[News] Urban Warfare and Corporate-Funded Armies - Part Two

[Anti-Imperialist News]

inquest.org <https://inquest.org/urban-warfare-and-corporate-funded-armies/>
Urban Warfare and Corporate-Funded Armies

   - By Joy James <https://inquest.org/people/joy-james/> & Kalonji Jama
   Changa <https://inquest.org/people/kalonji-jama-changa/>
   - July 20, 2023

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

In the first in this set of paired essays
<https://inquest.org/the-rubiks-cube-of-cop-city/>, published earlier in
the week, we explored how the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF)—a private,
militarized policy offshoot of the Atlanta Police Department (APD) working
in collaboration with corporate interests
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31Fe4g5Iu54&ab_channel=BlackPowerMedia>,
clergy
<https://logosjournal.com/2023/a-letter-of-concern-to-black-clergy-regarding-cop-city/>,
and Atlanta City Hall—is forcing the Cop City complex onto Atlanta despite
widespread opposition.

What is happening in Georgia right now, however, is not restricted to
Atlanta and APF. No one fully has a clear sight of the puppet masters’
hands and the manipulation of governance. Still, federal police have a
significant impact throughout the country. In July 2022 the FBI raided the
St. Louis and St. Petersburg headquarters of Uhuru House, part of the
African People’s Socialist Party, with weapons drawn, and confiscated
files. The raids were conducted supposedly to investigate Russian election
interference. But the African People’s Socialist Party, which provides food
and material support <https://apspuhuru.org/about/black-star-industries/>
for under-resourced organizations, has noted how the FBI’s use of the
Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) is continuous with its long history
<https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/foreign-agents-registration-act-political-repression/>
of violent policing against environmentalists at the behest of
corporations. The FBI appears to maintain a similar appetite to that
wielded by J. Edgar Hoover under the COINTELPRO program
<https://www.zinnedproject.org/if-we-knew-our-history/fbi-war-civil-rights-movement/>
which, with lethal efficiency, sabotaged Black radical organizing.

What we are witnessing is the logic of colonialism practiced domestically.
Colonialism is a contemporary threat to the stability of cities (and
countries) facing attempts by corporations and governments to violate the
rights of working-class and low-income communities, most often Black and
brown. Addressing the complexity or puzzle of Cop City means acknowledging
the historical trajectory of militarized violence, corporate dominance, and
political corruption that preceded the present crisis.

Paramilitary and mercenary foreign policy strategies seep into domestic
policing. Six decades ago, Democratic and Republican administrations were
both equally funding white mercenaries and paramilitary policing to
destabilize African freedom movements. In 1964 President Lyndon
Johnson authorized
the Department of Defense
<https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v23/d1> to
provide material support toward the effort of undermining and killing
African liberation leaders and intellectuals. This racial terrorism in U.S.
foreign policy was conterminous with domestic policy. Despite the terror,
Black agency continued to resist violence and dishonor
<https://stillcrew.com/how-dick-gregory-forced-the-fbi-to-find-the-bodies-of-goodman-chaney-and-schwerner-fa9790c49ad4>
.

In the summer of 1964, Johnson met with the parents
<https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/26/upshot/think-they-got-killed-1964-lbj-and-three-civil-rights-icons.html>
of slain white civil rights activists Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner,
but seemingly not with the parents of James Chaney, a Black Mississippi
CORE organizer. That June, assisted by a sheriff’s deputy, Klansmen had
assassinated the three civil rights workers in Mississippi and buried the
bodies in a dam. Johnson called upon J. Edgar Hoover to solve the crime.
The corpses were found on August 4, 1964, when President Johnson was
campaigning for the presidency and attempting to appease various political
factions. During the search for the bodies of the civil rights activists,
rivers were dragged and eight corpses
<https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/chaney-goodman-schwerner-murdered/>
of Black males discovered, including two nineteen-year-olds and one
fourteen-year-old who was wearing a Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
T-shirt. On August 3, 1980, one day short of the sixteenth anniversary of
the recovery of the bodies of the murdered civil rights activists,
Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, staging his campaign near
Philadelphia, Mississippi, a ten-minute drive from the dam where the three
organizers had been buried, stood at the podium demanding “state’s rights.”

