Resources

In the aftermath of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s murders by the police, we know now it is not the time to ask for meaningless reforms. If we learned anything from the deaths of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, and countless others, it’s that our nation’s racist and predatory policing system simply absorbs reforms and recalibrates to keep producing the same results.

An interactive map documenting efforts to build cop city training complexes around the US, including a spreadsheet with relevant information. As of February 17, 2024, the spreadsheet provides information on any project related to the assessment, planning, approval, construction, or opening of a renovation or expansion of a Public Safety, Police Training, Academy, or Department in any state.

This text is adapted from “So You Wanna Be a Cop?”, a pamphlet published by the War Resisters League.

Would you wear a uniform that evokes fear & distrust in your neighbors?
Would you risk your mental well-being, affecting you & your loved ones?
Would you be comfortable with helping send someone to prison for years because of a petty parole violation or non-violent offence?
Would you participate in actions that split apart families?
Are there other ways you can build safety, beyond policing, in your community?
YOU DESERVE THE TRUTH
Recruiters have a seductive pitch, tapping into our real needs for stable employment & strong desire for safer communities. Maybe you’ve already heard it: “Become a police officer today! It’s an honest, secure career devoted to protecting minorities & building partnerships with community. We need people like you to improve our police force and bring justice in & outside the department.”

Building on decades of counter-military recruitment activism and resource-making, WRL presents this ground-breaking counter-police recruitment resource. Similar to military recruiter lies, police recruiters and branding use strategies to recruit young people, targeting youth of color and poor youth in the promotion of law enforcement careers.

So You Wanna Be A Cop questions recruiter lies, debunking them with the truths of policing and police careers, and encourages visions of young people pursuing careers and lives that build actual community safety, not carceral, racist and classist versions of safety.

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.

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.

For now over twenty years, the FBI has detained, surveilled, harassed, and destroyed the lives of innocent Muslims. The public record amply documents how these abuses, inflicted via always-expanding FBI powers, led not to a reduction in terrorism, but painful, farcical, and often dangerous abuses of Muslims.

All of this injustice comes from a list. This list goes by various names – the terrorist watchlist, the Terrorism Screening Database, or as the FBI recently rebranded it, the Terrorism Screening Dataset.

It has long been clear to the Muslim community itself that the FBI’s list is nothing more than a list of innocent Muslims. The consequences of being on the FBI’s list are borne almost exclusively by Muslims, and even individuals who openly espouse political violence generally do not find themselves similarly targeted so long as they themselves are not Muslim.

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!

In this report, we find that the militarized portion of this budget is by far its largest single component. And yet the same legislators demanding billions in discretionary savings have vowed to exempt that militarized spending from any cuts. Instead, they’ve targeted the much smaller portion that funds human and community needs for even deeper cuts.

This report shows just how over-militarized our federal discretionary spending already is. We argue that this militarized spending has done far more harm than good, while our consistent under-investment in human needs has made us much less safe. Finally, we make recommendations for getting our national priorities right in the future.