Georgia indicts Confederate flag backers under state terrorism law

It brings me great joy to announce that the 15 Confederate flag enthusiasts who terrorized a black child’s birthday party this summer-members of an organization called “Respect The Flag”-were indicted this week for violating Georgia’s Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act”.

A group active in supporting the display of the Confederate Battle flag has been indicted as a street gang.

A group of white men and women driving cars flying the Confederate flag confronted a black family at a child’s birthday party, say prosecutors.

“The individuals charged will be arraigned, will have the charges presented to them, then (comes) the process of giving them their due process and their day in court”, Fortner said.

Confederate flag supporters can label the incident however they wish, but what it boils down to is a crime targeted specifically at African-Americans.

In a July 27 article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a member of the group who was named in the indictments, Levi Bush, said that the partygoers yelled at a few members of his group as they drove by.

Residents said the demonstrators entered their neighborhood and started shouting racial slurs. The Douglasville Police Department and the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office worked together to investigate the incident and on Friday, the grand jury handed down the indictments.

The Confederate flag, an emblem of the once slave-owning South that is seen by many now as a white supremacist symbol, has become a focus of an intense debate on racism in America since nine black worshippers were killed at a Charleston church in June. Two of the men were also charged with battery for a separate incident at a gas station that same day.

Morris Dees, the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center and its chief trial lawyer, could not recall seeing an antigang statute used against this kind of group in the past.