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Arrest Of Bail Fund Organizers In Atlanta Sets A Dangerous Precedent

June 1, 2023 Zoe Alexandra, People's Dispatch. , , , ,
Officers from the Atlanta Police Department (APD) and the Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI) raided an activist house in the southern US city of Atlanta on the morning of May 31. During the raid, the officers arrested three members of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, a non-profit organization that provides “support for people who are arrested at protests, or prosecuted for movement involvement” by way of jail and legal support and accompaniment, bail funds, and helping provide access to representation. The three arrested organizers, Marlon Kautz, Adele Maclean and Savannah Patterson, were booked in the DeKalb County Jail where they were each charged with money laundering and charity fraud.

Atlanta: We Do Not Need A School For Assassins

May 19, 2023 Alex Binder, Unicorn Riot. , , ,
Atlanta, Georgia — Hundreds of Atlantans spoke out against the proposed authorization of $33.5 million taxpayer dollars for the Atlanta Police Foundation to fund the construction of ‘Cop City’ during the public comment section at city council on Monday. The council is expected to vote on the funding on June 5. The public comment lasted over seven hours and the nearly 300 community members who had the opportunity to speak were unanimous in their opposition to ‘Cop City’, which if built, would be an 85-acre urban warfare police training compound in the South River Forest in DeKalb County, Georgia.

National Conference For Black Self-Determination And Pan-African Unity

May 17, 2023 Tunde Osazua, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
From June 23rd to the 25th, a historic gathering of Black radical organizers will take place in the city of Atlanta, hosted by Community Movement Builders . The National Black Radical Organizing Conference will serve as a rallying point for individuals dedicated to our collective liberation struggle. Under the theme of "Unity in our Lifetime: Connecting the National Black Struggle for Self-Determination with Pan-Africanism," this conference aims to propel our movement to new heights and reaffirm our unwavering commitment to dismantling systemic oppression. During conference keynotes, panels, plenaries, workshops, and screenings, a diverse array of critical topics will be explored, ranging from base building and mass work to ideological positioning, the non-profit industrial complex, political prisoners, policing, gender, incarceration, and the vital role of students and youth in our liberation struggle.

Cities Across The US Are Mobilizing To Honor Tortuguita’s Birthday

April 23, 2023 It's Going Down. , , , , ,
Supporters of the fight against Cop City in so-called Atlanta, Georgia are planning solidarity demonstrations, educational events, benefit concerts, and solidarity events to mark the birthday of anarchist and forest defender Tortuguita. This call for continued action comes after forty-two people now face “domestic terrorism” charges for simply “their participation in the movement, with arrest warrants citing the flimsiest grounds, including protesters having mud on their shoes and the number for a legal support group scrawled on their arms.” Moreover, the call for continued solidarity comes as the Dekalb County Medical Examiner has released the damning results of their autopsy, which directly contradicts claims made by law-enforcement that Tortuguita fired upon them, causing them to fire back and kill them in mid-January of this year, when police carried out a raid on protest encampments in the Weelaunee forest.

Why Did Chase Bank Cancel This Cop City Protester’s Accounts?

April 9, 2023 Nick Pinto, Hell Gate. , , , ,
Teresa Shen, a 31-year-old therapist living in Brooklyn, checked her mailbox earlier this month and found some perplexing correspondence from Chase Bank, the consumer banking branch of JPMorgan Chase, where she'd been a customer for more than decade. The letters, dated March 7, had surprising news. "One letter said that they were closing my checking and savings accounts," Shen recalled. "Another said they were closing my credit card." Just why Chase was closing Shen's accounts wasn't immediately clear from the letters, which said only that the bank was taking the step "due to a publicly reported financial investigation."

Atlanta’s “Cop City” Is A Blueprint For America’s Future

April 2, 2023 Taya Graham, The Real News Network. , , ,
In a special episode of Police Accountability Report, TRNN reporters Taya Graham and Stephen Janis report from the ground in Atlanta, where for weeks forest defenders have been fighting and risking their lives to stop the construction of “Cop City”—a massive planned police training center that would be used to instruct officers from around the country in deadly repression tactics. Speaking directly with activists on the frontlines, Graham and Janis explore the truth behind the police killing of Manuel “Tortuguita” Tehran, and the dark money sources funding the creation of the Atlanta Public Safety Center.

Youth Organizers Unite Marginalized Communities To Stop Atlanta’s Cop City

April 2, 2023 Ngakiya Camara, Truthout. , , , , , ,
A crowd of youth organizers have mastered this call and response chant, a unanimous voice talking back to a potential Cop City. Nearing the end of Defend the Atlanta Forest’s Week of Action, the energy from the In Defense of Black Lives rally held at the Atlanta Police Foundation Headquarters is palpable. There is laughter, chanting, a fire of hope that electrifies the air — folks have just finished roasting the heavily militarized police, who eye the crowd through the slits of their helmets. The solidarity between these kids is their biggest threat. Black youth organizers were at the center of this rally that was organized by the Stop Cop City Coalition, In Defense of Black Lives Atlanta (IDBL), which is a coalition movement based in Atlanta that works to defend Black life and to defund the Atlanta Police Department.

