Original link: https://gravitysworm.com/post/723165394239700992
Terminal media version: https://theinitium.com/article/20230717-international-cop-city/
In the early hours of June 6, 2023, after listening to 15 consecutive hours of one-sided public statements and protests, the Atlanta City Council, dominated by the Democratic Party of the United States, voted 11 to 4 to pass what the activists called “Police City ( Cop City)” project.
Cop City is called “Atlanta Public Safety Training Center (Atlanta Public Safety Training Center)” in official documents. It is a large-scale militarization base for training police and firefighters that is planned to be built in the southern forest area and near the black community. , will invest 90 million US dollars in debt successively, covering an area of 85 acres. The Police City project was commissioned by the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF), the largest of more than 170 similar agencies across the country, which swelled into a major lobbying platform for business conservatives after the Ferguson protests in 2014. APF’s board of directors includes executives from the most important local companies in Atlanta, such as Delta, Chick-fil-A, Home Depot , UPS, etc.
Despite funding for the project, the Stop Cop City (SCC) and related forestry movement is not over. The following June 8th is the national action day of the movement, and June 24th to July 1st is the sixth week of action ( Week of Action ) since the movement was launched. What matters to activists is that a cop city will never be built, not that it gets funded. “Once you build, we burn” has also become a new slogan for action, which allows the movement’s agenda and success or failure to transcend the decision-making process of political elites, and its potential energy cannot be absorbed by any party.
“Abolish Police City” may be the culmination of radical social movements in the United States over the past decade or so. “Occupy Wall Street” (Occupy Wall Street), “NoDAPL”, “Black Lives Matter” (Black Lives Matter) and other movements interspersed and overlapped, changing new public discourses and practices method. At the same time, this is a movement that lacks the spotlight, but continues to continue organically. The resilience and contradictions displayed in it also challenge the dichotomy between success and failure in social movements, and refresh the understanding of the political opportunities and vitality of the movement. In a generally decaying political landscape, the abolition of Police City ignites a new paradigm.
The Long Fight to Abolish the Police City Movement
People who have only paid attention to the movement this year due to the increase in media reports may be surprised to find that the “Abolish Police City” movement has already begun to brew after the trough of “Black Lives Matter” offline protests after 2020. It has been more than two years, and new actions and issues are constantly emerging.
The “Black Lives Matter” and the epidemic in 2020 have become an opportunity for the expansion of police power in major American cities and the debut of center-right politicians. New York, Atlanta, and Philadelphia have successively elected mayors who support the expansion of police power. Atlanta’s Police City project has pushed the upgrade of police power to the extreme. It does not hesitate to eradicate forests and borrow 30 years to complete the construction of the project. The Police City project capitalized on some of the public’s concerns about poor policing and cuts to police power, and was able to rapidly intensify racial and prison capitalism in a deeply divided city.
In mid-2021, the details of the semi-public police city project were discovered by Atlanta activists, and frequent and scattered offline protests and sabotage against the companies involved have already started. In September, the City Council voted to pass the plan despite continued protests, and the site of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm was officially handed over to the Atlanta Police Foundation. However, the advancement of the project still needs key financial support. At the end of 2021, amidst the outrage against politicians who want to go their own way, SCC has developed into a loose alliance connecting progressive communities, school districts, activists, and aboriginal networks across the city. Trees are installed with steel thorns to prevent trees from being felled. In 2022, occupations become more frequent and widespread. Meanwhile, the boycott spread beyond Atlanta, with harassment and attacks on agencies that provide services and funds to the Atlanta Police Foundation. The layer-by-layer agency and outsourcing system of supply chain capitalism has laid the foundation for SCC’s multi-level resistance while reducing costs and shifting the spearhead. According to data from Vice News, as of March 2023, at least 60 commercial sabotages have been carried out in the name of SCC across 19 states in the United States.
At the end of 2022, violent agencies headed by the Ministry of Justice and the police at the state level began to strengthen searches and suppression, and charged those arrested with “domestic terrorism”. It was also waves of police raids that led to the movement’s worst tragedy to date on January 18, 2023, when Georgia State Patrol officers shot and killed a forest guard known as Tortuguita (Little Turtle in Spanish) during a standoff by Manuel Terán. Although police insisted Tortuguita fired his own pistol first, an independent autopsy showed Tortuguita was shot 14 times with his hands raised before he died.
Tortuguita was the first environmental activist killed by US police in decades. In 2021, Jessica Reznicek, a Catholic anarchist who deliberately sabotaged the Dakota oil pipeline, was sentenced to eight years in prison. These two landmark incidents symbolize the escalation of the state’s political suppression of the environmental movement amidst the ecological crisis. Ironically, it wasn’t until Tortuguita’s death that the SCC movement gained some rare national media exposure, and the subsequent weeks of action drew more participants.
The SCC has in the past two years incorporated every form of resistance a radical social movement can have. Occupying forests, squares, bridges and universities, setting up camps, organizing bonfire concerts, burning excavators, sabotaging ATMs, setting up solidarity funds, protests in city councils, exposing police foundations for black money operations, these methods have all been used at different times. Many of the strategies employed by the group were ad hoc responses to state violence. Frequent weeks of unannounced operations have dragged violent institutions into protracted guerrilla warfare.
Media Attention and Social Momentum
In the United States, although Tortuguita’s death briefly attracted attention, the media coverage and public awareness of Stop Cop City is far less than that of OWS (Occupy Wall Street), BLM (Black Lives Matter), NoDAPL (opposing the Dakota Oil Pipeline), etc. The better known sports label. Apart from a handful of editorials, few major newspapers in the United States have dedicated in-depth coverage of the movement. The comparison data of Google Trends from 2021 to 2023 shows that the search popularity of SCC keywords is less than one percent of that of BLM, and the frequency is completely concentrated in Georgia, where Atlanta is located, which shows that it is still regarded as a regional movement.
The core information about the movement is basically disseminated within the anarchist community, and many anarchist bookstores hang posters mourning the little turtle. But outside the core community, even those who regularly follow social movements may not know why. On Twitter, the main SCC movement account, Defend the Atlanta Forest, has just over 30,000 followers, not even the reach of a local chapter of the previous national social movement.
During the two years of the movement, apart from sporadic solidarity rallies in New York and memorial services for Tortuguita in some cities, there was no rapid response movement in multiple cities, let alone international reach. In early April, Angela Davis decided to return an award bestowed to her by the Atlanta City Council in protest of the Police City project, possibly the highest level of confederate support the SCC has ever received. Opposing both parties at the same time, and the Atlanta City Council is dominated by Democrats, the SCC has no alliances in the mainstream political arena.
The SCC has long been a peaceful and quiet movement, with images without emotional impact provoking collective public outrage. The forest scene occupied by the movement is neither a landmark building, nor is it difficult to take a view because of the occlusion of the trees. Occupying the tree house and patrolling the forest cannot reproduce the tragic feeling of the snowy night occupation of NoDAPL in Dakota. Because the locations of operations are scattered, the intensity of the conflict has also been greatly diluted.
However, in the absence of international or even sufficient domestic attention, the movement has lasted for more than two years, and new tactical methods have been constantly introduced. For example, at the end of April 2023, when the Weelaunee People’s Park, the park closest to the forest, was cleared and closed, many occupation areas and mutual aid projects did not disappear, but were only more scattered and transferred to various parts of the city. In other words, the lack of media coverage and public discussion has instead become the driving force for SCC to continue.
A key factor behind this paradox is that it means that the movement will not have massive negative comments and backlash from public opinion. “Direct actions” against capitalist machines, such as burning cars and blowing up ATMs, once brought great public criticism during the climax of the “Black Lives Matter” movement in 2020. The opportunistic looting that exists in all movements is amplified by conservatives to discredit the movement as a whole. Coincidentally, a retrospective study found that Zapatista also developed better when the attention of the international English-language media was not so high.
The advantage of a small front is also that the archiving and timeline organization of the campaign is relatively simple and clear. It makes great social movement learning material. In fact, upgrading a social movement requires a lot of manpower for propaganda, interpretation, and coordination. If the scale of expansion cannot match the endogenous strength of the movement, the action will easily implode in the face of external pressure. Therefore, SCC is equivalent to using a limited scale to ensure that the power of movement can be released slowly for a long time.
Atlanta: A new geography of protest
Atlanta offers a somewhat different movement to the imagination in an area that does not share the characteristics of a typical global city. New York and Hong Kong, together with many capitals and central cities in the global south, have gradually shaped the landscape paradigm of sports cities in the past ten years. Their movements rely on advanced communications infrastructure, financial capital, super-high population densities, large middle classes, liberal media networks, politicians and celebrity spokespeople, and are prone to social media headlines. Atlanta doesn’t have these natural athletic advantages.
Atlanta is an extremely poor and segregated southern city. The poverty rate fluctuates around 21% all year round, 40% higher than the national average, and the poverty rate of children and people of color is even higher. Atlanta has a resident population of about 500,000. According to American standards, it can only be regarded as a medium-sized city. The unit population density is only one-eighth of that of New York City and the entire island of Hong Kong. The metropolitan area is small and scattered. Black people gather in the urban area, white people concentrate in the urban fringes, and new Asian and Latino immigrants are distributed around both sides of the I85 highway. It is impossible to mobilize a large number of urban populations in a short period of time.
Atlanta is located in the southern state of Georgia in the United States. State-level politics are still controlled by the Republican Party, and the violence of the state apparatus has been accelerated. As of the beginning of 2023, more than 40 forest guards and participants protesting the killing of the little turtle have been prosecuted by the state of Georgia on the charge of ” domestic terrorism “, of which 23 were arrested in a large-scale arrest in March this year was prosecuted.
Ironically, this piece of Georgia “domestic terrorism” legislation was passed in 2017 to curb lynchings and attacks on black churches by white supremacists. While white supremacy mobilization and violence against Asians did not diminish after the legislation was passed, the law was deliberately expanded to suppress peaceful occupation protesters. According to Georgia’s judicial interpretation, SCC participants broke the law because they attempted to impose government policy by obstructing critical state and national government infrastructure. The reason for the prosecution against the forest guardian even includes wearing black clothes, using a gas mask and using a hammock with his companions.
On May 31, 2023, three months after seeking help from the outside world, three activists in charge of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, Marlon Kautz, Savannah Patterson and Adele Maclean, were raided and arrested by Georgia police. TAs have been accused of participating in financial crimes such as money laundering and charity fraud. The Atlanta Solidarity Fund, established seven years ago, is a social movement rescue project that provides funding to local arrested activists. It was one of the important fundraising and support platforms for BLM at that time and the current SCC.
The indictment of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund radically inflames previous patterns of state repression. The reason for the prosecution shows that the fund is supporting a group called Defend the Atlanta Forest (DTAF). Despite the fact that the group does not exist, just a Twitter account with no registered entity, Georgia prosecutors say DTAF is currently a domestic violent extremist as defined by the Department of Homeland Security. After 2020, the extreme right has been sparing no effort to ask the government to define the “Black Lives Matter” movement, which does not have a central organization, as a terrorist organization. Unexpectedly, this seemingly extremely low-operational goal took the lead in “abolishing the police city” ” has been realized.
In addition to the large number of arrests, prolonged detention, and heavier charges, the sky-high bail set up by the Georgia judiciary and the inhumane treatment in the DeKalb short-term prison (Jail) have also become channels for violent agencies to destroy the will of activists. Local activist friends told me that these seemingly inconceivable suppressions are the daily routine of social movements in the south. Therefore, some friends considered becoming “social movement immigrants” and moved to the relatively inclusive blue state cities on the east and west coasts to continue participating in the movement.
However, unlike the urban ormativity that often existed in previous movements, Atlanta’s huge park and forest coverage also promoted the generation of a new protest geography. The interweaving of urban and forest images enables protests to transcend the division of man-made and natural spaces, and to cross multiple movements such as race, environmental protection, aboriginal people, and queer liberation. The forest blocks signals and is also a natural anti-surveillance base. Occupation participants are forced to abandon the communication method that relies heavily on online real-time connections, and instead explore physical, offline, and short-distance information transmission methods.
Book Donation Fundraiser for May 2023
Due to the brutal repression by the state apparatus, the SCC’s mobilization model is closer to the Global South, and it is easier to gain empathy from activists outside the United States. For example, the movement has also initiated donations and postcards to interned forest guardians. Online mobilization is also highly dependent on the spread of anonymous and decentralized social networks. The left-wing servers in Mastodon, Signal, Telegram, and Jitsi have become important nodes. This is in sharp contrast to the “Black Lives Matter” period in 2020, when everyone publicly spread Hashtags on social media and rarely used encrypted communication tools. According to the author’s observations in the past two years, the Signal usage rate and encryption awareness of the American sports community, especially the colored sports community, have increased significantly, which is closely related to the proliferation of radical social movements.
Low-frequency revival of anarchism
At present, the action strategy of “abolishing the police city” has been practiced in the existing localized anarchist movement. These movement tactics are seen as “very new” because they were often overshadowed in the past by socialist left-wing communities that emphasized centralized, coordinated mobilization.
A large number of SCC participants have come all the way in the tempering of the decentralization movement in the past. Tortuguita was an in-depth participant of the decentralized organization Food Not Bombs (FNB) before SCC. FNB originated in Boston in the 1980s, dedicated to collecting and sharing free vegetarian food. As of 2021, despite constant suppression, there are hundreds of decentralized FNB sites around the world, and its members often play key roles in other political movements. There are free food distribution points in the SCC’s occupation area, and there is also a Food Self-Festival in March this year. These practices are reminiscent of FNB. Historically, the FNB was one of the few radical social movements that continued to function healthily during the anarchist downturn of the 80s. From the perspective of movement structure, it often acts as a bonding, coordination and relief network for other political movements. This overlap, continuation, and complementarity of anarchist communities has also been demonstrated in the Occupy Wall Street and anti-Dakota oil pipeline movements. Many small local bookstores and mutual aid networks have played important guides in the Occupy scene. , information transmission and food supply functions.
Headcount rallies are not the crux of the SCC, which makes it less dependent on the media to survive. SCC is reviving and disseminating a set of attempts on how to radicalize life, including how to run affinity groups, how to raise funds anonymously and reduce risks, how to preserve food without electricity, how to build and maintain hydroelectric facilities, and how to DIY A local solar communication network, and even how to climb trees with rock climbing equipment , how to treat gunshot wounds, etc. Participants’ experience at the camp not only increases the “knowledge” and ideological understanding of the movement, but also a set of general skills that can be used to live together away from violent institutions.
Poster for an anarchist bookstore in Philadelphia
The SCC’s struggle is also one of the signs of the low-frequency recovery of anarchism after the epidemic, although this trend is difficult to confirm with data. It often comes from some subtle signals, such as words such as “Mutual Aid” gradually entering the discourse and practice of non-anarchist communities, and for example, the DIY workshops held by local anarchist bookstores are often full. The SCC is a minor tributary of these trends, both opposing state and judicial violence and rejecting a form of organized movement with purpose and unity.
the art of resilience
The continuation of the SCC movement is of course accompanied by crises. Atlanta is considered to be the new arrival city for immigrants and minorities in the 21st century. In the suburbs, Asian and Latino populations have been skyrocketing. However, the Asian and Latino gathering areas are in the northeast, and the forest area is in the reverse position in the southeast. Physical distance has become a natural barrier to participation. Due to the long-term geographical and residential isolation, the immigrant community is also more likely to be suspicious of the abolition of the police and stay away from the movement. So far, it appears that the communities with the highest support for SCC are concentrated in impoverished neighborhoods in the East, South, downtown, and black college towns, where city councilors voted against the project. In addition, the anonymity of the movement guarantees the external security and equality of participants, but at the same time increases the difficulty of maintaining trust and mutual accountability within the movement, especially among affinity communities. Similar to what happened in the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in Seattle in 2020, there are still some obstacles to cross-ethnic mobilization within the SCC.
Under the reality that the police city appropriation has been approved, SCC will face more severe challenges in the coming time. In the foreseeable future, this movement will still not have the support of political elites. The Georgia Republican Party regards it as a weapon to attack the extreme left and regain votes, while the Democrats represented by Mayor Andre Dickens are trying to repair the relationship with the police. Relationships continue to act as silent accomplices. The media reports around June 6 basically presuppose a final conclusion: the project funding has been approved, there is no Plan B for the site selection, the resistance movement has failed, and the police city will eventually be built. The SCC side delivered a critical rebuttal in a timely manner, but it needed to gather strength to reverse the movement’s sense of defeat.
“Abolish the police city” may have adapted to the current situation of being trapped. When the Police City project was first approved two years ago, the movement had already faced challenges with low morale and attrition. Ultimately, the movement expanded its agenda and revitalized it through a decentralized and varied Action Week agenda. Similarly, the sixth action week at the end of June has also become an important test field for accumulating the potential energy of the movement. Participants have attracted more newcomers through activities such as Little Turtle’s memorial service, park parties, and business boycotts. At the same time, community meetings, arrest notice workshops, food distribution, picnics, etc. are still held regularly in the center; under the strict defense of the forest by the police, Brownwood Park not far from the forest has become a new occupation and activity area. On the electoral mobilization front, a new coalition is pushing Police City into this November’s Atlanta referendum, and the city’s relentless response is helping to brew a new street movement. Today, “Abolish Police City” is no longer just about opposing a given municipal project. It’s more about Atlanta’s political landscape, the boundaries of grassroots mobilization, and how ordinary people can use their bodies to resist bloodthirsty machines in the present.
The historical trajectory of the anti-establishment movement, from ACT UP in the late 1980s to the antiwar protests of the 2000s, illustrates that an ideal political, media, and geographic environment is not always necessary for protest to persist. The rapid retreat of public support after BLM in 2020 is also a warning to activists. The apparent fellow movement, such as the seemingly tenacious support of the interracial alliance, may also be a time bomb that destroys the movement in the later stage. For radical social movements employing direct action, the absence of several factors appears to be the condition that breeds resilience. The current situation of SCC is the best illustration of this contradiction.
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