Welcome back to It could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis, and this is the last episode in my trilogy covering what's been happening this summer in Atlanta to stop Cop City. Last episode we covered the end of the Week of Action, the resurgence of nighttime sabotage, and Atlas long Engineering dropping out of the Cop City project. A relatively new, big aspect of the movement that I've really only mentioned peripherally
is the Cop City vote referendum. The goal of the referendum is to let the people of Atlanta vote on whether to repeal an ordinance authorizing the land lease of three hundred and eighty one acres of forest into Cab County that was given to the Atlanta Police Foundation in twenty twenty one to use the land for the construction of Cop City. In order to get the referendum on an upcoming ballot, the petition had to gather sixty thousand
signatures in six days. Every signature must be from an Atlanta resident who was registered to vote in twenty twenty one, and initially those who gathered signatures had to also be Atlanta residents. Sixty thousand signatures in sixty days was a lofty goal, but volunteers around the city were being increasingly
mobilized during and after the week of action. For the first few weeks of the referendum, the city stayed mostly quiet, but then on the July fifth APD press conference, Mayor Andre Dickens addressed the referendum.
Mayor, some of these protesters and posters of the twenty Center have biggun connecting signatures in the hope of having a referendum, putting the November p Mu's your reaction to that?
What's your comment on that?
Will you allow them to do what they're doing right now and possibly have in the referendum?
Absolutely, the referendum process is one that's legally documented. It's in the city code, and anybody can attempt to get the petition going and get the necessary signatures. We asked they do so with honesty and truth, collect the signatures from real people, with sharing the truth about what they are looking to do. And so I don't personally believe they're going to be successful. I believe that based on what we know about the citizens of Atlanta, they are
a supportive of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center. We know that this is going to be unsuccessful if it's done honestly, and so we're making sure that we continue to monitor the process.
This statement by the Democrat mayor of Atlanta, I don't think has been highlighted enough. The mayor is trying to frame a successful referendum as a fraudulent one. Dickens is priming propaganda channels and testing the waters for blatant election fraud stile messaging in the future by very clearly insinuating that if you win this, that means you're cheating.
The referendum kept popping up like throughout the Week of Action without It wasn't tailing up space.
It was never never the focus. It was always just like on the sidelines.
Yeah, but it was everywhere, Like every I think every event the referendum was in some way shape or form. You know, they're like the Home Depot rally and people walking by they were talking about the referendum and talking about the Week of Action collecting signatures.
It did not feel like it was taking space away from any of the other aspects of the movement I'm trying. I think some people were definitely worried about that, Like people worried that the referendum might act as like a release out for both the movement and like the people who are like out of the movement and still like looking at cop City being like, how can you get
involved in this thing? And you see this like very like above for electoral strategy of slanning stuff like what if people's efforts just get funneled into that and they missed that on the other much more expensive aspects of the movement. One of the few more referendum focused events during the Week of Action was a community town hall discussion put on by the Hip Hop Caucus at the
gathering Spot on the evening of Friday, June thirtieth. Before the panel discussion, myself and Matt from the Atlantic Community Press Collective talked with two members of the Hip Hop Caucus about the event and their hopes for the referendum. This is Brandy Williams, an organizer with the Hip Hop Caccus.
So the Hip Hop Coccus is a national nonpart is a nonprofit organization that uses hip hop culture to connect people to the civic and political process. And essentially we do that in four areas. We do that with I think one hundred percent, Climbate and environmental justice work. We were founded as a voting and democracy organization out of the Voter Die movement, so we still do that work under our respect my Vote platform. We also have our
Good Trouble civil and human rights work. It's our multiissue platform and we look at it as the justice department for hip hop, so we do it. We work on everything from police reform to education and healthcare, and then our justice Paid in Full, which is our economic justice platform, So how do we achieve economic justice. We actually started our activation like on the groundwork in La last week during be et weekend, so we did a similar event
in La. We're doing this one here and we're planning to be here in Atlanta and through the referendum and through the election.
We also talked with Leonajaha Lone Wolf, an Atlanta resident and national community organizer. Recently she had been working de spread awareness across the country about what's been going on in Atlanta.
