For several months now, groups of domestic terrorists have attempted to thwart the construction of a public safety training facility that the city of Atlanta is building in an unincorporated area of DeKalb County just outside the city.
These actions have intensified in recent weeks, culminating in a shootout with police in January that left an Antifa activist dead and a Georgia state trooper injured. Protests in the city turned violent a few days later, with domestic terrorists setting fire to a police car and vandalizing businesses.
The thugs announced a “week of action” for the first week in March. And they delivered. On Sunday night, a group of domestic terrorists used the cover of a “peaceful protest” and a music festival — because nothing’s more conducive to music than an old prison farm — and firebombed portions of the facility, damaging buildings, construction equipment, and at least one police vehicle.
Authorities quickly got the scene under control and arrested 23 goons, charging them with domestic terrorism. At least some of them made their first court appearance on Tuesday. Sure, Americans are innocent until proven guilty, and some of these people may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it’s clear that someone has been engaging in domestic terrorism at the training facility site.
One local activist told a local media outlet that this type of action is justified. Because police brutality or something, of course.
“There are protesters who are engaging in civil disobedience and direct action—and yes—some of those protesters’ tactics may from the outside look extreme,” Kamau Franklin told Fox 5.
It’s worth noting that Franklin isn’t exactly an impartial observer. Instead, he’s the lead of “Community Movement Builders, one of the groups opposing what they refer to as ‘Cop City,'” Fox 5 reports.
Related: Suddenly Domestic Terrorism Charges Are a Problem Now That Atlanta Is Using Them Against Antifa
When the reporter asked Franklin if groups like his have a responsibility to call out the extreme measures that some activists are taking, Franklin replied by equivocating.
“I think the movement has the responsibility to discuss tactics and strategies for moving the movement forward,” he stated, “We’ve had people thrown to the ground, beat up — all of this is coming from the policing side — the state side.”
Franklin resorts to the old childhood argument: “they started it.” And notice how, in the first quote, he says that the tactics of the violent extremists merely “may from the outside look extreme.”
Look extreme? Seriously? These domestic terrorists shot at law enforcement, vandalized historic buildings, torched a police car, and did extensive damage to the construction site. And that’s in 2023 alone.
“The ‘protesters’ against what the left calls ‘Cop City’ have vandalized the offices of the contractor in charge of the project, confronted contractor employees at their homes, and disrupted church services where employees of the contractor worship,” we reported here at PJ Media in January. “Antifa punks even firebombed a center for at-risk youth located near the planned facility.”
But such actions just “may … look extreme.”
What leftists like Franklin also either fail to realize or intentionally ignore is that this public safety training center will help relieve some of the police brutality problems that agitators like him worry about. Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, a Democrat, told reporters in January that, in addition to traditional police training, the public safety training center would include spaces for “de-escalation training techniques, mental health, community-oriented policing, crisis intervention training, as well as civil rights history education.”
Let’s face it: any training that helps law enforcement and public safety officials do their jobs better is going to benefit the community. On top of that, local law enforcement is prioritizing hiring people from the community who want to help make the city a better place.
Additionally, Dickens neutralized the surface-level arguments of the violent extremists by pointing out that the project includes hundreds of acres of parks and green space and that the city is getting rid of dangerous invasive species.
But none of this matters to people like Franklin. All that matters to them is furthering a far-left agenda, and facts can’t get in the way. You can’t tell these people anything.
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