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More than five dozen activists were indicted on RICO charges last week over the ongoing efforts to halt construction of the city of Atlanta’s planned public safety training center in DeKalb County.

  • @dezmdEnglish
    19•1 year ago

    You and I have very different definitions for “illegal coordinated scheme,” " repeatedly or consistently collect a profit through coercion, fraud or extortion," and also “conducting what amounts to traditional terrorism”

    a 503c charity and then funnel money in and out of it, track expenses and receipts, and perform reimbursements for supplies

    You mean a 501c3 charity. Those are all required activities for a 501c3. That is not an criminal enterprise.

    conducting what amounts to traditional terrorism

    Do you actually support our democratic government powers being corrupted into authoritarianism sprinkled with fascism?

    They also created and internally published their own educational materials to indoctrinate new recruits to the inner core of the cause.

    That’s what all organizations do, be they religious, charitable, or political.

    The entire indictment reads like propaganda piece, carefully crafted as to focus on political ‘anarchist militant’ rhetoric like this is the late 1960s and 70s, to create a false narrative bubble so that it includes any and all of the community organizers involved.

    This is an egregious abuse of power through the use of RICO, and it’s not the first time GA has employed it against activist types.

    • @[email protected]English
      -4•1 year ago

      They created booby traps on public property and took at least one completely innocent nonrealted person hostage at gunpoint. Get the fiuck out of here with “egregious abuse of power”. Right to protest doesn’t give you a blank check to maim other people or hold them at gunpoint and it doesn’t threaten democracy to indict them for that.

      • @dezmdEnglish
        7•1 year ago

        The RICO case is literally targetting everyone it can and certainly will affect everyone willing to protest. Its called the chilling effect and its a common strategy of authoritarians in government. It’s not actually prosecuting the explicitly henious criminal activity you are trying to reference to justify your support of an obvious egregious abuse of power.

        Your position is sophmoric cognitive dissonance, you are demanding to shrink the context of the discussion to justify your pitchfork waving.

        • @[email protected]English
          -4•1 year ago

          RICO is intended to prosecute wealthy and powerful puppeteers who hide behind their disposable pawns to do their dirty work. If this case was only about lawful protest, you have a reasonable argument, but it wasn’t, and you don’t. The fact that they broke laws and harmed innocent bystanders and took action that could have harmed more is OK for you because they did it in the name of a cause you happen to support. Call me whatever you want, you aren’t going to be able to justify the coordinated misdeeds when it infringes on the rights of the innocent.

          • @dezmdEnglish
            4•1 year ago

            RICO is intended to prosecute any group of individuals attempting to profit from running a criminal enterprise. The charged individuals as a group having a 501c3 with verbose open records and a verbose paper trail of spending in the first place may even been seen as a possible mitigating factor against finding a RICO conspiracy.

            1. Yes, the case is not about lawful protest, it’s about criminality, and in that context it’s being used to prosecute more than just criminality as it sweeps in leaders among the protestors not involved in criminality. It amounts to suppression of protestors and is a dangerous precedent to support from any level of government prosecution. This RICO case ends up being used in a way to prevent people from exercising First Amendment rights, a public protest is a form of petitioning the Government for a redress of grievances. What specific evidence has put all of these people into a category of criminality that isn’t just a sweeping catch all attempt using ‘anarchist’ activity (which is protected speech activity until acts occur, acts that are criminal activities done for protest are individually prosecuted)?

            Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

            1. Who would or is actually profiting from the alleged criminal activity? That alone makes the RICO charges dubious.

            You have no basis in support of prosecution beyond conjecture, and/or you are intentionally ignoring any larger context that doesn’t support your pitchfork desire for prosecution. There is nothing you have put forth that has any forethought or consideration of anything but the prosecutorial indictment claims alone.

            I called out your position as bullshit, I didn’t call you an idiot asshole as a person. Learn to recognize the difference, and do better.

      • @dogslayeggs
        7•1 year ago

        Your entire argument hinges on whether the organization had a role to play in the illegal activities vs whether the illegal activities were done by individuals in the organization. If someone in my company does something illegal, there should not be a RICO case against me unless I conspired with them to specifically do that illegal thing.

        • @[email protected]English
          1•1 year ago

          Your entire argument hinges on whether the organization had a role to play

          Well, let’s be real here. It’s the prosecution’s argument. And they obviously believe the organization played a role or they wouldn’t have named those individuals in the indictment.

          After reading through it, it does appear that the prosecution believes that senior individuals inside the organization were promoting the illegal behavior without actually getting their hands dirty.