The Fight to Stop Cop City
Activists continue to mobilize against the carceral state in Georgia’s Weelaunee Forest.
A Stop Cop City sign / Photo by SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice)
The tension between activists and law enforcement at the planned site for Cop City is mounting. This past Sunday, the Intercept reported, 23 people were arrested, slapped with domestic terrorism charges, and denied bond:
The probable cause stated in the warrants against the activists is extremely weak. Police cited arrestees having mud on their shoes — in a forest. The warrants alleged they had written a legal support phone number on their arms, as is common during mass protests. And, in a few cases, police alleged protesters were holding shields — hardly proof of illegal activity — which a number of defendants even deny.
This is just the latest incident of law enforcement and prosecutorial overreach against the abolitionist, environmentalist movement in Atlanta, an absurd attempt to establish guilt by association, as the flimsy arrest warrants make clear.
At a hearing for arrestees on Tuesday, 22 activists were denied bond outright. One defendant, a Georgia-based attorney who was arrested while acting as a designated legal observer for the National Lawyers Guild during Sunday’s events, was released on $5,000 bond.
The gathering of activists at the planned Cop City training facility has reenergized abolitionist organizing against the ongoing expansion of the carceral state and racist policing around the country.
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