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Protesters in Atlanta are hoping to heighten awareness of their ongoing opposition to the construction of a multimillion-dollar police training compound known by activists as “Cop City.”
In the latest in a saga that’s been going on for nearly two years, Atlanta police charged 23 people Sunday with domestic terrorism, claiming that a “group of violent agitators used the cover of a peaceful protest” to attack police officers with projectiles.
The domestic terrorism charges — on which I caution you to withhold judgment until all the facts are known — are a sign of the tensions between local police and activists, and come after a “Cop City” protester was fatally shot by officers in January.
In September 2021, the Atlanta City Council’s approval of the training facility went against the wishes of many local residents, with critics expressing concerns about the potential social and environmental harms that a huge police compound could inflict — especially one that requires dozens of acres of forest to be cleared.
The facility — which was dubiously billed as necessary to institute police reforms after the 2020 protests against police brutality — is being built in Dekalb County, which is largely Black.
As NBC News recently explained:
After the anti-police violence protests of 2020, Atlanta officials promised that a sprawling police training center would be integral to the reforms residents had been demanding. The City Council voted 10-4 in favor of the project, with [then-Mayor Keisha Lance] Bottoms saying a new facility for police “is something that can’t wait.” But the site, dubbed ‘Cop City’ by opponents, has faced local opposition for its potential environmental impact and concerns that it will do little to address police violence. It has become the focus of protests in several cities across the country to ‘Stop Cop City.’
On Monday afternoon, Atlanta-area faith leaders gathered to denounce both the project and Sunday’s arrests.
“This is our homeland. My ancestors, for generation upon generation for millennia, are buried on the very ground that you walk on every day,” Mekko Chebon Kernell, an ordained elder of the Muscogee tribe, told the gathering.
“And I think we have a say in how we should live as a society in this day and time. And so in this moment, our hope is to be able to come back — to rematriate — to take our lives back into the intimacy that we once had with everything that grows here, in what you now call the state of Georgia.”
The Rev. Leo Allen, a local Baptist minister, spoke out against the city’s plan to “destroy the nation’s largest urban forest and replace it with the largest militarized police training facility in North America.” Allen added: “We are profoundly troubled by the use of military tactics and escalated legal charges on members of our community.”
And the Rev. Darci Jaret, a pastor at Park Avenue Baptist Church in Atlanta, said their acknowledgment of white privilege was a major cause for their activism against “Cop City.”
“I am called by my very history and roots to call out injustice when we see it,” they said. “To participate in movements that begin to repair harm — not cause more harm.”