#97: Understanding the RICO Charges in Atlanta

The Ex-Worker

Prosecutors in Georgia have charged activists protesting against a planned police militarization facility known as "Cop City" with violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has indicted 61 people on RICO charges. In this episode, we explore the ramifications of this more or less unprecedented stage of repression. {Oct 6, 2023}

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• This episode is an audio version of the September 5th article “Understanding the RICO Charges in Atlanta.”

• For more information, check out this video recording of an online seminar organized by the National Lawyers Guild: Understanding the RICO Indictments Against Stop Cop City Activists.

• For more background on the ways that this law has been wielded as a tool of repression against social movements, see “On the Political Use of RICO Charges.”

• For further coverage and analysis of the last year of struggle in the forest in Atlanta, check out the articles Balance Sheet: Two Years against Cop City–Evaluating Strategies, Refining Tactics {February 28, 2023}, which evaluates the strategic hypotheses that the movement has produced and tested over the past two years and reflects on the risks and possibilities of the next phase of the struggle; Defending Abundance Everywhere: A Call to Every Community From the Weelaunee Forest {March 2, 2023}, a collection of short essays that draws on the struggle to defend the forest to reflect on the abundance that exists in our communities and in the more-than-human world; Atlanta Police and Georgia State Patrol Are Guilty of Murder: The Evidence and the Motive {April 20, 2023}, which exposes the truth about the police’s killing of Tortuguita in the forest; and “Living in an Earthquake: The Fight against Cop City Confronts Unprecedented Repression” {June 1, 2023}, which explains the latest rounds of repression and domestic terrorism charges.

• For more Ex-Worker Podcast audio coverage of the movement, check out Episode 85, “Stop Cop City / Defend Weelaunee Forest, Part I: History and Analysis”, which presents an audio version of our April 2022 article The City in the Forest: Reinventing Resistance for an Age of Climate Crisis and Police Militarization; Episode 86, “Stop Cop City / Defend Weelaunee Forest, Part II: Accounts and Solidarity”, which narrates the August 2022 article Beneath the Concrete, The Forest: Accounts From the Defense of the Atlanta Forest; Episode 96, which narrates the February 2023 account The Forest In The City: Two Years Of Forest Defense In Atlanta, Georgia.

• Stay up to date on the latest developments, calls to action, and more by following Stop Cop City Soliidarity – which includes a very helpful target map to help plan actions against the project’s supporters and funders – the Atlanta Community Press Collective, StopCop.City, Defend the Atlanta Forest linktree, and the Atlanta Solidarity Fund.

• The Ex-Worker is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network, an English-language anarchist radio and podcast network run by radical media makers. You can find episodes from other anarchist podcasts covering the struggle to defend the forest in Atlanta and Stop Cop City, including The Final Straw Radio, This is America, from It’s Going Down, and more.