Myself, hip Hop Quark is movement for Black Lives Until Freedom, community movement builders. We all came up with this idea to create this photo shoot campaign similar to Voter Die or in anything you know, with these where you have a nice shirt or a sticker and you're taking and just being there in solidarity. So we did it during La BT Awards weekend last weekend. We had a nice turnout of folks that came. I was in LA for
the Hollywood Climate Summit. I spoke on the panel with Jane Fonda, so there was a lot of people from Hollywood that came and said, oh my god, that's what's happening in Georgia. We have to be if we cannot sign for on the referendum, but we stand with you all because what we are also educating people at is that if Cop City is built, they already having contracts with police nationally to come here. This will be the largest police training facility in the United States. I went
to Universal Studios, Hollywood, Universal Studios. Rollercoat says, its huge, just nice. It's four hundred acres. That's fifty acres. Lest will be Cop City. And then you know, and I'm like, that's an amusement park of nothing but real real gunfire, real bombs, real real everything. It's not gonna be fake. It's not amusement park in that way. But this is their call of duty in real.
Life, and it's in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
They're not here to protect and serve. They're here to shoot to kill. And so police from all across this nation will be coming here to Georgia for this militarized police training and that's a problem for me. And the turnout in California showed that that's a problem for them too. So we had a lot of people that came for that, and today we're doing the same thing and we're having a community town hall discussion because I think there's a lot of people that don't understand why is cop city
because the mayor. I want to meet the mayor's publicists because the way that this whole thing has been spinned on his side that no, it would be great for the EMT and the firefighters, and they're pushing EMT firefighters more than the police part, but the police part is
a huge part. I think these type of conversations need to be talked about, and so that's what this community town hall is all about as well for those that are kind of wavering neutral, maybe don't know, maybe they know it a lot, you know, because the number one thing that we've been like, I was on V one O three yesterday on the radio station, and I also have been doing a couple of other media and call ins, and a lot of people don't understand, like they a
lot of people don't understand, like why is this a bad thing? You know, you can move it somewhere else, they say. But even if it's moved somewhere else, I'm still gonna fight against cop city, you know, just because I have this hits home for me too. Many of my friends and family have been murdered by the hands of radical power hungry, gun happy, trigger happy police officers. And I feel that there is and then also another thing too, I there is answers, you know, in regards
to we don't need more police, we need resources. They shut down our hospital, they shut down the shelters. It's not like they don't know, right, Like we tell them, we need more jobs, not just any job, good quality jobs. We need pristine health, not just affordable healthcare. And then most importantly, it just are unsheltered friends to see that they put bulldozers. They, this administration, this this city continues.
To ignore.
Ignore the people. We have the hugest the biggest wealth gap in the nation. They and they call it Wakanda, the blackest City. But if this is how you treat us our people, our people need resources. That's where this sixty seven million dollars should be going. It should not
be going towards a more police. We don't need more police because when you go to Cobb County, when you go over to Alpharetta, they don't have a lot of police, they don't have a lot of Why would they need a lot of police because they already got the resources.
On top of the community town hall discussion, there were a few other things to do at the event that, you know, Jaha talked about.
Stop Cop City photo campaign. One, you come and take your photo and just showing that you stand in solidarity, and then most importantly is to get some signatures.
As well throughout the referendum process. It's been interesting how many people, even in Atlanta are just now learning about cop City.
When did you first hear about cop City?
Honestly earlier this year, And.
Like a lot of the people that I am talking to now, I was also kind of confused about the issue. I wasn't really sure why, you know, they were so opposed until I started learning a little more about what actually was going to happen.
At this training facility.
So the idea of building a mini city with the helicopter landing pad with a shooting range or a firing range military grade in a community.
So this is not on the outskirts.
This is in a community, and then in a community of color, and you're bringing police from around the country in to learn military tactics, tactics that we use in foreign countries to protect citizens.
We should not be thinking about our.
Citizens, our residents, as people who need to be protected from themselves.
If that, if I'm making sense, you know what I mean.
So it's sort of like enemy combatants in your own.
In your on backyard, but you're training them up in a black community. So I can only imagine that some of that many cities is going to spill over into the communities.
Then you're bringing.
Police officers from around the country here, so they're taking that back.
The specific community where the Atlanta Police Foundation is trying to build a cop city has already been traumatized by the violence of the States for hundreds of years. Now. This whole area was violently stolen from Muscogee Creek, then it became a slave plantation, and then part of it was sold to the city of Atlanta, and then it became a prison firm. Since then, the land has been
home to two landfills and three detention facilities. This is the history of just this neighborhood for the last few hundred years. Now, the carstor of violence inflicted on this land, it's attempting to be exported, as police will soon come from around the country and even the world to train at copp City.
No one wants it in their community, but you're going to continue to burden this particular community with the same thing over and over and over again. The people of that community for generations have experienced all kinds of harm at the hands of the people that they supposedly are electing to represent and protect them from these types of.
Things, and they're actually the ones doing it to them.
You were elected by people to represent them, and they've told you for two years, we don't want this.
