Labor must join the fight to stop Cop City | Working People

Plans to build Cop City have been mired in controversy and civil rights violations from the beginning—from the city government's attempts to ignore residents' and activists' objections and force through the construction of Cop City in Atlanta's ecologically vital Weelaunee Forest, to police raiding an encampment of peaceful protestors and murdering one of them, Manuel ("Tortuguita") Esteban Paez Terán, who was shot 57 times, to the truly Orwellian crackdown on protestors and advocates, dozens of whom are being arrested and charged with "domestic terrorism."<br /><br />As Micah Herskind writes, "The struggle to Stop Cop City is not just a battle over the creation of a <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/mlks-vision-lives-on-in-atlantas-fight-against-new-police-training-facility/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$90 million police urban warfare center</a>. It's not just a fight to <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-south/the-new-fight-over-an-old-forest-in-atlanta" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">protect the 381 acres of forest land</a>, known as one of the "<a href="https://www.atlantaga.gov/home/showdocument?id=30594&amp;ref=welcometohellworld.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">four lungs</a>" of Atlanta, currently under threat of destruction. It's not just a conflict over how the city invests the <a href="https://atlpresscollective.com/2023/04/16/atlanta-now-to-pay-33-5m-for-cop-city-council-vote-likely-needed/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">over $30 million</a> it has pledged to the project, to be supplemented by at least $60 million in private funding. The movement is all of those things. But even more fundamentally, the struggle to Stop Cop City is a battle for the future of Atlanta. It's a struggle over who the city is for: the city's corporate and state ruling class actors who have demanded that Cop City be built, or the people of Atlanta who have consistently voiced their opposition and demanded a different vision for the city." Make no mi