[News] The Rubik’s Cube of Cop City - Part One

[Anti-Imperialist News]

inquest.org <https://inquest.org/the-rubiks-cube-of-cop-city/>
The Rubik’s Cube of Cop City

   - By Joy James <https://inquest.org/people/joy-james/> & Kalonji Jama
   Changa <https://inquest.org/people/kalonji-jama-changa/>
   - July 18, 2023

------------------------------

I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states.
I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta. . . . Injustice anywhere is a threat
to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of
mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one
directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live
with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. . . . You deplore
the demonstrations that are presently taking place. . . . But your
statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for
the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.

—Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” April 1963

------------------------------

When foundations and corporations attempt to run the world by buying
politicians and police forces, what’s the role of ethical citizenry and
captives? How do citizens and captives comprehend the scope and strategies
to resist the massive engineering of predatory policing—a rising urban
phenomenon that reveals that the term “military occupation” is more than a
metaphor, and reaches way beyond any particular city? And when such
violence is deployed against citizens by the police, who are protected by
the government, who then protects the citizen and captive from this state
criminality, which is approved and funded by corporations and the wealthy?

These are questions we invite readers to consider in a set of paired essays
about ongoing attempts in Atlanta to fund and build a massive new police
training center where law enforcement will practice counterinsurgency
techniques to use against the city’s own citizens. In this first part, we
review the militaristic and legal violence that police have been unleashing
against people who dare to oppose the new facility, and examine how the
Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) draws on vast private wealth to set public
policy against the public’s wishes. In the second essay
<https://inquest.org/urban-warfare-and-corporate-funded-armies/>, we
examine how these strategies practice a form of domestic colonialism with
techniques rooted in imperial counterinsurgency.

The Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) is a private foundation with strong
corporate ties that supports the Atlanta Police Department. As a private
nonprofit, it steers Atlanta policing policy with zero public
accountability. APF’s promotional tag—“21st Century Community
Policing”—suggests concern for non-elite communities. But the language APF
uses to describe the aim of the Atlanta Public Safety Training
Center—commonly known as “Cop City”—actually presents a lethal Trojan Horse
as a humanitarian gift “to make Atlanta the safest large city in the
nation.” Without specifying the beneficiaries, APF boasts that it will
bring “resources to underserved neighborhoods” that are already underfunded
and overpoliced—or overpoliced because they are underfunded. APF also
claims that it will “cultivate a mindset of true servanthood” within the
Atlanta Police Department (APD). What does APF’s twisted vision of “true
servanthood” look like in practice?

In January 2023 Atlanta state troopers shot and killed Manuel “Tortuguita”
Estaban Paez Terán, a twenty-six-year-old environmental activist who was
protesting the destruction of ancestral forests to build Cop City. Police
claimed that Tortuguita had fired a gun at them, but a private autopsy
<https://www.npr.org/2023/03/11/1162843992/cop-city-atlanta-activist-autopsy>
informed the public that Tortuguita had been sitting cross-legged on the
ground with their hands raised when Georgia troopers shot them fifty-seven
times
<https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/20/us/cop-city-activist-killed-dekalb-county-medical-examiner/index.html>.
While riddling Tortuguita’s body with bullets, a Georgia state trooper was
shot and injured, almost certainly by “friendly fire
<https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxnvgx/atlanta-police-release-body-camera-footage-of-activist-killing-at-cop-city>”
from another officer. After the killing, organizers obtained public
information about the police involved in the shooting and distributed
flyers in the neighborhood where one of the officer’s lived. Police jailed
them on stalking and felony intimidation
<https://theintercept.com/2023/05/02/cop-city-activists-arrest-flyers/> for
sharing this public information with the community.

