Cop City and Environmental Justice

And how the Defund the Police movement is connected to climate justice

From the Defend the Atlanta Forest Media Kit seeking to put a stop to Cop City

On January 18th, environmental activist Tortuguita was shot and killed by police while defending one of Atlanta’s important green spaces, the South River Forest/the Weelaunee Forest, the Muscogee (Creek) name for the land. For months protestors had been camping out on the land in protest of the impending construction of a $90 million police training campus dubbed “Cop City” by the protestors. This plan had been in the works since the city council approved the funding in 2021 that would effectively hand over nearly 400 acres of land to the police department to construct a mock city for training exercises on 85 acres of the land.

While activists have been calling to block this construction for months as well as putting their bodies on the line through physically occupying the area, it wasn’t until Tortuguita’s death as well as the terrorism charges made against 19 activists that have put Cop City into the national spotlight. And with it, we’re all getting a lesson in the intersections between racial justice by way of defunding the police and climate change. 

Cop City was justified in the wake of the racial justice uprisings of 2020 to help boost the morale of the police force. Activists see the complex as a way to build up an even more militarized police force that is essentially preparing for urban modern warfare. The funding consists largely of private donations solicited by the Atlanta Police Foundation from large corporations. Subsequently, the Atlanta City Council overwhelmingly approved the proposal to the complex despite almost no community engagement on the project and 70% of all 1,100 public comments opposing the project. This project is not only a huge step backward in the fight against police violence, it’s also an example of how these types of projects rammed through the approval process are a big part of the fight for environmental justice.

The South River in Georgia is the fourth-most endangered river in the United States and, for an area like so many around the country and world seeing more extreme weather events, is an essential resource where the vital ecosystem and tree canopy provides protection to the surrounding community that prevents flooding and urban heat island effect mitigation. 

Ray Levy Uyeda published a story in Prism last June warning against the environmental degradation of the city and those who would be most impacted. They quoted the advocacy organization South River Watershed Alliance board member Jacqueline Echols: “Green space holds value more than any other land, and [when] the environment goes, so does the community. What’s going on with the prison farm [which was what the land used to be used as]… is just devaluing people, devaluing communities, devaluing the environment, and they’re doing it because these are very vulnerable communities, marginalized people, and they can get away with it. You know, they can’t get away with it in [a wealthy white area like] Buckhead.” 

The city and the Atlanta Police Foundation are essentially working in authoritarian ways to turn vital land in an area right next to a predominantly BIPOC community into a place that seemingly promotes an increase in violent police tactics that disproportionately harm Black and Brown communities. It’s an example of private entities working in sneaky, suspect ways to grab land that should be preserved. It’s an example of what is happening across the country while containing an extra layer of racial justice implications.

“Along with overt violence, government institutions can yield policy to justify the polluting of low income, Black and Brown communities because they do not always have the economic capital to challenge these policy decisions,” wrote Alexandrea Wilson in The University of Chicago’s Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice’s Advocates’ Forum. “At different levels of government policy, decisions are made based on economic frameworks, such as cost and benefit. This analysis may prioritize sustaining a city’s fiscal resources but may do so in a way that divest from creating sustainable communities.”

With Atlanta’s Cop City, over-policing and police violence are being justified by policies created by lawmakers. Charging the 19 activists with terrorism charges because of no more than rock-throwing goes back to a 2017 Georgia terrorism law currently on the books. And it’s not just in Atlanta, police are threats to all environmental movements across the country. Police consistently used life threatening crowd control tactics against Dakota Access Pipeline protesters at Standing Rock. The same kind of police violence seen on the streets during the 2020 racial justice uprisings are the same methods they’re using against environmental activists.

As such, re-allocating the exorbitant amount of funds from the police to perennial underfunded city programs such as social services and parks programs is a move toward environmental justice. While Cop City received private funding, the city council had the power to deny the proposal as well as to listen to community members. 

Alexandrea Wilson’s article puts a fine point on the link between the “defund the police” movement and environmental justice.

“Police threaten the environmental justice movement and act as weapons against communities that speak out on violations of the right to clean air, water, and land,” she writes. 

“Policing creates an environment that is inaccessible to those who do not benefit from whiteness. They excessively patrol the streets of minority communities which only further contributes to the depiction of them as inherently violent and endangers the psychological and physical well-being of residents. Policing is a socially constructed environmental hazard and defunding the police is necessary to the creation of a safe environment for minority communities.”

Stay in the Know About Cop City

I highly recommend you keep up on the news about what’s going on with Cop City. While the police are using violent tactics to clear activists from the land, people are still protesting. I recommend reading all of the stories linked above. Impact had great information on what’s going on with Cop City on Instagram and included some recommendations on how to support the efforts to save the Weelaunee Forest. And follow Defend the Atlanta Forest on Instagram and www.defendtheatlantaforest.org.