UPDATE: The remaining Stop Cop City defendants that were held pre-trial have been released since we planned this event! With RDTW right around the corner, we’ll instead be writing to political prisoners who might want to write a statement or participate from the inside. Join us to strike up a correspondence with a new potential penpal or come to write to an existing penpal of your own! As always all the letter-writing supplies and light refreshments will be provided.
Join us on Monday July 29th, 6:30pm at Wooden Shoe Books as we send letters to comrades incarcerated for their support of the movement to Stop Cop City. In 2017, the Atlanta Police Foundation proposed the destruction hundreds of acres of Weelaunee forest to build a massive compound that would train cops from around the world in militarized tactics, urban warfare, and putting down social movements. The full Cop City proposal came in 2020 after national uprisings around the police murder of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks.
In 2021, forest defenders and community members established a long-term encampment in the Weelaunee forest. Shortly thereafter, a multi-agency task force began arresting and charging them with domestic terrorism. January 18th, 2023 brought more raids, arrests, and the murder of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán. This was the first police killing of an environmental activist during a protest in modern U.S. history. Autopsy results indicated that the police shot Tortuguita 57 times while their hands were up. On April 19th, the DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s office ruled Tortuguita’s death a homicide. On October 6th, a Georgia prosecutor announced that there would be no charges for any of the troopers involved in the murder.
Opponents of Cop City, however, have increasingly faced charges of unprecedented severity. On September 5th, 2023, Georgia’s Attorney General filed an indictment against over 60 individuals under the Rackateer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. On May 31st, 2023, a heavily-armed SWAT team raided the house of three bail fund organizers, arrested them, and charged them with money laundering and charity fraud. The intensifying repression has also extended to the general population of Atlanta, with police targeting four neighborhoods for purposefully invasive, round-the-clock surveillance.
The resistance to Cop City has also escalated, resulting in numerous delays and, according to Atlanta city officials, almost $20 million in damages. Communities across the country rallied against the targeting of activists and the killing of Tortuguita, and have supported activists held without trial, sometimes for upwards of a year.
Even before its completion, Atlanta Cop City’s militarized approach to social movements has already become a model for how to train police across the U.S.; between the George Floyd Uprisings and today, planning or construction has begun on 66 new Cop Cities around the United States. Similarly, the unprecedently fierce legal and extralegal measures taken against those resisting Cop City in Atlanta—domestic terrorism charges for civil disobedience, RICO charges for bail fund organizers, generalized harassment, and murder—can be understood as a localized experiment for broader application. These tactics of repression are being auditioned in Atlanta; if successful, you can bet they’ll be generalized across the U.S. For these reasons, it’s incumbent on all of us support those on the front lines of stopping Cop City, and especially those who’ve already paid the price of their freedom for this struggle.
We’ll also be sending birthday cards to U.S.-held political prisoners with birthdays in August: Bill Dunne (August 2nd), Hanif Shabazz Bey (August 15th), Ronald Reed (August 31st).