Two days after dozens of domestic terrorists marched on the construction site of a public safety training facility that the city of Atlanta is building, new wrinkles are emerging, and we’re learning more about the goons who damaged the property in the name of a far-left political agenda.
On Monday night, citizens on both sides of the issue spoke out at a meeting at Atlanta City Hall. Opponents of the training center brought 8,000 signatures on a petition urging the project to stop. Opponents were particularly passionate and vocal, as Fox 5 reported.
“We are opening our mouths and crying with a loud voice to say we don’t want ‘Cop City,’” said Rev. Keyana Jones. “I live in East Atlanta. I don’t want ‘Cop City.'”
“This will not blow over,” said another opponent of the project. “The current plan will heighten tensions and harm communities for decades.”
Representing the supporters of the public safety training complex was Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum, who told the Atlanta City Council that he will do everything he can to keep the area safe.
“He strongly criticized agitators, most of whom traveled from outside states, and even other countries, to participate in a violent riot … that broke out at the construction site Sunday evening,” reported Fox 5. “Some of them who disguised themselves as protesters were caught on camera changing into black clothing and face masks before hurling fireworks and Molotov cocktails at police, trying to harm them.”
Other local residents had opinions that fell somewhere in the middle but simply want the violence to stop.
“It felt like a warzone,” said Dr. Michael Hickson, who lives near the site. “I’m okay with protests. I’m not okay with people killing folks. So, when it gets to that point, I think we need to do something.”
Meanwhile, at least some of the 23 people who authorities arrested could appear in court as early as Tuesday morning. Fox 5 reports that they may also face federal domestic terrorism charges.
“The FBI’s Atlanta branch also weighed in on the violence Monday, pledging to work alongside state and local partners to ‘determine if any federal statutes have been violated,'” reports the local news outlet.
Related: Turns Out the Atlanta Terrorists Are Children of Privilege
We’re also learning more about the thugs who are in police custody, including the Southern Poverty Law Center attorney, Thomas Webb Jurgens. Jurgens is the only suspect who lists an Atlanta address, while another suspect has an address in Athens, which is just outside of metro Atlanta.
“The SPLC is a left-wing nonprofit that says it monitors extremism in the U.S.,” Andy Ngo explains at The Post Millennial. “It has been marred in its own controversies where former staff accuse the organization of systemic racism and sexism. Its spokesperson, Michael Edison Hayden, did not respond to a request for comment. Hayden and the SPLC’s staff frequently communicate in a chummy manner with Antifa accounts on Twitter.”
The SPLC issued a statement on Monday, and it’s exactly what you’d expect from a left-wing group:
An employee at the SPLC was arrested while acting — and identifying — as a legal observer on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). The employee is an experienced legal observer, and their arrest is not evidence of any crime, but of heavy-handed law enforcement intervention against protesters.
This is part of a months-long escalation of policing tactics against protesters and observers who oppose the destruction of the Weelaunee Forest to build a police training facility. The SPLC has and will continue to urge de-escalation of violence and police use of force against Black, Brown and Indigenous communities — working in partnership with these communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements and advance the human rights of all people.
Despite the SPLC’s claims that Jurgens was at the site as an observer, police allege that he threw Molotov cocktails at equipment at the site.
Ngo’s profiles of those arrested fall right in line with the characterizations of these types of domestic terrorists that we’ve seen in Atlanta as well as in other places. Some of them come from extremely privileged backgrounds, including the trans-activist son of a man Axios calls one of the “most powerful” people in Charlotte, N.C.
Many of them are transgender or non-binary. Some of them are college students, while a couple of them are longtime professional agitators who have been fellow travelers in the Occupy and Antifa movements for a while. The most interesting (yet potentially least surprising) common thread among these suspects is that all but two of them are from out of state.
These carpetbaggers came to Atlanta under the pretense of saving a virgin forest from development when the reality is that the facility site is a former prison farm and the city has committed to building the site in an environmentally friendly way. They claim to be speaking for the minority residents of Atlanta when the people they claim to represent are suffering from a crime wave that resulted from the ineffective, woke policies of former mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.
The truth is that these people are domestic terrorists, and the authorities need to treat them as such.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member