23 ‘Cop City’ Activists Charged With Domestic Terrorism After Fiery Clash With Police

Nearly two dozen “Stop Cop City” activists have been charged with domestic terrorism under Georgia law following fiery clashes between protesters and law enforcement at the site of a proposed police training center in Atlanta over the weekend. 

Hundreds of environmental and racial justice activists attended a festival on Saturday near the proposed building site (which included music and a bounce house), kicking off the Atlanta Forest “Week of Action.” Police claim that the clashes were instigated by a group of “agitators” who peeled off from the main event to start protesting. 

According to reporting by Unicorn Riot, a group of so-called “Forest Defenders” took over a police surveillance outpost located a mile from the festival, lit a cop car on fire and also torched infrastructure erected around the proposed training site. 

Angry clashes between activists and law enforcement ensued. Protesters hurled rocks, molotov cocktails, and bricks at police who were armed with crowd-control weapons. Police also swarmed the festival and made arrests.

Thirty-five protesters were arrested in total. According to the Atlanta Police Department, 23 protesters were booked Monday on domestic terror charges. That brings the total number of Cop City activists who’ve been charged under Georgia's domestic terror statute since December to 41. The law carries a maximum sentence of 35 years in prison.

Civil liberties groups have raised alarm bells, saying that Georgia officials are using their domestic terror statute inappropriately. The law was passed in 2017, after a white supremacist murdered nine Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. A letter by Human Rights Watch warned that the domestic terror charges brought against the Cop City activists “will, or are intended, to chill lawful protests, constrain civic space, and erode First Amendment freedoms.” 

Tensions have been rising in Atlanta ever since local officials unveiled their plan to build a $90 million Atlanta Public Safety Training Center on 400-acres of city-owned property in South River Forest (also called the Weelaunee Forest). Opponents to the plan, which included environmental groups and racial justice organizations, rallied under the banner of “Stop Cop City,” and said that the facility would bolster police militarization and decimate important forest land and resources. 

Things came to a boil in December, when a task force of police agencies raided the Stop Cop City encampment, arresting five and charging them with domestic terrorism. 

A second police raid on the site in January resulted in a Georgia State Trooper being shot in the leg, and a protester, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, who went by Tortuguita, being fatally killed by police. An autopsy showed Terán had been shot 13 times. Police claimed Paez fired first, but the full scene was not captured on body camera, and law enforcement’s account has drawn skepticism from activists, civil rights experts, journalists, and his own family. 

More events are planned in the coming week. The Atlanta Police Department said in a press conference that they were preparing for the days ahead with  “a multi-layered strategy that includes reaction and arrest.”

Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify the festival was a mile away from the construction site, and arrests also occurred at the festival site.