ATLANTA – More than 30 national, state, and local organizations have joined forces to oppose a proposed titanium mine near the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.
The Okefenokee Protection Alliance includes the Sierra Club, Georgia Conservancy, Georgia River Network, the Southern Environmental Law Center and St. Marys EarthKeepers.
Alabama-based Twin Pines Minerals is seeking a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a demonstration mining project on about 900 acres in Charlton County near the southeastern edge of the largest black water swamp in North America.
Opponents have raised concerns the mine could damage adjacent wetlands and permanently affect the hydrology of the entire 438,000-acre swamp.
“The new Okefenokee Protection Alliance is the first collaborative effort to have an exclusive focus on the protection of what is arguably our country’s healthiest remaining wetland of significance,” said Christian Hunt, Southeast program representative for Defenders of Wildlife, another member of the coalition.
“Everyone came together because of Twin Pines’ permit application, but by design we intend to be active over the long-term and address the present threat that we are dealing with today, as well as future threats that stand to compromise the Okefenokee.”
The alliance has introduced a new website (protectokefenokee.org) urging concerned citizens to write Gov. Brian Kemp asking him to protect the swamp.
“Just as we have reached out to folks to call on the Corps, we are reaching out to folks to call on Governor Kemp because it is not just the Corps that has a say,” said Rena Peck, executive director of the Georgia River Network. “We want Governor Kemp to stand with his constituents and all the citizens in Georgia who are concerned about the mine and ask the Corps for an environmental impact statement.”
Over the course of two recent public comment periods, the Corps received more than 60,000 comments, the vast majority urging the agency to deny Twin Pines’ permit application.
Coronavirus has sickened tens of thousands and killed thousands more in Georgia. (Image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Gov. Brian Kemp is facing a Wednesday deadline to decide whether to extend social-distancing restrictions for businesses and other requirements put in place in Georgia amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The governor could extend all of the current business and gathering restrictions currently in effect or continue a trend in recent months of gradually relaxing them. He has executive authority to issue emergency orders through at least Aug. 11.
Kemp’s office said he plans to update the COVID-19 restrictions sometime Wednesday before they are due to expire at 11:59 p.m.
While a host of Georgia businesses have been allowed to reopen since May, they are still required by the governor’s orders to abide by several measures to keep people separated from each other, maintain clean surfaces and send workers home if they show symptoms of coronavirus.
A shelter-in-place order has been under effect since late March for Georgians in long-term care facilities and those with chronic medical conditions including lung disease, moderate to severe asthma, severe heart disease, compromised immune systems, severe obesity and diabetes.
In particular, large gatherings in Georgia have been limited to no more than 50 people if they cannot keep at least six feet apart. That applies to restaurants, bars and other popular gathering spots.
Conventions, sports stadiums and performance venues were allowed to reopen July 1 under distancing, sanitizing and signage rules. But Kemp has suggested he could pull the plug on fall sports like football if people disregard wearing masks.
Mask-wearing in Georgia has been a testy subject in recent weeks. Kemp remains under pressure to impose mandatory masking requirements as positive COVID-19 cases continue rising in the state, and several cities have ordered residents to wear facial coverings in public.
The governor’s statewide rules so far have “strongly encouraged” voluntary mask-wearing even as many health experts and local elected officials have urged Kemp to take a mandatory approach or at least let counties and cities set their own masking rules.
To date, Kemp’s orders on COVID-19 have required city and county governments to adopt the state’s rules rather than impose their own. That scenario has caused tension in cities like Atlanta and Savannah, where local officials recently required residents to wear masks.
Last week, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms issued a citywide masking requirement that argued the governor’s statewide orders do not explicitly address mask mandates, posing a legal loophole for local governments to adopt their own measures.
Kemp’s office has dismissed the Atlanta mask mandate as unenforceable.
U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler speaks during a campaign event at Cobb County’s Republican headquarters in Marietta on July 13, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
MARIETTA – U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., doubled down Monday on criticism of the Black Lives Matter protest movement, calling it a political organization promoting “violence and anti-Semitism” as she seeks to win her seat in a crowded Nov. 3 special election.
Loeffler, a Buckhead businesswoman, has sought to bat back criticism over her opposition to the Women’s National Basketball Association’s recent decision to adopt Black Lives Matter-related phrases on their uniforms. She has urged the league to scrap the plan.
“They are built on a Marxist foundation and the most socialist principles,” Loeffler, who co-owns the Atlanta Dream WNBA team, said of Black Lives Matter at Cobb County’s Republican headquarters Monday.
Loeffler emphasized a distinction between the movement as a political organization with fundraising abilities versus its statements on racial equality and police reform, which she said she supports.
“They want to defund the police, the military,” she added. “They want to empty the prisons. They want to destroy the nuclear family, they’re anti-Semitic and they want to spread violence across the country.”
The comments by Loeffler highlight a recent shift in focus on issues in the campaign for her Senate seat, amid nationwide protests against racial injustice and police brutality. They also echo President Donald Trump’s bend toward social and cultural subjects as he vies for a second term.
The race for Loeffler’s seat has drawn a field of 21 candidates in an open special election to fill the remainder of former U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term. Isakson retired at the end of last year, prompting Gov. Brian Kemp to tap Loeffler to hold the seat until the election.
Speaking as part of a two-week statewide campaign tour, Loeffler paired her comments on Black Lives Matter with condemnation of calls from largely Democratic elected officials to reduce or defund local law enforcement agencies in the U.S.
