[From laws targeting fossil fuel protests to the crackdown on Stop
Cop City activists, corporations are calling in militarized law
enforcement to crush dissent. ]
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COP CITY AND THE ESCALATING WAR ON ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENDERS  
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Basav Sen and Gabrielle Colchete
July 13, 2023
In These Times
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_ From laws targeting fossil fuel protests to the crackdown on Stop
Cop City activists, corporations are calling in militarized law
enforcement to crush dissent. _

Protesters gather in New York on March 9 to rally against a proposed
training facility for Atlanta's police and fire departments., David
'Dee' Delgado/Reuters

 

The fight in Atlanta over Cop City, a massive police training
facility
[[link removed]],
has turned into ground zero for overlapping crises facing our country:
the climate emergency, vast political and economic inequality,
ever-militarizing police forces and systemic racism. 

If we want a democracy healthy enough to solve these crises, it’s
worth paying attention to what is happening in the South
River Forest.

On May 31, in a disturbing move shortly before Atlanta’s City
Council approved more funding for the facility, Georgia law
enforcement arrested three members of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund
[[link removed]],
which provides activists with legal support and bail money. 

Organized bail support for activists is a longstanding tradition,
exemplified by the historical precedent
[[link removed]] of
churches and community groups raising funds to bail Martin Luther
King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders out of jail. Now, however,
the authorities are deeming such acts ​“money laundering”
and ​“charity fraud.” 

In reality, the fund was targeted for supporting the Stop Cop City
movement, which opposes the police training facility. 

Many in the community fear
[[link removed]] the Cop City
facility will be used to train police in counterinsurgency, further
militarizing an already armed and equipped force. In a city
with wide wealth and income disparities
[[link removed]).],
more militarized policing fits into what community activist Micah
Herskind describes
[[link removed]] as ​“the
state’s retreat from the provision of social welfare and the
interrelated build-up of policing and imprisonment to manage
inequality’s outcomes.” 

The facility is largely funded
[[link removed]] by
the corporate-backed Atlanta Police Foundation (APF), whose donors
include
[[link removed]] Amazon,
JP Morgan Chase, Home Depot and Wells Fargo. Militarized policing is
a growing concern in the United States
[[link removed]],
and corporate-funded militarized policing raises further unease about
law enforcement becoming directly beholden to corporate interests. 

As local resident Brad Beadles put it
[[link removed]], ​“When
private corporate donors are able to fund militarized training
facilities for the police, they are essentially buying off the police.
They are making it clear who the police work for.”

Cop City also has adverse environmental justice effects. Building the
facility will require cutting down part of an urban forest adjacent to
a majority-Black, working class community
[[link removed]].

Urban forests provide critical environmental benefits
[[link removed]] for nearby
residents. They filter pollutants from the air, store carbon, and
mitigate floods and the urban heat island effect. Destroying community
access to nature and outdoor recreation also negatively impacts
mental health [[link removed]],
as individuals with less access to green spaces have higher prevalence
of mental distress, anxiety and depression. 

Cutting down forests anywhere in an age of climate crisis is a bad
idea, but doing it next to a working-class Black community is
particularly egregious when there are already nationwide racial
disparities
[[link removed]] in
urban heat island exposure and access to greenspaces
[[link removed]]. By 2050,
summer high temperatures in the Atlanta metropolitan area are
predicted to be 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than they are today
[[link removed]],
making preservation of Atlanta’s tree coverage all the
more imperative.

REPRESSING THE POPULAR WILL

The arrests of the bail fund organizers are only one example of state
repression against the Stop Cop City movement.

In a January raid on a protest encampment in the forest, police
killed Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, an activist also known as
Tortuguita. Police claim Tortuguita shot first, but have refused to
provide proof. Results from two independent autopsies
[[link removed]] contradict
the official story, raising the possibility that this was a cover-up
of a ​“friendly fire” accident between police
officers — or worse, an assassination. 

Activists in the movement have also been arrested on ​“domestic
terrorism
[[link removed]]”
charges for having muddy shoes or having legal support numbers written
on their arms — prosecutorial overreach with clear intent to
intimidate.The state is using violence and terror to try to stamp out
a movement opposing a facility meant to train law enforcement in
violence and terror. 

Environmental activists reoccupy the Atlanta Forest, a preserved
forest Atlanta that is scheduled to be developed as a police training
center, March 4, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia.(PHOTO BY ANDREW
LICHTENSTEIN/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Residents of Atlanta have spoken out against Cop City.
A September 2021 City Council hearing on the subject
received 17 hours of testimony, with about 70 percent 
[[link removed]]against
the project. The Council approved the project regardless.

In June 2023, the Council held a hearing on approving more public
funding for Cop City. This time, they heard 13 hours of testimony,
with the overwhelming majority in opposition.
[[link removed]] Once
again, the Council approved the funding anyway.

CRIMINALIZING PROTEST

The criminalization of protest in Atlanta is part of a years-long
trend.

In a 2020 Institute for Policy Studies report called _Muzzling
Dissent: How Corporate Influence over Politics Has Fueled Anti-Protest
Laws_ [[link removed]]_,_ we examined
state repression of oil and gas infrastructure protesters with
so-called ​“Critical Infrastructure Protection” laws. 

Similar to the Cop City project in Atlanta, the communities impacted
by the oil and gas projects we studied had high levels of economic
insecurity and were overwhelmingly Black, Indigenous or poor white
people. We examined pipeline resistance struggles in three different
states — a Black environmental justice community in Louisiana
with the highest rates of cancer in the country, an Indigenous nation
fighting to protect their cultural resources in Minnesota and
impoverished Appalachian communities in West Virginia.

