In the Autumn of 2021 the Atlanta City Council proposed building a police training facility in 300 acres of forest north of the city. There was much public opposition to the idea, for a variety of reasons. One man who attended the council meeting where public comments were solicited estimated that 70% of the comments were opposed to the project. Once the final vote of 10-4 in favor of the facility was in, grass roots protests began to form. The core of opposition coalesced into a loosely organized group known as the "Forest Defenders" who camped out in the forest, some of them in treehouses. Other than a few vehicles that were set afire, these protest were peaceful and mainly consisted of people simply living on the land to prevent the development from beginning. (Some sources claim that one of the vehicle fires was set with the owner inside - this is disputed by the Forest Defenders and since the owner is still alive...)
The violence began with a raid on the encampment on December 13, 2022. In an attempt to break up the occupation police attacked the protesters with pepper balls and tear gas. No one died in this attack, but amazingly five of the protesters were charged with domestic terrorism. The occupation continued after the raid.
Last week one of the Forest Defenders was killed after police claimed that he fired at them. No body-cam footage has been released, and with the police record on firing on people when "fearing for one's life", I would be skeptical of their claim that the Forest Defender fired first. (The police officer in question was shot). The march on Saturday in Atlanta was to protest that police shooting. It started peacefully but turned violent when some protesters began breaking windows and setting a police car on fire. Several arrests turned up explosives in the protesters' possession.
I'm not going to argue that the violence was justified unless I hear that the police did something that provoked a retaliation, which I have not heard. But people who have just had one of their number killed are on edge, and it wouldn't take much. Arrest the people that you can catch and charge them with whatever property damage felonies that are applicable. Unfortunately, in many peaceful protests, the risk that a small number (and by all accounts it was a small number, for a brief time during the otherwise peaceful march) will disrupt things with vandalism or violence is ever present. That small number can be outside agitators wanting to make a group look bad, it could be opportunistic troublemakers who are piggybacking on the protest for the sole reason of destruction, or sadly, it could be a sub-group within the larger group who want to take things further.
What it isn't, as the chicken littles of the right wing claim, "Antifa", or more ridiculously, Black Lives Matter. Antifa has become the all-encompassing bogeyman of the right wing, supposedly responsible for every act of violence, for every disruptive protest, and even for being behind right wing protests in disguise. Republican leaders want to designate "Antifa" as a terrorist organization. The problem is that there is no "Antifa". Not as a centralized organization. It's a mindset, it's a movement of loosely connected people, connected only by a hatred of fascism. I don't you could find any two anti-fascists who would agree with each other on what today's manifestation of fascism looks like or what to do about it. Charge individuals who commit crimes that meet the definition of terrorism with terrorism, but making "Antifa" illegal is like shooting at a cloud. It may be there, but you sure can't put your hands (or handcuffs) on it.
On the other hand, there is an organization called "Black Lives Matter", but I doubt that many people who participated in Black Lives Matter protests, or make the slogan "Black Lives Matter" their own are members of that specific organization.
The Tin-Foil Hat caucus in Congress wants nothing more in these situations than to distract from the Trump-inspired violent insurrection that occurred on January 6, 2021.
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