Friday marks the start of a weekend-long “mass direct nonviolent action” by the organizers of the Block Cop City movement in and around the South River Forest area of Atlanta where the controversial Atlanta Public Safety Training Center is set to be built.
Construction of the facility, dubbed “Cop City” by opponents, is ongoing, and is set to be completed by December 2024. Critics of the 85-acre, $90 million center will gather in the forest over the weekend to protest the construction, and to prepare for a “Day of Action” scheduled for Monday in an effort to “bring construction to a halt,” organizers say.
“If the city government does not halt construction in order to listen to the people, then we will simply have to do it ourselves: a People’s Stop Work Order,” activists said on the protest’s event page.
The larger movement against the center, called Stop Cop City, has been ongoing for the last two years, with critics of the training center for the Atlanta police and fire departments arguing that its completion could lead to greater police militarization in the Atlanta metro area, which is a predominantly Black community.
“It is a war base where police will learn military-like maneuvers to kill black people and control our bodies and movements,” the movement states on their website. “They are practicing how to make sure poor and working class people stay in line.”
The center will include an “auditorium for police/fire and public use,” a “mock city for burn building training and urban police training,” an “Emergency Vehicle Operator Course for emergency vehicle driver training,” a K-9 unit kennel and training, according to the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center’s website.
Protesters gathered on Constitution Road (shown here) on Nov. 10, 2023, after five individuals were arrested on Sept. 7, 2023, at the site of Atlanta’s proposed public safety training center after chaining themselves to construction equipment in an effort to halt work.
John Spink/The Atlanta…
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