In one of worst trades in history, politicians in Atlanta Georgia are spending $90 million, one third of which is taxpayer money, to raze 85 acres of the Weelaunee Forest and build a militaristic training center for cops in its place. The facility is to include a mock city complete with a nightclub, apartments, and a school with classrooms presumably to prepare for some imagined, impending domestic insurgency. Statist proponents believe better training will save lives when, in fact, other such facilities have only increased police brutality.
The choice of the Weelaunee Forest as a location for the training center is very telling considering its history. The Muscogee Peoples called this forest home until being forcibly removed during the Trail of Tears in the 1830s. The land was bought by the Federal government in 1917 and transformed into a prisoner-of-war-camp. Three years later it became the Atlanta Prison Farm, which remained operational until 1995. Georgia officials seek to continue this legacy of indigenous displacement, prison slavery, and police terrorism. Further, they wish to erase the gains of the modern Civil Rights movement that some say was catalyzed in Atlanta Georgia due its rich history of Black organizing and civil rights protest in the 1960s and ‘70s.
For a moment in 2020 when the momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement had peaked and acts of resistance, sabotage, and the establishment of autonomous zones had reached a fever pitch, there was brief talk of defunding police departments, even in mainstream, corporate media. With that momentum gone, politicians have doubled down, investing billions more taxpayer dollars in “predictive policing” and these Orwellian “training grounds” so that they can gun down more innocent people with impunity. Already more than $100 billion is spent on US police, but politicians feel it’s not enough. Fortunately, some cities like Portland, San Francisco, and Denver have implemented alternatives like street response teams that do not involve police, but these programs are not widespread.
The Atlanta Police Foundation is providing $30 million for cop city, and major US companies have donated to the foundation including Amazon, Home Depot, Nationwide insurance, UPS, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Chase bank, and Wells Fargo.[i] Amazon’s Senior Public Relations Manager, Nikki Forman, Vice President of Technology at Home Depot, Daniel Grider, and South Atlanta Area President of Wells Fargo, Mitch Graul, all sit on the Board of Trustees of the Foundation.
Activists protesting cop city construction have faced unprecedented legal charges that amount to political witch-hunts. On December 13th of last year, five activists were charged with domestic terrorism for camping in trees slated for destruction to delay construction of the facility. Georgia’s own lunatic Republican Governor, Brian Kemp, commended the police for the arrests, and referred to the protesters as domestic terrorists, saying “We will not stop or slow down when it comes to bringing domestic terrorists to justice in Georgia, and yesterday’s arrests should serve as a strong reminder of that to anyone threatening our communities.”[ii]
Terrorism has become an almost meaningless slur used by the state. It has been used to describe all kinds of civil disobedience and constitutionally protected speech, yet it is effective because it intimidates those who trust the state, turning them against protesters, and it dissuades many who seek to protest for fear of being charged with terrorism. The FBI defines terrorism as the “unlawful use or threatened use of violence committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” As the state defines what is lawful, of course, they don’t classify their own violence and threats of violence to pursue their own political and social objectives as unlawful (even when it does violate their own law) but without this legal double standard, most of its activities would qualify as terrorism.
A month after the groundless terrorism charges were made, one of the Cop City protesters, unarmed Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, was shot 57 times by police with his hands up sitting cross-legged.[iii] Cops lied, claiming Manuel shot first and wounded an officer but the autopsy report by the DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office found no trace of gunpower on his hands and ruled the death a homicide. This was simply an execution by firing squad consisting of Bryland Myers, Jerry Parrish, Jonathan Salcedo, Mark Jonathan Lamb, Ronaldo Kegel, and Royce Zah. Body camera footage later revealed the cop who was wounded may have been accidently shot by one of his other “brothers in blue,” not by Terán.[iv] None of them have been charged with a crime.
On March 5th, 2023, twenty-three more people were charged with domestic terrorism simply for attending a music festival in a public park near the cop city construction site. Thomas Jurgens, one of those arrested, was simply there as a legal observer from the National Lawyers Guild.[v] Police claimed the concert was being used as a “cover” for a coordinated attack on construction equipment where the facility is being built. In fact, more than 1000 people attended the festival. The 23 arrested were just the people police had the opportunity to grab. If they could have arrested them well, they would have. An organizer for the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, Marlon Kautz, noted “At this point the police seem to be charging every protester they arrest with ‘domestic terrorism’ regardless of the circumstances”.[vi] The reality is cops commit more domestic terrorism than any designated domestic terrorist group by harassing, fining, stealing, abducting, caging, torturing, and killing with impunity. Since December of 2022, 42 people have been charged with “domestic terrorism” for alleged participation in the protest movement against cop city. Warrants for their arrests have cited trivial nonsense as “evidence,” such as finding mud on the shoes of those accused and the numbers for legal support groups written on their arms.
In May in an egregious and Draconian violation of their right to free speech, three activists, Julia Dupuis, Caroline Tennenbaum, and Abeeku Osei Vassall faced felony charges for “intimidation” and “misdemeanor stalking” charges with potential sentences of up to 20 years in prison for posting flyers in Bartow Conty Georgia about the killing of Tortuguita.[vii] This kind of stifling of free speech is what one would expect in the most totalitarian dictatorships. The three arrested were held for days in solitary confinement and were denied bond. Their lawyer, Lyra Foster, told the Intercept, “An unarmed activist died in a hail of gunfire in the woods and now the state says it’s felony intimidation to even talk about that.” According to the state talking about its own terrorism, its brutal execution of an unarmed protester, is itself “terrorism.” Governor, Brian Kemp, furthered the narrative, stating, “These criminals facilitated and encouraged domestic terrorism.” These attacks on free speech aren’t exclusive to Georgia. Since 2018 lawmakers around the country have pushed for hundreds of anti-protest bills.”[viii]
On May 31st, Marlon Scott Kautz, Adele Maclean, and Savannah Patterson of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, were arrested and charged with “money laundering and charity fraud.” The Solidarity Fund takes donations to support incarcerated protesters as they make their way through the legal system by providing bail and legal representation as thousands of other organizations do and have done for years. Activists at Defend the Atlanta Forest wrote “Attacking the Solidarity Fund for charity fraud should concern all bail funds, all abortion funds, all travel funds for migrants, watchdog groups, all organized material support for people criminalized by the government,”[ix]
On August 29th, 61 cop city protesters were indicted on racketeering-influenced and corrupt organizations (RICO) charges,[x] which can carry a sentence of 20 years in prison, seizure of assets, and are typically used to indict members of the mafia. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation and state prosecutors said they would file RICO charges back in February. The indictment claims organizers of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund are at the center of the so-called RICO conspiracy. “In addition to RICO charges, three Solidarity Fund organizers have also been charged with 15 counts of money laundering from transactions dating back to Jan. 12, 2022, for as little as $11.91 for the purchase of glue.”[xi] Geoffrey Parsons, one of the people indicted, signed his name ACAB and this was mentioned in the indictment as “an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.” Jurgens, the legal observer charged in March with “domestic terrorism” was one of the 61 named in the RICO indictment. In fact, all of those charged with “domestic terrorism” were included in the RICO indictment. Crimethinc reported last month many of those charged with violating the RICO Act have never even met, let alone had the opportunity to organize a conspiracy together. The indictment alleges that the “conspiracy” began on May 25, 2020 long before the plans for construction of cop city were announced to the public. This date is purely symbolic as it is the date George Floyd was killed by police. It is an incendiary insult to his memory and to all those resist police terror. It is a knife in an open wound the state will never allow to heal.
Georgia police simply want their playground so they can play pretend solider with the rest of us and they are willing to do anything to get it. They are stuck in boyish adolescence enamored by fast cars, dangerous toys, power, and fear of minorities they have “othered”. Last year police killed at least 1201 people, 26% of whom were black, despite the fact that only 13% of the total US population is black.[xii] 109 of the victims were having a mental health crisis. At least 103 were unarmed.[xiii] Most were killed in response to a call to police reporting suspected non-violent crime or no crime at all. 33% of those killed by police were simply trying to flee. Somehow execution is deemed a lawful, “justifiable” response to a suspect trying to escape the police. 98.1% of police killings from 2013-2022 resulted in no charges against the cops responsible. Of the 1.9% charged, an even smaller percentage were convicted. If the murderers didn’t have badges and uniforms, of course, nearly all would be found guilty. What else could this be called other than terrorism?
Although over 116,000 residents in Georgia have signed the petition by the Vote to Stop Cop City Coalition for a referendum to stop construction (twice the number needed to call the vote) a vote is yet to be called. Georgia’s attorney general’s office called the petition “invalid”. Other officials, such as Atlanta’s Interim Municipal Clerk Vanessa Waldon are claiming the signatures must be “verified” as authentic, which organizers tried to do on September 11th but they were told the city clerk was “legally barred” from verifying them. It is clear that the city’s politicians do not want a referendum as they know they will lose. The verification process of signature matching itself has been criticized as a way to suppress votes as any slight variation in a person’s signature can result in it being incorrectly labeled as inauthentic. The Intercept reported in August that in “one study, for instance, showed that 97 percent of signatures rejected under Ohio’s signature-matching law were likely authentic.”[xiv]
As in all struggles a diversity of tactics is crucial. While the petition may or may not result in a referendum, there are other ways to help. You can donate to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund and other bail funds for protesters. You can boycott and divest from the companies invested in Cop City. You can organize or join a local protest. You can spread the word posting flyers on the places of business of investors. An example might be to post a flyer that reads “Manuel Teran, an unarmed protester, was shot 57 times by police for protesting the construction of a militaristic facility for police that this business is invested in. It has blood on its hands. You don’t have to have any on yours.” If these businesses feel they are losing money because of their investment in this facility, they might pull their funding. Direct action is another tactic. You can also call for the indictment of Brian Kemp, mayor Andre Dickens[xv], and indictment of the officers responsible for killing Manuel Teran.
This fight is not just about this one facility. It is emblematic of the rising tide of police brutality, totalitarianism, white supremacy, the chilling of free speech, endemic not only in the US but many parts of the world. We cannot allow them this facility lest this momentum continue.
[i] Meet the Major Corporations and Cultural Institutions Helping Build Cop City in Atlanta – Eyes on the Ties (littlesis.org)
[ii] Five people arrested on domestic terrorism charges in clash at Atlanta’s ‘Cop City’ site | CNN
[iii] Police Shot Atlanta Cop City Protester 57 Times, Autopsy Finds (theintercept.com)
[iv] Cop City Body Camera Footage Suggests Police Shot Officer (theintercept.com)
[v] Georgia Attorney General brings RICO indictments against 61 activists – Atlanta Community Press Collective. (atlpresscollective.com)
[vi] Police Crack Down on Atlanta Cop City Protesters (theintercept.com)
[vii] Activists Face Felonies for Flyers on “Cop City” Protester Killing (theintercept.com)
[viii] Free Speech Is Under Assault in Georgia Over ‘Cop City’ Protests – Rolling Stone
[ix] Three Atlanta Activists Arrested, Home Raided Over Bail Fund – UNICORN RIOT
[x] Over 60 People Indicted on RICO Charges in Atlanta, Allegedly Promoting ‘Anarchist Ideas’ – UNICORN RIOT
[xi] Georgia Attorney General brings RICO indictments against 61 activists – Atlanta Community Press Collective. (atlpresscollective.com)
[xiii] 2022 Police Violence Report
[xiv] Atlanta Officials Unveil Onerous Verification Requirements for Cop City Referendum – The Intercept
[xv] Community Demands Dickens Cancel Lease & Resign as Mayor – Stop Cop City
Tools of Control 
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