Activism

The End of American Protest

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To many people, it came as something of a shock when police in Robocop uniforms stormed the Columbia campus this spring to zip-tie and arrest largely peaceful student protesters. It was not a surprise, however, to veterans of the George Floyd uprising who knew from hard experience that authorities across the country, from mayors all the way up to the president, had taken a hard line against protests in general. In this deeply reported investigation of Atlanta’s crackdown on the activists at “Cop City,” New York‘s Zak Cheney-Rice traces the regression from that high-water mark of hope in 2020 to the dispiriting state of affairs today, when dissent is being stifled, demonstrators are treated like criminals, and real reform is but a distant dream.

—Ryu Spaeth, features editor, New York 

How to Criminalize a Protest In Atlanta, the George Floyd demonstrators are being prosecuted as gang members. The activists of today could be next.

Photo: Beth Sacca
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