Resources

An annotated version of the indictment filed against #StopCopCity organizers, featuring critical information and context, questions for discussion, ways to fight back, and additional resources.

Police Fraternal Organizations (PFOs), often incorrectly referred to as police unions, are organized political groups of cops who advocate on behalf of the police. They include a number of national groups with chapters across the country, including the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the International Union of Police Associations(IUPA), The International Brotherhood of Police (IBP) and the National Association of Police Organizations Employees (NAPOE).

Explore this five-page introduction to PFOs — what they are, why we should care about PFOs, how they specifically harm Black women and girls of color, and systemic responses we can use to combat them.

Police Fraternal Associations (also referred to as police “unions”) represent a powerful political force that stands in the way of progress on virtually every front of social justice movements — they vociferously oppose and block efforts to meet, prevent, and respond to crises with care instead of criminalization, vehemently defend the violence of policing and punishment, viciously target anyone who challenges their power, and command deference from politicians and policymakers by claiming to be the exclusive arbiters of public safety.

This playbook is for community members, workers, activists, organizers and targets of police violence to use when fighting back against police fraternal organizations. In it, we summarize information, strategies, and tactics to challenge and diminish the power of police fraternal organizations and remove the obstacles they place on our paths to safer, more just and liberatory communities.

This report asks us to face the impact centuries of systemic racism and economic inequality in Philadelphia have had on our criminal legal justice system. It puts numbers to a problem. It is a starting point for all people of good will to think together and work together to defeat racism in criminal justice.

On the numbers, there are staggering disparities in outcomes by race that often connect to race discrimination and to economic inequality. The District Attorney is sworn to seek justice, which clearly requires fighting against racism. But the results of centuries of oppression cannot be understood much less undone by any single actor. In releasing this report, and the different outcomes it highlights, I am calling on all Philadelphians to try to understand these disparities, to determine their causes and effects, and to work together to fix them.

Most local governments spend more on policing and incarcerating local residents than on proactive investments in residents’ well-being. Access to safe and affordable housing, health care, public transportation, and other community services like libraries and parks are essential to residents’ overall quality of life. Yet many communities invest less in these vital activities than in surveilling, arresting, and jailing residents.

This dashboard examines the 2022 budgets of 20 locales across the country. In most of these places, residents pay taxes to and are governed by both a city and county government. Therefore, the dashboard analyzes both the city and county budgets to give a fuller picture of local spending on police, sheriffs, detention, housing, health, and more.

In September 2021, the Atlanta City Council approved a proposal to lease 381 acres of the Weelaunee Forest—stolen Muscogee land surrounded by majority-Black neighborhoods—to the Atlanta Police Foundation to build the largest militarized police training center in the US. In response, a decentralized movement has risen up to halt the destruction of the forest and the construction of what has come to be known as “Cop City.” As the Stop Cop City movement has grown, the state has employed increasingly draconian methods of repression. In January of this year, police killed Manuel “Tortuguita” Téran, a 26-year old Indigenous Venezuelan forest defender. Dozens of people have been arrested for protesting, including a legal observer with the Southern Poverty Law Center, and more than 40 have been charged with domestic terrorism. Last month, a heavily armed joint task force raided a community center and arrested three bail fund organizers living there under tenuous allegations of “money laundering” and “charity fraud.” And despite widespread opposition, the Atlanta City Council recently authorized an additional $30 million contribution to the construction of Cop City, bringing the city’s pledged total to $67 million.

​​On this week’s episode of On the Nose, culture editor Claire Schwartz is joined by three guests in Atlanta deeply engaged with Stop Cop City—Micah Herskind, a community organizer and writer; Keyanna Jones, a reverend and organizer; and Josie Duffy Rice, a writer who covers criminal justice—to discuss the movement’s roots and tactics, and what the militarization of Atlanta can teach us about the economic underpinnings of fascism.

This toolkit was created in collaboration with MediaJustice and their ongoing work to combat disinformation as a resource for people and organizations engaging in work to dismantle, defund, and abolish systems of policing and carceral punishment, while also navigating trials of police officers who murder people in our communities.

Trials are not tools of abolition; rather, they are a (rarely) enforced consequence within the current system under the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) for people who murder while working as police officers. Police are rarely charged when they commit these murders and even less so when the victim is Black. We at MPD150 are committed to the deconstruction of the PIC in its entirety and until this is accomplished, we also honor the need for people who are employed as police officers to be held to the same laws they weaponize against our communities.

The Atlanta community is clear – they do NOT want #CopCity. Working people in Atlanta need the same things as working peoples across the country – investment in good jobs, healthcare, education and the environment. Instead, the Atlanta Police Foundation has pushed an enormous facility equipped with shooting ranges, Blackhawk helicopters and mock urban warfare training grounds. This all indicates preparation for actions against working people, not for us. Furthermore, actions taken against the brave protestors to date have included brutal pushback, threats of RICO charges and sadly even murder. The Labor Movement is all too familiar with violent repression of just fights, and it’s important to stand fervently against it’s acceptance.

The Labor movement must take a stand for working people and communities in Atlanta that have clearly said in no uncertain terms they DO NOT WANT #CopCity to be funded or built!

Thirty years after the Hate Crimes Statistics Act, lawmakers are still spreading anti-trans and anti-queer rhetoric, but, instead of taking responsibility for the resulting violence, they sold this story of the need for more police, more criminalization.

And once again, instead of answering our community’s clear demands for housing, direct financial assistance, and access to healthcare, President Biden signed yet another hate crimes bill into law. Same old story, same old false promise. And it’s time we say no to this false promise and demand more.

To interrogate the impact of hate crime legislations, TLC conducted interviews with community members and consulted an advisory board of experienced organizers addressing policing, sex work, ableism, anti-Blackness, and more. The following messages and materials were created through such research.