The cost of building collective power against Cop City through direct demonstration and protest has reached treacherous levels. Atlanta residents who have been a part of this movement for the past few years recognize the dangers and importance of continued organizing efforts. Andrew Free, an Atlanta-based law professor and founder of the anti-carceral legal organizing project #DetentionKills, speaks to these concerns: “I’m told that [Cop City] makes me safe. I’m asked to be silent. And I’m not just asked—I’m put into a situation of mutual interdependence with this city, where speaking out risks not being able to do what you want to do. It risks retaliation. It risks criminalization.”

“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.”

But Free argues that an analysis of the corporations buttressing Cop City might prove to be an effective strategy for the next wave of organizing efforts—both for Atlanta’s Cop City, and the next to come. “When we’re looking at power and we’re thinking about harm and … legitimacy,” Free says, “[I]t is vital that we develop a power analysis. 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.”

Cop City—or as the funders have dubbed it, the “Atlanta Institute for Social Justice and Public Safety Training”—is not your everyday city. Renderings for the 85-acre facility include space for a helicopter landing base, shooting ranges, burn tower sites, a horse barn, kennels, a simulation room, and a mock village. The land—forcibly taken from the Muscogee and Cherokee people—is home to Indigenous burial and ceremonial grounds, a planned prisoner-of-war camp, and also houses the old Atlanta Prison Farm, where incarcerated people were forced to labor with farmland and livestock until the early 1990s. Cop City would be a massive police facility in a primarily Black and working-class community that has already been saddled with corporate displacement during the developments accompanying the 1996 Olympics.

Despite this history of violence on this land, Rob Baskin, a spokesperson for APF, is all for Cop City. “Everybody’s more or less said this would be an amazing facility,” said Baskin in an interview with SaportaReport. He predicted it will generate “a tremendous amount of appeal” across the country and would be a “motivating force for morale” for police who feel the “city has not stood up for them in terms of the support they need.”

Locals, however, disagree vehemently. Kamau Franklin, founder and director of the Atlanta-based grassroots organization Community Movement Builders, challenges those assumptions: “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.”

“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.”

Opposition to Cop City stems broadly from two buckets: racial and environmental justice concerns.  

There’s a deep history of racial violence against Atlanta’s communities of color. Following the legacy of slavery and the Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906, today police violence—particularly toward Black and brown people—plagues Atlanta’s metro area. This has been put on stark display in 2020 by the killing of Rayshard Brooks at the hands of Atlanta police and the murder of Ahmaud Arbery by two white men. That year, the city spent $216.73 million funding its police—spending more money per capita than 74 percent of police departments in the country.

During the summer of 2020, droves of Atlantans took to the streets to call out militarized police training practices and the disproportionate impact these training tactics have on Black and brown communities, demanding city officials defund the police. These requests were almost realized: only one city council vote stood in the way of Atlanta cutting $72 million from its police department in 2021.

Two years later, Cop City proves that Atlanta has done a complete about-face, abandoning calls for change from the 2020 racial justice protests.Building Cop City also requires indelible damage to Atlanta’s tree canopy. The Welaunee Forest’s tree coverage helps filter rainwater and mitigate flooding during heavy rain, operates as a carbon sink, and helps combat the heat by providing shade and moisture. Cutting down trees to construct Cop City creates even more dire results in light of climate change. During Atlanta’s disastrous 2009 flooding, studies showed the Welaunee Forest’s vast tree coverage and absorbent roots were vital for the area’s protection. As the city faces a 75 percent increase in flooding and heavy rain and ranks as the 19th fastest-warming city in the nation, the loss of trees in Atlanta’s forests through the development of Cop City portends severe climate-related obstacles for the area in the future.

Source: Decaturish, Photo by Dean Hesse

Over time, the use of the training facilities at Cop City promises to lead to further environmental degradation. In an email to The Guardian, Chair of the Sierra Club’s Metro Atlanta Group Nina Dutton expressed dismay over the plan’s racial and ecological impact: “[T]he 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.” Shooting ranges are sources of heavy metal pollution which can leach into water and soil for decades after being introduced, impacting nearby agricultural crops and fish. Community members might also be exposed to toxic chemicals through explosive testing sites, which are located proximately to the forest’s tributaries that feed into the endangered South River, one of the four “lungs” of the city.

“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.”

These concerns have been raised to city officials on numerous occasions. Even amongst heightened levels of tension stemming from the intense policing of recent protest efforts, community members have continued to express their concerns clearly to local legislators. Keyanna Jones, a clergywoman and member of an interfaith coalition who attended a March 2023 city council meeting, stated her demands plainly: “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.”

Over these pleas, the council authorized APF’s lease grant. Plans to build Cop City continue forward.

