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Criminalizing dissent Tesnim Zekeria

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Sixty-one activists appeared before Fulton County Court yesterday on racketeering charges related to their protest of Atlanta’s new “Public Safety Training Center,” commonly known as Cop City. The arraignment comes after the Georgia Attorney General’s Office alleged, in September, that defendants were “conspiring” to violate the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. If convicted, each “Stop Cop City” activist could face up to 20 years in prison — even those who are alleged to have participated in non-violent protests. Experts worry that it’s the latest tactic by Georgia officials to stifle political dissent. 

Since its approval by the Atlanta City Council in 2021, Cop City has been the subject of intense controversy and criticism across the nation. The corporate-backed Atlanta Police Foundation, which is spearheading the project, says the center “will reimagine law enforcement training.” It will include a “Mock City for burn building training and urban police training,” an “auditorium for police/fire and public use,” and a police academy, among other things. Upon its completion, the $90 million, 84-acre facility would be the nation’s largest police training center.

But Cop City opponents warn that the center, which will be located near a majority-Black neighborhood, will further militarize the police and increase police violence against Black Americans. The proposed training center is also slated to be built on forested land that was previously a prison labor camp. Environmental advocates say that destroying this green space would be a step backward in the fight against climate change and make Atlanta even more vulnerable to extreme weather. 

The 109-page RICO indictment lumps together vague allegations of non-violent conduct with more serious charges of violence. The indictment, for example, cites numerous protesters for “trespassing” and “join[ing] an organized mob of individuals designed to overwhelm the police force in an attempt to occupy the DeKalb forest and cause property damage,” describing it as “an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.” Notably, the indictment does not allege these specific individuals caused any property damage or overwhelmed the police. But the indictment claims that was their intention. Trespassing is a crime, but not one that typically comes with a 20-year prison sentence. Other acts “in furtherance of the conspiracy” include being reimbursed for camping supplies, kitchen utensils, and glue. 

The indictment also portrays the group’s public criticism of the police as a central feature of the conspiracy. It links the creation of anti-Cop City efforts to the racial justice protests of 2020, despite the fact that protests occurred a year before the announcement of Cop City. “The demonstrations and protests eventually ended, but an undercurrent of threatening, violent anti-police sentiment persisted with some individuals in the Atlanta area…and it remains as one of Defend the Atlanta Forest’s core driving motives,” the indictment reads.

In one instance, the indictment cites three protesters distributing “flyers calling Trooper Jonathan Saucedo (sic) a murderer,” characterizing it as an “an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.” Salcedo was one of six officers believed to have killed “Stop Cop City” environmental activist Manuel Paez Terán, who was shot 57 times. The activists were previously charged with “felony intimidation” for distributing the flyers, an act which is typically protected by the First Amendment. Now, the Georgia Attorney General’s Office says this amounts to a criminal conspiracy. 

Several of the defendants in the RICO indictment were previously charged with more specific crimes: 23 protestors “were charged with domestic terrorism after clashing with police” in March 2023. Three others were charged with charity fraud and money laundering for bailing out protestors in May 2023.

“Breathtakingly broad and unprecedented”

Many civil rights organizations have spoken out in opposition to the indictments. On September 5, the ACLU of Georgia released a statement blasting the indictment of protesters who were raising concerns “over climate justice, displacement of Black communities, and increasing militarization of police forces,” adding that only “a small minority of protesters have allegedly damaged property.” 

“We are extremely concerned by this breathtakingly broad and unprecedented use of state terrorism, anti-racketeering, and money laundering laws against protesters,” Senior Staff Attorney for ACLU’s National Security Project Aamra Ahmad said in the statement. “Georgia law enforcement officials are disproportionately wielding these overbroad laws to stigmatize and target those who disagree with the government.” 

Other groups that denounced the indictment include the National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights, who both argued that the RICO charges were intended to silence protestors. The National Lawyers Guild argued that the indictment is “intended to serve a political end… to silence the protest movement, to prevent it from having access to attorneys, bail support and even legal observation,” stating that the charges were meant “to portray a popular movement as an unlawful conspiracy.” The Center for Constitutional Rights argued that, “[l]ike anti-terrorism statutes, RICO laws, in their vagueness and elasticity, are dangerous weapons in the hands of prosecutors and corporations bent on silencing dissent.” 

In June, before the RICO indictments, DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston announced that her office was “withdrawing from all cases related” to Cop City, including “domestic terrorism and related charges for approximately 42 people arrested during demonstrations against the center” due to “‘fundamentally different prosecution philosophies’ between her and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office” regarding “who should be charged and what they should be charged with.” Boston told WABE that the “value set of our office is that I will only proceed on cases that I believe I can make beyond a reasonable doubt.”

 

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THE ACCUSATIONS THAT COULD BRING BIBI DOWN Seymour Hersh

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Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu points at a screen during a press conference at the Government Press Office in Jerusalem on September 4. / Photo by Abir Sultan/Pool/AFP via Getty Images.

Menachem Mizrahi is a highly respected judge in Israel, a conservative jurist whose magistrate court is the most basic in the country’s court hierarchy, with jurisdiction over criminal matters and family disputes. He has now jailed five senior military and government officials in a rapidly expanding criminal investigation that could lead to the end of Benjamin Netanyahu’s third term as prime minister. And he has ordered the case sealed.