Behind The #StopCopCity Domestic Terrorism Warrants

March 23, 2023 Ryan Fatica, a contributor and Chris Schiano, Unicorn Riot. , , , , , ,
Atlanta, Georgia — The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, in collaboration with several other law enforcement agencies, charged 23 more people with ‘domestic terrorism’ for their alleged involvement in the ongoing effort to stop ‘Cop City’ and to defend the Weelaunee Forest in unincorporated DeKalb County southeast of Atlanta. This brings the total number of ‘Cop City’ opponents charged under the statute to 42. Most of those arrested are currently being held at the DeKalb County Jail after being denied bond by Magistrate Judge Anna Watkins Davis on March 7. Four arrestees, including attorney Thomas Jurgens, have been granted bond.

An Historic Direct Action In A Forest Outside Atlanta

March 19, 2023 Unicorn Riot. , , , ,
DeKalb County, Georgia – In broad daylight Sunday, March 5, a group of about three hundred masked people wearing mostly camouflage and black clothing stormed the main police security outpost within the Weelaunee Forest at the proposed construction site of the ‘Cop City’ project. Demonstrators tore up silt fencing, and set an office trailer, two UTVs, a mobile surveillance tower, and a front end loader afire as police ran for cover. The group hurled rocks and fireworks at the retreating police, who repositioned to a smaller outpost across Key Road SE and worked furiously to close a gate behind them to establish a barrier between themselves and the advancing group.

Atlanta Was A Constitution-Free Zone During ‘Stop Cop City’ Week Of Action

March 15, 2023 Candice Bernd, Truthout. , , , , ,
Southeast Dekalb County, Georgia—Belkis Terán raised her arms wide to welcome the rain now pounding hard over the newly thatched pavilion in the parking lot of the “Weelaunee People’s Park,” a space once known to residents of Atlanta and Southeast DeKalb County as Intrenchment Creek Park. Long before settlers dubbed the South branch of the Ocmulgee River here as simply the “South River,” the Mvskoke tribe, who were forcibly relocated from this area to Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears in the 1830s, called the river Weelaunee, the tribal word for “green/brown/yellow water.”

Atlanta, GA: Elders Say Stop Cop City!

March 12, 2023 Defend the Atlanta Forest, It's Going Down. , , , ,
Atlanta, Georgia - On Monday, March 6th, a group of elders and a young person in support visited the corporate offices of Brasfield & Gorrie, as well as five B&G worksites around Atlanta, to call on the company to Drop Cop City. It is currently the general contractor on the project, officially known as the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center. At each site, they held banners for the workers and passersby to see, and tried to talk to the construction manager in charge. At one site, after speaking with and handling flyers to dozens of workers from many countries, the manager appeared and threatened to have us arrested.

The ‘Stop Cop City’ Movement Roots Go Back Decades

March 11, 2023 Micah Herskind, Scheer Post. , , ,
On Jan. 18, 2023, a squad of local and state police officers marched into the Weelaunee Forest in southeast Atlanta, where they shot and killed a young, queer, Indigenous-Venezuelan protester named Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán. Tortuguita was one of many Atlanta forest defenders, a decentralized group of activists that has been living in the forest since 2021 to protect against its proposed destruction and replacement with “Cop City”—a massive police militarization facility complete with a “mock city” inside for police to practice their many tactics of urban warfare and repression.

Protesters Charged With Terrorism In Atlanta

March 10, 2023 People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
At least 23 protesters have been charged with domestic terrorism amid a week of action against the construction of “Cop City” in Atlanta, a proposed $90 million police training complex. Atlanta police detained 35 people and arrested 23 on the night of March 5, they claim, for vandalism against the Cop City construction site and violence towards police. Activists dispute this narrative. While video footage shows a small group torching the construction site and throwing fireworks towards police, according to activists, none of the 35 people detained were detained at the construction site itself.

66 Organizations Urge That Domestic Terrorism Charges Be Dropped

March 8, 2023 Defending Rights and Dissent. , , , ,
Atlanta, Georgia - 66 environmental, human rights, and civil liberties organizations sent a letter to Georgia prosecutors urging them to drop domestic terrorism charges against Stop Cop City/Defend the Atlanta Forest protesters. The charges represent a draconian escalation seemingly intended to chill First Amendment protected activity. The letter reads, in part: Civil disobedience and disruptive activism are part of the American protest tradition. From the Boston Tea Party to the civil rights movement, Americans have long drawn on civil disobedience tactics akin to the occupation of the Atlanta forest by the Stop Cop City protesters.

Rally In Solidarity With Resistance To Cop City In Avon, Massachusetts

March 7, 2023 IGD Worldwide, It's Going Down. , , , , , ,
The Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta is the proposed site of a massive police training facility, known to most as “Cop City.” Cop City is the logical outgrowth of violent, racialized capitalism in the United States. Corporations and wealthy Atlantans believe that they need a large and well-equipped police force to tamp down “crime” in the city they are working to gentrify, and have thus contributed financially to this project. As landlords and cops push Black residents out, wealthy, mostly white neighborhoods like Buckhead demand ever more police intervention to keep them and their ill-gotten wealth “safe.” With all their militarized training, equipment, and qualified immunity from prosecution, police murder thousands of people per year — disproportionately Black, Brown, and Indigenous.
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