You are ignoring their voice.
On the day of the Hip Hopcoccus Panel, an air quality alert was issued due to incoming smoke from wildfires up north in Atlanta. The AQI reached one hundred and fifty the ocean.
These fish, these birds, they're screaming at us right now. What we are doing to Mother Earth right now is we are from cutting down the trees, fossil fuels, everything, this is, this is, and especially this being the lungs of Atlanta. Today, I'm wearing my mask because on my weather advisory it said it said the air quality is not good today for sensitive people. And that is just with the trees. And they keep on cutting down these trees. I moved here because of the trees. I'm from Arizona,
so I needed trees. That was nothing but desert. But I moved here because of these trees because I love the life force that trees give us. Even when we see a tree, the Earth is talking back to us, saying, stop doing what you're doing. The dolphins, the orcas, the wells, they're all migrant. They're like, you're you're the ocean is hot right now, the so they are. They're yelling at us, and we're not listening. And and as a native in my native way, our elders, our chiefs have said that
we plan for seven generations from now. I am a mother of two sons, and what this administration is doing and what these corporations are doing, they're not looking at seven generations from now they're not looking at how this is gonna affect us on the long run. And and and I love the fact of everyone that is standing firm and saying stop cop City, because we see the vision. We know what this, this Uchi Marca, this mother Earth
is going to look like seven generations from now. And we're fighting to our death because the fact that we want to make sure that our children's children's children's children could still live here and be in a peaceful, safe place and environment to live.
Since being elected as the Progressive candidate in twenty twenty one, there's been an ever growing animosity towards Mayor Dickens from all of his unfulfilled promises. When talking with you Najaha, she expressed that she felt disappointed that herself and this
big block of people helped Andre get elected. And now Mayor Dickens is fully committed to the cop City project and is even having conversations with other black leaders in the city to bring them on board and prevent them from opposing Cop City.
The mayor is in his position because of the blood, sweat and tears and arrest and beat ups that we got during Freedom Summer twenty twenty. He used the social justice, the civil rights organizations and activists voices to get him in the position that he used them and say, y'all help me. I'm gonna be there for you all. And it's all a slap in the face. So I don't
like hypocrisy. And I see I see hypocrites all throughout this and on the on this administration side, from the governor all the way down, even when we try to help our unsheltered friends. In December, when it was so cold out here, I went on social media. I raised five thousand dollars in two hours. I went and went, Me and my friends went and got them all tents, tents, sleeping bags, everything. The mayor called my comrade. Mayor Andre called my comrade and was all like, why are you
saying that they don't have no heating stations? And I set up a heating station. Not everyone wants to go there, because so is there? Where is your mental health services? What's the transitioning team that you should have on the ground to helped transition them. Don't just open up a temporary heating shelter. Where's a transition team to go and talk to the people of saying, hey, let me walk you in to go get heated. There was none of that.
You're just expecting people to just go in there or they knew where.
It was at.
So we went to the cab. We went to the cab, and we also went down to Atlanta. We gave them tents. The police went down there. The Atlanta Pede went down there and put holes all in their tents. They slight They used a knife and put and sliced their tents open so it wouldn't they couldn't even stay in it. Yes, yes, while it was still below freezing. This is all under the administration of Mayor Andre. So no, we can't trust We can't trust them.
Do you feel betrayed by Andre?
Yes, because I voted for him. I voted for him. I voted for him because I think I voted for him like every other person voted for vote for someone. Is that their care is? They talk an amazing game. And on top of it, my friends that were close with him voted for him. My friends in the movement activists, people that I look up to from as mentorship. They said, man, Andre, He's gonna have fund a lot of the things that we're doing.
Leonajaha spoke about how Mayor Dickens worked to build mutually beneficial relationships between the city and non governmental quote unquote progressive organizations. So while some NGOs have received money from the city, now many of these big quote unquote civil rights orgs are scared of jeopardizing potential funding and are now currently refusing to speak out against cop City.
Yeah. When I talk so the same people that have spoken to Andre are the same people. I'm like, why don't you involved, you know, And they're just like, I think it's gonna be built, and at least I'm at the table. A lot of them think that way. They was like, I was there at the beginning fighting. I had to sit down with the mayor. I believe this is gonna be built. So since this is gonna be built, let me figure out at least I'm at the table
in the community and there's community engagement. At least there's some type of bridging happening. That's their angle. Anyone that said black Lives Matter was on the front line with us in twenty twenty, that is that was horrified by the videos that they saw. This we are at prime time, this is the epicenter of police terrorism being built. This is it, this is this is it. This is not
each individual. We're trying to prevent more families, because if they build this, it's gonna be a lot more families that's gonna be crying and saying, they killed my baby. So we're at the epicenter of a cop city and you are silent. You're silent, but you was there for the families. You was there posting black lives matter. You was there saying stop police terrorism. But they're building a they're building a terrorist headquarters, and you don't have nothing
to say. You're a hypocrite. You're a hypocrite, period, point blank.
