[News] The 'Stop Cop City' Movement Roots Going Back Decades

[Anti-Imperialist News]

scheerpost.com
<https://scheerpost.com/2023/03/11/the-stop-cop-city-movement-roots-going-back-decades/>
The 'Stop Cop City' Movement Roots Going Back DecadesMarch 11, 2023
------------------------------

The Stop Cop City movement recalls Atlanta’s 1996 Olympic bid and the
city’s long history of prioritizing tourists, business interests, and
wealthy white communities over Black and working-class people
Protesters marching in Minneapolis near Hennepin/Lake remembering Manuel
Teran(Tort), who was shot and killed by officers at a prolonged protest in
an Atlanta forest after they say he fired upon them. They stopped at
Lake/Girard where protester Deona Marie was killed on 06/13/21. (Chad Davis
<https://www.flickr.com/photos/chaddavisphotography/> / Flickr
<https://www.flickr.com/photos/chaddavisphotography/52668179545/in/photolist-2of7bR8-2of6rmm-2n2nTjW-2ncEueQ-3gC2uB-2fwKSvZ-2nFJujv-DLmXBf-4TpkZ4-9b2gH2-aGWNdX-JPDX6-qfRVcA-5GfWVc-bRtcGP-2o27PXh-6nNqR3-LNxge3-vTefQb-2nmQSdk-EiuA5R-P4Mk2Z-2kGwTgH-2njKTwo-2nWsQSN-2gNxXJW-4VeLCy-nPbyvg-2mVnNFg-WWiLrr-CqJyt-3gC2wM-Y5PZnu-6ViTfW-2j81y1q-5K1fjN-FfLKRJ-2j7ewti-2koRia2-2ohYMXy-2n3qqNh-2jcNrUR-Cq6u9N-2oce9hh-2h573oF-2ggxLG6-2fuWcqz-h8aBDo-2XYtU2-2krdQ2D>
)

*By Micah Herskind / Prism
<https://prismreports.org/2023/03/02/fight-stop-cop-city/> *

On Jan. 18, 2023, a squad of local and state police officers marched into
the Weelaunee Forest in southeast Atlanta, where they shot and killed
<https://theintercept.com/2023/02/09/cop-city-body-camera-footage/> a young,
queer, Indigenous-Venezuelan protester
<https://www.gofundme.com/f/for-family-of-manuel-tortuguita-paez-teran> named
Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán. Tortuguita was one of many Atlanta forest
defenders, a decentralized group of activists that has been living in the
forest since 2021
<https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-south/the-new-fight-over-an-old-forest-in-atlanta>
to
protect against its proposed destruction and replacement with “Cop
City”—a massive
police militarization facility
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/16/us-activists-protest-atlanta-cop-city-training-forest>
complete
with a “mock city” inside for police to practice their many tactics of
urban warfare and repression.

The city is leasing 85 acres of the Weelaunee Forest (land originally stolen
<https://streetsofatlanta.blog/2022/05/02/native-americans-share-concerns-over-fate-of-forest/>
from
Muscogee Creek people) to the Atlanta Police Foundation for Cop City, but
it is located in a majority-Black area of DeKalb County outside of city
limits, resulting in significant disenfranchisement of its residents who
have few easily accessible official channels
<https://ryangravel.com/2021/08/21/faq-what-process-would-we-expect/> to
register their dissent. While Cop City would impact everyone in Atlanta and
across the country, it will have especially disastrous ramifications for
nearby residents
<https://www.teenvogue.com/story/stop-cop-city-tortugita-oped>, who will lose
the benefit
<https://prismreports.org/2022/06/15/atlanta-environmental-damage-cop-city/> of
the forest’s flood prevention and cooling impacts. Indeed, this is land
that the city referred to in 2017 as one of the “four lungs”
<https://www.atlantaga.gov/home/showdocument?id=30594> of Atlanta and
slated for incorporation into a broader set of park land—a promise the city
broke just four years later.

While the political assassination
<https://theintercept.com/2023/02/09/cop-city-body-camera-footage/> of
Tortuguita thrust the multi-year struggle against Cop City into the
national spotlight, Atlanta organizers have been working against the
project for years. The proposal first went public
<https://citycouncil.atlantaga.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/5332/637454378634230000>
in
early 2021. It was quickly opposed by a broad coalition
<https://www.mainlinezine.com/cop-city-and-the-prison-industrial-complex-in-atlanta/>
that
included environmental justice and human rights organizations,
abolitionists, groups working against gentrification, clergy, neighborhood
associations near the proposed site, and more. Community members consistently
advocated
<https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/battle-brews-over-land-plans-for-new-atlanta-police-and-firefighter-training-center/YYTLB5CGXVAIDCMVPFAEBIA6KQ/>
and
attended public meetings throughout the summer of 2021. When it came time
for the final City Council vote on the Cop City legislation, the council
meeting lasted two days due to over 17 hours of public comment
<https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/17-hours-of-public-comment-pour-in-ahead-of-police-training-center-vote/RDE6OHCQRRCZXPQFHFS776CX2I/>,
in which the vast majority of commenters opposed
<https://theappeal.org/atlanta-cop-city-police-training-facility/> the
project.