Organizing food support for families and communities in Atlanta for months,
Tortuguita and their collectives provided what the city withheld. Their
murder and the subsequent arrests are part of an organized campaign to
terrify and jail all who oppose the building of Cop City. In March
prosecutors also charged twenty-three people
<https://apnews.com/article/cop-city-protest-domestic-terrorism-atlanta-6d114e109d489d316f588f51c7cab0cc>
with domestic terrorism after clashes between police and protesters at the
proposed site of Cop City. At the end of May, a police SWAT team, in full
gear and weapons, raided the Atlanta Solidarity Fund
<https://www.npr.org/2023/06/01/1179427542/atlanta-copy-city-arrests> (a
community bail fund), arresting three of its leaders, Marlon Scott Kautz,
Adele MacLean, and Savannah D. Patterson. The three have been charged
with money
laundering and charity fraud
<https://apnews.com/article/police-training-center-arrests-cop-city-1468a138ed4b17ed394e4b1e4fe202fe>,
accused of “misleading contributors” to channel funds to the Defend the
Atlanta Forest, which was, according to the warrant, “classified by the
United States Department of Homeland Security as Domestic Violent
Extremists.” In fact, the Department of Homeland Security never designated
Defend the Atlanta Forest or other community caretakers as “Domestic
Violent Extremists.” Yet that did not stop DeKalb County Superior Court
judge Shondeana Morris
<https://atlpresscollective.com/2023/05/31/apd-gbi-raid-bail-fund-arrest-three-organizers/>,
a Black woman appointed by Republican governor Brian Kemp, from signing the
warrant. The warrants claim that the “illegal” reimbursements included
expenses for
<https://atlpresscollective.com/2023/05/31/apd-gbi-raid-bail-fund-arrest-three-organizers/>
“forest clean-up, totes, covid rapid tests, media, yard signs.” The Atlanta
Solidarity Fund issued a statement
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23833003-atlanta-solidarity-fund-investigation-response-statement-1-docx-1>
saying that its sole function is to provide resources to protesters facing
repression. Following the arrests, the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) released
a statement
<https://www.nlg.org/nlg-condemns-state-repression-against-atlanta-solidarity-fund-activists/>
asserting that bail funds protect the right to dissent and to have access
to counsel. On June 2 Judge James Altman granted bail.

In June 2020 an Atlanta police officer shot and killed Rayshard Brooks,
less than a month after George Floyd was killed. Brooks’s funeral was held
at Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. King’s
daughter Bernice King and Reverend Raphael Warnock, then a Senate
candidate, addressed the funeral gathering and the public. Warnock spoke
eloquently in the historic church: “Rayshard Brooks is the latest
high-profile casualty in the struggle for justice and a battle for the soul
of America. This is about him but it is so much bigger than him.”

Neither of Georgia’s democratic senators—Warnock and Jon Ossoff—spoke of a
“battle for the soul of America” when three years later Georgia troopers
assassinated Tortuguita in the forest. When the twenty-three environmental
activists were arrested, Senator Ossoff deplored
<https://twitter.com/ossoff/status/1665436838956347392> the “violence” of
an “extremist minority”; he did not address the lethal anti-human violence
of the Georgia state troopers under the control of Governor Kemp, who rages
about terrorism without acknowledging to the public the functions of his
Georgia troops. Both senators expressed concerns
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lawmakers-cop-city-arrests-atlanta_n_647cf7a3e4b02325c5e1608e>
about the arrests of the organizers of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund; yet
they never articulated or advocated for a constitutional right not to be
assassinated by police forces. If no one is policing the police for the
safety of the community, then security as community care becomes high
priority. As public referenda (or even recalls) are waged, electoral
politics and legalism appear insufficient in demilitarizing a war zone
built and protected by the state with the backing of corporations.
------------------------------

