Cop City RICO

Plus: Good returns at the ballot box as the South burns

Author

Brad Johnson
November 08, 2023

PRESENTED BY THE VAST COSMOS

Voters across the nation fought against the extremism of the Republican Party at the ballot box yesterday. In a strong rebuke to the anti-climate Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.), Democrats took control of both chambers of the Virginia legislature, as the state literally burns; Kentucky’s Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear was re-elected; and down-ballot climate hawks won several competitive races. In Maine, the $40 million spent by Maine’s foreign-owned electric utilities defeated the $1 million on behalf of the Pine Tree Power initiative, which would have converting the state to a public utility.

Climate Cabinet is hosting an online debrief of the 2023 election today at 12:30 pm; Hill Heat will have a more comprehensive roundup of the election results soon.

On Monday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Adams arraigned 57 of 61 climate-justice activists on organized-crime charges for protesting Atlanta’s planned Cop City.1

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr is the eco-fascist using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act to criminalize non-violent civil disobedience and protest:

“We contend the 61 defendants together have conspired the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center [Cop City] by conducting, coordinating, and organizing acts of violence, intimidation, and property destruction.”

Hundreds of activists protested outside the courthouse.

“We have to stand strong here with our organizers and activists and community members who are now facing legal charges,” Community Movement Builders’ Kamau Franklin told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jozsef Papp and Riley Bunch. “Because today it’s them and tomorrow it could be the rest of us.”

Belkis Terán, mother of the cop-slain Manuel ‘Tortuguita’ Terán spoke out:

“We have to be clear why we are doing this. We are going to leave a legacy that Manuel was trying to share with everybody.”

The next mass protest against Cop City is planned for this weekend, November 10th to 13th. The National Bail Fund Network is collecting legal and bail support, as organizers with the local bail fund were arrested. By contributing, you too can become a criminal!

Spiral galaxy IC 342

CLEANING HOUSE: White House senior advisor and infrastructure coordinator Mitch Landrieu, one of President Joe Biden’s top carbon-industry liaisons, is leaving by the end of the year. But don’t worry, the oily Amos Hochstein is still Senior Advisor to the President for Energy and Investment.

BORICUA SOLAR: The Department of Energy has chosen residential solar companies Sunrun and Sunnova and power product supplier Generac to install rooftop solar and battery storage systems in Puerto Rico, with over $400 million from the $1 billion Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Fund. This could be transformational.

THE SOUTH IS BURNING: Wildfires are burning throughout the hot and dry South: Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, and Kentucky. So far, none of these states’ attorney generals have arrested any fossil-fuel executives on RICO charges.

All of today’s climate hearings began at 10 am.

Senate Environment chair Tom Carper (D-Del.) chairs a hearing on clean water infrastructure assistance for disadvantaged communities with rural community advocate Olga Morales-Pate, south Texas’s Nueces River Authority director John Byrum, and Oklahoma water quality director Shellie Chard.

The House Small Business Committee has a hearing attacking Department of Energy energy-efficiency rules, with refrigerator lobbyist Jeff Bauman, climate denier Ben Lieberman of the Koch-backed Competitive Enterprise Institute, home-builder lobbyist Alicia Huey, and Democratic witness Emily Hammond, a climate policy expert and GW law professor who recently served in the Biden DOE.

House Natural Resources has a legislative markup with two absurd GOP fossil-fuel bills: Rep. Jeff Duncan’s (R-S.C.) fracking-protection bill (H.R. 1121), which would ban a federal moratorium and opposes national regulation of fracking; and Rep. Garret Graves’s (R-La.) bill to prevent rules protecting the highly endangered Rice’s whale from Gulf of Mexico drilling (H.R. 6008). Rep. Joe Neguse’s (D-Colo.) bill to extend western drought relief programs to 2028 (H.R. 4385) is also on the docket.

Globular cluster NGC 6397

Hearings on the Hill:

Climate Action Today:

Thanks for subscribing and spreading the word. If you’ve got job listings, event listings, or other hot news, I want to hear it. Connect with me—@[email protected] and  @climatebrad.hillheat.com on BlueSky

1 Of the remaining four, one is in immigration detention, one is stuck in Canada, one is in France, and one is whereabouts unknown.

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