Brandy also talked about the hypocrisy of pushing forward cup City after the George Floyd uprising in twenty twenty.
You know, three years ago, just in May, all these companies were sending out these emails saying that black lives matter. After George Floyd. They were pouring money into the community to show their support for black lives. But some of those same communities Home Depot, Coca Cola, Delta Airlines, waffle House. You guys are I'm sure sent those emails out, and now you're putting money into something that does not respect
black lives. So I think there's just this huge contradiction in who these companies say they are how they're showing up.
Part of the growing propaganda battle over cop City is an attempt to frame this state of the arched militarized police training facility as a quote unquote public safety training center, embodying the call for police reform that liberals protested for
in twenty twenty. Not only does this erase the abolitionist corps of the twenty twenty uprising, but it also obfuscates the fact that cop City is indeed a direct response to twenty twenty, not in terms of police reform, but in the aftermath of the neoliberal police state being under genuine threat. Corporate America and police have made this pact to maintain each other's legitimacy, as one cannot survive without the other. Cop City is to ensure that what happened
in twenty twenty will never happen again. After the clear cutting of around eighty acres to the Wahlani Forest, there's been more of a focus on the stop Coop City wing of the movement than defend the forest. Sure, there are still three hundred acres to defend and eighty acres to restore. But as construction is getting more imminent, the specific cop city focus has taken center stage in messaging.
When it was initially talked about, it was all about the environment.
They're tearing down the.
Forest and as marginalized poor people. If I am hearing that, I'm not seeing it as important. I'm trying to figure out how much pay my rent, how much my kids, how i'm i pay my bills, how I'm getting to and from work, and so those things I think made it difficult to break into the household of people who really need to be paying attention, and I would dare to say even the people in the community. I watched some of the testimony from the city council meeting several
weeks ago. In the the state representative that spoke first talked about how the church right next door to the facility didn't even know what was happening next door to them. So for the city of Atlanta to say, oh, we've done outreach people in the community, no, that's not true, right, But part of that is the way that the narrative has started.
And I think they were like, Okay, that ain't got nothing to do with me.
And then also the fact that the faces that they saw on TV, it was they're thinking, this is a white led, white organization, white problem, it's not our problem, so they haven't engaged. So I think those are all things that we have to consider that and let people know this is a diverse problem.
It impacts everybody.
It's going to impact people of color and poor and marginalized communities more than anybody else, just because of the nature of how policing is done in America and so.
And the and the problems that we still have with that.
So our program is from Red Dogs to cop City, the Dirty South history of over policing Atlanta. So helping them understand how this is just new iteration of what's been happening. So the Red Dog Unit was at some call it a gang within Atlanta PD for many years. It was disbanded in twenty eleven, but they were terrorizing low poor communities of color, and so cop City in the way that they're thinking about training these officers.
Would be just a new iteration of that.
So helping them understand that just because we have come far with the civil rights, with our civil rights and I'm not even talking specifically about the sixties movement, but civil rights for people of color, women, LGBTQIA plus communities.
Just because we've come far doesn't mean it can't go back.
Atlanta's Red Dogs inspired the Scorpion Unit in Memphis that killed Tyree Nichols this past January, and the current iteration of the Red Dogs in Atlanta is the Apex Unit, who have been very active in suppressing stop Cop City protests. I'm going to play three brief clips from the panel discussion. The first is from Mariah Parker, a local activist and former Georgia County commissioner.
This is a war on the Uprising of twenty twenty.
Okay, this is in the aftermath of the largest uprisings.
In North America.
The Atlanta Police Foundation, who is the main driver and the main funder and actually the owner of Cross City. I keep forgetting the fact that this is not actually going to go bust. The Limp Police Foundation trying to rehas certain their control over Black communities at a time when people are starting to understand that communities are made safe for bi bordable housing and healthcare, child.
Care and edger.
And where their supremacy in the public safety apparatus has been challenged, their dominance has been challenged, and so in response to that uprising, they seized hold of the narrative that more police training, more diversity in our officers would be the magic key to heal all the wounds in our communities and to actually deliver a style of police
thing that serves some people. And so with that they were able to make arguments that cop city would be the answer to right allegedly rising crime rates, heal at these divides, et cetera, et cetera.