Meanwhile, it was residents from northeast Atlanta, a disproportionately white
and wealthy
<https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/what-would-buckhead-city-look-like-we-crunched-the-numbers/WRIYJBY2PBCEJFKWTFK2YDWXYA/>
area
of the city, who spoke in favor
<https://www.mainlinezine.com/cop-city-and-the-prison-industrial-complex-in-atlanta/>
of
Cop City. As one Black resident from southwest Atlanta summarized poignantly
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYLJ2Rigfdo>, “It doesn’t appear as if the
police protect us. They protect the north side. But you want them to train
over here … why is that?”

Despite the massive local opposition to Cop City, a combination of state
and corporate forces
<https://www.mainlinezine.com/cop-city-and-the-prison-industrial-complex-in-atlanta/>worked
hand in hand for years to push for its creation. The private nonprofit
Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) championed the vision for Cop City, working
on the plans for it since at least 2017
<https://atlantapolicefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/VISION-SAFE-ATL-Infrastructure.pdf>.
APF is backed by a mix of some of Atlanta’s most
<https://news.littlesis.org/2022/11/15/meet-the-major-corporations-and-cultural-institutions-helping-build-cop-city-in-atlanta/>
 prominent corporations
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23572554-q3-2022external-q3-atlanta-police-foundation-board-meeting-bus-tour-consent-agenda_q3-91422#document/p20>,
including Delta, UPS, Home Depot, Wells Fargo, and Coca-Cola, as well as major
foundations
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23572554-q3-2022external-q3-atlanta-police-foundation-board-meeting-bus-tour-consent-agenda_q3-91422#document/p20>
like
the Georgia Power Foundation and the Woodruff Foundation, whose founder was
the president of Coca-Cola from 1923-85. Many of the same corporations’
leaders sit on the Atlanta Committee for Progress
<http://atlprogress.org/about.php> (ACP), a public-private partnership made
up of corporate, state, nonprofit, and university leaders
<https://prismreports.org/2023/02/27/what-good-are-hbcus-mirroring-anti-blackness/>
that
has vocally supported
<http://www.atlprogress.org/_pdf/ACP_Public_Safety_Release_04-01-21.pdf> Cop
City—including the 2021 commitment from their then-Board Chair Alex Taylor
to lead the fundraising campaign
<https://saportareport.com/opposition-grows-to-police-training-center-at-atlanta-prison-farm/columnists/maria_saporta/>
for
$30 million in private funds, half of the anticipated $60 million total
cost to build the facility. Taylor is also the CEO of Cox Enterprises, the
corporation that owns Atlanta’s main media outlet, the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution—resulting in an endless
<https://www.ajc.com/opinion/opinion-atlanta-needs-new-public-safety-training-center-now/CTY42ZZA7RHOBCZW3CR5FD5CFA/>
 stream
<https://www.ajc.com/opinion/opinion-the-sometimes-messy-but-inexorable-march-to-public-safety/BYFEJFLAVFA6PFWP2E6554QGKA/>
 of
<https://www.ajc.com/opinion/opinion-a-violent-outcome-that-neednt-have-happened/EILQDIUEBBDWBD7YLDDSWHANH4/>
 pro-Cop City
<https://www.ajc.com/opinion/citys-crime-rise-can-be-reversed-once-more/NXZT4APRCRHD5NTEPFFZZR3YYE/>
 op-eds
<https://www.ajc.com/opinion/opinion-does-atlanta-city-council-really-care-about-public-safety/MBMGNS2I2BBLBHJ7HHFPTVCQ5I/>
 and
<https://www.ajc.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-govt-101-and-the-tough-decisions-surrounding-cop-city/5BQVUR7PDJE4HEQLLWCJGV2JSI/>
 editorials
<https://www.ajc.com/opinion/opinion-crime-wave-should-spur-action-on-center/E2G7BMPL2BEZHPOW4AOJBXUG64/>
since
the project was announced, with the paper often failing to disclose
<https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-south/the-new-fight-over-an-old-forest-in-atlanta>
the
relationship between AJC and Cox.

