could certainly have
Speaker 1: set them on edge. Here's Allen again.
Speaker 6: So when I started to review the results of this
Speaker 6: public records request I did, there was kind of this
Speaker 6: mystery in my mind, like DHS claims that they didn't
Speaker 6: designate any group domestic violent extremists, and yet we have
Speaker 6: these Georgia officials claiming that they did. So what did
Speaker 6: DHS actually say?
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 6: Two of the most interesting documents to me were these
Speaker 6: open source intelligence reports from the Department of Homeland Securities
Speaker 6: Office of Intelligence and Analysis. These were sent in the
Speaker 6: summer of twenty twenty two, so several months before we
Speaker 6: started seeing these domestic terrorism charges, and we see Department
Speaker 6: of Homeland Security characterizing acts of.
Speaker 3: Basically property damage.
Speaker 6: There was some tree spiking where copsity opponents put spikes
Speaker 6: into trees to make them difficult to cut down, and
Speaker 6: I believe a construction vehicle was set on fire. Those
Speaker 6: two actions were framed as consistent with anarchist violent extremism
Speaker 6: and environmental violent extremism. Which are the categories that DHS
Speaker 6: uses to describe what maybe would more commonly be considered
Speaker 6: eco terrorism or domestic or terrorism. These reports were sent
Speaker 6: to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. That's the same agency
Speaker 6: that was putting together these arrests affidavits that described Defend
Speaker 6: the Atlanta Forest as a domestic violent extremist group. So,
Speaker 6: you know, it looked like a clear line between these
Speaker 6: reports and what Georgia law enforcement eventually used to justify
Speaker 6: domestic terrorism charges.
Speaker 3: I think we'd already seen some.
Speaker 6: Reports after those domestic terror arrests began where DHS was
Speaker 6: using that language to reference Copcity, but this was, you know,
Speaker 6: a DHS officer sending this information directly to Georgia and saying,
Speaker 6: here's how you should think about these guys. One other
Speaker 6: thing that was really on my mind as I was
Speaker 6: going through this material was the police killing of Manuel
Speaker 6: Payez Tedan Tortuguita, who you know, was killed as they
Speaker 6: were occupying the forest where the project is to be built.
Speaker 6: They were in a tent when law enforcement came into
Speaker 6: a the people occupying the forest, and law enforcement shot
Speaker 6: and killed them. They claimed that Tedan fired first, but
Speaker 6: there was no one to witness what happened. We only
Speaker 6: have police accounts, So you know, there had been some
Speaker 6: reporting indicating that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had briefed
Speaker 6: officers that they would be facing domestic violent extremists or
Speaker 6: domestic terrorists, and I was really curious to know how DHS,
Speaker 6: how the federal government was fueling that kind of terrifying framework.
Speaker 6: Another thing that was really interesting in this trove of
Speaker 6: documents was that Atlanta police officers were kind of receiving
Speaker 6: the steady stream of material sort of debating and talking
Speaker 6: about what the environmental violent extremist threat looked like, what
Speaker 6: eco terrorism looked like. One of the most interesting reports
Speaker 6: there was actually a school paper that a Homeland security
Speaker 6: officer for the Atlanta Fire Department had written where his
Speaker 6: research question was should defend the Atlanta Forest be designated
Speaker 6: the next domestic terrorist group? His school program, as well
Speaker 6: as a lot of the agencies that were generating these reports,
Speaker 6: from academic institutions to federal agencies, were all ones that
Speaker 6: were created in the wake of nine to eleven. So,
Speaker 6: you know, we see when there's this big push to
Speaker 6: look at everything as terrorism, suddenly everything looks like terrorism.
Speaker 6: When that money is there, it sort of shifts the
Speaker 6: way that folks from academia to federal government to local
Speaker 6: law enforcement think about these things. The last thing I'll
Speaker 6: mention is civil liberties organizations recently sent a letter to
Speaker 6: congress members urging them to investigate this DJs agency that
Speaker 6: was creating the open source intelligence reports. You know, the
Speaker 6: civil liberties organizations flagged to additional reports.
Speaker 3: Including one that claimed that.