At the end of the day, they it's.
Like it's a form of counterinsurgency. The people rose up, and so this is the police right.
For that one response to reassert their dominance.
Next is kJ Henson, an Atlanta local and organizer with Black Men Build and Blackmail Initiative Georgia.
We're clear that the police are not our protectors.
Right.
We suffer at the hands of the system on a daily basis. Right, the system was built upon our backs literally, So.
We see that we've been discarded, we've been.
Abused by the system. And that's the point.
It's not that we're disengaged because we don't care. We're disengaged because we do care right. Every election cycle, it's black voters to the rescue. We're the folks that are most impacted by the decisions of the same elected officials that beg us to put them in a position.
We suffer because these people will.
Come to us and beg for votes, for canvassers, for money, and.
They turn around and they sell us out the first chance they need.
So it's we're dis engaged of a matter of I can't get what I need from these people that say.
That they're for me.
Right, the very means of the people are at risk. Cop city threatens are very right to protest. Right, cop city threat is the right.
For us to stand in the street and use our voice as a means of building collective.
Power, as a vehicle for making societal change. You can come a domestic terrorist, you get jail, without bed, without bond, you won't have a courtin I've been there myself, not for testic terrorism.
We've just been from Corda.
So we're seeing the rise of fascism in a very real way.
Like in the realistic ways cop City, like you said, it is ground zero for what would become a very popular trend.
Not this in America, but.
Across the world right, So it's on us to make sure that we do everything that's.
In our power to make sure that this.
Day is stop.
Cop City is.
Given police the training and the ability to have urban warfare and suppression tactics at their will to be used against the people.
Urban warfare and suppression.
Not like thy not unlike what we see in other countries, in other cities with organized resistance everywhere.
Lastly, we have Reverend Keana Jones, member of the Faith Coalition to Stop Cop City, whom we've heard from on this show before.
I want every Black Atlanta to think about what you don't have. If you don't have affordable housing, it's because they put the money in the cop CIT. If you can't pay your life bill, it's because that assistance got given back to the federal government.
What they're paying for cop CIT.
If there are no policing alternatives and no urgent initiatives in your community, is that they've given the money and hop sick. If you fell into that pot hole on Passilion, it's because they.
Give it the money to pop C.
If you can't walk out of your door and brief clean air, it's because they rather get it to top C. So Andrea Hickins does.
Not care about black people.
I'm gonna do a Kanye West right now, but I'm saying, are Gibbons.
Don't care about black people?
And Andrea Nickens ain't no different than nobody else, and some of those other consul people out there who have no soul called legacy names ain't doing nothing for black people. So, once again, what is Andre Niggins doing for you? If he is willing to take police and make sure that they got slot takes to roll around in they walking around the ars in your neighborhood, your children walking out the house to hearing gunshots constantly, what do Andre Niggins care about you?
Does his children hear that?
Okay, it is important to mention the venue that that this was, that this panel took place in, because this is like a very much like a it feels it feels like a Black Excellence type of like space. It's like that is the space that it is. It's it is, it is a private club. It holds like an amount of like respect.
There cultural significance.
And on this panel at the gathering spot, the panelists were We're talking about how why why is the mayor who meant many of these people helped get elected because he had promises about, you know, helping out the community, giving millions of dollars to affordable housing. Why is he using now, like sixty seventy million dollars that could go to affordable housing, that could go towards supporting black people
in Atlanta? Is funneling all of that money into the police and and into not even like the police department, a private police foundation, like funding funding the APFS project, not a city project. I think it was Keana who said that Andre Dickens does not care about black people. Yeah, and having that be said at the gathering spot, I think actually is very important and is worth talking about.
As the referendum was progressing and people from across all sides of the movement, we're working in conjunction just spread awareness of Copcity and engage in action. The mayor was making attempts to divide the movement.
Criminals are hiding in the middle of peaceful protests and sometimes they are doing their own separate acts of violence. Some of them are career arsonists and vandals from across the nation. Local activists have been alerted to this numerous times. These are the actions of blatantly outrageous, dangerous, and violent criminals. How are arsonists, vandals, violent actors able to be alongside
peaceful protesters. You have individuals that will burn up construction equipment, light a fire to police vehicles, and then have a bouncy house party the next day with peaceful protesters at a park. So they will go to a park by day, and then by night they're burning up police equipment or setting fires or trying to destroy construction equipment. So these individuals are trying to use the guys of peaceful protests that maybe some local Atlantans may actually be engaged in
a desired conversation about their views on public safety. But these individuals have different views than those folks. These individuals are anarchists. They want to destroy. So these individuals are alongside these arsonists, these criminals are alongside peaceful protesters, and sometimes the peaceful protesters are aware of it, and sometimes they are not. We have made it clear to local activists that we know and individuals that tend to be peaceful.
