HOW TO CRIMINALIZE a PROTEST

In Atlanta, the George Floyd demonstrations of four years ago are being used as evidence of illegal gang activity-and the activists of today could be next.

- ZAK CHENEY-RICE

In 2018, tiffany roberts, a 42-year-old lawyer, joined the Southern Center for Human Rights, a venerable civil-rights organization based in Atlanta. She had been a criminal defense attorney moonlighting as an organizer for most of the previous ten years and now had a sense, based on a host of overlapping developments and controversies, that something terrible was about to happen.

Eleven months earlier, Georgia lawmakers had expanded the legal definition of domestic terrorism to include damaging certain types of property—deterrence aimed at the burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement, which had also inspired a wave of state bills that sought to give motorists immunity for hitting protesters with their cars. The backlash from lawmakers came just as the movement for Black lives was getting bolder, setting up a potential confrontation that could be far more explosive than anything Roberts had experienced. “The tactic of floating legislation that would authorize violence was emboldening folks who wanted to harm Black folks,” she says.