At the June 5–6, 2023, Atlanta City Hall hearing, hundreds of residents
<https://apnews.com/article/cop-city-vote-atlanta-city-council-d782604c15874e441570654ea362e0ef>—varying
in age, race, gender, and income—denounced Cop City for fifteen hours.
Despite considerable opposition from the public and community organizers,
on June 6, in an 11–4 decision, the Atlanta City Council approved $67
million in funding for the Cop City project. The total cost is anticipated
to be $90 million
<https://www.gpb.org/news/2023/06/06/live-coverage-atlanta-city-council-approves-cop-city-funding-after-hundreds-speak>.
On June 7 opponents of Cop City filed a petition
<https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/atlanta-clerk-sued-denying-stop-cop-city-petition-100287575>
to create a ballot measure that would ask voters to halt the building of
the complex. On June 20 they filed a lawsuit
<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/atlanta-police-training-center-opponents-sue-delays-approving-referend-rcna90252>
against acting city clerk Vanessa Waldron for delaying certification of the
petition. Shortly thereafter, Waldron certified the petition. The petition
must now receive signatures from 70,000 Atlanta voters—some argue that the
number is closer to 100,000, given likely challenges—by August 15 to be
certified and added to the ballot. The referendum petition seeks to repeal
the ordinance
<https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/atlanta-organizers-unveil-plan-to-take-cop-city-fight-to-the-ballot-box>
which authorized the city to lease the eighty-five-acre Intrenchment Creek
Park—renamed Weelaunee People’s Park by organizers
<https://peoplestribune.org/2023/03/forest-defenders-reoccupy-weelaunee-to-stop-cop-city/>—for
the building of Cop City. Cop City is slated to be built on part of what the
Muscogee Creek called the Weelaunee forest
<https://streetsofatlanta.blog/2022/05/02/native-americans-share-concerns-over-fate-of-forest/>
before state-sponsored terrorism forced them from the lands
<https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/removal-muscogee/during.html> in the
1820s and ’30s. Before it was a park, now reclaimed by organizers as a
forest for food and gardens, it was used by the state of Georgia as a
prison farm, on which convict laborers were enslaved growing food for other
inmates. Before that it was a plantation. Through duplicitous and
antidemocratic politics, federal, state, and local politicians—along with
the APF, ADP, and corporate sponsors—plan to dismember the Weelaunee forest
into a training ground for war.

APF promises the enhancement of civilian safety through private funding.
Yet, the “public-private partnership model
<https://atlantapolicefoundation.org/>” that APF celebrates is more
accurately described as a raid on public coffers that will deprive
working-class Black Atlantans while building equity for white billionaires
and corporations. Atlanta’s city council has pledged millions of dollars to
bankroll the endeavor. Black citizens are being priced out of a city that
they can no longer afford to live within in part because public monies are
going to fund a military playground where police will be taught
counterinsurgency tactics that could be used to kill Black Atlantans.

Pushed by the APF, under the guise of a public project, Cop City is heavily
backed by corporate interests. APF has notable financial and leadership
ties to a long list of companies
<https://theflaw.org/articles/corporations-are-keeping-cop-city-alive/#:~:text=Backed%20in%20turn%20by%20a,the%20media%20narrative%20around%20protest>,
including Waffle House, Equifax, UPS, Wells Fargo, Home Depot, AT&T, Delta
Airlines, Chick-fil-A, and Koch Industries. Cox Enterprises, Inc., a
multi-billion-dollar privately held communications corporation that shapes
public perceptions, is recognized as a lead funder of Cop City
<https://theflaw.org/articles/corporations-are-keeping-cop-city-alive/>.
(In a July 2023 Black Power Media/Renegade Siafu TV [BPM/RSTV] interview
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31Fe4g5Iu54&ab_channel=BlackPowerMedia>, a
member of the Cox family and a member of Atlanta Black clergy
<https://logosjournal.com/2023/a-letter-of-concern-to-black-clergy-regarding-cop-city/>
critique their respective institutions.) Atlanta’s elected officials—its
mayor, chief of police, and city councilors—are attentive to the directives
of the APF, the brain trust building, banking, and redefining Atlanta
through Cop City. APF’s website boasts that President Obama’s 2015 Task
Force on 21st Century Policing promoted Atlanta as a “model city,” claiming
that it is 1 of only 15 jurisdictions out of 18,000 police forces that
received such an honor. Celebrating this endorsement from the first Black
president veils the fact that the Atlanta democratic political figures
rooting for Cop City are Black but the funders are white corporations.
According to the APF, the police training received at Cop City will “improve
morale . . . for APD
<https://atlantapolicefoundation.org/programs/public-safety-training-center/>.”
How so? Training in domination, violence, and abuse of power increases
civilian distrust of policing.

