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A collection of essays from the Stop Cop City movement on the fight for police abolition and for a liveable planet for all, with gripping reporting from activists on the ground and rousing articles from renowned radical academics
The Stop Cop City movement is a decentralized effort to stop the construction of a $120 million police training facility and the destruction of 170 acres of the Weelaunee Forest outside of Atlanta, Georgia. This is the first collection of essays bringing together organizers and activists who have been involved in the years-long struggle to Stop Cop City. Connecting movements for environmental justice, police abolition, and Indigenous sovereignty, this expansive collection highlights the strategy, tactics, and ideologies that transformed a local collective action into a powerful international movement.
Featuring the voices of forest defenders, environmental justice advocates, political prisoners, Indigenous activists, abolitionists, educators, legal scholars, and academics, these wide-ranging essays explore the history of the intersectional movement, the diverse tactics embraced by activists, tributes to Tortuguita, the 26-year-old queer Indigenous forest defender murdered by Georgia State Patrol troopers, and the intense police and legal repression faced by organizers. Making critical connections between oppression and resistance at home and abroad, the movement to Stop Cop City has expanded to a fight against a Cop World.
List of contents
Part 1: How Did We Get Here?
1. Why Cop City? Why Here? Why Now? by Micah Herskind
2. Boss Terror: How the Capital of the South Funded Cop City by Mariah Parker
3. A Brief History of the Atlanta Prison Farm by Atlanta Community Press Collective
4. Becoming External Enemies: From Occupy Atlanta to Stop Cop City by Kayla Edgett
5. How the Black Misleadership Class Provides Cover to Cop City by Eva Dickerson
Part 2: No Cop City
6. Mvskoke Migrations by Mekko Chebbon Kernell
7. Eviction Notice from the Mvskoke People to Mayor Dickens and Cop City
8. The Saboteurs by Paul Torino
9. Base Building to Stop Cop City: Successes, Failures, Reflections, and Lessons for Future Organizers by Ashley Dixon
10. Is This Enough Black Folks For You, Andre Dickens? by Kamau Franklin
11. Protecting the South River Forest by Jackie Echols
12. A New World in the Forest by Anonymous
13. Students vs. Cop City by Narek Boyajian, Andrew Douglas, Oren Panovka, Daxton Pettus, and Jaanaki Radhakrishnan
14. The Roots of Resistance: Building Narrative Power by Hannah Riley
15. Let the People Decide by Mary Hooks and Kate Shapiro
16. Children Have Always Been at the Center by Rukia Rogers
17. Dear Andre Dickens, Save Weelaunee by Emelia and Violet
Part 3: Viva, Viva Tortuguita!
18. Little Turtle's War by David Peisner
19. Statements by Tortuguita's Parents by Belkis Terán and Joel Esteban Paez
20. In Their Own Words by Tortuguita
Part 4: Repression
21. How Georgia Indicted a Movement by Zohra Ahmed and Elizabeth Taxel
22. Thirty-One Days in DeKalb County Hell by Priscilla Grim
23. Defending the Movement: Lessons in Anti-Repression by Marlon Kautz
Part 5: No Cop World
24. You Can't Reform A War Away: On Creative Aggression by Craig Gilmore and Ruth Wilson Gilmore
25. From No Cop Academy to Stop Cop City by Benji Hart
26. Cop Cities in a Militarized World by Azadeh Shahshahani
27. Atlanta's Attack on Protesters Should Be a Warning To Us All by Angela Davis and Barbara Ransby
28. Please Keep Playing: A Letter to My Son, Remix by Ariana Brazier
Conclusion: No Cop City, No Cop World
About the author
Micah Herskind is an organizer, writer, and law student. He is active in abolitionist movements against police and jail expansion, and has written for outlets including
New York Magazine,
Scalawag,
MSNBC,
Teen Vogue, and
Race & Class.
Mariah Parker is an emcee and labor organizer born and raised in the South. Their cultural work and organizing have been featured in
The New York Times,
Rolling Stone,
Teen Vogue,
SPIN,
Al Jazeera,
Scalawag and
Hammer & Hope.
Kamau Franklin is the founder of Community Movement Builder, a Black, member-based collective of community residents and organizers. Kamau has been a dedicated community organizer for over thirty years and is a former practicing attorney, beginning in New York City and now based in Atlanta.
