Over the past decade, activist Mary Hooks has witnessed Atlanta’s political winds shift considerably.

Hooks, 41, is the spokesperson for the Stop Cop City coalition and the national field secretary for the Movement for Black Lives. The longtime Atlanta resident says a radical Black left-wing movement didn’t really exist in 2012, when she joined Southerners On New Ground (SONG), an LGBTQ liberation group, that she later became the co-director of.

But when the Black Lives Matter movement emerged a year later, sparked by the acquittal of a self-styled vigilante for killing Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager, grassroots organizations once perceived as “fringe” started to gain ground in mainstream political discourse.

These days, nothing signifies that growing influence more than the Stop Cop City movement, a loose coalition of racial justice activists, environmentalists, and local neighborhood groups who are trying to shut down the city of Atlanta’s Public Safety Training Center project. 

They’ve amassed more than 30,000 signatures so far in a long-shot, people-powered attempt to put a citizen referendum on the ballot. If voters concur, it could reverse the Atlanta City Council’s approval of the $90 million project – and thanks to a federal judge’s recent decision, they’ve got 60 additional days to collect the 40,000 signatures still needed. 

Atlanta Civic Circle spoke to Hooks for her perspective on the Stop Cop City movement and the potential power of grassroots activism in Atlanta.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you get involved with social justice organizations in Atlanta?

I’ve been a resident of Atlanta for about 17 years, give or take. When I moved here from Racine, Wisconsin, I worked at Goodwill for a minute as a budding HR professional. That quickly ended after I became politicized through Southerners On New Ground. I joined as…