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Cop City Crackdown Reflects Broader Criminalization of Environmental Protest
The first step in fighting back is to develop a shared understanding of militarization of law enforcement, stigmatization of protest, and corporate capture of government as an intertwined strategy to undermine democracy.
Jul 17, 2023
The fight in Atlanta over Cop City, a massive police training facility, has turned into ground zero for overlapping crises facing our country: the climate emergency, vast political and economic inequality, ever-militarizing police forces, and systemic racism.
If we want a democracy healthy enough to solve these crises, it’s worth paying attention to what is happening in the South River Forest.
On May 31, in a disturbing move shortly before Atlanta’s City Council approved more funding for the facility, Georgia law enforcement arrested three members of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which provides activists with legal support and bail money.
Organized bail support for activists is a longstanding tradition, exemplified by the historical precedent of churches and community groups raising funds to bail Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders out of jail. Now, however, the authorities are deeming such acts “money laundering” and “charity fraud.”
In reality, the fund was targeted for supporting the Stop Cop City movement, which opposes the police training facility.
“When private corporate donors are able to fund militarized training facilities for the police, they are essentially buying off the police. They are making it clear who the police work for.”
Many in the community fear the Cop City facility will be used to train police in counterinsurgency, further militarizing an already armed and equipped force. In a city with wide wealth and income disparities, more militarized policing fits into what community activist Micah Herskind describes as “the state’s retreat from the provision of social welfare and the interrelated build-up of policing and imprisonment to manage inequality’s outcomes.”
The facility is largely funded by the corporate-backed Atlanta Police Foundation (APF), whose donors include Amazon, JP Morgan Chase, Home Depot, and Wells Fargo. Militarized policing is a growing concern in the United States, and corporate-funded militarized policing raises further unease about law enforcement becoming directly beholden to corporate interests.
As local resident Brad Beadles put it, “When private corporate donors are able to fund militarized training facilities for the police, they are essentially buying off the police. They are making it clear who the police work for.”
Cop City also has adverse environmental justice effects. Building the facility will require cutting down part of an urban forest adjacent to a majority-Black, working class community.
Urban forests provide critical environmental benefits for nearby residents. They filter pollutants from the air, store carbon, and mitigate floods and the urban heat island effect. Destroying community access to nature and outdoor recreation also negatively impacts mental health, as individuals with less access to green spaces have higher prevalence of mental distress, anxiety, and depression.
Cutting down forests anywhere in an age of climate crisis is a bad idea, but doing it next to a working-class Black community is particularly egregious when there are already nationwide racial disparities in urban heat island exposure and access to greenspaces. By 2050, summer high temperatures in the Atlanta metropolitan area are predicted to be 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than they are today, making preservation of Atlanta’s tree coverage all the more imperative.
Repressing the Popular Will
The arrests of the bail fund organizers are only one example of state repression against the Stop Cop City movement.
In a January raid on a protest encampment in the forest, police killed Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, an activist also known as Tortuguita. Police claim Tortuguita shot first, but have refused to provide proof. Results from two independent autopsies contradict the official story, raising the possibility that this was a cover-up of a “friendly fire” accident between police officers—or worse, an assassination.
Activists in the movement have also been arrested on “domestic terrorism” charges for having muddy shoes or having legal support numbers written on their arms—prosecutorial overreach with clear intent to intimidate.The state is using violence and terror to try to stamp out a movement opposing a facility meant to train law enforcement in violence and terror.
Residents of Atlanta have spoken out against Cop City. A September 2021 City Council hearing on the subject received 17 hours of testimony, with about 70% against the project. The Council approved the project regardless.
In June 2023, the Council held a hearing on approving more public funding for Cop City. This time, they heard 13 hours of testimony, with the overwhelming majority in opposition. Once again, the Council approved the funding anyway.
Criminalizing Protest
The criminalization of protest in Atlanta is part of a years-long trend.
In a 2020 Institute for Policy Studies report called Muzzling Dissent: How Corporate Influence over Politics Has Fueled Anti-Protest Laws, we examined state repression of oil and gas infrastructure protesters with so-called “Critical Infrastructure Protection” laws.