We're letting them know that we are aware that there are individuals that are in our city that have committed crimes across the nation and that they are on your social media or in your network saying they're coming to your event to do the same.
Mayor Dickens went further and essentially threatened that if you are a so called activist and you don't snitch, then the APD will treat you the same as a violent criminal.
So when we give you that heads up as a local organizer, you should take that heads up and also see something, say something, as we're asking any other citizen to do. When peaceful protesters, when organizers are not utilizing their best judgment, then bad things can happen with them being alongside them, and it makes it real tough for APD to know who was the one with the dirty hands,
so to speak. And so that's what the message that we want to get out to the public is that these individuals mean harm and you don't want to be around them or associated with them. When you are, it makes it difficult to tell who.
The city wants. The various wings of the fight to stop cop City to turn on each other, to resent each other, to so distrust and undermine any collective power. That's why the referendum's Statement of solidarity explicitly rejecting respectability politics and the framing of violent and nonviolent resistance was so important. An online communicate claiming responsibility for torching police motorcycles on the last day of the Week of action
addressed this dynamic quote. We took action after non combative demonstrations at Cadence Bank and Home Depot. The police attacked those demonstrations with no cause, as they do wherever and however the movement gathers. There can be no separation of time and space for tactics when police have turned society into a war zone. Despite this, we dispersed our activity as much as possible across their area of control. We encourage those who are pursuing a strategy of referendum to
continue supporting all methods to stop cop City. If you defy the state's unilateral authority in any way, you will be seen as a valid target. As demonstrated throughout the history of this movement, including during this last Week of action, police will treat you like a violent criminal, whether you're holding a sign in a parking lot, bailing activists out
of jail, or smashing a cop car. On July sixth, a group of activists in unincorporated Decab County near the potential site of cop City, filed a lawsuit against the City of Atlanta and the State of Georgia, claiming the requirement that signature gatherers must themselves be Atlanta residents violated their First Amendment right to free speech and petition the government due to the potential constitutional violation, the lawsuit also requested the court reset the sixty day clock for gathering
signatures while still counting the signatures that were already gathered. In mid July, the City of Atlanta filed a reply in federal court arguing that the cop City referendum was wholly invalid since it seeks to provoke a land lease that has already been signed. The filing reads, in part, quote, repeal of a year's old ordinance cannot retroactively revoke authorization
to do something that has already been done. But if the referendum could claim to result in a revocation or cancelation of the lease, it would still be invalid because it would amount to an imformissible impairment of that contract unquote. The city also argued that if the court does deem the Atlanta residency requirement for gathering signatures unconstitutional, then the
entire referendum should be deemed unlaw. A rebuttal by the plaintiffs said that the city did not provide factual or legal evidence for its claims and misread the cited precedence. According to the plaintiffs, the land lease contract is ongoing, not an irreversible quote unquote one time event, and since the city authorized and issued the petition form, they skipped their chance to argue that the referendum is somehow invalid by already approving the language of the petition and letting
the referendum process begin. Near the end of July, US District Court Judge Mark Cohen ruled in favor of the cop city referendum, allowing non Atlanta residents to collect signatures and reset the sixty day clock to collect the roughly sixty thousand signatures needed to put the land lease on the ballot. In his ruling, Judge Mark Cohen said, quote requiring signature gatherers to be residents of the city imposes a severe burden on core political speech and does little
to protect the city's interest in self governance unquote. Mary Hooks, the tactical lead of the referendum coalition, reacted to the ruling, saying, quote, we are thrilled by Judge Cohen's ruling and the expansion of democracy to include our cab neighbors and level the
playing field for our coalition unquote. The city quickly filed for an appeal, which was subsequently denied on August fourteenth, with the judge stating quote, the city's real concern may be that now that non residents have the ability to gather signatures on the petition for the entire time that they would have been permitted to do so had their initial request been granted, there is an increased possibility that a sufficient number of valid signatures could be obtained unquote.
