Atlanta: Home of Coca-Cola, Jermaine Dupri, and the country’s most open-ended racketeering law. Two very different cases of national importance are headed to trial under Georgia’s version of the RICO Act. One of course involves Donald Trump and eighteen allies for their attempt to steal the 2020 election. The other targets more than sixty activists who tried to stop the construction of a $90 million police tactical training center in a forest outside Atlanta, a project the protesters have indelibly nicknamed “Cop City.”
As I tried to think through these very different cases — and what they say about the law and American criminal justice in general — I couldn’t think of anyone better to talk to than Josie Duffy Rice. A journalist and graduate of Harvard Law School, Duffy Rice is the host of the podcast UnReformed: The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, and a legal commentator who has appeared everywhere from the New Yorker to The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. We talk about activism, free speech, the mob, and laws as tools for both justice and revenge. It’s a great, and I think enlightening conversation, and I hope you enjoy. (There’s also an automatically generated transcript available on the website.)
And if you do enjoy, or get something out of my work in general, please consider supporting The Racket with a paid subscription. This newsletter has become my main job, and I can’t do it without the active support of readers like you. For $6 a month or $60 a year, you’ll get every issue, access to subscriber-only podcasts and nearly 300 past issues going back over four years, not to mention the sastifaction of supporting real, independent journalism. Thanks again for reading and listening:
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