[News] Youth Organizers Are Uniting Marginalized Communities to Stop Atlanta’s Cop City

[Anti-Imperialist News]

truthout.org
<https://truthout.org/articles/youth-organizers-are-uniting-marginalized-communities-to-stop-atlantas-cop-city/>
Youth Organizers Are Uniting Marginalized Communities to Stop Atlanta’s Cop
City
Ngakiya Camara - March 28, 2023

A crowd of youth organizers have mastered this call and response chant, a
unanimous voice talking back to a potential Cop City.
<https://truthout.org/articles/forest-defenders-vow-resistance-after-court-green-lights-phase-i-of-cop-city/>
Nearing the end of Defend the Atlanta Forest’s Week of Action
<https://defendtheatlantaforest.org/>, the energy from the In Defense of
Black Lives rally held at the Atlanta Police Foundation Headquarters is
palpable. There is laughter, chanting, a fire of hope that electrifies the
air — folks have just finished roasting the heavily militarized police, who
eye the crowd through the slits of their helmets. The solidarity between
these kids is their biggest threat.

Black youth organizers were at the center of this rally that was organized
by the Stop Cop City Coalition, In Defense of Black Lives
<https://www.instagram.com/idblatl/?hl=en> Atlanta (IDBL), which is a
coalition movement based in Atlanta that works to defend Black life and to
defund the Atlanta Police Department. Sustaining solidarity among the Black
left, the movement’s goal is to create an Atlanta free of policing, prisons
and detention. It has three basic demands, according to IDBL youth
organizer Thayu Speaks: No Cop City anywhere; reinvest the $90 million
granted to destroy the Weelaunee Forest to the community living outside of
it; and finally, that land being leased to the Atlanta Police Foundation be
given to the community as part of a “land back” initiative in partnership
with the Muscogee people working toward the reclamation of their stolen
land.

Establishing an organizing fellowship for Black and Brown youth, IDBL
strives to push Atlanta’s University donors to divest from Cop City through
this youth organizing, and to engage Black and Brown communities within
organizing work. For youth organizers Destiny Harris and Thayu Speaks, IDBL
has also tasked them with another mission — to form solidarity between
resistance struggles and reclaim space for Black and Brown community
members through the Black Radical Tradition.
*Solidarity Through the Black Radical Tradition*

The Black Radical Tradition
<https://daily.jstor.org/cedric-robinson-the-black-radical-tradition/> is a
foundational legacy of resistance that has realized many of the practices
we rely on in organizing work. Born out of anti-colonial and abolitionist
organizing, this tradition encompasses the cultural, intellectual and
direct-action practices designed to disrupt the social, political and
economic structures that destroy Black lives. And while various iterations
of Black movements have emerged throughout history, these practices still
build from one another, thus demonstrating the connectedness between
struggles across time and space.

This connectedness is especially noticeable when you consider the various
versions of Cop City that have been proposed throughout the nation. One
such iteration was Cop Academy <https://nocopacademy.com/> — a $95 million
cop campus proposed in a predominantly Black neighborhood on Chicago’s
westside. This training facility, much like Cop City, would have included
<https://inthesetimes.com/article/cop-city-atlanta-police-violence-no-cop-academy-chicago-climate>
a mock city block to practice raids and other militarized maneuvers, as
well as a swimming pool, food court and shooting range. Beginning in 2017
<https://nocopacademy.com/2017/09/20/for-immediate-release-92017/>, Black
youth organized and led a powerful effort against its construction
<https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/01/25/controversial-west-side-cop-academy-opens-after-years-of-pushback-from-activists/>,
demanding that the city of Chicago invest in youth and the community
instead. Today, inspired by this work from #NoCopAcademy In Defense of
Black Lives, the #StopCopCity movement relies on key strategies developed
by #NoCopAcademy’s Black and Brown youth organizers according to Speaks and
Harris. In fact, Harris stresses that this was what compelled her most to
get involved with the Stop Cop City campaign. “[They] read our toolkit and
told us that a lot of strategy was informed by us,” Harris told *Truthout*.

