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.

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.

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.

The Abolition Working Group steering committee is pleased to share our Abolition Toolkit with you. Why make a toolkit when organizations like Critical Resistance and Interrupting Criminalization have already produced so many wonderful resources?

We wanted to lift up the abolitionist projects being done in DSA by chapters across the country and make clear the connection between abolition and socialism. We do not believe you can have one without the other.

For all of the working class to achieve collective liberation we must constrain, diminish, and abolish the carceral forces of the state — from prisons and police themselves, to their manifestations in all forms throughout society. -DSA’s Political Platform

Non-profit organizations like police foundations can be tricky to research due to limited public disclosure requirements. In this research training we’ll walk through a variety of tools and tips that can help you find key information.

A visual data map tracing the $60 million in ‘private’ capital the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) promised to build Cop City in Atlanta, Georgia.

Chicagoans deserve real community safety—a city in which every child has a fair opportunity to grow up and achieve their full potential and every resident has the resources they need to thrive. Communities that invest in their people are safe communities. Parents in towns with well-funded public schools, public parks and libraries with a lot of youth programs, and strong public health infrastructure don’t fear for their kids’ lives every time they let them out of the house. Cities with good jobs, free public transit, and free child care give residents the opportunity to provide for their families. Real community safety comes from addressing the underlying issues that lead to crime and violence. The proposals in this report would generate $12 billion in new revenue and savings that we could invest in our people and neighborhoods.