Cop City Vote Coalition Condemns Police Intimidation & Stands in Solidarity of the Week of Action
June 25, 2023
On the first day of the 6th week of action to stop Cop City, the Atlanta community gathered to celebrate the beginning of the week of action with meals, music, educational community panel and fun activities for the many children present. As the event shifted to a beautiful vigil in honor of Tortuguita, a beloved organizer who was violently killed by the police defending the Weelaunee forest, over 30 Atlanta Police Department officers swept through a community vigil at Brownwood Park to actively escalate and intimidate attendees. APD and opponents of the Stop Cop City movement see the power in this community and are actively attempting to disempower us while continuously harming this community.
Atlanta’s proud history of movement organizing means that many before us have stood against the power of the state. The Stop Cop City movement carries on this legacy of defying state repression and intimidation in pursuit of liberation, staying true to the community-centered values of Atlanta far more than any official who would rather use an altered, respectable lens of organizing and activism history as a talking point to call for quiet acceptance of authoritarianism.
Our place in the people’s movement against militarization, police violence, and state repression demands vocal and active solidarity with all tactics on this road to collective liberation. The Cop City Vote referendum coalition stands in solidarity and full support of the Stop Cop City Week of Action, larger Stop Cop City movement and abolitionist organizers and activists across the city.
While the state, bolstered by Cop City’s funders and proponents, seeks to define “violent” or “nonviolent” resistance, we reject this framing at its very core — our movement, across strategies or mobilizations, opposes the violence that the state is inflicting on our communities daily. From deforestation and the pollution of our neighbors’ drinking water to the prosecution of protestors and legal observers under “domestic terrorism” statutes, to the physical violence against forest defenders and heartbreaking murder of Tortuguita, police and our leaders have shown that they are willing to use any range of violence in their quest to quash this movement and our collective vision for a new world that chooses people over profits and capital.
The Cop City Vote referendum campaign is grounded in the values of abolitionist organizing, and racial and environmental justice. We also recognize our chosen tactic is a single intervention in a wide rainbow of fighting state oppression. We seek to use the Cop City referendum to leverage local power, educate and activate our communities, and build networks that can strengthen our city and future mobilizations. The referendum is one piece of a vibrant, multi-faceted movement, one that defies respectable categorization as well as state violence and repression. Our moral compass, and our North Star, remains in active solidarity with this wider movement in favor of our communities. We encourage those who support the Stop Cop City movement through our activity to learn more: attend the Week of Action, amplify this movement’s voice, and lift up the memory of Tortuguita.
Together, we will win.