Our Defence Fund shares a lot on common with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. Like them, we provide a LOT of legal defense support to anti-fascists facing trouble because of their anti-fascist work. In fact, the Atlanta Solidary Fund got its start in 2016 defending anti-fascists arrested after shutting down a KKK rally – something we also helped out with!
Lately, the Atlanta Solidarity Fund has been puttin’ in a ton of work defending Stop Cop City protestors, whose efforts to resist plans to build a sprawling, multimillion dollar, militarized police training complex in Georgia has been met with outrageous police brutality, trumped-up “terrorism” charges against 42 people, and the police murder of Manuel Paez “Tortuguita” Terán this past January. The police repression has already caught the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, the National Lawyers Guild, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Nonetheless, the police continue to abuse and terrorize those opposed to the construction of their training megaplex. Their latest move: to arrest three Atlanta Solidarity Fund admins, charging them with “charity fraud” and “money laundering” for daring to collect contributions to help pay for protestors’ bail and legal defense.
This case has far-reaching implications – certainly for our own Defence Fund but also for any effort to raise money and resources to resist anything that police support. One can see how this is an attack on the constitutional rights of citizens to protest or show solidarity with protestors. More immediately to us: successful prosecution of these three would pave the way to shutting down our own anti-fascist fundraising operations.
Given that, our Defence Fund has made a sizeable contribution to the crowdfunder for the legal defense of the admins of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund – something that you can also do, if you think that criminalizing attempts to support public protest is wrong and defending those brave enough to publicly raise their voices in opposition to injustice is an important part of the society you want to live in.
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