How do you build a $90 million police training complex and bulldoze 85 acres of vulnerable forest in Atlanta? By using Connecticut logistics, investments, and insurance.
The fight to Stop Cop City, now an international struggle over the sanctity of the Georgia metropolis’ Weelaunee Forest, came to Connecticut last week for the National Week of Action. The Ecosocialist Working Group started building a statewide coalition with Worker’s Voice and 350 CT last summer, which has gained significant momentum since the police killing of the Forest Defender known as Tortuguita on January 18th. After flyering and convening with other coalition members on Zoom, Ecosocialist activists picketed at AXA XL Headquarters in Stamford and Atlas Technical Consultants in East Hartford. These events are part of a coordinated effort to target the police industrial complex supply chain and jam the flow of carceral capital. Though we may be miles away from the site of struggle, these efforts extend the reach of local Atlanta organizers like so many satellites sharing a political message. And that message could not be any more dire.
Cop City represents a perfect storm of police violence and environmental destruction. It is an attempt to revitalize a former prison farm used to incarcerate Atlanta’s petty criminals into a 21st-century training ground for urban police tactics. The proposed design includes replica city blocks so that police can practice suppressing mass movements and was planned as a direct response to the 2020 uprisings in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks. Up to 400 acres of forest containing old-growth trees adjacent to the majority of Black and low-income neighborhoods of south Atlanta are at risk of destruction to make way for Cop City and movie studios. Anarchists and environmental activists began occupying the forest and living full-time in tree forts over a year ago. In more recent events following the city’s sustained protest against this violent new institution, the police murdered Tortuguita. They arrested many others with outsized charges of domestic terrorism as they swept out the encampments.
The CT DSA Ecosocialist Working Group sees this conflict as part of the battlefield in the mass struggle against climate change and environmental racism. Such a struggle is grounded in the abolition of policing and the privatization of land. By liberating land from the capitalists who own it and the police who secure it, we can bring about democratic solutions to climate change.
Our working group will participate in events to be announced during the month of March, including a fundraiser for the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. DSA members can join Connecticut’s Forest Defenders support coalition by emailing StopCopCityCT [at] gmail.com. We will also plan EcoSocialist meetings to discuss the Justice for Our Streets project to find an equitable solution to flooding in Stratford and Bridgeport and to determine the future trajectory of this recently revitalized working group. Reach out to Fiona McElroy on Mattermost to get involved!
Contact (Link contact form) Fiona McElroy to get involved with CT DSA and any of our Ecosocialism Working Group campaigns.
