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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Youth Organizers Are Uniting Marginalized Communities to Stop Atlanta’s Cop City</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Ngakiya Camara - March 28, 2023<br></div>
</div><div class="gmail-content"><div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div id="gmail-articleContent"><p>A crowd of youth organizers have mastered this call and response chant, a unanimous voice talking back to a potential <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/forest-defenders-vow-resistance-after-court-green-lights-phase-i-of-cop-city/">Cop City.</a> Nearing the end of <a href="https://defendtheatlantaforest.org/">Defend the Atlanta Forest’s Week of Action</a>,
the energy from the In Defense of Black Lives rally held at the Atlanta
Police Foundation Headquarters is palpable. There is laughter,
chanting, a fire of hope that electrifies the air — folks have just
finished roasting the heavily militarized police, who eye the crowd
through the slits of their helmets. The solidarity between these kids is
their biggest threat.</p>
<p>Black youth organizers were at the center of this rally that was organized by the Stop Cop City Coalition,<a href="https://www.instagram.com/idblatl/?hl=en"> In Defense of Black Lives</a>
Atlanta (IDBL), which is a coalition movement based in Atlanta that
works to defend Black life and to defund the Atlanta Police Department.
Sustaining solidarity among the Black left, the movement’s goal is to
create an Atlanta free of policing, prisons and detention. It has three
basic demands, according to IDBL youth organizer Thayu Speaks: No Cop
City anywhere; reinvest the $90 million granted to destroy the Weelaunee
Forest to the community living outside of it; and finally, that land
being leased to the Atlanta Police Foundation be given to the community
as part of a “land back” initiative in partnership with the Muscogee
people working toward the reclamation of their stolen land.</p>
<p>Establishing an organizing fellowship for Black and Brown youth, IDBL
strives to push Atlanta’s University donors to divest from Cop City
through this youth organizing, and to engage Black and Brown communities
within organizing work. For youth organizers Destiny Harris and Thayu
Speaks, IDBL has also tasked them with another mission — to form
solidarity between resistance struggles and reclaim space for Black and
Brown community members through the Black Radical Tradition.</p>
<h2><strong>Solidarity Through the Black Radical Tradition</strong></h2>
<p>The <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/cedric-robinson-the-black-radical-tradition/">Black Radical Tradition</a>
is a foundational legacy of resistance that has realized many of the
practices we rely on in organizing work. Born out of anti-colonial and
abolitionist organizing, this tradition encompasses the cultural,
intellectual and direct-action practices designed to disrupt the social,
political and economic structures that destroy Black lives. And while
various iterations of Black movements have emerged throughout history,
these practices still build from one another, thus demonstrating the
connectedness between struggles across time and space.</p>
<p>This connectedness is especially noticeable when you consider the
various versions of Cop City that have been proposed throughout the
nation. One such iteration was <a href="https://nocopacademy.com/">Cop Academy</a>
— a $95 million cop campus proposed in a predominantly Black
neighborhood on Chicago’s westside. This training facility, much like
Cop City, would have <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/cop-city-atlanta-police-violence-no-cop-academy-chicago-climate">included</a>
a mock city block to practice raids and other militarized maneuvers, as
well as a swimming pool, food court and shooting range. Beginning in <a href="https://nocopacademy.com/2017/09/20/for-immediate-release-92017/">2017</a>, Black youth organized and led a powerful effort against its <a href="https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/01/25/controversial-west-side-cop-academy-opens-after-years-of-pushback-from-activists/">construction</a>,
demanding that the city of Chicago invest in youth and the community
instead. Today, inspired by this work from #NoCopAcademy In Defense of
Black Lives, the #StopCopCity movement relies on key strategies
developed by #NoCopAcademy’s Black and Brown youth organizers according
to Speaks and Harris. In fact, <a id="gmail-post-305998-_Hlk130889387"></a>Harris
stresses that this was what compelled her most to get involved with the
Stop Cop City campaign. “[They] read our toolkit and told us that a lot
of strategy was informed by us,” Harris told <em>Truthout</em>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Movements like #NoCopAcademy and #StopCopCity
continue the work of previous Black-led uprisings which resisted the
carceral state.</p></blockquote>