She framed criticism over her views as part a “cancel culture” social approach that Trump has also sought to evoke in his presidential campaign amid recent protests and pressure to remove Confederate monuments.
“We as Americans have every right to express our views without being canceled,” Loeffler said Monday.
Loeffler faces stiff competition from Democratic contenders and from within her own party in Georgia. U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, a Republican, is campaigning hard for the seat, as is Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat.
Collins, who has especially lobbed criticism at Loeffler, has dismissed her stance on Black Lives Matter as empty politics, drawing ties between her ownership of a WNBA team and the league’s support for Planned Parenthood.
“Now that she’s pretending to be a conservative to run for public office, she should explain her silence and divest herself of this team and her past progressive advocacy,” Collins said.
Warnock, who has amassed a hefty campaign war chest in recent months, has also taken aim at Loeffler while touting his support for the protest movement and its aims.
“The Black Lives Matter movement is an effort to give voice to the very real problem of injustice in our country,” Warnock said on Twitter recently. “While we urge peaceful demonstrations, the pain in the Black community is still real and demands to be heard, no matter how inconvenient that is for Kelly Loeffler.”
A federal judge Monday blocked a Georgia law from taking effect that would ban most abortions after a heartbeat is detected, marking a pivotal decision in a case that has enflamed passions in the state for more than a year.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Steve Jones approved a permanent injunction of the law sought by several pro-choice groups in June 2019 shortly after the General Assembly passed legislation to impose the restrictive abortion ban.
Jones’ ruling follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision earlier this month that struck down a restrictive abortion law in Louisiana. Previously, Jones said he planned to await an outcome in that case before issuing his own order.
Jones handed down a single-paragraph ruling Monday that found the law to be in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment equal-protection clause.
Backers of the push to overturn Georgia’s abortion law hailed the court ruling Monday as a win for the right-to-choose movement, calling it a repudiation of governmental overreach in reproductive issues.
“This moves us further into the future we all want to live in,” said Monica Simpson, executive director of the nonprofit SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. “No one deserves to live in a country where their bodies or their reproductive decision-making are dictated by the state.”
Gov. Brian Kemp’s office quickly pledged to appeal the ruling, potentially setting up a future U.S. Supreme Court battle.
“Georgia values life, and we will keep fighting for the rights of the unborn,” said Cody Hall, the governor’s press secretary.
Georgia’s law on abortions would have been among the most restrictive in the country had it been allowed to take effect at the start of this year.
It would have banned all abortions in the state before a fetal heartbeat can be detected, usually around six weeks. Certain exceptions would have been permitted such as for medical emergencies.
Legislation creating the abortion ban passed out of the General Assembly in March 2019 by partisan margins and following fierce debate on both sides of the aisle.
Several groups including SisterSong and Planned Parenthood filed suit after the bill’s passage, arguing it posed an unconstitutional violation of women’s reproductive rights set in the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade case.
The American Civil Liberties Union’s Georgia branch, which represented the suing groups, noted a separate federal court also struck down an abortion ban in Tennessee on Monday.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law has a history of racism and encourages civilians lacking law enforcement training to take the law into their own hands, civil- and human-rights advocates said Monday.
“Law enforcement has resources to handle these kinds of things,” Christopher Bruce, political director for the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, told members of a legislative committee. “We should encourage citizens to look to law enforcement.”
The Georgia House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee took the first step with Monday’s hearing toward fulfilling House Speaker David Ralston’s pledge to follow up on the General Assembly’s recent passage of a hate-crimes law by considering additional criminal justice reforms.
The state’s citizen’s arrest law became a focus of attention following the fatal shooting earlier this year of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man gunned down while jogging near Brunswick. Two white men, a father and son, charged with murder in the case have claimed they were trying to make a citizen’s arrest because they suspected Arbery had committed a burglary.
The law was put on the books in Georgia during the Civil War, a time when white slaveholders were trying to prevent runaway slaves from joining the Union Army, said the Rev. James Woodall, president of the NAACP’s Georgia chapter.
“This law was literally written to keep Negroes as slaves,” he said.
After the war, vigilante mobs used the law to justify the lynching of blacks, Woodall said.
Both the ACLU and NAACP are recommending that the General Assembly repeal citizen’s arrest as an outdated law that is no longer necessary in an era when law enforcement agencies have sufficient resources to handle criminal complaints.
But some of the committee’s Republican members questioned whether doing away with the citizen’s arrest law would leave Georgians unprotected from home invasions or shopkeepers with no recourse to detain shoplifters.
Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, said a police officer can’t always be present.
“Can I detain somebody not authorized to be in my home or car?” he asked.
Marissa McCall Dodson, public policy director for the Southern Center for Human Rights, said the citizen’s arrest law could be repealed while maintaining the ability of shopkeepers to detain shoplifting suspects. Homeowners would still be protected by the legal right to self-defense, she said.
“Citizen’s arrest and self-defense are not the same,” she said.
Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter, who also testified Monday, said the cases of citizen’s arrests he has encountered in his decades as a prosecutor typically don’t go well because civilians attempting to make citizen’s arrests lack legal training.
“I’m personally not in favor of citizens arresting one another,” Porter said. “They usually turn out badly with someone’s misinterpretation of the law.”
However, Porter urged lawmakers to consider the potential consequences of abolishing homeowners’ ability to make a citizen’s arrest during a home invasion, leaving them with only the legal protection of self-defense.
“You incentivize a homeowner to kill someone rather than detain them under the citizen’s arrest law,” he said.