History is instructive. Atlanta’s brutalities and tragedies are not unique.
Cop City’s current paramilitary violence—from city police, state troopers,
and the FBI—mirrors the lethal policies of the past where vigilante and
police terror, opportunist politicians, and state criminality converged.
Without the formal endorsement of (white) nationalist presidential
candidates such as Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, Black compradors have
worked in and beyond Atlanta to obscure the legacies of Martin Luther King,
Jr., el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz (Malcolm X), Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks,
and Ella Baker. Investment portfolios incentivized by corporations and
foundations seek to decimate the civil rights of working-class and poor
communities deemed exploitable and expendable, particularly if they are
Black. From city councils to mayors, through governors, Congress, and the
White House, intimidation and terror tactics appear to be implicitly (by
Democrats) and explicitly (by Republicans) approved in standard governance
for the control of Black cities and communities.
------------------------------

APF is only one organization within a larger nexus of “public–private”
partnerships attempting to shape Atlanta’s public safety policies.
Headquartered inside the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia
State University, the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange
(GILEE) has been in partnership with the university, Atlanta Police
Department (as well as various other police agencies), public and corporate
sectors, and civic groups since its inception thirty years ago. Among its
activities, GILEE organizes a police exchange program that provides U.S.
law enforcement with special training from Israeli Police
<https://news.gsu.edu/2021/11/19/16-senior-police-and-public-safety-executives-return-from-police-executive-training-in-israel/>.
Aside from hosting Atlanta police, the *Jerusalem Post *reports
<https://www.jpost.com/israeli-news/article-711682> that “Israel . . . has
hosted over 1,200 public safety officials since the start of the program.”
A least twenty-nine U.S. delegations of law enforcement have traveled to
Jerusalem to participate in “intensive two-week training programs,”
including many from the Atlanta area.

Why would Atlanta, a city that many view as the “civil rights capitol,”
look to Israel for local police training—and what does this training even
consist of <https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep31111>?

In 2019 the United Nations Human Rights Council released a twenty-two-page
report
<https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoIOPT/A_HRC_40_74.pdf>
stating, according to the *New York Times*
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/world/middleeast/israel-crimes-against-humanity-gaza-un.html>,
that “Israeli troops may have committed crimes against humanity in shooting
unarmed civilians—including children—who posed no threat during mass
protests.” Israeli military and police forces have been guilty of the
illegal occupation of Palestine for the last fifty-six years
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/#:~:text=Since%20the%20occupation%20first%20began,them%20of%20their%20basic%20rights.>—making
it, according to law scholar Valentina Azarova
<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3133978>, the longest
occupation in modern history. They have a well-documented track record
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/#:~:text=Since%20the%20occupation%20first%20began,them%20of%20their%20basic%20rights.>
of human rights abuses. Yet for the past three decades the Atlanta Police
Department, as well as various state and local officials, have through
GILEE turned to these same actors to train law enforcement in military
tactics in Georgia.

GILEE donations, channeled through Georgia State University and government
funding, are more opaque than APF resources. We know, though, that APF
is supported
by major corporations
<https://www.forbes.com/sites/morgansimon/2023/03/14/cops-and-donuts-go-together-more-than-you-thought-the-corporations-funding-cop-city-in-atlanta/?sh=65dfc0f06bc6>
such as Cox Media Group
<https://theflaw.org/articles/corporations-are-keeping-cop-city-alive/>,
Coca Cola, Wells Fargo, Delta, and Home Depot. A host of other
multinational corporations maintain a significant influence in and beyond
Atlanta by funneling private funding into police foundations
<https://news.littlesis.org/2020/06/18/corporate-backers-of-the-blue-how-corporations-bankroll-u-s-police-foundations/>.
Deploying similar tactics across the globe, U.S. corporations have
facilitated coups and assassinations of labor, environmental, and human
rights organizers in Haiti
<https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/haiti-wall-street-us-banks.html>,
Guatemala <https://ufcguatemala.voices.wooster.edu/>, Nicaragua
<https://www.jstor.org/stable/40653942>, and many other nations
<https://www.history.com/news/us-overthrow-foreign-governments>. In its
refusal to hear an impassioned citizenry argue and plead against a
militarized zone, Atlanta remains loyal to the trajectory of colonial
cities despite the rising costs and violence against civilians.
------------------------------

A member of Atlanta’s Faith Coalition to Stop Cop City
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnFbsm3k2Oc&ab_channel=SquareMileMediaAtlanta>,
Reverend Keyanna Jones has family that lives in the Black neighborhood
targeted for gentrification and militarization through Cop City. In her
activism against the police training complex, Rev. Jones brings attention
to the betrayals of Black mayors and the predominately Black city council.
Jones
<https://www.blackagendareport.com/atlantas-black-community-says-stop-cop-city>
and other activists have drawn attention to the fact that plans for Cop City
<https://atlantapolicefoundation.org/programs/public-safety-training-center/>
include a “mock village” in which police will practice urban warfare
tactics. Contributors to educational platforms such as *Scalawag*
<https://scalawagmagazine.org/tag/cop-city/> help keep the public informed
on strategic opposition to state warfare.

