![]() In Atlanta and across the US, investment in police budgets comes at the expense of access to food, education, childcare, and healthcare, of affordable and stable housing, of parks and public spaces, of transit and the free movement of people, of economic stability for the many. Mass incarceration and police militarization have failed to bring down crime or improve conditions for poor and working-class communities. Replacing a forest with a police training center will only create a more violently policed society, in which taxpayer resources enrich police and weapons companies rather than addressing social needs. The goal of those who spread this narrative is to discourage solidarity and isolate communities from each other while offering a pretext to bring in state and federal forces, who are the actual “outside agitators.” The consequence of that strategy is on full display in the tragedy of January 18. ![]() ![]() Politicians who support Cop City have attempted to discredit forest defenders as “outside agitators.” This smear has a disgraceful history in the South, where authorities have used it against abolitionists, labor organizers, and the Civil Rights Movement, among others. What is happening in Atlanta is not a local issue. So do the gentrification and police violence that the bulldozing of Weelaunee Forest would facilitate. The destruction of forests affects all of us. In memory of Manuel Teran, also known by the name Tortuguita.įorests are the lungs of planet Earth. The official narrative is that Cop City is necessary to make Atlanta “safe,” but this brutal killing reveals what they mean when they use that word. This is only the most recent of a series of violent police retaliations against the movement. On January 18, in the course of their latest militarized raid on the forest, police in Atlanta shot and killed Manuel Teran, known by fellow forest defenders as Tortuguita. We call on all people of good conscience to stand in solidarity with the movement to stop Cop City and defend the Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta. We endorse the following statement of solidarity with the movement to defend the Weelaunee Forest.
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