Since last December, in Atlanta, Georgia, opponents of the destruction of a forest have been arrested and charged with domestic terrorism. On the morning of January 18, a forest defender was killed during a police raid. Does the incline towards an increasing criminalization of dissent give the right to kill?
For about two years, an eclectic mix of citizens, environmental activists, naturalists, outdoor enthusiasts and participants in rave parties, mobilize to defend a forest that must be destroyed to make way for the largest police training complex in North America and a mega movie studio. This image which allows us to grasp the character of an era in the blink of an eye, we could call it dialectical image, using the words of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin. We are heading straight into environmental disaster.
Those who see in the inadequacy of government policies the need to act to counter the destruction will be repressed. We will be massively offered films and television series to make us think of something else. A forest, a police complex, a Hollywood studio. It is this dialectical image that the movement’s slogan tries to convey: “No to Cop City”, “No to Hollywood dystopia”, “Let’s defend the forest of Atlanta”.
The movement’s means of action have cast a wide net by first seeking to make its concerns heard by people in decision-making positions. Raising awareness, petitions, networking and demonstrations made it clear that the decision was already made at higher levels which were very difficult to influence. What to do then? In Atlanta, there were dozens of them setting up camps in the forest, to monitor and try to prevent its destruction. In December, a police decent led to nearly a dozen arrests. Where opponents of the projects have built camps made of tents, extra kitchens and huts perched in the trees, a military arsenal has been deployed to crush the protest.
At the limit of the right
Those arrested were all charged with domestic terrorism, a very serious charge that has so far been little used in this kind of context. According to the Georgia State Police, it aims to qualify acts that do not respect the law, committed to oppose decisions made by the governments in place. The majority of the defendants having their address outside of Georgia, this made it possible to identify them with “outside agitators” in the media.
This denomination, one could say with the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben that it places the accused at the limit of the law. Terrorism is the most serious charge that can be brought against someone, depriving him of even his membership in the world of law. It is an exceptional accusation because it plays on the limit between the interior and the exterior of the law.
On January 18, a sudden escalation of violence confirmed this situation. An Atlanta Police Department officer opened fire on Manuel Esteban Paez Terán. According to the witnesses present, and contrary to the version of the police, this gesture would have been made without provocation on the part of the man called Tortuguita and who had no weapon in the forest. Did the accusation of terrorism allow the killing without trial of one of its defenders? Was Tortuguita’s death an example given to those who get in the way of projects they deem harmful, telling them that they could be executed, like the natives of South America who oppose Canadian mining ?
The characterization of terrorism for acts that do not respect the law casts a shadow of infamy over great moments of civil disobedience which, particularly in the southern United States, succeeded in changing the political and legal system for the better. The Freedom Rides of the 1960s were led by activists from different American states to protest against the segregationist law in force elsewhere in the country: during these actions, laws were deliberately broken to bring to light the injustices they made possible.
At the time, these movements were often attacked by racist mobs before being stopped by the police. Yet they live on in our memories as brave people, for having braved injustice even if it meant taking the risks that went with it. So when Atlanta police disqualify an anti-deforestation movement on the grounds that arrestees aren’t from the same state, let’s be more than skeptical. Everyone knows that the cause they fight for crosses borders.
Condense the truth of the time
Just over two years after the death of George Floyd, after an unprecedented challenge to police power and the violence it allows in the United States, young environmentalists who live in the trees to oppose the destruction of a forest can be accused of terrorism.
We must see in these events a return of the pendulum of the great criticism of the police institution which shook the country: with Cop City, by training the police services on a national scale, it seeks to consolidate a weakened hold on the American company.
In 2008, as part of a somewhat similar “anti-terrorist” operation that took place in France, Giorgio Agamben wrote this in the pages of Release “The only possible conclusion of this murky affair is that those who actively engage today against the (questionable) way in which social and economic problems are managed are considered ipso facto as potential terrorists, even if no act would justify this accusation”.
In addition to condensing the truth of an era, the characteristic of dialectical images is to present the possible passages from a situation: the forest could be preserved, or destroyed for the benefit of these two great projects. Even if the first situation seems difficult to envisage compared to the second given the asymmetry of the economic and political interests at stake, we are still at a time when this impossible is in fact possible.
A bifurcation, desired by an increasingly important part of humanity, could take place. This bifurcation, which is far from concerning only the forest of Atlanta, is essential for the continuation of our life on this planet. For this to be possible, it is imperative to understand that accusations of terrorism cannot disqualify this movement, and that the tragic deaths that ensue should not be lived with indifference.