Rev. Jones anticipates that Cop City will be used for police training in
“MOUT” tactics. MOUT is a genre of military-developed urban warfare
strategies—for example, as described in the Marines-developed training
handbook *Military Operations on Urban Terrain (MOUT)*
<https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/MCWP%203-35.3.pdf>. The manual focuses
on “military operations on urbanized terrain” (i.e., urban warfare), with
diagrams illustrating military operations in commercial and residential
areas that would be perfectly at home in Atlanta. Indeed, an Army report
from the early 1980s <https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA105652.pdf> says
that researchers developing MOUT techniques used the city of Atlanta as a
basis for their research. Under the rubric of MOUT, protests against police
violence, redistricting, poverty, and hunger become criminalized.
Essentially communal advocacy and protests for civil and human rights are
treated as acts of terrorism. This is the Atlanta (and international)
playbook to colonize a city. In its effort to suppress dissent against Cop
City, the majority of Atlanta’s city government has criminalized people who
want to grow flowers and food, and attend music festivals and, while there,
show solidarity with forest protectors without being arrested on
“terrorist” charges.

The U.S. military has practiced some version of MOUT across the globe for
decades. Combat training seeks to colonize your local city. Primary targets
of the domestic deployment of MOUT will be Black folks, BIPOC, and
working-class and low-income communities. Some argue that the “asymmetric
enemy” will look like the “Chocolate City” or “Black Mecca” and thus we
should expect some version of Detroit 1967 in the future. State violence
continues despite the fact that it would be simpler, safer, and more
orderly to provide healthy jobs, food, housing, schooling, and green spaces
to communities. Progressives’ and abolitionists’ unpreparedness for
repressive mandates to construct and control “internal colonies” indicates
that this ongoing struggle has been shortsightedly portrayed as a local,
urban issue.

Speaking about Atlanta during a June 9, 2023, *Black Power Media* (*BPM*)
podcast, this essay’s coauthor Kalonji Changa reflected upon the trajectory
of escalating state violence and police as executioners:

The arrogant and desperate attempt to terrorize and crush the morale
of activists five days before the Atlanta City Council’s vote on
funding the corporate-sponsored paramilitary training ground is
utterly repulsive. The trumped-up charges used to criminalize and
vilify the Atlanta Solidarity Fund’s legitimate activists, including
Marlon Kautz, and Adele MacLean—both of whom I have known and
organized with for well over a decade—is proof that these warmongers
will pull out all stops to achieve their goals. The police and the
media have unsuccessfully tried to paint Marlon and Adele as
opportunists or “agitators” when in fact they are seasoned organizers
who have a long history of organizing in the Atlanta community. As
part of their Cop Watch program, they worked alongside our
organization, The FTP Movement, and many other organizations working
on numerous campaigns, including the case of Troy Anthony Davis who
was executed in September 2011 despite global demands for a stay due
to his innocence. The state’s blatant disregard for community will be
their ultimate demise. You *cannot *attack community organizers in
front of the world and think that it will be an easy victory.

Cop City’s architects have blood on their hands for the murder of
Tortuguita. The government and police should be charged not only with his
assassination, but also the numerous false arrests, bullying, scare
tactics, and the strong-armed robbery of taxpayers who are supposed to
provide the tens of millions to fund a colonial project. The APF, corporate
donors, and indifferent Georgia politicians are the true domestic
terrorists.

Activists warn that a militarized police training center will
disenfranchise a Black working-class community as the state and
corporations wage a lethal war against communities and civilians. The only
people killed or tortured in Atlanta were those assaulted by police.
Communities deploy various strategies in war resistance. Anti-colonial
battles are continuous and require constant vigilance. Less than a two-hour
drive from Atlanta, at Fort Benning, another deadly entity with a benign
name—the School of the Americas
<https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-school-of-the-americas> (SOA), also known
as the “School of the Assassins”—was shut down by ethical organizers in
2000. Yet the former SOA was rebranded as the Western Hemisphere Institute
for Security Cooperation, which reportedly continues to offer SOA’s
curriculum of torture, assassinations, and human rights violations. Still,
mass gatherings of diverse and principled individuals and communities
continue to resist death and gentrification structured by communal
dispossession, predatory policing, and state criminality from New York to
Nanterre
<https://truthout.org/articles/frances-racism-still-on-display-as-it-denies-its-colonial-past-and-present/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=36ae1ade0d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_3_20_2023_13_41_COPY_05&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-36ae1ade0d-650623509&mc_cid=36ae1ade0d&mc_eid=62fe682022>.
History remains instructive. In 1972, only a few months before his
assassination in Guinea by forces supporting colonialism, African liberator
Amílcar Cabral spoke with New York City organizers (his speech is preserved
in *Return to the Source*
<https://abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/amilcar_cabral_return_to_the_source-ilovepdf-compressed.pdf>),
instructing and offering international solidarity in anti-colonial war
resistance:

We realize the difficulties you face, the problems you have and your
feelings, your revolts, and also your hopes. We think that our
fighting for Africa against colonialism and imperialism is a proof of
understanding of your problem and also a contribution for the solution
of your problems in this continent. Naturally, the inverse is also
true.

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

*Editor’s Note:* *This essay and its first part
<https://inquest.org/the-rubiks-cube-of-cop-city/> are mark the end of 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*.
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