Defending Rights & Dissent And Project South Sue DHS & FBI For 'Cop City Records
Civil liberties group Defending Rights & Dissent and social justice organization Project South are jointly suing the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for their failure to provide records relating to the proposed law enforcement training facility in Atlanta known as 'Cop City.' The complaint is linked here.
DRAD and Project South have been seeking documents that will uncover the extent and duration of DHS and FBI investigations and surveillance of the grassroots movement to stop 'Cop City' since February 2023. More than two years later, DHS has failed to respond entirely, while the FBI has repeatedly stonewalled and slow-walked the release of these documents in the public interest.
'Individuals exercising their First Amendment rights have been branded as terrorists or extremists for opposing Cop City. All too often we know federal agencies like the FBI or DHS play a role in facilitating these crackdowns. When free expression is on the line, we need full transparency from the government. It is unacceptable that these agencies have stonewalled us, forcing us to take them to court in order to defend the people's right to know and freedom to act,' said Chip Gibbons, Defending Rights & Dissent Policy Director.
'Cop City' has been controversial since it was first proposed in 2021 as a $90 million training ground for police and fire departments to be built on the beloved South River Forest, widely known as one of last remaining green spaces in metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia. A movement in opposition to the facility known as 'Stop Cop City' has garnered national attention, with thousands of residents and activists voicing their criticisms of the project.
Law enforcement has aggressively cracked down on these protests, arresting activists, charging more than 40 with 'domestic terrorism,' and even shooting and killing 26-year-old Manuel Paez
Terán during a raid on the public park. Previously released documents have already shown that both DHS and the FBI have been monitoring activists' web activity and are treating their opposition as consistent with 'anarchist violent extremist' and 'environmental violent extremist' ideologies. This aggressive surveillance contributed to Georgia police's violent repression of the Stop Cop City movement.
'The right to protest is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. This fundamental right has continuously been violated by the U.S. government through its surveillance of social justice movements historically and in the present moment. This long and dark history needs to be exposed and the government's surveillance with the aim of destroying our movements must be countered,' said Juilee Shivalkar, Staff Attorney with Project South.
DHS and FBI have 60 days to respond to the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, which was filed on May 9.
Defending Rights & Dissent is a national civil liberties organization that defends the American people's right to know and freedom to act through grassroots mobilization, public education, policy expertise, and advocacy journalism.
Founded in 1986, Project South, the Institute to Eliminate Poverty & Genocide, is rooted in the legacy of the Southern Freedom Movement and Black Radical Tradition. Project South cultivates strong social movements in the U.S. South and global South, powerful enough to contend with some of the most pressing and complicated social, economic, and political problems we face today.
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