Versions of ​“Critical Infrastructure Protection” legislation
in Louisiana and West Virginia (which have the laws on the books), and
Minnesota (where the legislature passed a bill that was subsequently
vetoed by the governor), all included similar language that identified
varying types of fossil fuel infrastructure as ​“critical
infrastructure” and criminalized entering these sites with the
threat of felony charges. 

Many versions of the bill also held supposed ​“co-conspirators”
of such activities liable. These types of charges criminalize
participation in a group or social movement involved in protesting,
which parallels many of the police repression tactics against Stop Cop
City, also known as the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement. 

Forest defenders who were arrested in Atlanta have often
faced ​“domestic terrorism
[[link removed]]”
enhancement charges in addition to ​“felony trespassing” due to
their association with the ​“Defend the Atlanta Forest”
movement, which prosecutors claim is a ​“criminal organization”
under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
[[link removed]] (RICO).

In _Muzzling Dissent_, we identified how the fossil fuel industry is
weaponizing the term ​“critical infrastructure
protection” — which is historically associated with
safeguarding infrastructure that serves a vital function for
communities, such as roads and bridges — to restrict the ability
of communities to protect themselves against destructive oil and
gas projects. 

The State of Georgia and the City of Atlanta are now weaponizing RICO,
a 1970s law to prosecute violent mafia activity, against an autonomous
and decentralized environmental justice movement.

Similarly, the State of Georgia and the City of Atlanta are now
weaponizing RICO, a 1970s law to prosecute violent mafia activity,
against an autonomous and decentralized environmental
justice movement. 

CORPORATE CAPTURE

“Critical Infrastructure Protection” laws are most successful in
states with the most concentrated fossil fuel industry power at
a time when domestic oil and gas production is at a record high. 

In all three of our case studies, the ​“Critical Infrastructure
Protection” bills were led by state legislators who took large
campaign donations from oil and gas companies. In fact, the original
model text for the bills was drafted by the American Legislative
Exchange Council (ALEC) — a non-profit heavily funded by the
fossil fuel industry and closely tied to many of the policy makers who
passed the bills.

_Muzzling Dissent_ was ultimately an illustration of how unfettered
corporate power leads to the criminalization of community resistance
against wealthy, private interests. Similarly, it’s no coincidence
that Cop City is being built in a heavily corporatized city.

Atlanta has been dubbed the ​“Silicon Peach” because of its
position as one of the fastest growing urban technology hubs in the
United States. In addition to a booming technology sector, recent tax
cuts for the film industry have made Atlanta a new hotspot for
high-budget entertainment studios. 

Atlanta is also home to Coca-Cola, UPS, Delta Airlines and Home
Depot — each of which are represented on the APF’s Board of
Directors
[[link removed]] (with
the recent exception of Coca-Cola, which stepped down after Color of
Change exposed the corruption and controversies surrounding the
[[link removed]] foundation). 

The unwillingness of the majority of elected-officials in Atlanta to
acknowledge the widespread opposition to Cop City is a testament to
the power of the corporate-backed APF. 

UNDERMINING DEMOCRACY

The recent Congressional intervention to force construction of the
Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is also consistent with the trend of
powerful corporate interests promoting militarized state repression to
protect their interests against the popular will.

Stop Mount Valley Pipeline rally held in front of the White House in
Washington D.C. on June 08, 2023.STOP MOUNT (PHOTO BY MOSTAFA
BASSIM/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), the architect of the provision benefiting MVP
in the debt ceiling bill, gets the most oil and gas industry money
[[link removed]] of
any federal legislator. And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer
(D-NY), who made the back-room deal with Manchin to force the
pipeline’s approval, has received more than $300,000
[[link removed]] from
MVP developer NextEra Energy.

While the MVP deal
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not directly criminalize dissent, it closes off regulatory and legal
tools for project-impacted communities to fight back, making protest
and direct action even more indispensable. It requires regulatory
agencies to issue all permits for the project without going through
the customary review process that projects usually have to go through,
cutting communities out of intervening in permitting processes by
filing comments in regulatory dockets. It also exempts permits issued
to the MVP from judicial review, closing off the courts as another
venue for communities to fight back.

When the so-called ​“proper channels” for communities to resist
harmful corporate projects are made inaccessible, protest tactics are
sometimes seen as the only choice left for those fighting to defend
their communities. And as the crackdown in Atlanta shows, such protest
tactics can lead to activists being locked up, creating a chilling
effect for those engaging in dissent.

This trend is a serious threat to social movement organizing. The
first step in fighting back is to develop a shared understanding of
militarization of law enforcement, stigmatization of protest, and
corporate capture of government — not as isolated evils, but as
an intertwined strategy to undermine democracy.

In the meantime, Stop Cop City organizers are circulating a petition
to put the issue before voters on the ballot for municipal elections
on November 7.
[[link removed]] If
the organizers collect enough signatures to put the decision on Cop
City question on the ballot, voters will get to choose whether or not
to lease the city-owned land for the project. Despite their
opponents’ best efforts, Atlanta Forest Defenders have not given up
on democracy. They are taking their case against Cop City directly to
the people of Atlanta, asserting organized people power as the
antidote to concentrated corporate power.

_BASAV SEN [[link removed]] directs the
Climate Policy Program at the Institute for Policy Studies._

_GABRIELLE COLCHETE
[[link removed]] is a former
IPS Next Leader._

Reprinted with permission from _In These Times_
[[link removed]].
All rights reserved. 

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* Cop City
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* environmental movement
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* Police Frame-ups
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