[News] Atlanta Is Already A ‘Cop City’; This Is Why The Fight Is Intensifying

[Anti-Imperialist News]

popularresistance.org
<https://popularresistance.org/atlanta-is-already-a-cop-city-this-is-why-the-fight-is-intensifying/>
Atlanta Is Already A ‘Cop City’; This Is Why The Fight Is Intensifying
By Demetrius “Dee” Vaughn, Reckon - June 27, 2023
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[image: image.png]

Above Photo: The city of Atlanta touts its civil rights history while
pouring public money into a training facility where police will refine
their techniques on how to suppress social uprisings. Michelle Zenarosa /
AP.
Atlanta is being used as a laboratory to enact a vision of the world where
the police serve to protect corporate interests over community needs.

*But this struggle has been around since long before the fight against “Cop
City.”*

I’ve lived in Atlanta for my entire life. I tried to leave a few times, but
l always somehow made my way back. I’ve never felt the sense of community
that I feel here anywhere else.

It’s a Black city, steeped in southern hospitality. That means that we’ll
find a way to help each other, even if we don’t have the resources. It’s a
community of deep creativity, a city of hustlers and artists with a culture
of Blackness that people from other places often can’t understand.

But it’s also a place where the gap between the rich and the poor is
painfully clear. That gap is marked by the presence of police in low-income
Black neighborhoods like mine.

I have been stopped by police in a park in my pajamas and almost arrested
for not having ID on me. I have been held at gunpoint by police who showed
up at my door while I was cooking dinner, looking for someone else. When I
was 23 years old, police raided my family’s home because they thought that
we were selling drugs. They put my mom, my sister and my niece– who at the
time was only a teenager–in handcuffs. Everyone was traumatized.

These experiences have hardened my spirit, and made me feel like it’s me
against the world. But they have also taught me that if you love something
enough, you have to fight to help save it. Our communities are all we got.
A city at war

I first heard about the $90 million dollar Atlanta Public Safety Training
Center known as “Cop City” two years ago.

At first, a lot of people were confused. An 85-acre training facility to
“re-imagine law enforcement”? The cops had already gotten big raises
<https://www.ajc.com/news/crime--law/pay-raise-credited-for-big-spikes-apd-recruitment-retention/BFi5pwVb4W3peV67n8yCiO/>
in recent years.

As a public school teacher, I thought about my students.

I work with first and fifth graders who already live in a state of urban
warfare. Their neighborhoods are filled with the constant sound of sirens.
Some sleep in cars and many come to school in the same set of clothes every
day. Others live with big families crammed into one-bedroom apartments. A
lot have parents who are locked up or dead, and some have even been locked
up themselves.

Anyone who grows up poor and Black in this city can tell you: Atlanta
already is a cop city.
The rise of “Cop City”

They are building “Cop City” in the The Weelaunee canopy forest
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPMW47tCA1g>. Picture trees as tall as
skyscrapers surrounded by miles of greenery. Just beyond those trees is a
Black neighborhood filled with families who have been there for
generations. The land was stolen from the Muscogee Creek People in the
early 1800s
<https://www.nps.gov/ocmu/learn/historyculture/upload/Accessible-Muscogee-Creek-Removal.pdf>
and now the forest’s ecosystem provides oxygen and clean air to the
city–some people call it the lungs of Atlanta.

When they began bulldozing trees to start construction, protesters realized
that they had to take matters into their own hands. They built an
encampment and some people blocked construction by creating physical
barricades
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/16/us-activists-protest-atlanta-cop-city-training-forest>.
The encampment got bigger and bigger, and the forest filled with free music
shows, art, and educational workshops.

People power was being built up. At the same time, this led to direct
encounters between protesters and authorities, many of which ended in
violence and mass arrests.
<https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/atlanta-public-safety-training-cop-city-arrests-protests-evidence>
On January 13th, 2023 a 26 year old protester named Manuel “tortuguita”
Terán was killed by police who shot him 57 times in the chest.
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65340456>

Since then, organizers have continued to face harsh repression. Currently 23
people involved in the protests are being charged with domestic
<https://www.democracynow.org/2023/3/24/atlanta_cop_city> terrorism.
Criminalizing “good trouble”

A common narrative being pushed in the media is that the people protesting
“Cop City” are “outside agitators.”

The idea that natives of Atlanta like me who love our city wouldn’t care
enough to fight back against something that threatens our future and our
families is outrageous.

Revolutionaries such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., H. Rap Brown and John
Lewis have all called Atlanta home. City officials love to hold events
commemorating their legacies, and talk about the importance of fighting for
justice by getting into what John Lewis famously called “good trouble.”

Yet the reality is that everyday life for Black people in Atlanta is filled
with police terror. The irony of the city celebrating civil rights leaders,
while pouring public money into a training ground where police will refine
their techniques on how to suppress social uprisings is not lost on anyone.
All eyes on Atlanta

At the beginning of this month, hundreds of people came out to City Hall
for an Atlanta City Council meeting
<https://apnews.com/article/cop-city-vote-atlanta-city-council-99e9dfbd5a3d83d2e564c34b7c61c686>
where council members were set to vote on whether or not to approve $31
million dollars of public funding for “Cop City.” There were Black folks,
white folks, brown folks and people of all ages. Police filled City Hall
dressed in riot gear and armed with zip ties.

That day over 350 community members gave public testimony
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mknR8toe_Po> that lasted over 14 hours.
Youth talked about the effects of police brutality on their lives. People
prayed and cried as they spoke to the council members. Yet in the end, they
voted 11-4 to approve the funding.

That was when I realized that we are at war in the city that I love.

But I’m ready for the war. Because the implications of this are so big that
I have no other option.

The fight against “Cop City” is part of a global struggle against a rising
wave of fascism. Atlanta is being used as a laboratory to enact a vision of
the world where the police serve to protect corporate interests over
community needs.

But people who believe in freedom and justice from all around the world
have been fighting against this vision since long before the first tree was
bulldozed in the canopy forest.

We stand in the legacy of freedom fighters from our city as we continue the
struggle. We are not outside agitators, we are young people who love our
community enough to fight for its future.

*Demetrius “Dee” Vaughn* is an artist, organizer and educator born and
raised in the south side of Atlanta. Their work centers on empowering
Atlantans to use their voice to fight for community power. Their
photography can be found here <https://www.instagram.com/deevineshots/>.
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