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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Field Notes from the Frontlines of the Government's War on the Left</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Michael Gould-Wartofsky - June 30, 2023<br></div>
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<img src="cid:ii_ljix3i740" alt="image.png" width="416" height="312"><br><p>As night fell over the South River Forest, the music festival was in
full swing. Young and old swayed to the sounds of Suede Cassidy.
Families gathered around the grill. Little ones frolicked in an
inflatable bouncy house bedecked with a banner that read: “Stop Cop
City.”</p>
<p id="m_2485340806484136830more">While the band played on, a strike
force of Georgia state troopers assembled in the shadows. They were
there to clear the way for the creation of the Atlanta Public Safety
Training Center, better known as “Cop City,” a $90-million training
ground for the future of urban warfare. It would destroy more than half
of that urban forest. For years, the project had faced mounting local
opposition and this festival was, in essence, a coming-out party for the
movement to defend a priceless bit of urban green space from the
bulldozer’s blade.</p>
<p>Now, accompanied by the dull hum of drones and the buzz of
helicopters overhead, officers of the “peace” descended from all
directions, their fingers on the triggers of their semi-automatics. The
orders came down with the force of live rounds: “Get on the ground!
Now!”</p>
<p>“I was playing ‘All Along the Watchtower,’ funnily enough,” remembers
Suede Cassidy frontman Jeremiah Percival. “Around halfway through our
set, they started arresting people… pointing AR-15s… traumatizing kids
for nothing. It was very stormtrooper-esque. It’s a good reminder to
know how fascism is in this country and how it’s very much alive.”</p>
<p>“It was after dark,” recalls Stop Cop City activist <a href="https://unicornriot.ninja/2023/dont-forget-us-forest-defenders-confront-horrors-of-life-in-dekalb-county-jail/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">Priscilla Grim</a>.
“I was walking to see the concert. And I noticed that there was a drone
tracking me. And the next thing I knew, men started chasing me, and I
fell. They had me turn over on my stomach. And there was the red light
of the gunsight to the right of my head. It was… frightening!”</p>
<p>Priscilla and 22 other protesters nabbed that night would go on to be <a href="https://www.atlantapd.org/Home/Components/News/News/3927/17" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">charged</a> with
“domestic terrorism” — conduct allegedly “intended to intimidate the
civilian population” or to “alter, change, or coerce the policy of the
government of this state” — under a Georgia <a href="https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-16/chapter-4/16-4-10" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">statute</a> originally meant to deter would-be killers in the wake of the Charleston A.M.E. <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/charleston-church-massacre-2015/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">massacre</a>.
“I was completely shocked when I heard that I was being charged with
domestic terrorism,” Priscilla told me. “For wearing black! In a forest!
It’s absurd. It’s illegitimate. It’s an abuse… And as a survivor of
9/11, I am insulted that the state of Georgia thinks that they can do
this.”</p>
<p>The Makings of an American Inquisition</p>
<p>Today, no fewer than <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/02/atlanta-cop-city-protest-domestic-terrorism-statute" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">42 such cases</a> are
being prosecuted by Georgia’s attorney general. All 42 defendants stand
accused of damaging property, not people. The only injuries that
occurred were by police and correctional officers on the bodies of the
accused. Some were then held for a month or more before being formally
charged with a crime.</p>
<p>Georgia is hardly alone. The New York City Police Department recently attempted to charge multiple protesters with “<a href="https://pix11.com/news/local-news/nyc-subway-chokehold-protester-calls-out-nypd-for-charges-outrageous/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">terrorism</a>” after they peacefully occupied a subway station to protest the choking to death of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/nyregion/nyc-subway-chokehold-death.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">Jordan Neely</a>,
an unhoused New Yorker, by an ex-Marine. In an absurd turn of events,
the charges were ultimately downgraded from “terrorism” to “criminal
trespassing” before being dropped altogether last week.</p>
<p>And across the country, such police work continues under the guise of
counterterrorism. Since the George Floyd movement, it’s been possible
to see the makings of a future American inquisition in which the
machinery of state is increasingly weaponized against the body politic
itself — especially against its most leftwing, most marginalized parts.</p>
<p>Though the fanatics of the far right have been <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/report/murder-and-extremism-united-states-2022" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">responsible</a> for
the preponderance of deadly political violence in recent years, it’s
the heretics of the left — antiracists and antifascists,
environmentalists and anticapitalists, pro-choice feminists and LGBTQ+
liberationists — who have attracted the most attention from police,
prosecutors, and inquisitorial politicians.</p>