Similar to the Cop City project in Atlanta, the communities impacted by the oil and gas projects we studied had high levels of economic insecurity and were overwhelmingly Black, Indigenous, or poor white people. We examined pipeline resistance struggles in three different states—a Black environmental justice community in Louisiana with the highest rates of cancer in the country, an Indigenous nation fighting to protect their cultural resources in Minnesota, and impoverished Appalachian communities in West Virginia.
The fossil fuel industry is weaponizing the term “critical infrastructure protection”—which is historically associated with safeguarding infrastructure that serves a vital function for communities, such as roads and bridges—to restrict the ability of communities to protect themselves against destructive oil and gas projects.
Versions of “Critical Infrastructure Protection” legislation in Louisiana and West Virginia (which have the laws on the books), and Minnesota (where the legislature passed a bill that was subsequently vetoed by the governor), all included similar language that identified varying types of fossil fuel infrastructure as “critical infrastructure” and criminalized entering these sites with the threat of felony charges.
Many versions of the bill also held supposed “co-conspirators” of such activities liable. These types of charges criminalize participation in a group or social movement involved in protesting, which parallels many of the police repression tactics against Stop Cop City, also known as the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement.
Forest defenders who were arrested in Atlanta have often faced “domestic terrorism” enhancement charges in addition to “felony trespassing” due to their association with the “Defend the Atlanta Forest” movement, which prosecutors claim is a “criminal organization” under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
In Muzzling Dissent, we identified how the fossil fuel industry is weaponizing the term “critical infrastructure protection”—which is historically associated with safeguarding infrastructure that serves a vital function for communities, such as roads and bridges—to restrict the ability of communities to protect themselves against destructive oil and gas projects.
Similarly, the State of Georgia and the City of Atlanta are now weaponizing RICO, a 1970s law to prosecute violent mafia activity, against an autonomous and decentralized environmental justice movement.
Corporate Capture
“Critical Infrastructure Protection” laws are most successful in states with the most concentrated fossil fuel industry power at a time when domestic oil and gas production is at a record high.
In all three of our case studies, the “Critical Infrastructure Protection” bills were led by state legislators who took large campaign donations from oil and gas companies. In fact, the original model text for the bills was drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—a nonprofit heavily funded by the fossil fuel industry and closely tied to many of the policy makers who passed the bills.
Muzzling Dissent was ultimately an illustration of how unfettered corporate power leads to the criminalization of community resistance against wealthy, private interests. Similarly, it’s no coincidence that Cop City is being built in a heavily corporatized city.
Atlanta is also home to Coca-Cola, UPS, Delta Airlines and Home Depot—each of which are represented on the APF’s Board of Directors, with the recent exception of Coca-Cola.
Atlanta has been dubbed the “Silicon Peach” because of its position as one of the fastest growing urban technology hubs in the United States. In addition to a booming technology sector, recent tax cuts for the film industry have made Atlanta a new hotspot for high-budget entertainment studios.
Atlanta is also home to Coca-Cola, UPS, Delta Airlines and Home Depot—each of which are represented on the APF’s Board of Directors (with the recent exception of Coca-Cola, which stepped down after Color of Change exposed the corruption and controversies surrounding the foundation).
The unwillingness of the majority of elected officials in Atlanta to acknowledge the widespread opposition to Cop City is a testament to the power of the corporate-backed APF.
Undermining Democracy
The recent Congressional intervention to force construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is also consistent with the trend of powerful corporate interests promoting militarized state repression to protect their interests against the popular will.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.), the architect of the provision benefiting MVP in the debt ceiling bill, gets the most oil and gas industry money of any federal legislator. And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who made the back-room deal with Manchin to force the pipeline’s approval, has received more than $300,000 from MVP developer NextEra Energy.
While the MVP deal does not directly criminalize dissent, it closes off regulatory and legal tools for project-impacted communities to fight back, making protest and direct action even more indispensable. It requires regulatory agencies to issue all permits for the project without going through the customary review process that projects usually have to go through, cutting communities out of intervening in permitting processes by filing comments in regulatory dockets. It also exempts permits issued to the MVP from judicial review, closing off the courts as another venue for communities to fight back.