Despite the massive protests in the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 death at
the hands (or knee) of a Minneapolis police officer, police killings reached
an all-time high
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/06/us-police-killings-record-number-2022>
in 2022. Simultaneously, APD lost police
<https://www.11alive.com/article/news/local/atlanta-police-numbers-2020/85-a54ace87-bed2-4d41-87b1-150a9b877672>
after the 2020 protests; it plans to hire 750 officers over three years
with retention bonuses and relocation stipends. Mayor Andre Dickens
maligned environmental and community protectors protesting Cop City by
calling them “outsiders”—but APD’s growth requires recruiting “outsider”
police to accelerate gentrification.

APF sells its product: policing. Meanwhile Atlanta citizens go without bus
shelters, well-funded schools, free lunches for children and elders,
adequate housing and health care, clear air, and parks. APF sees the forest
(and the city budget) as the property not of the public but of affluent
sectors and corporate wealth, whose interests are served by the comprador
class. People sleep in substandard public housing, or on cardboard in
streets and alleys, with insufficient food and care, while investors build
a political economy based on predatory policing. Once built, Cop City would
train APD, state, regional, and international law enforcement agencies “in
21st Century Policing best practices” while also providing a cushy “gathering
spot for community events and conversations
<https://atlantapolicefoundation.org/about-the-atlanta-police-foundation/>”
amid the destruction of Black communities through terrorizing those
communities and the environmentalists and caretakers protecting them.

Despite its stated mission to care for (Black) youth, the APF still
projects them as primary targets of the combined forces of the APD, Fulton
County District Attorney, judges, and Atlanta Criminal Justice Commission
which will “address Atlanta’s repeat offender issue
<https://atlantapolicefoundation.org/about-the-atlanta-police-foundation/>.”
APF promises “Youth Engagement” to “expand its At-Promise youth initiative”
to “divert Atlanta youth from crime to brighter pathways.” When nonprofits
partner with police (or carceral foster care) to help youth in communities
neglected from the city government and abused by predatory policing, they
actually worsen the health outcomes of these communities. Artist Hausson
Byrd’s spoken-word meditation “Projection
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLptzN_zvB0&ab_channel=YouthJusticeProject>”
poetically addresses the violence of predatory policing. Police networks,
as Byrd notes, project their violence upon civilians, citizens, and
captives. The disproportionately targeted are poor, working class, and
people of color. Rather than ask communities what forms of assistance are
useful, governance dictates to under-resourced communities, and continues
to destabilize them through financial neglect and punitive policing. If
militarized policing is a colonizing project for cities writ large, it is
imperative to think beyond the plans and protests of individual cities, and
political betrayals, in order to map trajectories that inform war
resistance strategies.
------------------------------

*Editor’s Note:* *This essay and its second part
<https://inquest.org/urban-warfare-and-corporate-funded-armies/> are the
third and fourth installments in the authors’ four-part series *Abolition
Alchemy. *Changa and James continue this discussion on YouTube with a new
video, *Resisting Cop City Corporate and Clergy Colonizers
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31Fe4g5Iu54&ab_channel=BlackPowerMedia>,*
which they recorded for Black Power Media* *to accompany their *Inquest
* article*.

*Image: Jarrod Erbe <https://unsplash.com/@erbephoto>/Unsplash*
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