The campaign to stop Atlanta's police-training center — Cop City — in the Weelaunee Forest brought every prior instrument together: dozens of forest defenders charged with domestic terrorism under Georgia law, many on evidence as thin as mud on their shoes; the January 2023 police killing of Manuel "Tortuguita" Terán, shot at least 57 times in their tent during a raid, with body cameras off; and bail-fund organizers arrested for charity fraud over reimbursing protest supplies.

In September 2023 Georgia's attorney general indicted 61 people under the state RICO statute — treating the entire movement, from tree-sitters to legal observers to zine distributors, as a criminal enterprise, in the broadest conspiracy prosecution ever aimed at American environmentalism. The case, still unfolding, has made "Cop City" the emblem of the new era in which protest infrastructure itself is prosecuted.