Despite their opponents’ best efforts, Atlanta Forest Defenders have not given up on democracy.
When the so-called “proper channels” for communities to resist harmful corporate projects are made inaccessible, protest tactics are sometimes seen as the only choice left for those fighting to defend their communities. And as the crackdown in Atlanta shows, such protest tactics can lead to activists being locked up, creating a chilling effect for those engaging in dissent.
This trend is a serious threat to social movement organizing. The first step in fighting back is to develop a shared understanding of militarization of law enforcement, stigmatization of protest, and corporate capture of government—not as isolated evils, but as an intertwined strategy to undermine democracy.
In the meantime, Stop Cop City organizers are circulating a petition to put the issue before voters on the ballot for municipal elections on November 7. If the organizers collect enough signatures to put the decision on Cop City question on the ballot, voters will get to choose whether or not to lease the city-owned land for the project. Despite their opponents’ best efforts, Atlanta Forest Defenders have not given up on democracy. They are taking their case against Cop City directly to the people of Atlanta, asserting organized people power as the antidote to concentrated corporate power.
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Atlanta Referendum to Block 'Cop City' Clears Key Bureaucratic Hurdle
Backers of an Atlanta ballot measure to cancel the land lease enabling the controversial training complex now have less than two months to gather more than 70,000 signatures.
Jun 22, 2023
Opponents of the proposed Public Safety Training Center—widely known as "Cop City"—near Atlanta cleared an important administrative hurdle Wednesday as the city clerk's office approved their petition for a referendum on whether to cancel the controversial project's land lease.
The petitioners will now have just 58 days to collect signatures from 15% of Atlanta's registered voters—or 70,000-75,000 people—in order for the referendum to qualify for this November's ballot.
Paul Glaze, an organizer with Cop City Vote Coalition, told WXIA that more than 3,000 volunteer canvassers have already signed up to gather signatures.
"The mayor says the people of Atlanta want Cop City, that this is a thing the people want, and if that's true, no one should be afraid of a vote," Glaze said, referring to Democratic Mayor Andre Dickens, a supporter of the project. "We are committed to this and we believe in this."
The petition's approval follows months of protests inside and around Atlanta City Hall. Cop City opponents are set to launch a week of action this weekend to drum up support for the ballot measure and amplify opposition to the $90 million project, which is funded largely by the city of Atlanta and the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF).
Despite opposition from environmental, racial justice, Indigenous, and other groups, the APF—a private organization whose backers include major corporations like Amazon, Home Depot, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and UPS—was granted permission in 2021 to build Cop City in the Weelaunee Forest in DeKalb County just outside Atlanta city limits.
The complex would be built on land stolen from the Muscogee people, many of whom were forced westward during the genocidal Trail of Tears period.
Earlier this month, the Atlanta City Council approved funding for the project.
In January, militarized police shot and killed Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, a 26-year-old protester also known as "Tortuguita" who officers claim opened fire on them, during a raid to violently remove forest defenders from the project site. A DeKalb County Medical Examiner autopsy—which officials suppressed for months—revealed that Terán was shot 57 times and that there was no gunpowder residue on the victim's hands, debunking the government's claim Terán fired first.
Police subsequently charged nonviolent anti-Cop City activists with "domestic terrorism," a move described as "unprecedented" by human rights defenders.
Police also arrested Marlon Scott Kautz, Savannah Patterson, and Adele Maclean of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund (ASF)—a legal aid group and bail fund supporting the Cop City protesters—in a dramatic militarized raid on June 1.
Authorities accused the trio of money laundering and charity fraud, with Georgia Deputy Attorney General John Fowler claiming that despite what "appears to be laudable [and] lawful" nonprofit work, the defendants "harbor extremist anti-government and anti-establishment views and not all of the money goes to what they say that it goes to."
Atlanta City Councilmember Liliana Bakhtiari responded by calling the organizers—who deny the allegations against them—"some of the best of our Atlanta mutual aid network" and condemning their arrests as "nothing more than an intimidation tactic by the state."