As liberals cheered on the Fulton County District Attorney in Atlanta for indicting Trump and co conspirators for election tampering under reco charges, the same exact sort of charges that this office has used against young black rappers and have been wielded against the Stop Cop City movement, the City of Atlanta's own election interference by repressing the referendum has
been largely ignored. Fulton County court set Trump's bond for two hundred thousand dollars for attempting to overthrow a federal election. The same court set bond at three hundred and fifty five thousand dollars each for multiple protesters arrested for being
merely present at a protest. After Georgia State Patrol killed force defender Torteguita in January of this year, during all of the glowing press for District Attorney Fannie Willis and the City of Atlanta, it was revealed that on August eleventh, the Atlanta Police Department killed a sixty two year old, unarmed black man named Johnny Holman while responding to a minor traffic accident. Both Holman and the unnamed second driver
called nine one one after the accident. Holman told nine one one operators quote, somebody ran into truck after waiting for over an hour for police to arrive. Twenty three year old officer Kiaran Kimbro responded to the scene. Kimbro joined APD in March of twenty twenty one and currently as an open complaint for quote sexual misconduct non criminal unquote.
Johnny Holman, who served as a deacon in his church, called his kids to listen to how the officer was escalating the situation, and then an unknown witness helped this APD officer wrestle sixty two year old Johnny Holman to the ground and put him in handcuffs as the officer used his taser. To quote the Atlantic Community Press Collective quote, the children listened for seventeen minutes as they drove to the scene of the accident, hearing their father call for
help after officer kimbro tased him. When they arrived on scene, they found officers giving chrest compressions to their father. Unquote. Johnny Holman was then pronounced dead at Grady Hospital. A week after APD killed Holman, another person incarcerated at Fulton County Jail died while being held on five thousand dollars bond after being denied signature bond for shoplifting less than five hundred dollars of goods. The City of Atlanta's own
alleged voter suppression has continued. Initially, the cop City vote referendum hoped to not have to use the extra day is granted by the judge and submit the collected signatures on August twenty first, with the intention of getting them verified in time to put the cop City vote on the upcoming November ballot come Monday, August twenty first, the referendum put out a statement that, despite collecting over one hundred thousand signatures, that they are delaying submitting the petition
due to concerns that the city was going to employ voter suppression tactics during the validation process. The statement reads, in part quote, In recent days, we began to hear from reporters and sources inside city Hall that the City of Atlanta is planning to argue for a higher than
previously reported legal minimum signature count for ballot access. More concerning were reports that they also planned to utilize signature match in their verification process, an archaic and widely abandoned tool of voter suppression that has been widely condemned across the political spectrum, including by the Republican controlled Georgia State legislator.
Signature matching is a subjective form of a vote validation which uses election workers to visually match signatures on a ballot or in this case of petition, to a previous signature on their driver's license or voter registration card. Hours after the referendum's statement, the City of Atlanta officially announced their intention to use his signature matching for the cop
city vote referendum. Back in twenty eighteen, a federal judge in Georgia ruled that signature matching did not serve any legitimate in interest and disenfranchised black and brown voters disproportionately. For years, the ACLU has advocated against and won multiple
court cases against discriminatory signature matching processes. Fair Fight Action, a Georgia based voting rights organization founded by Stacy Abrams, responded to the news Atlanta would be using signature matching with a statement saying quote signature matching is a tool of voter suppression that litigated extensively in Georgia and removed from the mail in ballot process because of its harm
to voters resulting in mass disenfranchisement. Using the discredited process of signature matching is unacceptable and risks unfairly rejecting thousands of valid petitions. Signature verification is notoriously subjective, disproportionately impacts voters of color, and as biased against disabled and elderly voters. There is extensive precedent in Georgia showing the harms of
this process. It must be relegated to them. Past Fair fight calls on the City of Atlanta to rescind their intent to use this process and to enact steps that fairly evaluate these petitions unquote. Facing the City of Atlanta's quote open and ongoing hostility to the cop city vote referendum, the coalition has decided to use the time extension granted by federal Judge Mark Cohen to continue collecting signatures to quote leave no doubt as to the will of Atlanta
voters unquote. They now plan to submit petition signatures on September twenty third. The City Council will then have fifty days to validate the signatures, which means that if successful, and assuming the city doesn't further interfere the referendum would get put on the ballot during the March primary election in twenty twenty four. The vote being pushed into March
adds a few complications. Turnout may skew more Republican as it's unlikely there will be a Democratic presidential primary, and the vote being seven months away disrupts the momentum that the campaign has been gaining over the past couple of months. People who signed the petition back in June would have to wait almost a whole year to vote on the ballot.
The few extra months does give more time to educate the public about cop City during a lead up to the election, but that goes both ways, which means that after two years of this movement mostly taking form as a ground war over territory, now for the time being, much of the fight to stop Cop City will change
into a pr war in the public sphere. This shift from a physical offense to a metaphysical offense was something that I already felt coming back during the Week of action in terms of like cameras and spectacle the other The big feeling I had on the Saturday kickoff rally was like this just feels like society of the spectacle, Like there's.