In other words, Cop City is a fundamentally anti-democratic project driven
by a mix of powerful actors, while Atlanta’s residents, particularly those
closest to the proposed site, have been utterly ignored.
Atlanta’s Olympic City and mass displacement

This is far from the first time that Atlanta has prioritized the wishes of
its ruling class over the community; it’s a defining feature of Atlanta
governance
<https://saportareport.com/red-hot-city-is-perfectly-timed-for-atlanta-gentrification-to-look-in-the-mirror/columnists/johnruch/>.
While the fight to Stop Cop City is a more recent struggle against the
Atlanta ruling class’ orientation toward its most vulnerable residents, it
should be understood within a much longer trend of state, corporate, and
nonprofit forces banding together to shape the city in their interests and
at the expense of Black and working-class residents. This pattern showed up
perhaps most vividly in the transformation of the city that occurred in the
leadup to the 1996 Olympics.

To attract the Olympics and the supposed increase in revenue and reputation
that the Games would bring, Atlanta’s political and economic leadership
worked to physically and ideologically
<https://www.jstor.org/stable/26229061>reshape Atlanta as a world-class city
<https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/233383/imagineering-atlanta-by-charles-rutheiser/>—a
mission that predated but intensified
<http://www.ruig-gian.org/ressources/Atlanta_background_paper.pdf> during
the city’s preparation for the Olympics. While the APF and ACP lead the
push for Cop City today, the private nonprofit Atlanta Committee on the
Olympic Games (ACOG) and groups like the Central Atlanta Progress (a
nonprofit representing Atlanta’s business interests) championed the vision
<https://placesjournal.org/article/the-displacement-decathlon/?cn-reloaded=1>
and
city transformation for the Olympics.

Upon being selected for the 1996 Olympics, the city’s leaders prepared
Atlanta for the games with displacement, destruction, and redevelopment. In
1995, the city destroyed Techwood Homes, the U.S.’s oldest federally
subsidized public housing project, to clear the way for
<http://www.ruig-gian.org/ressources/Atlanta_background_paper.pdf> the
Olympic village that would house athletes and media. Just south of Techwood
Homes, the Techwood Park district—an “economically and culturally vibrant
location <https://www.jstor.org/stable/26229061>” home to over 10% of the
city’s shelter capacity that was painted as a “slum” by the city’s
corporate forces—was transformed by ACOG into the fenced-in Centennial
Olympic Park. Several other neighborhoods were cut up or destroyed in the
service of the Olympics, including Atlanta’s Summerhill neighborhood
<https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2016/08/05/autodromo-rio-atlanta-olympics>,
which was replaced by the Centennial Olympic Stadium and an array of
townhouses that were unaffordable for prior residents.

The city also made significant policy changes and other infrastructural
investments that would facilitate displacement, often through
criminalization. In 1991, the Atlanta City Council passed new city laws
<https://uncpress.org/book/9781469654751/the-legend-of-the-black-mecca/#:~:text=For%20more%20than%20a%20century,in%20spite%20of%20Jim%20Crow%2C>
hyper-criminalizing
homelessness—laws that, according to historian Maurice Hobson, “were so
ambiguous that they could be enforced
<https://uncpress.org/book/9781469654751/the-legend-of-the-black-mecca/#:~:text=For%20more%20than%20a%20century,in%20spite%20of%20Jim%20Crow%2C>
against
undesirables at the discretion of authorities.” In 1995, the city opened
the Atlanta City Detention Center downtown with an approximate 1,000-bed
capacity, which state forces used to clear mostly Black homeless people
from the streets and hold them over the weekend when tourists flooded the
city. Hauntingly, the new jail was referred to by one city official
<https://smartech.gatech.edu/bitstream/handle/1853/10644/1995_Fall.pdf?sequence=1>
as
“the first Olympic project completed on time.” Organizers are still fighting
<https://www.closethejailatl.org/> to close this jail.

The city displaced roughly 30,000 people
<https://www.jstor.org/stable/26229061> from their homes between 1990 and
1996 and illegally arrested over 9,000 homeless people between 1995 and
1996. At the time, some activists even uncovered the Atlanta Police
Department’s use of pre-printed tickets
<http://www.ruig-gian.org/ressources/Atlanta_background_paper.pdf> with
categories filled out for “African American,” “Male,” and “Homeless.”

