APD Arrests 3, including 76 YO LGBTQ Icon and Movement Elder Lorraine Fontana

June 30, 2023

The arrests come during Week of Action at the behest of the Home Depot.

(Atlanta, Georgia) - Yesterday, officers with the Atlanta Police Department arrested two activists in the Stop Cop City movement; including 76 year old movement elder and Atlanta LGBTQ icon Lorraine Fontana who was peacefully carrying a sign that honored murdered friend Tortuguita. Fontana, a supporter of and canvasser with the Vote to Stop Cop City referendum effort, was participating in an action to bring awareness to Home Depot’s role in supporting the police development project after collecting signatures to get “Cop City” on the ballot. The Southern Center for Human Rights is pairing the two with legal representation.

“The Atlanta Police Department put a 76 year old woman in handcuffs because one of their corporate sponsors told them to. When someone shows you who they are, believe them. This is who APD is, and no amount of training is going to change that,” said Rachel Kahn, Coordinating Chair of Mosaic Atlanta.

At 10:30 PM, residents gathered outside the Rice Street jail for a solidarity rally and jail vigil. A Jail Vigil is where friends wait up until whenever someone is released or available to bond out so that they spend as little time in police custody as possible. Unfortunately, the peaceful demonstration was met with threats of further arrests and police intimidation. Ultimately, after several hours of public pressure, the two people were charged with misdemeanor trespassing.

“They’ll probably paint a rainbow crosswalk in Cop City and then say ‘See? Nothing to worry about’ while Black, brown, and queer Atlantans continue to face harassment, intimidation, and arrest from APD. To arrest a queer icon, who was outside in a parking lot, doing nothing illegal, peacefully demonstrating, during Pride Month just shows how deep the problem goes,” added Mary Hooks, National Field Secretary for Movement 4 Black Lives and Referendum Leader.

This week, the movement to Stop Cop City and Defend the Atlanta Forest is hosting its 6th Week of Action. The Coalition encourages everyone to seek out opportunities to get engaged with this broad movement and “get in where you fit in.” If you are an Atlanta resident and were registered to vote by November 2021 in the City of Atlanta, sign this petition to get the question of Cop City on the ballot this November.

BIO for Lorraine Fontana from the Southern Lesbian Feminist Activist Herstory Project: Lorraine Fontana is a working-class dyke from Queens, New York. Since early on, she has supported the civil rights movement, Black empowerment, and anti-war activism.

After graduating from Queens College, City University of New York, Lorraine Fontana came to Atlanta in 1968, where she joined VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), which was part of the war on poverty that led to the Economic Opportunity Act. While attending Emory graduate school there, she came out as a lesbian among other leftist feminist women who founded the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance (ALFA) in 1972.

Lorraine Fontana later used her legal training from the People’s College of Law (1976-79), and her JD from Atlanta Law School (1981), when working at Georgia Legal Services, at the EEOC, and at Lambda Legal.

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.