Speaker 6: Animal rights slash, environmental violent extremists, and anarchist violent extremists
Speaker 6: were inspiring criminal acts around the US. This intelligence report
Speaker 6: even includes a map of all of the alleged extremism
Speaker 6: inspired actions around the US. The Brendan sent Center for
Speaker 6: Justice took a close look at these this list of
Speaker 6: cases and found that the ones that they could identify
Speaker 6: were vandalism. So, you know, we have one chart tracking
Speaker 6: these incidents where the agency used the symbol of a
Speaker 6: bomb do label sabotage that appears to involve activists damaging
Speaker 6: ATM card readers with super glue. So, you know, I
Speaker 6: think that symbol really kind of illustrates the discrepancy that
Speaker 6: is raising a lot of concerns associating super glue on
Speaker 6: ATM card readers with a bomb, you know, environmental sabotage
Speaker 6: with terrorism, which a lot of people associate with nine
Speaker 6: to eleven or mass shootings.
Speaker 3: So these civil liberties organizations.
Speaker 6: Have really pushed for DHS to rein in this kind
Speaker 6: of communication because they say that it has led to
Speaker 6: inappropriate law enforcement actions against political activists.
Speaker 1: I think you mentioned in one of the conversations we
Speaker 1: had about like one of the people that was just
Speaker 1: like walking in the forth.
Speaker 8: Yes.
Speaker 6: Just looking at one of these arrest affidavits, I'll just
Speaker 6: read it because I think it kind of illustrates it's
Speaker 6: just how little there is here. It says the accused
Speaker 6: affirmed their cooperation with Defend the Atlanta Forest by criminally
Speaker 6: trespassing on posted land.
Speaker 3: Okay, criminal trespass.
Speaker 6: Sure, during a standoff with another defendant who's occupying an
Speaker 6: elevated treehouse, said accused then fled upon being in contact
Speaker 6: with law enforcement. The defendant was wearing camouflage clothing and
Speaker 6: carrying a backpack with a climbing harness and rope. So
Speaker 6: you know, we have alleged criminal trespass. Apparently there's someone
Speaker 6: there in a treehouse and the person's fleeing law enforcement.
Speaker 6: Allegedly they're wearing camouflage clothing and carrying a backpack with rope.
Speaker 6: This is what Georgia was using to arrest people as
Speaker 6: domestic terrorists. So I think about nine of the arrest
Speaker 6: affidavits from December twenty two in January twenty twenty three
Speaker 6: were alleged to have committed no specific illegal actions beyond
Speaker 6: misdemeanor trespassing. So a lot of these churches are not
Speaker 6: even linked to serious property damage according to these arrest affidavits.
Speaker 1: In many cases, people swept up in the forest raids
Speaker 1: seemed to legitimately think there had been some sort of mistake.
Speaker 1: That's how little they were doing. One person Ellen spoke with,
Speaker 1: who goes by Lucky, had never even participated in a
Speaker 1: protest before in his life.
Speaker 4: In the beginning, I wasn't sure what was happening, but
Speaker 4: I was like, okay, honest, mistake, you guys. You guys
Speaker 4: can just like let me go.
Speaker 1: But they did not let Lucky go. Instead, they held
Speaker 1: him in jail for three months and denied him bond
Speaker 1: four times. This is how he talks about it now.
Speaker 4: So I was involved in a dragnet arrest during a
Speaker 4: stopcop City Week of Action in the Wheel Forest in
Speaker 4: Atlanta last March. I was unconstitutionally arrested, denied bond four times,
Speaker 4: and incarcerated a total of three months on what I
Speaker 4: consider and many consider bogus domestic terrorism allegations in that
Speaker 4: original warrant, and I was recently wrongfully indicted on RICO
Speaker 4: charges in Fulton County, Georgia. There isn't a warrant out
Speaker 4: for my arrest for that, but that's coming out.
Speaker 1: Lucky initially went to Atlanta to help with mutual aid
Speaker 1: efforts in the forest, not so much to protest.
Speaker 4: I heard that people were sleeping in tents and they
Speaker 4: felt like they needed to do that or I don't remember.
Speaker 4: I wasn't going to sleep in a tent, but I
Speaker 4: just wanted to go help, and I served on a
Speaker 4: mutual aid basis, and unfortunately that ended up changing my life.