Few outside the media are questioning Mizrahi’s caution, given the issues surrounding the case. They essentially involve actions taken by Netanyahu who is desperate to stay in office. He was allegedly the catalyst of blackmail, theft of highly secret documents, and falsification of transcripts of secret cabinet meetings, all of stemming from his casual public release of one of the Israeli military’s most sensitive documents on Hamas’s operational control of the October 7 hostages, who, if still alive, have been captive for thirteen months.

The issues have energized and enraged the sometimes—but not always—accommodating Israeli press, who realize that underneath the media hoopla is the fact that the cases, once unraveled, could tell the distraught and embittered families of the hostages that they were right all along: Netanyahu did not make a hostage release deal with Hamas when one was possible because to do so would have jeopardized his standing with Israel’s religious far right. Their openly stated goal is to gain control of Gaza and the West Bank, as mandated by a fanatical reading of the Bible. And to hell with the fate of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank continuously under murderous Israeli military attack.

The judge’s actions have made headlines around the world. The emphasis was initially on a Netanyahu aide who leaked a distorted version—friendly to the prime minister—of what the Israeli intelligence community had learned about the plight of remaining hostages to the Jewish Chronicle, a newspaper in the UK. An even more distorted version was provided to the Bild, a right-wing tabloid in Germany known for its support of Netanyahu’s government. The British article’s thrust was to support Netanyahu’s contention that the off-and-on talks with Hamas would never result in a ceasefire because Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who was killed last month, was prepared to flee Gaza for Iran, via Egypt, and would take the hostages with him.


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The Missing Boy Who Captured America’s Heart Elias Wachtel

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The Missing Boy Who Captured America’s Heart

Lost on a Mountain in Maine (Balboa Productions)

You beamed. You cried. You commented in the hundreds. Free Press readers responded overwhelmingly to Elias Wachtel’s piece, “On the Appalachian Trail, I Fell in Love with America.” It ran on July 19, exactly three years after 21-year-old Elias—who is part of our first generation of Free Press Fellows—completed the 2,193-mile hike from Georgia to the highest peak of Maine, Mount Katahdin.

“It’s true that no one can get you up the mountain but yourself,” he wrote. “But as I reached Katahdin’s summit, I thought about my family, and my friends on trail. . . and the generations of Americans who cut the trails we walk.”

One of those Americans is Donn Fendler. Eight decades before Elias summited Katahdin, Donn got lost in a storm on the very same mountain, at the age of 12. A monumental search effort immediately began. It was July 1939: Europe was on the brink of war, but all America could think about was this boy who, as the days ticked by, seemed unlikely to return to his family.

But return he did. Donn had walked a hundred miles, in cut-up sneakers and with little in his belly except berries. That same year, with the help of journalist Joseph Egan, he told the story of what happened in a book, Lost on a Mountain in Maine—which has been adapted into a film of the same name, out this month.

What’s most remarkable about Donn is his conviction that he’d survive. Although the odds were stacked against him, he was so sure he’d get home that he carried a heavy rock as a souvenir because, he recalled, “I knew Mommy would like it.”

Here, Elias tells the incredible story of Donn Fendler. —The Editors

In the summer of 1939, as clouds of war darkened over Europe, a boy named Donn Fendler was lost on a mountain in Maine. The 12-year-old had run ahead of his father and brothers to reach the peak of Mount Katahdin, the highest in the state, when a fierce storm blew in. In pelting rain and dense fog, Donn stumbled off the trail, unable to find his way back to his family. By the time they realized he was missing, his loved ones couldn’t shout his name loudly enough to be heard over the wind.

The race was on to find Donn before he succumbed to one of Katahdin’s many perils. A young friend of his family, who’d been hiking with them, hurried down the mountain and mobilized a small group of forest rangers who searched through the night. By the next morning, Maine State Police had joined in. Volunteers from local towns flocked to the mountain to help, and the Great Northern Paper Company sent men from its timber crews. Police brought bloodhounds to follow Donn’s trail, but their paws were cut up so badly by the rough terrain they had to be carried down the mountain. More dogs were flown in by New York State Police. Meanwhile, the governor of Maine ordered 65 National Guardsmen to Katahdin.

All the while, America held its breath. Donn’s story made headlines across the nation, and his mother, Ruth Fendler, began receiving telegrams—hundreds of them—from other moms across the country, telling her they were praying for her and her son. But as the days dragged by, hope began to flag. After a week, most searchers assumed they were looking for a body rather than a boy.

Then, miraculously, the nation’s prayers were answered. Nine days after Donn had last been seen, the owner of a small cabin on the Penobscot River—35 miles east of Katahdin—contacted the authorities to tell them about the boy who’d wandered onto his property. Donn was exhausted, bloodied, half-naked, and skeletally thin; he’d been subsisting on berries and stream water, and had lost 16 pounds. It’s thought that he walked at least 100 miles, using what he remembered from the Boy Scouts to follow a small stream and, eventually, a telephone wire back to civilization. Meanwhile, the search parties had never even left Katahdin, thinking it impossible that a boy his age could have made it down the mountain alive. 

That boy became a national hero.


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November 11, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson

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