Jessenia Class’s new article on The [F]law uncovers how corporate actors funding Cop City under the guise of public safety and “neighborhood prosperity” are harming the very people they claim to serve.
Read the article here.
“Foundations and corporate actors have worked alongside local and state officials to bulldoze past opposition to build Cop City by bankrolling its construction, controlling the media narrative around protest efforts, and encouraging the silence of dissenters.”
“It is vital that we tie together the money and the motivations and the networks that create things like Cop City because by doing this, and by doing it in an analytically rigorous way…we are able to determine where the fissures in the system are.”
“Cities, corporations, and police agencies . . . bide their time and wait for opportunities or create opportunities to put out narratives of high crime and double-down on the over-policing that’s been happening in our communities and create a more militarized police force that can actually stomp out movements against police violence in the first place.”
“The APF’s facility would constitute a huge investment into a system of policing and militarization that has already proven to be dangerous in this city and around the world, in forms ranging from racial disparities in deadly interactions with police, to pollution from explosives and gun ranges persisting in the environment.”
“We are opening our mouths and crying with a loud voice to say that we don’t want Cop City. I live in East Atlanta. I don’t want Cop City.”
“All of the words in emails and public statements attesting to racial and environmental justice are nice, but they mean nothing if APF is granted the land disturbance permit to build Cop City.”
“This is an intergenerational struggle for what our future together in this world should look like, and what future we want for our children and our children’s children and for generations to come.”
“What is to be done? Organize, organize, organize. That’s what’s to be done.”
Related SJP Resources
- From The [F]law:
- Saleh Ismail, Activism and Land Control in a Changing Boston
- Gabrielle (Gabe) Crofford, Selling Sovereignty: How Corporations Used Tribal Sovereign Immunity to Evade Regulation and Exploit Consumers
- Connie Cheng, From Walls to Shackles: The Big Business of Electronically Monitoring Immigrants
- Tala Alfoqaha, Marketplace of Violence: Bidding for Brutality Among Minnesota’s Police
- Anna Bower, Shots Fired, and Profited On: Inside the Campaign against “ShotSpotter” in Chicago
From The Systemic Justice Journal: