Above photo: Mary Hooks spoke outside Atlanta City Hall on Friday, March 22, in opposition to Cop City a privately owned military style police training base currently under construction.
Atlanta, Georgia – A collective of Black Women of the Movement for Black Lives dropped a 30-foot banner under the atrium of City Hall and demanded Mayor Andre Dickens allow Atlanta residents to vote on whether or not construction of Cop City should proceed in DeKalb County. Outside Atlanta City Hall they displayed banners sewn with samples of over one hundred thousand petitions of Atlanta area residents opposed to Cop City. Several city employees watched the demonstration inside City Hall as the women chanted “Stop Cop City!” and “Black Women Oppose Cop City!”
The Black Women collective were met with over a dozen police both inside and outside City Hall. Police responded by tearing down and destroying banners the women had assembled and painted—one banner read ‘Black Women Against Cop City,“ which they hung from the third floor banister inside the City Hall atrium. It was torn down by police a few minutes after it was unfurled (video of action is below). Another banner which the women attached to a fence outside and across the street from Atlanta City Hall was also torn down by an angry police officer.
There were no arrests during the banner drop and sidewalk action, however police and City Hall security photographed each participant and videotaped the action inside City Hall, despite it being a peaceful action, a spirited exercise of First Amendment rights, and within the law.
Several spokeswomen told of the history of police oppression and repression of rights in the fight against Cop City and warned it was an effort to privatize police, avoid accountability, and a threat to the safety of struggling communities across the Atlanta region. If the cop city were to be completed and go into full operation, it would “be police oppression on steroids,” said one of the speakers.
A mother and resident of metro Atlanta said she was concerned that the people of Atlanta were being denied a vote by the mayor. “A $120 million cop city a few miles from where i live does not make me or my children feel safe and does not make me feel good about the prospect of the future,” said Edget Betru, an organizer with Community Movement Builders. “I want the mayor to let the people of Atlanta to decide whether we want this facility and what we want to do with $120 million.”
Cop City Built from Dark History of Oppression
Cop City Atlanta is a $120 million police training facility being built for municipal city police as well as regional police forces to access advanced military tactics, training, and equipment. This facility will include a Black Hawk heliport, a mock urban combat training zone, firing ranges, military grade vehicles, military grade weaponry and equipment, a K-9 kennel, firefighting infrastructure, and a facility training and support staff. The details of the plans for this military grade training facility could not be obtained as of publication.
The 85 acre site being developed was acquired from an Old Atlanta Prison Farm known as South River Forest in DeKalb County which was abandoned in 1995. The land was previously taken from the Muscogee Indigenous Tribe during the 1830s when the Federal Government forcibly removed and relocated the indigenous owners living there and sending them to a reservation in Oklahoma. This was the beginning of the Trail of Tears at Stone Mountain.
The forest was acquired 2021 for the Cop City project after the Black Lives Matter protests swept the nation in the wake of the Minneapolis Police murder of George Floyd.
Black Women Have Worked To Quash Cop City Through Legal Channels
Mary Hooks, one of the spokespeople at the action said that the construction of Cop City was not the only project being planned and 47 States nationwide had planned 67 similar military grade training sites. Hooks said that Mayor Dickens was not really concerned about the well-being and improvement of struggling Black communities. Hooks pointed out the Mayor had gone against his July 2023 commitment to not intervene in a petition gathering process but has done everything to subvert the petition process which would have allowed a referendum to appear on the November ballot. Under the present policy, if communities gather a minimum 60,000 signatures for a ballot initiative, an issue could be added as a referendum to the next November election. Activists worked for many months to gather nearly double that requirement—totaling 116,000 signatures as of September 2023—in opposition to the planned sprawling military Cop City complex.
Mayor Dickens appealed the ballot referendum on Cop City on the basis that the signatures were gathered by non-Atlanta residents, however, in a lawsuit filing, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Cohen found no basis to disallow the signatures and determined they were obtained legally. Mayor Dickens appealed the Judge’s findings, and so far has blocked the referendum from appearing on the ballot. The Judge has no legal power to compel Mayor Dickens to approve the referendum and place it on the November ballot, but he stated from the bench that the Mayor’s office was the source of “confusion” and “dishonesty” in the referendum process, according to a report published by AP.
Plans Are Forming To Roll Out Cop City Projects Nationwide
Hooks warned that civil rights organizations and social justice organizations of communities in other States must study strategies that the Atlanta Movement for Black Lives has undertaken to learn from its successes and mistakes to stop plans similar to the Atlanta Cop City facility from being built in their communities.
“The public should be concerned the same way we have been rallying about the privatization of prisons and what we have seen coming out of that,” she said. “We should be just as concerned about the ways cop city is being built with private money and who is running it.
Atlanta Cop City is primarily owned by Atlanta Police Foundation, a private organization with no public oversight. Hooks said that its CEO, David Wilkerson was inaccessible and would not answer their inquiries. “They know that we know what happens when people put our power together across color, race, class, gender, and sexuality, and they want to stop it. They want to stop everyday people from engaging in community control,” said Hooks.
Hooks later said at a debriefing the women had plenty of banners for future actions.