(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



The building of Atlanta's massive police training complex 'Cop City' must be stopped [1]

['Daily Kos Staff', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2023-02-13  

The neighborhoods surrounding the forest are predominantly BIPOC and lower-income neighborhoods. Despite the police-perpetuated trauma these communities must already endure, the creation of Cop City means they will not only be subjected to the sounds of police shooting their guns in practice, but also witness an extreme and horrifying example of environmental racism. As Prism reported, the forest helps to clean the air, offers shade and cooling, and offsets storm runoff, which could contaminate the water. In addition, we know that forests—and trees more generally—help cull pollution. It’s reported that the forests in Atlanta remove about 19 million pounds of air pollutants each year.

RELATED STORY: Dubious ‘domestic terrorism’ charges just the tip of what’s amiss with Atlanta ‘antifa’ narrative

In a press conference held Jan. 31, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens announced some changes as part of a meager compromise. "We're here taking the recommendations to add a 100-foot tree buffer, the recommendations to add sidewalks, the recommendations to have the firing range moved further away from the residential area,” GPB news reported. They have also committed to replacing any hardwood tree destroyed during the building with 100 hardwood trees.

The Atlanta Police Foundation has all the corporate backing it could ask for: AT&T, Waffle House, and The Atlanta Hawks, to name a few. For this reason, it seems they believe their plans are untouchable, and why Georgia State Patrol might have felt justified in the shooting death of peaceful, nonviolent forest defender Manuel Teran—known colloquially as Tort or Tortuguita—during a raid where the protesters have been living since 2021 to protect the land from this state-funded destruction. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says there is no body camera footage from the Georgia State Patrol to corroborate the claim that a forest defender fired a gun at them, and other agencies (including the police) are refusing to release the body camera footage they have.

The fight to halt the construction and funding of Cop City is a fight for BIPOC communities, for the environment, for peaceful activism and protest, and for resistance to fascism and police violence against the most marginalized. We should do everything we can to stop it.

Sign the petition: The police cannot tear down forests to make tactical villages—we must stop Cop City now!

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/13/2150621/-The-building-of-Atlanta-s-massive-police-training-complex-Cop-City-must-be-stopped

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/