TORCH NETWORK

Today, Monday, September 17, the East Ellijay Police Department cleared Officer Thomas Dwayne Long of any wrongdoing over Long’s online support for the Ku Klux Klan. During 2016 and 2017, Tommy Long “liked” explicit Klan materials posted to Facebook profiles for two United Northern and Southern Knights of the KKK leaders, Imperial Wizard Charles Geoffrey Denton and Georgia Grand Dragon Justin Stephen Owens. 

Tommy Long has been on paid administrative leave since Thursday, September 6, the day after Atlanta Antifascists exposed Long’s pro-KKK Facebook activity. Early the next week, EEPD Chief Larry Callahan was already signaling that he would clear Long. This Monday, Callahan made that decision official.Continue reading →

On the night of August 12, 2018 – one year since a white supremacist murdered Heather Heyer at the bloody “Unite the Right” racist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia – anti-fascists placed dozens of posters in the Peachtree Hills neighborhood of Buckhead in Atlanta, Georgia.

The posters warned of a house on Ridgeland Way which is a hub for white nationalist organizing both locally and nationally. The house is owned by Sam Dickson, a lawyer who has been active for decades in the white power movement. Dickson is linked to a plethora of racist and far-Right organizations, such as the Council of Conservative Citizens, the Charles Martel Society, and the Holocaust-denying Barnes Review. As a lawyer, Dickson represented Klansmen, but he made his fortune on the Atlanta property market, where he has been accused of “bullying” tactics to gain title.

Also linked to the Ridgeland Way house is Evan Anderson (AKA Evan Thomas Kuettner), a key member of the racist organization Identity Evropa. Evan Anderson booked the park in Charlottesville, Virginia for the May 2017 racist rally which was a direct precursor to “Unite the Right.” (Both Dickson and Anderson also attended UTR.) Anderson assists Dickson with his Atlanta real estate investments; Anderson also has his own investments on the Atlanta property market.

A second mailing of two hundred flyers was sent to residents in the Lakewood Heights area of Atlanta – a multiracial working-class area where both Sam Dickson and Evan Anderson own property. The flyers warn residents of Dickson and Anderson’s property in the area and their attempts to profit from the neighborhood as it gentrifies. The flyers urge residents to not cooperate with the white nationalist gentrifiers, and to stand by any neighbors who may be pressured by Dickson, Anderson, or their associates. (Activity by Dickson and other white nationalists on the Atlanta property market were discussed in a lengthy Atlanta Antifascists article from last year: “Right-Wing Gentrification Gangs”.)

These outreach efforts are a small contribution to much broader fights against organized racism and the far-Right. Although the last year has seen real victories against the insurgent far-Right, there is still much work to be done – especially as white nationalists adapt and learn to operate in the post-Charlottesville environment.