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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://popularresistance.org/atlanta-is-already-a-cop-city-this-is-why-the-fight-is-intensifying/">popularresistance.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Atlanta Is Already A ‘Cop City’; This Is Why The Fight Is Intensifying</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">By Demetrius “Dee” Vaughn, Reckon - June 27, 2023<br></div>
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<img src="cid:ii_ljfxwcr30" alt="image.png" width="416" height="239"><br><p>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.</p>
<h2>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.</h2>
<p><strong>But this struggle has been around since long before the fight against “Cop City.”</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h3>A city at war</h3>
<p>I first heard about the $90 million dollar Atlanta Public Safety Training Center known as “Cop City” two years ago.</p>
<p>At first, a lot of people were confused. An 85-acre training facility
to “re-imagine law enforcement”? The cops had already gotten <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/crime--law/pay-raise-credited-for-big-spikes-apd-recruitment-retention/BFi5pwVb4W3peV67n8yCiO/">big raises</a> in recent years.</p>
<p>As a public school teacher, I thought about my students.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Anyone who grows up poor and Black in this city can tell you: Atlanta already is a cop city.</p>
<h3>The rise of “Cop City”</h3>
<p>They are building “Cop City” in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPMW47tCA1g">The Weelaunee canopy forest</a>.
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 <a href="https://www.nps.gov/ocmu/learn/historyculture/upload/Accessible-Muscogee-Creek-Removal.pdf">Muscogee Creek People in the early 1800s</a> and now the forest’s ecosystem provides oxygen and clean air to the city–some people call it the lungs of Atlanta.</p>
<p>When they began bulldozing trees to start construction, protesters realized that they had to take matters into their own hands. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/16/us-activists-protest-atlanta-cop-city-training-forest">They built an encampment and some people blocked construction by creating physical barricades</a>. The encampment got bigger and bigger, and the forest filled with free music shows, art, and educational workshops.</p>
<p>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<a href="https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/atlanta-public-safety-training-cop-city-arrests-protests-evidence"> mass arrests.</a> On January 13th, 2023 a 26 year old protester named<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65340456"> Manuel “tortuguita” Terán was killed by police who shot him 57 times in the chest. </a></p>
<p>Since then, organizers have continued to face harsh repression. Currently <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2023/3/24/atlanta_cop_city">23 people involved in the protests are being charged with domestic</a> terrorism.</p>
<h3>Criminalizing “good trouble”</h3>
<p>A common narrative being pushed in the media is that the people protesting “Cop City” are “outside agitators.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h3>All eyes on Atlanta</h3>
<p>At the beginning of this month, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/cop-city-vote-atlanta-city-council-99e9dfbd5a3d83d2e564c34b7c61c686">hundreds of people came out to City Hall for an Atlanta City Council meeting</a>
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.</p>
<p>That day over 350 community members <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mknR8toe_Po">gave public testimony</a>
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.</p>
<p>That was when I realized that we are at war in the city that I love.</p>
<p>But I’m ready for the war. Because the implications of this are so big that I have no other option.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><b>Demetrius “Dee” Vaughn</b> 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 <a href="https://www.instagram.com/deevineshots/">here</a>.</p>
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