While state and corporate actors were the key drivers of the Olympic
transformation, nonprofits also aided directly in the displacement, lending
resources, involvement, and cover to state violence. For example, through a
partnership
<http://www.ruig-gian.org/ressources/Atlanta_background_paper.pdf> between
the city and the nonprofit organization Travelers Aid, homeless individuals
were given one-way tickets out of town and were reportedly required
<https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2016/08/05/autodromo-rio-atlanta-olympics> to
sign pledges not to return. Just as state and corporate entities partnered
with nonprofits during the Olympic displacement, today, the Atlanta Police
Foundation is partnering with the National Center for Civil and Human
Rights to offer “human rights” training
<https://www.civilandhumanrights.org/human-rights-groups-launch-course-to-train-police/>
to
the Atlanta Police Department—a partnership touted during the leadup to the
City Council vote on Cop City.
Striving to become a “world-class city”

In the two and a half decades since the Games, Atlanta’s hostility toward
Black and working-class residents has only intensified. Atlanta’s
leadership continually poured vast sums of public money
<https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520387645/red-hot-city> into private
projects while the city has gentrified rapidly and low-income residents
have been pushed further out. In 2017, the City closed Peachtree and Pine
<https://atlanta.curbed.com/2017/6/22/15851062/peachtree-pine-homeless-shelter-closing-2017>,
the city’s largest homeless shelter. Ownership of the building
<https://thesoutherneronline.com/83287/nexus-feature/final-closing-of-peachtree-and-pine/>has
since been transferred to Central Atlanta Progress, the group that once
helped to champion Atlanta’s Olympic transformation. As Anita Beaty,
then-executive director of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless,
noted
<https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2016/08/05/autodromo-rio-atlanta-olympics>,
“the [Olympic] juggernaut was a dry run, a dress rehearsal for the
developers and the elites to take over the city, to take over the planning,
housing construction—to eliminate public housing.” These words have proven
to be tragically true.

Today, many of the same forces that once worked to reshape the city
continue to build on the city’s Olympic legacy to attract other large
events, most prominently the 2024 Democratic National Convention
<https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/atlantas-bid-to-host-the-2024-democratic-national-convention-a-breakdown-of-the-numbers/AO43EOGGWFFCRNY6GYJFSEXSUQ/>
(DNC)
and the 2026 FIFA World Cup
<https://www.ajc.com/news/world-cup-sets-deadline-for-developers-to-bring-new-life-downtown/KCABWBFKNVHJ5L6ENXDVKVDMXY/>.
In the city’s bid to attract the DNC—an event that has been compared to the
Olympics—Atlanta’s leadership has touted its hotel capacity, planned
improvements to stadium infrastructure, and the city’s ability to call on
at least 27 other police and fire departments in nearby areas.

While these events are certainly not the only reason that city leadership
has worked so hard to create Cop City, they are nonetheless directly
related. Atlanta’s quest to frame itself as a world-class city that is
welcoming to tourists and big business will continue to go hand in hand
with increased policing and displacement. At a recent City Council meeting,
for example, the Atlanta chief of police stated
<https://twitter.com/atlanta_press/status/1630281274286850051> that he was
seeking to recruit over 400 additional police officers by the time of the
2026 World Cup. Likewise, despite committing in 2019 to closing the city
jail built in preparation for the Olympics, in 2022, city leadership instead
voted to re-open
<https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/civil-rights-organizations-ask-atlanta-mayor-and-city-council-reverse-their-decision>
and
fill the jail with 700 people from the county jail.

In other words, when it comes to the displacement, destruction, and
violence associated with the vastly unpopular Cop City project, Atlanta has
been here before. State and corporate forces continue to run the city in
the service of real estate capital, tech jobs, tourism, and upper-class
white communities—and at the expense of Black and working-class residents.
Carceral expansion, real estate development, and major events continue to
mutually reinforce one another.

But just as there were once protests
<http://www.ruig-gian.org/ressources/Atlanta_background_paper.pdf> against
the violence of the Olympic project in Atlanta, so too are people resisting
state violence today. The movement to Stop Cop City is only becoming more
powerful as more people join every day and take action even in the
midst of massive
and likely unconstitutional
<https://theintercept.com/2023/01/27/cop-city-atlanta-forest/> state
repression. While Atlanta’s posture toward its most vulnerable has held
steady for decades, the Stop Cop City movement is here to stay. The
movement has the potential not just to stop the destruction of the forest
and the construction of a deadly police playground, but also to begin
reversing the transformation that has for so long held our communities
ransom. When we fight, we win.

*Editor’s Note: See ScheerPost publisher Robert Scheer’s SI Interview
with civil rights activist and Community Movement Builders
<https://communitymovementbuilders.org/> founder Kamau Franklin on Cop City
below:*

*The Birthplace of American Dystopia: Cop City, Atlanta
<https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/08/the-birthplace-of-american-dystopia/>*
------------------------------

Micah Herskind is an organizer, policy advocate, and writer based in
Atlanta, GA.
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