Movements like #NoCopAcademy and #StopCopCity continue the work of previous
Black-led uprisings which resisted the carceral state.

Fundamentally, both #NoCopAcademy and #StopCopCity emerged from the same
context. In fact, Harris stresses that not only were these developments to
be built in Black neighborhoods, but multiple people responsible for
getting the proposals being passed were Black — even Black women. Such a
commonality brings contradiction to light, demonstrating that too often
Black political figures have a fealty to the carceral state and not the
communities they’re meant to “serve.” In fact, while Chicago had no money
to maintain 49 public schools
<https://inthesetimes.com/article/cop-city-atlanta-police-violence-no-cop-academy-chicago-climate>as
well as half of Chicago’s free mental health clinics, they *did* have the
$95 million to instate a new training facility on top of contributing 40
percent of the annual budget to the Chicago Police Department. Meanwhile,
last November Atlanta didn’t have the money to save a hospital
<https://khn.org/news/article/impending-hospital-closure-rattles-atlanta-health-care-landscape-and-political-races/>
from shutting down in the community, but managed to conjure up the $90
million to develop Cop City.

And aside from Cop City and Cop Academy, yet another training base in
Crawford County, Michigan has catalyzed a new resistance movement. Camp
Grayling
<https://truthout.org/articles/national-guard-wants-to-expand-its-training-site-to-twice-the-size-of-chicago/>
— the largest National Guard training base in the US — is looking to double
its size, with the National Guard attempting to lease yet another 250
square miles of public state forest to train in warfare.

However, just as all of these training facilities mimic one another, so
too, do the resistance movements against them. In fact, functioning through
abolitionist movement building, both #NoCopAcademy, #StopCopCity, and now
#StopCampGrayling <https://www.instagram.com/stop_camp_grayling/> campaigns
have prompted decentralized coalitions that exist beyond racial, political
and class lines in cities fuming
<https://inthesetimes.com/article/cop-city-atlanta-police-violence-no-cop-academy-chicago-climate>
with segregation and political fracturing. Most importantly, movements like
#NoCopAcademy and #StopCopCity continue the work of previous Black-led
uprisings which resisted the carceral state — a pillar of resistance deeply
informed by the Black Radical Tradition in Harris’s eyes. “These
[movements] are a pattern of something that’s already happened and
something we’ve already done. We have to look at history and the way folks
organized before to better inform our tactics and strategies. The fight is
connected and it’s best that we look to each other for support as we build
movements,” she told *Truthout*.
*Reclaiming Space: Whiteness in the Movement*

Understanding the importance of solidarity between movements means
understanding the inevitable interconnectedness across different struggles.
In fact, Stop Cop City’s movement has united communities
<https://indypendent.org/2023/03/stop-cop-city-the-fight-for-a-forest-and-the-future-of-american-policing/>
from across Georgia, including neighborhood associations, environmentalist
groups, Muscogee leaders, local schools, and of course, racial justice, and
other abolitionist organizations. Muscogee leaders delivered an eviction
<https://indypendent.org/2023/03/stop-cop-city-the-fight-for-a-forest-and-the-future-of-american-policing/>
notice to Atlanta Regional Commission in protesting Cop City, while Black
residents canvassed and organized direct actions
<https://baptistnews.com/article/coalition-of-atlanta-faith-leaders-plans-action-to-stop-cop-city-and-defend-a-forest/>
and Forest Defenders <https://stopcop.city/> began a long-term encampment
in Weelaunee Forest to prevent deforestation. The movement integrates
abolitionist work with environmental justice with #landback in an effort to
demilitarize, decolonize, divest and dismantle yet another product of the
carceral systems that destroy these communities daily.

The idea of solidarity and interconnected struggle lies at the heart of the
Black Radical Tradition that the Stop Cop City coalition practices.

However, not all solidarity within the movement to Stop Cop City is
cohesive. This is especially true of white organizers involved with Defend
the Atlanta Forest. IDBL fellow and youth organizer Speaks stresses white
anarchists and environmentalists too often monopolize space in the
movement. “There’s extreme white dominance over the movement, and because
of this, there’s a lack of inclusion of POC and the community who surround
the forest,” they told *Truthout*.

