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Joeff Davis
Daniel Hanley is thrown to the ground by law enforcement during a nonviolent demonstration against a neo-Nazi Nationalist Socialist Movement rally on April 21, 2018, in Newnan, Georgia. Hanley has been charged with obstruction of a pedestrian roadway. The street where he was arrested had been blocked off from traffic during the protest.
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Joeff Davis
A man's head is smashed into the ground by heavily armed police during the nonviolent protest of the neo-Nazi Nationalist Socialist Movement rally in Newnan. Sheriff Mike Yeager claimed that protesters came to Newnan "to antagonize, take control of our community, and incite fear." Newnan police chief Douglas "Buster" Meadows estimated the final number of protesters at 700. They were greeted by more than 800 heavily armed members of law enforcement.
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Joeff Davis
Police justified the high numbers of heavily armored police at the demonstration by saying the decision was based on intelligence that 8,000 to 12,000 protesters would be protesting the event. Think Progress later cited an open records request revealing that the police had relied on Facebook posts to estimate crowd numbers that were entirely fake and easily discernible as such.
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One obviously satirical Facebook post reportedly used by law enforcement to justify huge numbers of heavily armed police said that 10,000 antifa activists would show up at the neo-Nazi rally in Newnan to erect “statues of Pauly Shore” and “to turn the fricken [sic] frogs gay.”
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Daniel Hanley is surrounded by armed law enforcement during the anti-fascist protest in Newnan, Georgia. Ten protesters were arrested during the afternoon protest, several for wearing a mask in violation of an obscure law making it illegal to cover your face at certain public events in Georgia—originally enacted in 1951 to combat hooded Ku Klux Klan members. None of the participants in the nearby neo-Nazi Nationalist Socialist Movement rally were arrested.
A nonviolent gathering of around 700 people protesting a neo-Nazi Nationalist Socialist Movement rally on April 21, 2018, in Newnan, Georgia, was reportedly met by 800 heavily armored police officers. Ten of the counter-protesters—and none of the neo-Nazi demonstrators—were arrested and now face felony charges.
Photographer Joeff Davis captured the action on the ground that day. The Progressive spoke to the arrestees’ legal team about where things stand now.
Q: Can you tell me about your group?
We are the defense team of the ten people currently being charged by [Georgia’s] Coweta County as well as several who were arrested without charge.
Q: Is everyone out of police custody now? Does any one have injuries or other damages as a result of their encounters with the police that day?
Everyone is out. Arrestees suffered cuts, bruises, and concussions as a result of the violent arrests.
Q: How did it feel to be met with overwhelming police force?
The police were heavily armed, they came prepared to use deadly force against us. It was terrifying. It looked like scenes from a war zone.
Q: Was the law enforcement response unexpected?
Unfortunately, it’s not at all unexpected that police side with white supremacists, since their job day-to-day is enforcing racist policies. But the lengths they were willing to go and the violence they were willing to use to shut down our protest was shocking.
Q: Are you moving forward with a collective legal challenge?
Unfortunately, we can't share details about the legal situation because Coweta County is still pursuing extreme felony charges against some of us, and our lawyers have asked us not to comment. The charges are completely unfounded, but being charged at all is a burden. The sooner the Sheriff's office drops the cases, the better.
Joeff Davis is a freelance storyteller whose work has appeared in The Progressive, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Vice, and Democracy Now!, as well as in a dozen books and twenty-five exhibitions. See more at www.joeff.com.
Alexandra Tempus is associate editor of The Progressive.