[News] State Repression Targets the Stop Cop City Movement

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 *State Repression Targets the Stop Cop City Movement*
<https://www.blackagendareport.com/state-repression-targets-stop-cop-city-movement>

<https://www.blackagendareport.com/state-repression-targets-stop-cop-city-movement>
Margaret Kimberley <https://www.blackagendareport.com/author/Margaret
Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist> - 07 Jun 2023

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[image: State Repression Targets the Stop Cop City Movement]
<https://www.blackagendareport.com/sites/default/files/2023-06/let%20atlanta%20decide.jpeg>
Kamau Franklin of Community Movement Builders and other organizers announce
a ballot referendum effort at a June 7 press conference in Atlanta. (Photo:
Twitter @Micahinatl)

*Cop City is an effort to ensure that state violence will bring the most
draconian methods to bear against Black people. State violence is also
being used proactively, in an effort to end opposition to this creation of
Atlanta's white ruling class and their errand boys and girls who ostensibly
control a fake mecca for Black people.*

“The politicians don’t care about the people. They don’t work for the
people. They work for corporations, the developers, and the police. The
Atlanta City Council ignored the largest mass mobilization ever because the
corporate-funded Atlanta Police Foundation controls them.”
Kamau Franklin, Community Movement Builders
<https://twitter.com/kamaufranklin/status/1666078056484687872?s=20>

Atlanta, Georgia is no mecca. The idea that it is a “good for Black people”
city is a lie. Atlanta is little more than a glorified plantation where
powerful white people give directions to the Black people they choose to be
overseers. The power of the latter group is severely limited of course.
They can always be counted on to act on behalf of the white power structure
they serve.

No one should be shocked that members of the Atlanta City Council listened
to hours of impassioned testimony from their constituents opposing what
they call a Public Safety Training Center yet still voted to approve an
initial $31 million expenditure by a vote of 11 to 4. The center is
commonly and more accurately known as Cop City and thousands of people have
mobilized to keep it from being built.

In the days before the vote the degree of official perfidy was revealed
when the public were informed that the estimated cost for the center was
more than double what they had been told. The cost to the city is $67
million <https://atlanta.capitalbnews.org/cop-city-budget-hearing/>, and
not the $30 million figure that has been stated ever since the project was
announced.

The state of Georgia and their Atlanta lackeys swung into action after the
budgetary fraud was exposed and arrested three organizers of the Atlanta
Solidarity Fund
<https://atlpresscollective.com/2023/05/31/apd-gbi-raid-bail-fund-arrest-three-organizers/>,
a bail fund used to support protesters who have been arrested. The city and
state had already mobilized brute force, killing one protester, Manuel Paez
Teran, with 57 bullet wounds and charging others with terrorism. Before the
bail fund arrests, three other organizers were charged with felony
intimidation of an officer
<https://theintercept.com/2023/05/02/cop-city-activists-arrest-flyers/>
when they shared already public information which identified the killer
police.

Atlanta Solidarity Fund organizers were arrested by a SWAT team and charged
with charity fraud and money laundering because they reimbursed themselves
for expenses. Judge James Altman
<https://theintercept.com/2023/06/06/cop-city-atlanta-funding-vote/>
released the three on $15,000 bond each. “Paying for camping supplies and
the like? I don’t find it very impressive. There’s not a lot of meat on the
bones of the allegations that thousands of dollars are going to fund
illegal activities.”

But the city of Atlanta and the state of Georgia are not alone in their
acts of repression. The federal Department of Homeland Security
<https://theintercept.com/2023/06/05/dhs-cop-city-andy-ngo/> has also
weighed in calling protesters “militants” who they say comprise a “violent
far-left occupation.” When the DHS report was made public, online access
was suddenly removed.

Cop City would be more than a police training center. The 85-acre site
would be a mock city, used to train police in “crowd control,” methods. It
would be a militarized policing center training law enforcement from around
the country. Cop City is a response to the 2020 protests which sprang up
across the country after the police killing of George Floyd and the
protests in Atlanta which took place after the killing of Rayshard Brooks.
The reaction against the new movement was swift and Atlanta’s local
oligarchs demanded that their Black figureheads do something to ensure that
any further protests be met with the harshest measures possible.

Yet the people of Atlanta weren’t fooled, and they lined up for hours to
give testimony before their so-called representatives who don’t really want
to hear from them. Atlanta resident Robell Awake
<https://twitter.com/jduffyrice/status/1666097516553854979?s=20> spoke for
many when he said, “I cannot believe I am standing here, pleading with you
not to spend the tax dollars of a Black city, to tear down a forest in a
Black neighborhood, to increase the policing and caging of more Black
people. All this in a city with Black leadership. It breaks my heart.”

As we have said many times at Black Agenda Report, we don’t have Black
political leadership in this country. We have misleadership, a corrupt
buffer class who do the bidding of Black people’s enemies while pretending
to be our representatives.

The next step in stopping the Cop City scam is to put a referendum
<https://www.copcityvote.com/> on the ballot. Organizers must secure 75,000
signatures from registered voters within the next two months in order to
give voters a voice in the process. Direct democracy is the tool, but the
same people who use SWAT teams to arrest organizers won’t stop either.

Cities, states, and the federal government will all work together at the
behest of the ruling class whenever the people choose to act in favor of
their own interests. They will bring terrorism charges, kill protesters,
and buy off politicians in order to get what they want. As always, the
question is how the masses will respond. Atlantans are ready and they are
showing the way.

*Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the
Presidents <https://www.blackagendareport.com/bit.ly/3fnaWYU>**. You can
support her work on Patreon  <https://www.patreon.com/margaretkimberley>and
also find it on the Twitter
<https://twitter.com/freedomrideblog>and Telegram
<https://t.me/MargaretKimberley>platforms. She can be reached via email
at margaret.kimberley(at)blackagendareport.com
<http://blackagendareport.com>.*
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