Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, known as Cop City, in the South River Forest area near Atlanta, Georgia, USA, Credit: EPA-EFE/ERIK S. LESSER
Dec. 4 (UPI) — Are protests turning into criminal activities? Atlanta is grappling with this question as 57 people have been indicted and arraigned on racketeering charges related to their demonstrations against a planned police and firefighter training center that is controversially nicknamed “Cop City.”
The racketeering charges are typically used for those accused of conspiring toward a criminal goal, such as members of organized crime networks or financiers engaged in insider trading, so this application to demonstrators has raised many eyebrows. Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr is attempting to argue that activities opposing the construction of the police training facility, such as organizing protests, occupying the construction site, and vandalizing police cars and construction equipment, constitute a “corrupt agreement” or shared criminal goal.
The indictment’s justification is rooted in longstanding anti-anarchist sentiments within the U.S. government. However, some civil rights organizations call this combination of charges unprecedented.
Environmental change scholars and researchers in social justice believe that the charges aim to suppress typical acts of civil disobedience and target grass-roots community organizing models and ideas rooted in the practice of mutual aid. They point to people organizing collective networks to meet each other’s basic needs.
The Move Against “Cop City”
“Cop City,” officially known as the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, was first proposed in 2017. The facility is expected to cost $90 million and is located on 85 acres of public land in the Weelaunee Forest, once home to the Indigenous Muscogee Creek peoples. The site is owned by the city of Atlanta but sits on unincorporated land in DeKalb County, just outside the city.
The opposition campaign has garnered support from activists and environmentalists who are concerned about militarization of police forces and potential threats to the Black community, as well as to climate resilience in Atlanta.
Members of Defend the Atlanta Forest, a decentralized movement of grass-roots groups and individuals, argue that the threatened forest provides essential ecological services — filtering rainwater, preventing flooding, providing habitat for wildlife and cooling the city in a time of climate change.
Activists have led protest marches, written letters to elected officials and organized a referendum for the public to decide the future of the property.