“Weelaunee Three” Cop City protesters weigh pretrial diversion as supporters demand charges be dropped

Every Friday for months, community members gathered outside the construction site of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, colloquially known as Cop City, for “Forest Fridays.” People met at a local park and carpooled to the gated, barricaded entrance, where they marched, danced and chanted in front of armed guards.

On Dec. 22, 2023, three Atlanta residents protesting Cop City were arrested during one of those Forest Friday gatherings and charged with criminal trespassing and obstruction of justice. The three individuals—Rukia Rogers, Noah Grigni and Kyra Hanlon—were dubbed the Weelaunee Three. Weelaunee is the Mvskoke name for the South River Forest where Cop City is being built.

In a video of the arrest, Rogers stands outside the Cop City site with a banner that reads “Save Weelaunee, Free Palestine.” More than a year later, on March 14, Rogers wore a keffiyeh outside of the Dekalb County Courthouse for a calendar call, after their initial arraignment. Rogers’ fellow arrestees stood alongside her with a group of supporters, holding a banner that read “Drop All Cop City Charges.” 

Rogers said it’s “[t]he state [that] needs to be on trial.” The case of the Weelaunee Three is one of the latest in a slew of prosecutions against Stop Cop City activists. “I had no weapon,” Rogers said. “I had a piece of cloth that was stating my beliefs. I had my voice.” Officers grabbed Rogers, and Grigni and Hanlon moved to support her on either side.

Grigni, a transgender, non-binary artist, was misgendered and separated from their co-defendants in DeKalb County Jail. They were placed in solitary confinement and recalled seeing another transgender person, who the guards “treated like an animal.” Attorney Lyra Foster, who is transgender, is representing the Weelaunee Three. Foster has litigated in defense of transgender women in prison and other queer-identifying Stop Cop City activists.

Foster says she presents masculine in court when she is ”coming into the courtroom with trans, gender non-conforming defendants” as a form of protection for her clients, to “use whatever privilege I might have by not presenting [as trans].” According to Foster, people who are visibly gender-expansive experience “the vast difference in punishment and in suffering that is inflicted for defendants who’ve been arrested for the same thing.” 

Foster remembers visiting two different Stop Cop City detainees she represented in jail: a cisgender person housed in a pod with other detained persons and a transgender person alone in a cell. When the two defendants were released, according to Foster, the cisgender person “still looks like themselves,” while the transgender person “comes out as like a different person, like a haunted person.” 

“I’ve lost sleep over how different that is,” Foster said. 

During Friday’s hearing, the prosecution offered pretrial diversion, which would result in the charges being dropped upon completing certain requirements. Those requirements may include a mandatory “rehabilitation” course. 

Foster said her clients may choose to take the case to trial anyway to “vindicate their rights.” 

The Weelaunee Three have until May 9 to decide if they will choose pretrial diversion. Foster called the state’s evidence “flimsy” and said the prosecution has not turned over any discovery or evidence against her clients. Grigni said, “If we choose to take it to trial, I think we’re in a good position to win.” 

Hanlon connected their prosecution to state repression of pro-Palestinian protesters, like the detention of Columbia student and activist Mahmoud Khalil by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Hanlon said the Weelaunee Three “feel really grounded in the fact that this case is not about us. This case is about state repression.”