The U.S. state of Georgia, one of the strongholds of far-right Republican fascism, has declared war on all political dissidents. It began with the city of Atlanta’s studied provocation of the left: the construction of the so-called Cop City, the megaplex designed to train police officers from around the country in urban warfare and counterinsurgency. This flash-point has set off a cascade of sharpening conflict between protestors and the state. This past Wednesday, on May 31, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested bail fund organizers in Atlanta.
Bail funds for left-wing protestors, marchers, and direct action networks played an important role in the 2020 June uprisings and have continued to be important for protest rights throughout the empire. In fact, bail funds have served as a historical link between the progressive-liberal forces in the U.S. Empire and the radical on-the-ground forces in both the Civil Rights and labor movements going back to 1920. The first bail funds were set up by the ACLU to release those arrested for sedition during the First Red Scare. The bail fund draws liberal progressives into the fight and provides a channel for resources to reach the frontlines of the struggle.
Marlon Scott Kautz, Savannah D. Patterson, and Adele MacLean were arrested by the state of Georgia and charged with money laundering and charity fraud. MacLean, Kautz, and Patterson are respectively the CEO, CFO, and secretary of the Network for Strong Communities, the corporation that runs the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, spurred on by Gov. Kemp and his network of sycophants, has already arrested over 40 people on charges of “domestic terrorism” for their efforts to put a halt to the construction of the Cop City terror-complex in Atlanta.
This is a watershed moment. These tactics harken back to those used by the FBI in the 1960s and 70s, when the young Black Communist movement was at its strength. The warrant by which these three activists were arrested sets forth the absolute depravity of the charges:
Transfer and misappropriation of funds collected through a State of Georgia registered 501c(3) Network for Strong Communities (NFSC) to the private bank accounts of NFSC officers. Additionally, Patterson was reimbursed via her personal Paypal account… from Network for Strong Communities for 26 payments beginning April 28, 2021, through March 27, 2023 totaling $6657.59. These payments were for various expenses such as gasoline, forest clean-up, totes, covid rapid tests, media, yard signs and other miscellaneous expenses.
It is clear from the flimsy allegations that no law was broken. Rather, legitimate solidarity expenses have been taken to, themselves, be criminal. There are two possible purposes for the leveling of these ludicrous charges. The first is a typical and time-tested tactic of counterinsurgency; that is, knowing the charges won’t stand up in court, they may have been brought merely to disrupt the bail network and help push the construction of Cop City further along while minimizing resistance. The second, however, is to float this case as a test, a bellwether. If the charges stick and the state can get convictions (whether after trial or on a plea bargain), it sets a dangerous precedent — not a legally binding precedent, but it will set the expectation of prosecutors and judges in Georgia that these kinds of spurious and facially vapid “crimes” can be successfully prosecuted. Once that has been established, the state can issue waves of warrants, each of which stands some reasonable chance at seeing some kind of conviction. This is the criminalization of political dissent. Any liberal who thinks it will be used solely on “extreme” antifascists is sorely deluded.
This is the plan of a large clique, the ruling clique, within the Republican party. But we cannot afford to lose sight of the fact that the execution of this plan requires the complicity of identifiable individuals that work on the ground. The “cogs” in the machine are not “just doing their jobs” any more than the agents of Hitler were merely following orders. This is no defense. The warrant, for instance, was signed by Judge Shondeana C. Morris, a former state attorney. There is no probable cause stated in this warrant. The statute cited by the affiant (§ 7-1-915 of the Georgia Code) does not even set forth the elements of the crime of money laundering — it’s the penalties section. Everyone involved in the prosecution of these three organizers is either an ideological fascist or materially serves as the tool of ideological fascism.
This clique of extreme-right Republican fascists — the “MAGA” Republicans — now dominates politics on the all-Empire level. They have been establishing strongholds of domination throughout the country, from which they have launched repeated attacks on the fascists farther to their left — other Republicans and Democrats. These tools and tricks that the Republican MAGA crowd are perfecting now in places like Georgia and Florida will soon be turned on their political rivals in the ruling class. We Communists are merely their whetstone.