<p>It is they who have been profiled as “<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/video/6322454297112" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">domestic terrorists</a>,” branded as “<a href="https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs5746/files/Anarchist%20-%20Left-Wing%20Violent%20Extremism%20in%20America.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">violent extremists</a>,” and subjected to terrorism-based sentencing <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/labeled-terrorist-jan-sentencing-fuels-debate/story?id=87769985" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">enhancements</a>,
often yielding harsher prison terms and crueler punishments than those
for their right-wing counterparts. As a result of such disparities,
hundreds of participants in the George Floyd protests remain caged in
federal facilities to this day.</p>
<p>The Long, Hot Summer of 2020</p>
<p>On May 31, 2020, just days after George Floyd’s murder, President
Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) all but declared war on the
burgeoning racial-justice movement. Attorney General William P. Barr
went before the press and <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-william-p-barrs-statement-riots-and-domestic-terrorism" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">promised</a> to
deploy federal forces to apprehend “radical agitators,” identify
“criminal organizers and instigators,” and “coordinate” with “our state
and local partners.”</p>
<p>“The rioting is domestic terrorism,” Barr went on to state, “and will be treated accordingly.”</p>
<p>Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) Ken Cuccinelli had a nearly identical <a href="https://twitter.com/HomelandKen/status/1268906136297713664" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">message</a> for
the media: “Cities across America burn at the hands of antifa and
anarchists while many political leaders are refusing to call it what it
is: domestic terrorism.” A DHS whistleblower later <a href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/homeland-security-whistleblower/0819ec9ee29306a5/full.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">affirmed</a> that
Cuccinelli and others had specifically instructed him to play up “the
prominence of violent ‘left-wing’ groups” in his intelligence
assessments — and downplay threats of terror from the far right.</p>
<p>And so began a long, hot summer of inquisition into, and
counterinsurgency against, the Black Lives Matter movement. By the
second week of June, more than 13,643 protest participants had been <a href="https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/6982454/FBI-June-6-George-Floyd.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">arrested</a> by state and local authorities. Some, like a group of three teens in Oklahoma City, even faced charges of felony “<a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/08/27/black-lives-matter-protesters-terrorism-felony-charges/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">terrorism</a>” for alleged acts of property destruction.</p>
<p>By the time the protests were over, some 326 people had been apprehended by <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/over-300-people-facing-federal-charges-crimes-committed-during-nationwide-demonstrations" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">federal agents</a>,
including members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and the Department of Homeland
Security’s Border Patrol Tactical Unit (<a href="https://www.opb.org/news/article/federal-law-enforcement-unmarked-vehicles-portland-protesters/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">BORTAC</a>). At least 54 U.S. Attorneys’ offices were involved, as were all 56 of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces.</p>
<p>In May 2023, new reporting on FBI activities would reveal that the agency had improperly run “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/19/fbi-surveillance-black-lives-matter-protesters-00097924" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">batch queries</a>”
of foreign intelligence sources for information on 133 individuals, all
of whom were arrested “in connection with civil unrest and protests” in
2020. They were looking for “counter-terrorism derogatory information
on the arrestees.” According to recently declassified <a href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/fisa-702-certification-2022/1b7ec8155e5513a3/full.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">documents</a> from
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, they were also spying on
American citizens without “any specific potential connections to
terrorist-related activity.”</p>
<p>In 20 of the <a href="https://m4bl.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Struggle-For-Power-The-Ongoing-Persecution-of-Black-Movement-by-the-U.S.-Government.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">cases</a> prosecuted
at the federal level, there is evidence of direct involvement by FBI
agents in the arrests themselves. And in two particularly egregious
cases, U.S. Marshals and their deputies functionally acted as judges,
juries, and <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/cop-city-deadly-police-violence/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">executioners</a>,
with “Violent Offender Task Forces” fatally shooting two suspects —
antifascist activist Michael Reinoehl in Washington and Black Lives
Matter advocate Winston Smith in Minnesota — on sight.</p>
<p>Up until January 6, 2021, the supposed danger posed by left-wing
“extremism” continued to be deemed greater than, or at least equal to,
the threat of right-wing terrorism. No matter that the right had been
responsible for the lion’s share of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/28/extremism-right-wing-deaths/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">lethal incidents</a> linked to extremism of any kind.</p>