<p>Fundamentally, both #NoCopAcademy and #StopCopCity emerged from the
same context. In fact, Harris stresses that not only were these
developments to be built in Black neighborhoods, but multiple people
responsible for getting the proposals being passed were Black — even
Black women. Such a commonality brings contradiction to light,
demonstrating that too often Black political figures have a fealty to
the carceral state and not the communities they’re meant to “serve.” In
fact, while Chicago had no money to maintain <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/cop-city-atlanta-police-violence-no-cop-academy-chicago-climate">49 public schools </a>as well as half of Chicago’s free mental health clinics, they <em>did</em>
have the $95 million to instate a new training facility on top of
contributing 40 percent of the annual budget to the Chicago Police
Department. Meanwhile, last November Atlanta didn’t have the money to
save a <a href="https://khn.org/news/article/impending-hospital-closure-rattles-atlanta-health-care-landscape-and-political-races/">hospital</a> from shutting down in the community, but managed to conjure up the $90 million to develop Cop City.</p>
<p>And aside from Cop City and Cop Academy, yet another training base in
Crawford County, Michigan has catalyzed a new resistance movement.<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/national-guard-wants-to-expand-its-training-site-to-twice-the-size-of-chicago/"> Camp Grayling</a>
— the largest National Guard training base in the US — is looking to
double its size, with the National Guard attempting to lease yet another
250 square miles of public state forest to train in warfare.</p>
<p>However, just as all of these training facilities mimic one another,
so too, do the resistance movements against them. In fact, functioning
through abolitionist movement building, both #NoCopAcademy,
#StopCopCity, and now <a href="https://www.instagram.com/stop_camp_grayling/">#StopCampGrayling</a> campaigns have prompted decentralized coalitions that exist beyond racial, political and class lines in cities <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/cop-city-atlanta-police-violence-no-cop-academy-chicago-climate">fuming</a>
with segregation and political fracturing. Most importantly, movements
like #NoCopAcademy and #StopCopCity continue the work of previous
Black-led uprisings which resisted the carceral state — a pillar of
resistance deeply informed by the Black Radical Tradition in Harris’s
eyes. “These [movements] are a pattern of something that’s already
happened and something we’ve already done. We have to look at history
and the way folks organized before to better inform our tactics and
strategies. The fight is connected and it’s best that we look to each
other for support as we build movements,” she told <em>Truthout</em>.</p>
<h2><strong>Reclaiming Space: Whiteness in the Movement</strong></h2>
<p>Understanding the importance of solidarity between movements means
understanding the inevitable interconnectedness across different
struggles. In fact, Stop Cop City’s movement has united <a href="https://indypendent.org/2023/03/stop-cop-city-the-fight-for-a-forest-and-the-future-of-american-policing/">communities</a>
from across Georgia, including neighborhood associations,
environmentalist groups, Muscogee leaders, local schools, and of course,
racial justice, and other abolitionist organizations. Muscogee leaders
delivered an <a href="https://indypendent.org/2023/03/stop-cop-city-the-fight-for-a-forest-and-the-future-of-american-policing/">eviction</a> notice to Atlanta Regional Commission in protesting Cop City, while Black residents canvassed and organized <a href="https://baptistnews.com/article/coalition-of-atlanta-faith-leaders-plans-action-to-stop-cop-city-and-defend-a-forest/">direct actions</a> and <a href="https://stopcop.city/">Forest Defenders</a>
began a long-term encampment in Weelaunee Forest to prevent
deforestation. The movement integrates abolitionist work with
environmental justice with #landback in an effort to demilitarize,
decolonize, divest and dismantle yet another product of the carceral
systems that destroy these communities daily.</p>
<blockquote><p>The idea of solidarity and interconnected
struggle lies at the heart of the Black Radical Tradition that the Stop
Cop City coalition practices.</p></blockquote>
<p>However, not all solidarity within the movement to Stop Cop City is
cohesive. This is especially true of white organizers involved with
Defend the Atlanta Forest. IDBL fellow and youth organizer Speaks
stresses white anarchists and environmentalists too often monopolize
space in the movement. “There’s extreme white dominance over the
movement, and because of this, there’s a lack of inclusion of POC and
the community who surround the forest,” they told <em>Truthout</em>.</p>
<p>“There’s a clear divide between the white anarchists and the abolitionist movement,” Harris told <em>Truthout</em>.
