National Council Statement: Defense of Democratic Rights to Protest and Free Speech
National Council Statement in Defense of Democratic Rights
to Protest and Free Speech
7/15/23
The intensifying repression and violence of the government’s response to protests are a warning to the American people. The Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta has been the most recent example. Twenty-six year old Manuel Esteban Paez Terán “Tortuguita”, an unarmed activist who was gunned down by police as he sat in protest, brought deadly violence to the repression. A raid was conducted on the Atlanta Solidarity Bail Fund which gave legal assistance to protestors. Fifteen hours of citizen testimony before the Atlanta City Council opposing Cop City was all but ignored: The Council passed the $67 million funding anyway.
Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and even opinion, is also under attack. Months after a SWAT-style midnight FBI raid on the African People’s Socialist Party a few of the members were indicted, without any basis, as co-conspirators of Russia for their opposition to their own U.S. government’s role in the war in Ukraine.
Recent legislation has been passed to limit peoples’ access to public sidewalks and lands, city halls, and the courts. The latest assault included attempts to pursue domestic terrorism charges against some of the Cop City protestors. That set a tone for even more draconian measures to shut down and punish protestors in protection of its most valuable resource: corporate private property.
The attack serves private and corporate entities, not for the public good or the well-being of nature itself. The motivation is clear: It is to demoralize, to normalize the inability of individuals and grassroots organizations to fight back. When the ruling class is unwilling and unable to meet the peoples’ basic needs silencing dissent serves to make acts of protest more profound and the measures to quash them more extreme and violent. Criminalizing public kitchens that feed homeless people and destroying tent cities as attempts to remove signs of poverty from public view is the reaction of a failing nation at all levels.
Democracy cannot exist without the freedom of speech and assembly. Our country is ruled by a powerful class of capitalists that sees as its enemies those who threaten its interests—both abroad and domestically. The ruling class begins its attack by targeting marginalized people—immigrants, political radicals, homeless—with limited or no resources.
Anyone can be the next target. Defense of one is defense of all. Use every avenue available. Let’s call on our representatives to fight for the democracy they were elected to uphold, to assure the people’s voices are heard. This could mean spending sleepless nights at city hall. It could mean what people in Atlanta are now doing through a referendum to put Cop City on the ballot in the upcoming election. This is everyone’s fight.
