• Awoo [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    20 years in prison on domestic terrorism charges for setting some fireworks off or burning a digger.

    People are gonna start thinking they're better off doing murder to escape than getting caught. It seems extremely shortsighted of the system to go after people this hard as the result is going to be people weighing that up.

    • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      People are gonna start thinking they’re better off doing murder to escape than getting caught.

      If some cops have to die to really cement in the public view that leftist protesters are all terrorists, well, that's a sacrifice the elites are glad to make.

      • Dingus_Khan [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        This was definitely a trend in early modern Britain where basically every crime was punished by the death penalty. Better to kill the lord while stealing sheep or cutting trees because dead men tell no tales

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          They needed to force people off the land and in to the factories, but they also wanted the financial advantages of wage slavery, so they just made everything a death penalty offense to terrorize the peasantry in to submission.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I really think most people don't know how incredibly draconian us prison sentences are. Like you go back in the day and people are getting a few years for all sorts of serious shit, but then the drug war, and really the 90s, happen and the us is sending people up for life for petty drug crimes or decades for shop lifting. I honestly don't understand why people surrender to the cops anymore and i assume it's mostly because they don't understand how corrupt the system is and how horrific prison conditions are.

      • Nagarjuna [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        It depends on the state. A Louisiana term is worse than a Texas term is worse than a California term is worse than a Vermont term.

  • culpritus [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    buried at the bottom of the article, the reason why non-violent protest is leading to more significant direct actions

    Officers involved in the shooting claimed Teran fired the first shoot, hitting a state trooper in the abdomen and prompting them to return fire. Teran's family said a private autopsy found he was shot 13 times

    So was a weapon ever found that shot at the cops? What is the caliber of the round in the cops belly? Why is no one able to ask these simple damn questions.

    • very_poggers_gay [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The body can footage from nearby officers (because of course the murderer wasn’t wearing one) suggests it was friendly fire between pigs… the cops’ discussions moment after you hear the bullet spray even shows them debating how the first shot sounded like one of theirs

  • Tormato [none/use name]
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    2 years ago

    Haven’t been following this story closely enough.

    But every time I see some fascist apparatus engulfed in flames I reflexively pump my fist triumphantly.

    Then I stop to wonder, “could this be another police 101 tactic of shutting down protest by means by setting things on fire or providing them with bricks or….,” as has been done in almost every instance in which a protest rally or action was getting so big and uncontrollable for them that they pull out this kind of subterfuge? Which is what they did In Minneapolis, at Occupy, throughout years of BLM uprisings, etc.

    Throughout the ages the cops and FBI have done this kind of shit all the time. To populist uprising as having now stepped over the line, and with the public on their side because they are now sufficiently opposed to “this kind of violence” are onboard to see it totally shut down. “I was all for the protests, until they started to (fill in the blank).”

    That said, radical acts are sometimes the only way to get the point across.

    What’s the feeling here about it?

    • HexbearGPT [comrade/them]
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      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Almost always they are actual actions by radicals and not cop operations. Unless there is clear evidence otherwise then i always assume the actions are authentic.

      “I was all for the protests, until they started to (fill in the blank).”

      People who say this are 95% of the time full of shit. If it’s a cause they agree with they are fine with anything. See: supporters of capitol Jan 6th rioters who also complained about BLM protests. Supporters of ukraine who condemn this atlanta protest. Etc etc. its all just bullshit excuses. But some libs don’t even realize they’re doing it and they say this shit unself-consciously. I at least have more respect for reactionaries that say this shit but know they are lying about it for having more self-awareness than a fucking lib goldfish brain.

    • Nagarjuna [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Anarchists burn ecocidal machines all the time. Cops were already throwing around domestic terror charges. Those two things happening at the same time really seems the most likely explanation.

  • BatCountryMusicFan [he/him]
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    edit-2
    2 years ago

    I'm curious what the level of support for Cop City is among average Atlantans. I mean big props to the people there for resisting this long, but unless they have wide community support it's just delaying the inevitable.

    • bbnh69420 [she/her, they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      People are checked out from local politics, that’s what institutions rely on to do things like bulldoze a park to build an urban combat training facility. It is the role of the communists to bring people into their issues

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        "Checked out" is probably underselling the us propaganda machine, the undermining of the education system, things like that. Like it's not just that american's are bad at organizing, there's a lot of institutional forces at work.

        • bbnh69420 [she/her, they/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Certainly don’t intend to undersell, I just see that checking out as the result of those decades of America just rolling along

    • MattsAlt [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      bbnh69420 is right. People are mostly checked out, it's far enough away from the city that there isn't a lot of visibility on the issue. Not once have I heard anyone talking about it out and about or much even on TV when I'm tormented by 24/7 news in public places. Online, it's a mixture of "I tHoUgHt YoU wAnTeD bEtTeR tRaInEd CoPs" and milquetoast libs saying I don't like it but the law is the law. Occasionally there are people who voice more radical opinions and those are either hotly contested or agreed with depending on how quickly the CIA bots find that thread

      • BatCountryMusicFan [he/him]
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        edit-2
        2 years ago

        About what I thought then, and that's what worries me. It's the same thing with Chicago's Cop City or that fucking monument to himself that Obama's building. We can talk all we want about righteous defiance, but there's this fundamental disconnect between the minority of people whose activism is based on a sense of morality, and your average person on the street who can really only be reached by an appeal to selfish material interest.

        We need a mass line, and I don't know how you build one in a country where 2/3 of adults are homeowners and everyone else is siloed off into their own atomized struggles to survive.

        • MattsAlt [comrade/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Yeah things are getting pretty bleak. Importing a bunch of tech bros for all the different hubs going in like Microsoft and then Hollywood libs as more movie studios get setup as well. The PSL and DSA are relatively active, but it's hard breaking through all the lib brained Hershel, MTG, and Kemp talk with anyone who is politically conscious and not cheering for more typical Republican ghoul stuff.

          I forgot to mention that all this has brought out the "we tried defund/ending cash bail and there's too much crime now" crowd again

  • FoolishFool [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    How long til' the charges are dropped? Like they usually are with left protestors.

    They always trump up the charges to scare them into accepting lesser wrongful sentences.