Speaker 4: I did not know what I was walking into. I
Speaker 4: didn't know that there was risk to be arrested. It
Speaker 4: was mostly just a really nice like it was the
Speaker 4: biggest garden party I've ever been to.
Speaker 1: Lucky was surprised to see something that he'd experienced as
Speaker 1: being so beautiful and innocent criminalized.
Speaker 4: Even somebody who might have shown up that day out
Speaker 4: of curiosity, or someone like me who saw a week
Speaker 4: of action as an opportunity to volunteer those people's curiosity
Speaker 4: has been made illegal in practice.
Speaker 3: I don't think anyone.
Speaker 6: Anticipated that they would end up facing these really severe charges,
Speaker 6: and some of them doing jail time on charges that
Speaker 6: still haven't even been linked with a formal indictment. Lucky
Speaker 6: really had not participated in a protest before. He was
Speaker 6: sort of there to see what was going on, and
Speaker 6: you know, in another case, a legal observer was charged
Speaker 6: with domestic terrorism. Hannah Cass is a researcher who went
Speaker 6: to see what was happening in Georgia with movement to
Speaker 6: stop Coop City and ended up leaving with terrorizing charges.
Speaker 1: To be clear, Hannah wasn't charged with domestic terrorism like
Speaker 1: some of the others. Her charge was making terroristic threats.
Speaker 6: She spent a little bit of time in jail and
Speaker 6: just ended up kind of experiencing a lot of unexpected.
Speaker 3: Backlash related to that arrest.
Speaker 6: At one point, Hannah's university called her in for a
Speaker 6: disciplinary hearing because they'd received complaints related.
Speaker 3: To these charges.
Speaker 6: She also learned that this think tank that's part of
Speaker 6: the Atlas network, which we have discussed here in the past,
Speaker 6: had filed a record it's request related to Hannah and
Speaker 6: her work at the university because she's a student at
Speaker 6: a public university.
Speaker 3: These are just some examples of the.
Speaker 6: Creeping impacts that a charge like this can have on
Speaker 6: someone's life, even if the charges are ultimately dismissed. I mean,
Speaker 6: she of course was among the sixty one people caught
Speaker 6: up in this rico case, so you know, her life
Speaker 6: continues to be sort of in this offended place, along
Speaker 6: with all of the other people involved in that case.
Speaker 8: If this case were to be successful, like everyone is
Speaker 8: in danger.
Speaker 7: This is.
Speaker 8: Fascism, and I just hope, I guess my greatest hope
Speaker 8: is that people understand what the stakes are.
Speaker 1: You also spoke with attorney Lauren Reagan, who's defending several
Speaker 1: of the Copsity defendants, and I know I spoke with
Speaker 1: her as well about you know, just how novel this
Speaker 1: type of RICO charge is. I've been defending activists for
Speaker 1: over twenty five years now, and I know of only
Speaker 1: one other criminal rico prosecution.
Speaker 7: That was in the.
Speaker 9: Early two thousands in Indiana, there were two activists that
Speaker 9: were part of a campaign to fight a highway expansion
Speaker 9: for the I sixty nine highway, and they were charged
Speaker 9: with criminal rico among other things. But ultimately a plea
Speaker 9: bargain was reached in those cases prior to trial, and
Speaker 9: the rico charges were neither litigated nor were there any convictions.
Speaker 9: So this is certainly the largest and broadest attempt at
Speaker 9: using criminal rico against movement participants. To my knowledge, I
Speaker 9: don't know of any any activists, certainly environmental or climate activists,
Speaker 9: that have ever been convicted of criminal reco.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, I've spoken to Lauren Reagan a number
Speaker 6: of times in the years of reporting that I've done
Speaker 6: on criminalization of land and water defenders. She's someone who's
Speaker 6: been doing this kind of work since the Green Scare.
Speaker 6: So she also really underlined that the framework of eco
Speaker 6: terrorism it's a political framework, something to use to sort
Speaker 6: of slander political opponents as criminals, as dangerous. You know,
Speaker 6: she and others really question whether eco terrorism is a
Speaker 6: useful term at all for anything.
Speaker 10: Well, I mean, to me, eco terrorism is extractive industries
Speaker 10: and corporations that are destroying the environment and the planet
Speaker 10: and thus basically threatening all life on the planet. That
Speaker 10: I believe is the true definition of an eco terrorist,
Speaker 10: you know, someone that is causing widespread, devastating harm to
Speaker 10: humans and non humans alike.
Speaker 9: For private profit.
Speaker 10: However, in this context, far right extremists and.
Speaker 3: Their water carriers have.
Speaker 10: Used that phrase for just an incredibly wide swath of
Speaker 10: anything that they don't like. Really, any kind of activism,
Speaker 10: whether it is very traditional civil disobedience or whether it
Speaker 10: engages in economic sabotage where property is damaged but there
Speaker 10: is no harm to human life, is all being dumped
Speaker 10: into this label called eco terrorist, which is basically just
Speaker 10: meant to attempt to discredit and align political opponents. When
Speaker 10: they cannot win the argument based on fact, real reality,
Speaker 10: and public opinion, they attempt to undercut that by using
Speaker 10: the media and public forum to create a false, inflammatory narrative.
Speaker 6: According to DHS, for something to be quote unquote domestic terrorism,
Speaker 6: which they usually call domestic violent extremism or environmental violent
Speaker 6: extremism if it has to do with environmental stuff. For
Speaker 6: something to be domestic terrorism, the DHS definition says that
Speaker 6: it needs to be one dangerous to human life or
Speaker 6: two potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources. So
Speaker 6: that is quite broad to begin with, and action also
Speaker 6: has to be politically motivated or has to advance an
Speaker 6: ideological cause. But you know, where it comes to environmental issues,
Speaker 6: that term critical infrastructure is part of what's so dangerous
Speaker 6: in the US pipeline, for example, an oil pipeline. Energy
Speaker 6: infrastructure is often framed as critical infrastructure, and that becomes
Speaker 6: a problem when there's a growing movement that seeks to
Speaker 6: halt the construction of this same type of infrastructure that
Speaker 6: is also pushing US faster and faster toward a cliff
Speaker 6: that leads to climate chaos, that leads to mass suffering
Speaker 6: and death. So I think there's a lot of question
Speaker 6: about what should be considered critical infrastructure. And you know,
Speaker 6: like in some of these documents I've reviewed, we see
Speaker 6: all kinds of things being called critical infrastructure, like financial institutions,
Speaker 6: energy infrastructure. It just seems to be a label that
Speaker 6: can be applied to all kinds of things. And now
Speaker 6: it appears that DHS is also looking for things that
Speaker 6: might be inspired by domestic violent extremism, So that just
Speaker 6: broadens that already broad definition even further and leaves a
Speaker 6: lot of people vulnerable to be to being framed as
Speaker 6: in kahoots with domestic terrorists.
Speaker 5: Yeah the round people, I'll sing you song about brave
Speaker 5: Tortuguita Inui Laani don say.
Speaker 6: Drilled is an original Critical Frequency production. This episode was
Speaker 6: reported by me Ellen Brown. I'm also the senior editor
Speaker 6: for this series.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Martin Zaltz Ostwick.
Speaker 11: Sound design and scoring also by Martin Saltz Austwick who
Speaker 11: composed much of the music in this episode.
Speaker 7: Mixing and mastering by Peter Duff.
Speaker 6: Thanks to Matt Rivers, who wrote the song so Grows
Speaker 6: the Flame the ballad of Tortugita would.
Speaker 5: Say with a heartful of fire in a faceful of play.
Speaker 6: You can find more of his music at mattrivers dot
Speaker 6: bandcamp dot com.
Speaker 11: A theme song is but in the Hand by four Known.
Speaker 7: Our artwork is by Matt Fleming.
Speaker 6: Our first amendment attorney is James Wheaton.
Speaker 1: This show was created by Amy Westervelt.
Speaker 6: Check out my print stories on Copcity and access all
Speaker 6: of the DHS documents mentioned in this episode on our
Speaker 6: website at Drilled dot media.
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Speaker 5: Will they go? Thanks to Brave dorth to get the now,
Speaker 5: the whole damn world knows for every tree that's fell,
Speaker 5: here's a coup that's gone the hell forevery mar slain
Speaker 5: so throws the flame