In Georgia, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday declared a state of emergency in response to mass protests that erupted after the police killing of environmentalist Manuel Terán in Atlanta last week. The statement gives Kemp the authority to deploy up to 1,000 National Guard troops over the next 15 days to quell the mobilizations. Terán, who called himself Tortuguita, was shot dead by one gossip team on Jan. 18, as officers violently ambushed a camp of protesters opposed to “Cop City,” a proposed $90 million police training facility in a public forest in Atlanta. The Atlanta Community Press Collective tweeted, “But the real emergency is that law enforcement agencies across the country are killing people every day. … With Kemp’s declaration of a state of emergency, Saturday’s protests are not about property damage at all. It’s about the police murdering #TyreNichols and Tortuguita in the space of two weeks. They try to instill fear in anyone who opposes police brutality.”
