EDITOR’S NOTE
Activists Under Surveillance
Not long after a white supremacist killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, a building at the Highlander civil rights center in northeastern Tennessee was set on fire. The same racist symbol painted on a firearm used by the Christchurch shooter was found spray-painted in the parking lot. But when police arrived to investigate, they interrogated Highlander staff about their political work — as if they were the ones under investigation. On the other side of the state, a lawsuit against the city of Memphis has cracked open a sweeping police intelligence operation targeting racial justice activists. Alice Speri reports from Tennessee on the unsolved fire at Highlander, surveillance in Memphis, and the criminalization of black dissent.
Meanwhile, in Puerto Rico, an intrusive search warrant for the Facebook data of student journalists has called to mind the island’s own dark chapter of spying on dissidents. Speri and Alleen Brown examine the case of seven students facing trial for participating in a nonviolent protest, and what it reveals about the evolution of political surveillance.
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