Such a performance.
It was very performative, but it was like almost like with all of the cameras looking at everything all the time, it was like are people trying to make a proximily of this movement for the cameras? Like is that has become almost more important? Or like it felt that way. This is a conversation that people have, like is it worth creating moments where we expect the police to lash out violently? Like is that effective as a propaganda tactic.
Yeah, and that if comes with losing while looking good, it does.
Yeah, that is like that is losing while looking good. But also I don't think that's nearly as effective as people think it is. I think after twenty twenty, I think people are kind of desensitized to a lot of police violence at protests. The visual the visuals of police hurting protesters, I don't think is nearly as impactful as
it was even three years ago. So I think people are also realizing that and realizing that, hey, the sacrifice inherent in up actions where you know that you're probably going to get sucked up by police, that's not worth it. That that one, it treats people as like tools. That treats people as disposable, which is, you know, that's not great if you want to build a long lasting movement,
And that's not even very effective. As the public relations battle over the fate of cop City intensifies in the lead up to the vote, with the City of Atlanta undoubtedly ready to run a full election, propaganda campaign strategies of resistance cannot overlook the physical construction of the facility. Pre construction has been active and ongoing for a few months now, mostly in the form of tree clearing and
land grading. Just a few days ago, the Atlanta Police Foundation updated their construction timeline, saying that they had just began installing a stone base for the main roadway, that irrigation and site lighting is now underway, and full lawn construction is set to quote begin in the next week or or soot that now may be out of date, but based on the progress being made on the site, it's clear that construction is now imminent, and with the threat of the referendum, the APF will try to get
as much built as quickly as possible to help with the pro copcity side of election messaging. One of the original goals of the referendum was to try to place an injunction on further construction until the ballot vote, but it's unknown if or when that would happen. In the meantime, activists may take a cue from Earth First, and instead of trying to occupy the site, instead they might find
creative ways to make the construction site hard to work on. Also, with the increased element of spectacle placing a lot of extra eyes on pre announced public demonstrations, more secretive actions may start becoming more common. There's other actions that can happen more covertly, like if you're doing sabotage where you don't need to invite a camera crew to film you do crimes.
Why is move not?
Why is?
But it's also as a rule like why That's the other thing is like so many of these events during during these weeks of action are pre planned that not only gives media heads up on like we're gonna film this, and this is also gonna that's gonna change the actions that happened while this is happening because everyone knows they're being launched, it also gives police heads.
Up to to shut down the paths your in jurudchment career.
So that I think that comes with the week of Action format because if people people coming in from out of town, they don't know where to go, if they're not already tied in with the movement, they don't know what what what exactly to do. So that's that's another thing that thinks could change during future actions that may not be part of the Week of Action is more covert, less less pre planned, pre announced actions that are maybe uh maybe a little bit more mischievous in their recent
statement on voter suppression. The referendum also announced quote the coalition will consider using upcoming opportunities for non violent direct actions to direct the people's frustration with the city council's obstruction of the democratic process unquote. Camal Franklin of Community Movement Builders added quote, if the city needs to see a demonstration of the people's commitment to the issue, we're
happy to provide one. Unquote. Police intentionally denying anarchists operating space by occupying the Wolani themselves may shift the more liberal side of the movement to now focus on rallies and events around the construction site, which could also inadvertently draw eyeballs away and open up other territory across the city that might be more vulnerable to attack by small groups to quote the direct action communicate claiming responsibility for
torching the police motorcade on July first. Quote, while signatures are collected, the police are still killing. We cannot wait. If the referendum fails, actions like ours and Boulder will be the only means available. Unquote. With construction imminent, subcontractor tensions increasing and the City of Atlanta gambling with voter suppression, right now the movement really cannot afford to alienate the Green anarchists that pioneered the early legitimacy of this movement
with bold direct action. The Atlanta Police Foundation is trying to snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat. What happens in the next few months may push Atlanta to a dangerous tipping point. No matter the endpoint of this particular struggle, victory or defeat cannot be imagined as the end. The fight against Copcity is one large battle in an ongoing war, a war of police militarization, racism, environmental justice, and against the incestuous neoliberal police state in its leviathan
like formation. Based on what happens here in Atlanta, similar police project proposals will be recalibrated. As the South goes, so goes the nation. Capitalist realism posits that history is over, that it's a literal thing of the past, But it turns out you're living through it right now, So what will you do to create it? You can read more about the fights to stop Coopcity at Atlpresscollective dot com and donate to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund at Atlsolidarity dot org.
See you on the other side. It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.