The idea for a Cop City was first sparked by the Atlanta Police Department. In 2015, the department reached out to APF to begin researching the possibility of a new training facility.  After considering available properties owned by the city, the foundation selected the Welaunee Forest as its desired location, originally eyeing over 300 acres of land for development. Over the next five years, APF worked with Atlanta’s police and fire departments to design the facility. Former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms hinted at the facility’s development in an action plan to address violent crime in January 2021. 

“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.”

The ordinance to authorize Cop City’s development was introduced to Atlanta’s city council in early June 2021. Council members tweaked the legislation over the summer before putting the bill up for a vote in September 2021. There, almost 1,2000 local residents provided over 17 hours of public comment calls; 71 percent of non-police officer callers expressed opposition to Cop City. A week later, the council approved APF’s ground lease for Cop City, rubberstamping its construction.

Of the $90 million slated for Cop City’s development, $33.5 million is expected to come out of taxpayers’ pockets; the city will pay $1 million in installments for the next 30 years to cover the facility’s costs. The other approximately $60 million will be footed by APF, which plans to raise this money from donors and members of its board. Little-Sis, a public accountability database, has mapped out where this $60 million is coming from. Each of these funders has played a critical role in motivating powerful actors to stay silent and complicit in the face of Cop City’s development.

A large heft of funding—$13 million—is coming from the Woodruff Foundation. The Woodruff Foundation describes itself as “seek[ing] to improve the quality of life in Georgia by investing in health, education, economic opportunity and community vitality.” It is a major funder of higher education in Georgia, providing $177.18 million dollars in grants in 2022 alone to Emory University, Georgia Tech University, Georgia State University, the University of Georgia, and Morehouse College. 

Notably, none of these universities’ top officials have issued statements against Cop City. Faculty members at Georgia State University have signed an open letter denouncing Cop City and urging funders to invest instead in housing, public health, and environmental justice. Students at historically Black Atlanta colleges Spelman College, Morehouse College, and Clark-Atlanta University have also staged protests; students at Emory University have organized walk-outs as well. But the administrations at these Georgia-based universities have remained neutral—a striking example of how the commercialization of higher education can silence dissent.

Another $10 million comes from the James M. Cox Foundation, the “corporate responsibility” arm of Cox Enterprises. Alex Taylor is the CEO of Cox Enterprises and heads APF’s Cop City fundraising campaign. In addition, Taylor chairs the Atlanta Committee for Progress (“ACP”), a purported public-private partnership “between the city’s top business, civic and academic leaders, and the Mayor of Atlanta to support positive change in our city.”

ACP’s work focuses on development projects in Atlanta. The board is mostly comprised of top officials of major corporations, including Delta Airlines, UPS, Wells Fargo Equifax, Chik-fil-A, Koch Industries, AT&T, Home Depot, Mercedes Benz, Coca-Cola, and Georgia Power, as well as a number of Georgia-based university presidents and foundation representatives.

Many of these same corporations are members of APF’s board and are also direct funders themselves. ACP released a statement in April 2021 promising to help then-Mayor Bottoms push Cop City forward while (expectedly) also calling for “new market tax credits” to attract more investors like itself to the project.  

Cox Enterprises is also the owner of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution (“AJC”), the only major daily newspaper in the metro Atlanta area. Unsurprisingly, the AJC has strategically issued editorial pieces that helped usher in supportive votes while the Cop City bill was being considered by the Atlanta City Council. On August 7, 2021, the AJC ran an op-ed written by former Atlanta police chief George Turner, which attempted to address the “false narratives, misunderstood objectives and a distorted view of the urgency of the law enforcement needs of Atlanta citizens” to pave the way for Cop City’s approval.

On August 21—two weeks before the bill came to a vote before the council—the AJC published a staff editorial calling for the bill to pass, stoking fear around the city’s crime rates while blithely nodding to Taylor and the Cox Enterprises’ “philanthropic” support. The same day, the AJC published an op-ed by Robert C. “Robin” Loudermilk, Jr., president and CEO of the Loudermilk Cos and Board Chair for the APF, which heavily pressured council members with outstanding votes to affirm Cop City. In October 2022, the AJC editorial board reiterated its disdain for “so-called activists trying to halt the construction of” Cop City, channeling a clear call-to-action: “[T]hey must be stopped.”

The Arthur M. Blank Foundation also pledged $6 million to the APF. The Blank Foundation—endowed by the eponymous founder of Home Depot—describes to “promote[] innovative solutions to transform the lives of youth and their families, seeking results that move communities beyond what seems possible today.”