“There’s a clear divide between the white anarchists and the abolitionist
movement,” Harris told *Truthout*. In talking with Stop Cop City
organizers, she realized that most Black organizers hadn’t been to the
forest, while when she went to the forest with her No Cop Academy
coalition, most of the people were white, with herself and #NoCopAcademy
peers being the few other Black folks there. Thus, while most white folks
were watching over the forest, Black coalition organizers were engaging
folks in Atlanta neighborhoods and communities outside of the forest. This
would be a good strategy to diversify tactics and center individual strong
suits in the movement, Harris clarifies, but the issue is the lack of
integration and coordination regarding these potential tactics. “They can’t
just both be doing their own thing with no communication. There needs to be
solidarity and communication amongst folks,” Harris told *Truthout*.

The idea of solidarity and interconnected struggle lies at the heart of the
Black Radical Tradition that the Stop Cop City coalition practices, but
this isn’t always the case for some white organizers distanced from the
practice. And while white allies may mean well, the foundational work
needed to eradicate their remnants of white supremacist ideals is
nonexistent. As a result, white organizers often reify the same
individualist and negligent practices they insist only exist in right-wing
spaces. “Sometimes we get very radical white allies but they just wanna
fuck shit up, and it’s safer for them to do that,” Harris shared. “But they
won’t acknowledge that having that mentality presents a threat to nonwhite
people — if something violent does happen, it’s the Black people who’ll be
impacted first and foremost.”

Further isolating white organizers from the Black Coalition movement is
their tendency to center environmentalism at the root of their organizing.
Characterizing their fight as one to save the forest, some white anarchists
and environmentalists neglect solidarity work in their attempt to separate
environmentalism from abolition and overall racial justice work. “A lot of
white environmentalists focus on deforestation, saying ‘No Cop City in the
forest!’ But no, we don’t want Cop City anywhere — not in the forest, not
in the neighborhoods, not in Atlanta, not anywhere,” Speaks points out.

In this case, white organizers too often sever movements from one another,
including the inextricable link between abolition work and environmental
justice. In fact, environmental liberation has everything to do with
abolishing the same carceral systems which defecate on the land and abuse
its stewards. “They don’t understand,” Harris explains, “that when you’re
talking about the environment, you’re talking about the community that you
engage with every day. If you live in an overpoliced community, that’s an
issue of environmentalism.”

“We don’t want Cop City anywhere — not in the forest, not in the
neighborhoods, not in Atlanta, not anywhere.”

But for Speaks, acknowledging and building community is not the strong suit
of many white organizers. In fact, despite the stronghold white anarchists
and environmentalists have over the forest region — giving them proximity
to marginalized communities right outside of the forest — Speaks stresses
that these communities are often left behind. “White anarchists and white
environmentalists are not good at engaging communities. There’s a
disconnect there, and the community of people around the forest —
predominantly Black and Brown people — are being neglected even though
they’ll be the most impacted by Cop City,” Speaks told *Truthout*.

For this reason, IDBL established a fellowship designed for youth
organizers to engage other POC and Black organizers and make space where
white folks have dominated. The goal of this engagement is to center the
Black Radical Tradition, find the gaps left by white environmentalists and
anarchists in the forest, and to expand the movement to bring in and lift
up the marginalized communities’ needs.

Grounding their organizing within the Black Radical Tradition, Black
coalition organizers like IDBL are able to center the voices and
testimonials of those most marginalized, and to ensure that their concerns
and ideas are not an afterthought. For Speaks, this is indeed a lot of work
— “getting the word out to different community members, training community
members, bringing community members in and helping them engage in ways they
want to based on their various skills,” is just a taste of the organizing
work that IDBL has been doing. Nonetheless, this work is what makes
movements grow, and continuing to build solidarity and reclaim space for
marginalized people will ensure that movements like Stop Cop City are
successful.
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