<p>There were, of course, no terrorism bulletins released ahead of the events of <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/pdf/GPO-J6-REPORT-4-1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">January 6</a>th. Nor would there be terrorism enhancements <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/04/doj-domestic-terrorism-sentences-jan-6-526407" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">after the fact</a> awaiting those who participated in the Capitol siege. Such charges were reserved for Americans of a different description.</p>
<p>A Bipartisan Inquisition</p>
<p>The inquisition did not end with Trump’s first term. For all the
rhetoric about criminal justice reform — and for all the conspiracy
theories claiming that the president had “<a href="https://factcheck.afp.com/satirical-post-shared-belief-biden-pardoned-blm-protesters" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">quietly</a>”
pardoned thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters in 2021 — Joe
Biden’s Department of Justice has doubled down in a determined fashion
on an inquisitorial strategy of counterinsurgency in the name of
counterterrorism.</p>
<p>In the White House’s “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/National-Strategy-for-Countering-Domestic-Terrorism.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">released</a> in
June 2021, the administration pledged to “disrupt and deter those who
launch… attacks in a misguided effort to force change in government
policies that they view as unjust.” Subsequent documents, like last
fall’s “Strategic Intelligence Assessment,” a joint product of the FBI
and the DHS, <a href="https://www.dni.gov/files/NCTC/documents/news_documents/2022_10_FBI-DHS_Strategic_Intelligence_Assessment_and_Data_on_Domestic_Terrorism.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">confirmed</a> what
many in the Black Lives Matter movement already knew: that federal
intelligence agencies had set their sights on “threat actors” motivated
by “real or perceived racism or injustice in American society.”</p>
<p>Over the course of the Biden presidency, the DOJ has prosecuted
Trump-era protest crimes with vigor and enthusiasm, while federal
prosecutors have expanded the use of terrorism sentencing enhancements,
delivering dozens of political prisoners to the doorstep of the Federal
Bureau of Prisons. A grossly disproportionate <a href="https://m4bl.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Struggle-For-Power-The-Ongoing-Persecution-of-Black-Movement-by-the-U.S.-Government.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">share</a> of them have been people of African descent.</p>
<p>The vast majority of federal cases involve offenses against property or “<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/feds-go-after-protesters-rarely-used-civil-disorder-law-enacted-n1245540" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">commerce.</a>”
At least 17 have faced felony charges for unlawful use of the Internet
(for instance, “using an instrument of interstate commerce to incite
riots”). One of every three defendants was charged with obstructing
“interstate commerce,” one in five with crimes of “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/231" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">civil disorder</a>,”
and another one in five for “conspiring,” “attempting,” or “aiding and
abetting” some underlying crime they did not themselves commit.</p>
<p>Take the case of a young Black woman named <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/08/18/civil-disorder-prosecutions-racial-justice-protests-extremism/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">Tia Pugh</a>, of Mobile, Alabama, who was initially charged with two simple misdemeanors for breaking a window on the night of May 31, 2020.</p>
<p>“We were attacked first,” she would recall. “I was getting my people
out of there… We get killed for less.” After being tracked down on
Facebook, then interrogated by the FBI, she was brought up on felony
charges for interfering with the police “during the commission of a
civil disorder” which “adversely affected commerce.” Facing more than
five years in prison, her sentence was reduced to time served after she
spent more than a year in pretrial detention in an Alabama jail.</p>
<p>Though many have seen their charges dropped, others have seen their
cases pursued to the bitter end by local prosecutors. Black activist <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/09/06/1121322520/a-black-protester-voiced-anger-at-police-in-south-carolina-she-got-4-years-in-pr" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">Brittany Martin</a> was,
for instance, convicted in 2022 of “breaching the peace” for shouting
in officers’ faces during a peaceable assembly in Sumter, South
Carolina, in 2020. Although the alleged offense typically carries a
maximum penalty of 30 days, prosecutors charged her with a crime of a
“high and aggravated nature.” Last spring, she was sentenced, while
pregnant, to no fewer than four years behind bars.</p>
<p>Future Enemies of the State</p>
<p>By any measure, the white supremacist movement is now officially <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/553161-biden-officials-testify-that-white-supremacists-are-greatest/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">acknowledged</a> to
pose the deadliest terrorist threat in America. The White House, the
DOJ, and the DHS have made much of their commitment to confronting such
far-right forms of terror, but the numbers coming from the federal
government tell a different story.</p>
<p>On June 6th, the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General released its annual internal <a href="https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/reports/23-078.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">audit</a>,
