"COFFEE COUNTY, GEORGIA"

 “COFFEE COUNTY, GEORGIA”

There are many smoking guns in the massive indictment issued by Fulton County, Georgia over Donald Trump and others attempting to interfere in the 2020 election results.  Nineteen people, including Trump, were indicted in the news conference announced by DA Fani Willis on August 16.  Not only were there many smoking guns seen in those indictments – there were also at least two blazing guns seen.  One was the infamous phone call that Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, “asking” him to find 11,870 more votes for Trump.  When Raffensberger told him that the votes were not there, Trump began to make all kinds of veiled threats to Raffensberger.  Trump later described it as a “perfect phone call.”

The other blazing gun was seen in a video from the elections office of Coffee County, Georgia, which is in rural south Georgia, about 200 miles south of Atlanta.  On January 7, 2021, the day after the violent and murderous insurrection of January 6, a team from Sullivan/Strickler showed up in broad daylight at the Coffee County elections office in Douglas, Georgia.  Their mission was to commit the obvious crime of copying all election data and the inner workings of the voting machine systems used by Coffee County and the state of Georgia.  Sullivan/Strickler had been hired by attorney Sidney Powell’s company to do this work.  I’d like to say that the elections supervisor blocked them at the door, telling them that their request for such information was not only irregular but also illegal under Georgia law.  

The video shows something different, however.  It shows Republican Party county chair Cathy Latham waving them in, and elections supervisor Missy Hampton welcoming them in and assisting them in their efforts to commit an elections crime in Georgia.  All of the participants in this process were white, and the information taken on January 7 was shared all around the country.  None of this was known until the video was released as part of the evidence in another case.  This happened in a county that voted 70% in favor of Trump in the 2020 election, so it was not a case of seeking to discover voter fraud in the county.  It came technically on the same day that the US House of Representatives had voted to certify the 2020 election results, a vote that had been delayed until 3 AM because of the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, seeking to overturn the election results at Trump’s urging.

I’d like to say that Coffee County was a very isolated case, but as we are coming to learn, Trump and his team of Powell, Eastman, Giuliani, and others were pressuring several states in the same way.  Coffee County also has a long history of voter intimidation and suppression, and that 70% vote for Trump mirrors the white population of Coffee County. The county was named for Maj. John Coffee, known as a famous fighter in the “Indian Wars” of 1833-36, which led to the removal of Muskogee and Cherokee tribes, who lived on the land prior to the European invasion.  This removal came to be known as “The Trail of Tears.”

Coffee County was part of the voter suppression in post-Reconstruction days and maintained that stance throughout the days of neo-slavery, until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 began to end that era.  It is the county where segregationist governor Lester Maddox gave many speeches in the neo-slavery days, because he thought that it was safe territory.  Progress was made late in the 20th century because of courageous Black leaders like Gladys Coley, but the election of Barack Obama as president brought out the neo-slavery voices and efforts.  Olivia Coley-Pearson, a Black Douglas city commissioner and daughter of Glady Coley, knows that oppression first hand.  She was arrested in 2011 on elections interference charges because she assisted people at the polls, but the state of Georgia declined to prosecute her.  Coffee County brought the charges forward and tried her twice in 2012, one trial ending in a hung jury and the second in an acquittal.

Coley-Pearson had these comments about the current situation in Coffee County (and throughout the rural South, for that matter):  “In terms of voting rights, I’ve definitely seen regress,” Coley-Pearson said. “Back in the 1960s, we had to  count the jelly beans; this, that and the other. We aren’t still there, but where we are is a more sophisticated means of voter suppression. We might have progressed some at one point in time, but we are currently moving backwards.”

We are definitely at a crucial point in our democracy, and the events of 2023 and 2024 will determine our future.  Keep your eyes and ears open – the forces of white supremacy have given us notice that they intend to take us back to neo-slavery.  It will be up to us to prevent that.