Tag: Cop City
-
The Goal is to Attack a Movement
The Georgia Attorney General’s office appears to have made a major blunder in the ongoing prosecution of 61 Stop Cop City activists—one that could potentially cost the state its case altogether. According to a motion filed by attorneys for three defendants who run the nonprofit Atlanta Solidarity Fund (ASF), Georgia Deputy Attorney General John Fowler’s prosecutorial team…
-
The Stop Cop City Indictment Is An Act Of Desperation
Early on the morning of Sept. 7, a Stop Work Order Notice was posted at the site of Cop City, a proposed police militarization facility that Atlanta residents have been fighting for over two years. This order wasn’t like most. It was not issued by a governing authority. Instead, it was issued by the People; a…
-
The Struggle to Stop Cop City – By Any Means Necessary
Cop cars on fire. Occupations of the Weelaunee Forest. Weeks of action. Volunteers with clipboards, collecting referendum petition signatures in the summer heat. Weekly canvassing. Town halls and open mic sessions. Direct action and civil disobedience. Record-breaking numbers of people showing up for public comment (on three separate occasions!). Regular food distributions and mutual aid.…
-
A Constellation of Tactics
It’s one thing to talk about your theory of change; it’s another thing to demonstrate what it looks like in practice. Many look to elections, courts, think tanks, expert recommendations, data collection and information sharing, and scholarship. But in Radical Acts of Justice: How Ordinary People Are Dismantling Mass Incarceration, Jocelyn Simonson paints a different picture of…
-
‘Cop City will affect the entire country’: Activists explain the movement to #StopCopCity and why it matters
What began in Atlanta as an effort to stop a forest being clearcut for a police militarization facility has grown to be a national and international movement.
-
Forest Defense is Self Defense
“Forest Defense is Self-Defense” is one of many refrains of the movement. The slogan is not an exaggeration: though known as “the city in a forest,” Atlanta’s tree canopy has declined at an alarming rate in recent decades. The Weelaunee Forest is one of the “four lungs” of Atlanta, helping to reduce flooding, clean the…
-
If Those Supporting ‘Cop City’ Prevail in Atlanta, Your City Could Be Next
Arresting bail fund organizers is just the latest strategy that city and state officials have used to criminalize dissent and to attack those of us working to stop Cop City.
-
This is the Atlanta Way: A Primer on Cop City
The struggle to Stop Cop City is not just a battle over the creation of a $90 million police urban warfare center. It’s not just a fight to protect the 381 acres of forest land, known as one of the “four lungs” of Atlanta, currently under threat of destruction. It’s not just a conflict over how the…
-
The Movement to Stop Cop City Isn’t Going Anywhere
“My heart is destroyed.” These are the words of Belkis Terán, whose child Manuel Esteban Paez Terán—or Tortugita—was killed by a squad of Georgia State Patrol troopers on January 18, 2023. Tortugita, who used they/them pronouns, was killed while participating in the defense of at least 85 acres of forest land in the Weelaunee Forest—a site that…
-
The Fight to Stop Cop City Has Decades-Old Roots
The Stop Cop City movement recalls Atlanta’s 1996 Olympic bid and the city’s long history of prioritizing tourists, business interests, and wealthy white communities over Black and working-class people
micah herskind 