assessing the Department’s strategy to “address the domestic violent
extremism threat.” The audit revealed that investigations into white
supremacist, “racially motivated,” and “anti-government/anti-authority”
activity fell dramatically from 2021 to 2022. At the same time, the
number (and share) of investigations involving “abortion-related”
(including “pro-choice”) extremism <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/06/15/fbi-abortion-domestic-terrorism/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">skyrocketed</a>, increasing by more than 800% and surpassing that recorded in any other year on record.</p>
<p>There is little mystery as to who is being targeted by such
investigations since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision, which
revoked a pregnant parent’s right to choose. Last year, FBI Director
Christopher Wray <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5042052/user-clip-fbi-director-wray-admidts-abortion-voilence-cases-pro-life-orgs" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">clarified</a> which
side was the most suspect and which side considered the most
victimized: “You might be interested to know that, since
the Dobbs decision, probably in the neighborhood of 70 percent of our
abortion-related violence cases, are cases of violence or threats
against pro-life… where the victims are pro-life organizations. And
we’re going after that.”</p>
<p>The case of Pilsen Community Books (PCB), a worker-owned <a href="https://pilsencommunitybooks.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">bookstore</a> on Chicago’s Lower West Side, is illuminating in this regard. PCB was recently revealed to be the subject of an FBI “<a href="https://unicornriot.ninja/2023/fbi-bookstore-spying-in-chicago-eyes-abortion-rights-cop-city-anti-development-activists/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">assessment</a>,”
based on three factors: its status as a “not police friendly place”;
its role as a “meeting, planning, and networking venue”; and its recent
use by “pro-abortion extremists…to prepare for a pro-abortion direct
action.” In other words, it’s a dangerous hotbed of constitutionally
protected activity.</p>
<p>“Everything is very much out there in terms of what we believe and
what we do,” says worker-owner Mandy Medley. “I was shocked that the FBI
would be interested in us this way… Community organizing is not illegal
and should not be treated as such.”</p>
<p>Elsewhere, the Department of Homeland Security and its national network of 80 “<a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/policy-solutions/ending-fusion-center-abuses" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">fusion centers</a>”
have been hard at work collecting and aggregating data on “anarchist”
or “environmental violent extremists.” And they’ve cast a wide net, even
ensnaring writers and artists in their web of surveillance.</p>
<p>State Terror in the Age of Counterterrorism</p>
<p>Meanwhile, back in Washington, D.C., inquisitorially-minded
Republican politicians have been pressuring the FBI and DHS to crack
down ever harder on their ideological adversaries. Last month, Marjorie
Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-resolution/202" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">legislation</a> that
would designate “Antifa,” and “any other affiliated group or subsidiary
of Antifa” to be a domestic terrorist organization based on its
“unlawful conduct” and its belief in “communism, anarchism, socialism…
and lawlessness.” That same month, the House Committee on Homeland
Security held a <a href="https://homeland.house.gov/tomorrow-at-2pm-bishop-to-hold-subcommittee-hearing-on-left-wing-violence/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">hearing</a> on
“Countering Left-Wing Organized Violence,” at which Greene called for a
clampdown on the newest enemy of the state: “The movement that wants to
use trans terrorism against Americans.” No mention was made of the very
real movement that approves of the use of terror against trans
Americans.</p>
<p>One such trans American was Manuel Terán, an indigenous forest defender known as <a href="https://bittersoutherner.com/feature/2023/little-turtles-war-cop-city-atlanta" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">Tortuguita</a>,
who was killed by a barrage of 57 bullets one cold January day in that
Atlanta forest. While it was a state trooper who fired the <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-do-left-wing-protesters-keep-getting-killed-by-police" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">fatal bullet</a>,
it was DHS, the FBI, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that
provided the intelligence for the operation. In the months since
Tortuguita’s killing, those very agencies have continued to beat the
drums of war, warning of the threat of “violent extremists in Georgia”
and <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/ntas/alerts/23_0524_S1_NTAS-Bulletin-508.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer">singling out</a> those motivated by “anti-law enforcement sentiment.”</p>
<p>In a real sense, it may be that this latest American inquisition has
simply come full circle, returning us to our historical roots: to a
society where the caging of Black people, the spilling of indigenous
blood, and the violent policing of the body politic are the stuff of
business as usual — a society where state terror, in the name of
counterterrorism, is accepted as a way of life.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if Black Lives Matter and the movement for bodily
autonomy are any indication, it may be that we, as a society, have a
lower tolerance for state terror than we once did.</p>
<p><i>This column is distributed by TomDispatch.</i></p>
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