On Tuesday, the Georgia attorney general’s office made public a sprawling indictment of sixty-one protesters and organizers, most connected to the Stop Cop City movement, under the state-level Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute. Prosecutors allege a grand anarchist conspiracy to exact threats and violence upon society writ large.

Legislators passed RICO statutes in the 1970s and 1980s to ensnare slippery mafiosos, but in the decades since, the breadth of the crimes admissible under versions of the law have made it an attractive tool for enterprising prosecutors. Prior to Donald Trump’s recent indictment under the statute, RICO’s status as a catchall law that nonetheless levies hefty penalties made it a weapon of choice against groups as diverse as cheating schoolteachers, gang truce negotiators, unions, Major League Baseball, and tobacco companies. On the civil side, corporations have leveraged RICO statutes to undercut environmental and animal rights groups, including PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), the Humane Society of the United States, and Greenpeace.

In the indictment, Georgia concocts a red-string conspiracy theory linking crimes committed during the George Floyd uprising to the Stop Cop City movement (also known as Defend the Atlanta Forest). Since 2021, the Atlanta-based movement has organized against razing part of the city’s urban forest to build a $90 million police training center. According to Georgia prosecutors, the common thread uniting Stop Cop City and the 2020 protests is an alleged anarchist conspiracy, characterized by, among other things, talking about solidarity and sharing zines, that incites people to violence against police buildings, Cop City contractors, and random bystanders.