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'The Whole World Is Watching': Atlanta City Council Approves Cop City Funding
"We're here pleading our case to a government that has been unresponsive, if not hostile, to an unprecedented movement in our City Council's history," one opponent of the police training facility said.
Jun 06, 2023
After listening to nearly 15 hours of public comments opposing the controversial project, the Atlanta City Council voted early Tuesday to provide additional funding for a police training center known as "Cop City."
A coalition of activists and community members have been protesting the facility since the council first approved it in 2021, arguing that it would increase the militarization of the police and destroy 85 acres of Weelaunee Forest, one of Atlanta's four "city lungs."
"I cannot believe I am standing here, pleading for you not to spend the tax dollars of a Black city, to tear down a forest in a Black neighborhood, to increase the policing & caging of more and more Black people," one Atlanta resident said at the council meeting. "All this in a city with Black leadership. I'm tired of it."
\u201c\u201cI 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 & caging of more Black people. All this in a city with Black leadership. It breaks my heart.\u201d #StopCopCity\u201d— Clara T Green (@Clara T Green) 1686017511
Despite a day and night of similar comments, the council voted 11-4 to approve additional funds for the $90 million project a little after 5:00 am ET Tuesday morning, The Associated Press reported.
"The whole world is watching," the public chanted during the vote, as WABEreported.
When the training center was first approved in September 2021, city officials said that taxpayers would only foot $30 million of the bill, according to the Atlanta Community Press Collective. However, recent reporting from the collective revealed that, as early as late October of the same year, members of the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) were discussing further funding with the city, in the form of a $1 million-per-year lease back arrangement with the city that would repay a $20 million construction loan over 20 years.
The final bill approved by the council Tuesday is even higher than that: It includes the initial $30 million, an additional $1 million for a gym, and approval for Mayor Andre Dickens to enter a lease-back arrangement with the APF that would actually amount to $36 million over the next 30 years, according to WABE.
"Just think what $60 million can do to care, educate, house, and nurture the people of this city," the same Atlanta resident said of the project's expanded price tag.
"Just think what $60 million can do to care, educate, house, and nurture the people of this city."
City officials argue that the deal still saves them money they would otherwise have to spend renting another facility and that the city's police and fire departments truly need a new training center, according to WABE.
In a statement Tuesday, Dickens called the vote a "major milestone" and promised to make Atlanta a "national model for police reform with the most progressive training and curriculum in the country."
"We know there have been passionate feelings and opinions about the training center," he added. "Over the past several months, we have heard from citizens who have concerns about the center as well as from many who support it."
The latter were in short supply at the council meeting. More than 350 people signed up to comment, according to WABE, and more than 220 of them spoke against the center, AP reported.
"We're here pleading our case to a government that has been unresponsive, if not hostile, to an unprecedented movement in our City Council's history," Matthew Johnson, the executive director of local nonprofit Beloved Community Ministries, said at the meeting, according to AP. "We're here to stop environmental racism and the militarization of the police."
Residents expressed concern about what losing the forest would do to water quality and the urban environment.
"It's majority Black and brown immigrant communities, poor, working-class people, and so that has been a sanctuary for our people for a very long time," 26-year Atlanta resident Eva Cardenas, who attends church two blocks from the "Cop City" site, said during a rally before the meeting, according to WABE. "Seeing that being clear cut and displacing our people is really concerning to me because it leaves us vulnerable."
Rights groups and experts have criticized the city's response to the protests for being heavy-handed and "fascist." In January, police shot and killed forest defender Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, or Tortuguita, in what experts toldThe Guardian was the first U.S. police killing of an activist trying to prevent a forest from being cleared. Police have also charged anti-"Cop City" activists with "domestic terrorism," another unprecedented move.
Days before Tuesday's vote, police arrested three members of a bail fund group that had supported the protesters, making the Atlanta Solidarity Fund "the first bail fund to be attacked in this way," Civil Liberties Defense Center executive director Lauren Regan said at the time.
But despite the arrests and Tuesday's vote, "Cop City" opponents are not deterred.
"The message of 15 hours yesterday was consistent: Cop City will never be built," the group Defend the Atlanta Forest wrote on Twitter.
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