Black, queer Georgia State Representative Park Cannon (D-58th District) will not face prosecution after she was arrested and charged with two felonies for knocking on the door of an office occupied by governor Brian Kemp. At the time, Kemp was signing a bill critics said increased voter restrictions and would disproportionately impact Black and brown Georgians, as well as transgender voters.
On March 25, two officers dragged Cannon out of the building after she repeatedly knocked on Kemp’s door as an act of protest. She was handcuffed and later charged with obstruction of law enforcement and disrupting the General Assembly.
Georgia State Capitol police officers involved in making the arrest worried the crowd of protesters behind Cannon would be “emboldened” to breach the door if they did not stop her from knocking on it. “The events of January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol were in the back of my mind,” Lieutenant G.D. Langford, who arrested Cannon, wrote in a report obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
But people who were present dispute the arresting officers’ account of the incident.
“Nobody [else] touched that door. We didn’t go anywhere near that door,” Tamara Stevens, an activist who was with Cannon and filmed the encounter, told the Journal-Constitution of the crowd gathered at the Capitol that day. “There was no attempt, flat out, to breach the door.”
Cannon’s arrest was met with outrage. Supporters, including Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, held an hours-long vigil outside the Fulton County Jail where Cannon was detained on March 25. She was soon released.
After reviewing the evidence, District Attorney Fani Willis agreed that Park’s arrest had been unwarranted. “While some of Rep. Cannon’s colleagues and the police officers involved may have found her behavior annoying, such sentiment does not justify a presentment to a grand jury of the allegations in the arrest warrants or any other felony charges,” Willis said on Thursday, according to the Atlanta Fox affiliate WAGA-TV.
The voting law that Kemp was signing, Senate Bill 202, is one that has been compared by Democrats, including President Joe Biden, to Jim Crow-era laws designed to suppress Black voters from participating in the democratic process. The legislation puts new voter ID requirements in place, allows state officials to take over elections boards, limits the use of drop boxes for ballots, and makes it a crime to offer food or water to voters waiting in line, among other things.
Kemp cites unfounded claims of election fraud touted by former president Donald Trump, which Kemp called “alarming issues,” as the reason these changes to voter laws are needed. By passing SB 202, Kemp said that “Georgia will take another step toward ensuring our elections are secure, accessible, and fair.”
The law’s passage has led to major fallout for Georgia. Major League Baseball pulled the 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta, and experts estimate the move could cost as much as $100 million in revenue.
Meanwhile, criticism of SB 202 has only continued to mount. A March 29 open letter signed by Bernice King, the daughter of the Martin Luther King Jr.; Al Vivian, the son of C.T. Vivian; and John-Miles Lewis, the son of Congressman John Lewis condemned opponents of the bill for not doing enough to prevent its passage. Signatories claimed “lawmakers failed to take a stand and corporations did not go far enough to ensure every voting citizen had fair and equitable access to the most basic of American rights.”
Cannon has vowed to continue fighting voter suppression in Georgia and addressed the public at a Thursday press conference.
“Two weeks ago today, Brian Kemp sat in his office, surrounded by a group of good ol’ boys, and signed into law one of the most racist pieces of leg in my lifetime,” Cannon said in a statement cited by ABC News. “I knocked on the door so that Brian Kemp would have to see me and see all of those who I represent.”
Cannon was elected to the Georgia State Legislature in 2015, taking office in 2016 at just 24 years old, which made her the youngest openly LGBTQ+ member of the Georgia House. She ran on issues impacting Black, queer, and low-income Georgians and followed through on that promise by speaking out against a bill that would allow members of the clergy to discriminate against same-sex couples shortly after being sworn-in.
“Wouldn’t it be true that if this bill is passed, as amended, that in a domestic violence situation, in a same-sex couple, that person could be denied care?” she asked in a speech on the House floor cited by CNN.
As Republican lawmakers and anti-LGBTQ+ groups across the country seek to seize back power after Trump’s 2020 defeat by doubling down on voter suppression, Park urged others to join her fight for justice. “Today, I vow to you that I will keep knocking and I ask you, Georgia to keep knocking,” she said on Thursday. “America, keep knocking.”
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