As a part of this work, the Blank Foundation in June 2020 issued numerous grants to exemplify their “ongoing commitment for racial justice by [Arthur Blank], [his] family, [their] Foundation and [their] businesses.” Of these grants, $100,000 went to the NAACP to “support policy work needed for police reform in Georgia”;  $50,000 to the Color of Change’s #JusticeforAhmaud campaign; and $150,000 to in part support the Southern Center for Human Rights’ youth initiatives to “transform systems causing harm” in cities including Atlanta. These organizations—ones the Blank Foundation funded purportedly to steward their beliefs and actions on racial justice—have each stood against Cop City.

Corporate funders have pledged tens of millions of dollars to construct Cop City. But after the murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and subsequent protests in the summer of 2020, these same corporations pledged to their consumers and to the world that they would support racial and environmental justice efforts. It took little for these corporations to fall back on their promises.

Source: Twitter @kamaufranklin

Take, for example, Chik-fil-A. After the summer of 2020, CEO Dan T. Cathy professed his commitment to racial justice: “We must use our influence in our own businesses to be responsible capitalists who meet the needs of society.” Two years later, the fast-food company directly donated $1 million to APF and its Cop City agenda.

In describing how philanthropists should incorporate a racial equity lens into their giving strategies, Bank of America listed four steps. The first calls for philanthropists to listen and learn from impacted communities: “When looking to create racial justice outcomes, philanthropists must seek out and prioritize the voices of those who are most directly affected by inequity.” Yet, in its own philanthropic endeavors, Bank of America fails at step one. Amidst resounding opposition from Black and brown Atlantans, Bank of America donated $360,000 to APF to fund Cop City. 

Atlanta-based organizations fair no better. Named the world’s worst polluter, Coca-Cola has attempted to redirect itself and be mindful of environmental justice. In its guiding principles, the company promises to “conduct business in ways that will protect and preserve the environment while reducing our environmental footprint.” As a step in that direction, Coca-Cola pledged it would make 25 percent of its packaging reusable by 2030. Yet, Coca-Cola’s $1 million donation to APF will help destroy acres of greenery in the Welaunee Forest.

“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.”

Home Depot too fails to live up to its word. In its 2022 environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) report, the Atlanta-headquartered company showboated strong climate justice commitments to its socially conscious stakeholders. The report boasts about Home Depot and its employees “find[ing] new ways that our organization can reduce its environmental impact.” Apparently, this “new way” involved both direct donations well as a $6 million dollar pledge via the Blank Foundation to APF that will contribute to the poisoning of tributaries and rivers in the largest urban forest in the country.

These contradictions are all too clear to consumers. Brad Beadles, a Dekalb County resident, shared his discontent with corporate doublespeak in the Atlanta Community Press Collective: “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 the precedent you are allowing to be set and this is the legacy you will leave behind if you continue to do nothing to prevent these egregious acts of environmental racism in your county.”

Andrew Free’s son was invited to participate in a stomp dance ceremony in the Weelaunee Forest by Mekko Chebon Kernell, a Muscogee leader who led a historic rematriation to the traditional, sacred lands of his ancestors. Free sees this moment as capturing what’s at the heart of the #StopCopCity movement: “[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.”

“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.”

Part of the battle involves undermining the corporate actors keeping Cop City alive. Mounting a challenge against these corporate monoliths can be daunting. In claiming to support public safety measures, corporations are gilded in plausible deniability: they need only point to the media sources that they control to suggest pure intentions. Wealthy funders also have the financial means to weather many organizing attempts.

But money can shield these corporations only for so long. Creative methods to put pressure on the corporate entities propping up Cop City are emerging. Students and faculty at Georgia-based universities are calling upon their administrations to divest from Cop City.

Socially conscious stakeholders have the means to put pressure on their investments by calling on decision-makers to stop funding Cop City or moving their investments out of banks and corporations that continue to support the development. Direct actions—rallies, banner drops, creative civil disobedience, petitions, and more—are being staged to build collective power across the country. Social media campaigns are raising awareness around corporate complicity in the destruction of the Welaunee Forest and the criminalization of organizers.

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Protesters are hopeful that continued efforts across the movement will put an end to the development and reallocate funding to community programs that promote safety, such as mental health resources and affordable housing. Efforts in Hawaii mounted against a similar first-responder facility were recently successful, stalling their site’s construction plans.  

“What is to be done? Organize, organize, organize. That’s what’s to be done.”

Though the development is slated to move forward, for now, the fight to stop Cop City continues. As Free puts it, quoting prison abolitionist and scholar Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore: “What is to be done? Organize, organize, organize. That’s what’s to be done.”

From The [F]law:

From The Systemic Justice Journal:

• Austin Nielsen-Reagan, The Profitability of Inhumanity: How Corporate Power Gives Rise to Forced Labor in Privatized Immigration Detention
• Adira Levine, Can’t Get Back Up: The Growth and Toll of Private Probation