IT'S ALWAYS MAGA:

As you may have heard, protesters have occupied the wooded site of an old federal and state "prison farm" in Atlanta (one of the city's last green spaces) which is being developed into a police training facility. According to law enforcement spokesmen, on the morning of January 18,  one of the protesters, Manuel Téran, shot and wounded a Georgia State Patrol officer. In return, if it was a return, police shot them (Téran used "they" pronouns) repeatedly and fatally. There's no video, and no witnesses have emerged except law enforcement officers. These are classic conditions in which no one can know what happened, and I don't think any clear or plausible account has been offered.

Police arrested at least 19 "Cop City" protesters over the last couple of months and charged them, astonishingly, with "domestic terrorism." They held these protesters under a Georgia statute that defines domestic terrorism as follows (summarizing a bit): Any attempt to violate the laws of this state or of the United States which is intended to cause bodily harm or death or "disable or destroy critical infrastructure" and which is intended to intimidate people or alter the policy of government and "to further any ideology or belief." This may be committed solo or "as part of a command structure involving an identifiable set of other individuals."

That's vague enough to permit the arrest of anyone who's engaged in almost any act of civil disobedience for any reason. This, in the home town of MLK. But the statute does require underlying criminal conduct. So, for example, if someone commits a murder, they'll charge him as a domestic terrorist if the murder's ideologically-oriented or intended to intimidate others. But the underlying crimes of the 19 arrested in the Weelaunee forest (as the occupiers call it, after the indigenous people who once lived there) are things like trespassing and criminal mischief.

A review of the arrest warrants, according to the website Grist,"shows that none of those arrested and slapped with terrorism charges are accused of seriously injuring anyone. Nine are alleged to have committed no specific illegal actions  beyond misdemeanor trespassing.

Tweet   @brothersjudd