In talking with Stop Cop City organizers, she realized that most Black
organizers hadn’t been to the forest, while when she went to the forest
with her No Cop Academy coalition, most of the people were white, with
herself and #NoCopAcademy peers being the few other Black folks there.
Thus, while most white folks were watching over the forest, Black
coalition organizers were engaging folks in Atlanta neighborhoods and
communities outside of the forest. This would be a good strategy to
diversify tactics and center individual strong suits in the movement,
Harris clarifies, but the issue is the lack of integration and
coordination regarding these potential tactics. “They can’t just both be
doing their own thing with no communication. There needs to be
solidarity and communication amongst folks,” Harris told <em>Truthout</em>.</p>
<p>The idea of solidarity and interconnected struggle lies at the heart
of the Black Radical Tradition that the Stop Cop City coalition
practices, but this isn’t always the case for some white organizers
distanced from the practice. And while white allies may mean well, the
foundational work needed to eradicate their remnants of white
supremacist ideals is nonexistent. As a result, white organizers often
reify the same individualist and negligent practices they insist only
exist in right-wing spaces. “Sometimes we get very radical white allies
but they just wanna fuck shit up, and it’s safer for them to do that,”
Harris shared. “But they won’t acknowledge that having that mentality
presents a threat to nonwhite people — if something violent does happen,
it’s the Black people who’ll be impacted first and foremost.”</p>
<p>Further isolating white organizers from the Black Coalition movement
is their tendency to center environmentalism at the root of their
organizing. Characterizing their fight as one to save the forest, some
white anarchists and environmentalists neglect solidarity work in their
attempt to separate environmentalism from abolition and overall racial
justice work. “A lot of white environmentalists focus on deforestation,
saying ‘No Cop City in the forest!’ But no, we don’t want Cop City
anywhere — not in the forest, not in the neighborhoods, not in Atlanta,
not anywhere,” Speaks points out.</p>
<p>In this case, white organizers too often sever movements from one
another, including the inextricable link between abolition work and
environmental justice. In fact, environmental liberation has everything
to do with abolishing the same carceral systems which defecate on the
land and abuse its stewards. “They don’t understand,” Harris explains,
“that when you’re talking about the environment, you’re talking about
the community that you engage with every day. If you live in an
overpoliced community, that’s an issue of environmentalism.”</p>
<blockquote><p>“We don’t want Cop City anywhere — not in the forest, not in the neighborhoods, not in Atlanta, not anywhere.”</p></blockquote>
<p>But for Speaks, acknowledging and building community is not the
strong suit of many white organizers. In fact, despite the stronghold
white anarchists and environmentalists have over the forest region —
giving them proximity to marginalized communities right outside of the
forest — Speaks stresses that these communities are often left behind.
“White anarchists and white environmentalists are not good at engaging
communities. There’s a disconnect there, and the community of people
around the forest — predominantly Black and Brown people — are being
neglected even though they’ll be the most impacted by Cop City,” Speaks
told <em>Truthout</em>.</p>
<p>For this reason, IDBL established a fellowship designed for youth
organizers to engage other POC and Black organizers and make space where
white folks have dominated. The goal of this engagement is to center
the Black Radical Tradition, find the gaps left by white
environmentalists and anarchists in the forest, and to expand the
movement to bring in and lift up the marginalized communities’ needs.</p>
<p>Grounding their organizing within the Black Radical Tradition, Black
coalition organizers like IDBL are able to center the voices and
testimonials of those most marginalized, and to ensure that their
concerns and ideas are not an afterthought. For Speaks, this is indeed a
lot of work — “getting the word out to different community members,
training community members, bringing community members in and helping
them engage in ways they want to based on their various skills,” is just
a taste of the organizing work that IDBL has been doing. Nonetheless,
this work is what makes movements grow, and continuing to build
solidarity and reclaim space for marginalized people will ensure that
movements like Stop Cop City are successful.</p></div></div></div>
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