Inside the 'Stop Cop City' forest camp, the latest epicenter of activism over policing
ATLANTA — Carrying backpacks and bedrolls, a group arrived at a forest just outside Atlanta one balmy March afternoon. At the edge of a thicket of loblolly pines, they stepped over a concrete slab decorated with a mural of a police car, overturned and aflame.
They passed a folding table spread with flyers listing numbers for legal help in case of arrest, and instructions for writing to fellow activists jailed on domestic terrorism charges.
"THIS IS NOT A LOCAL STRUGGLE," one flyer said. "Every day that passes, the police are hurting and killing people; meanwhile, the planet burns."
The campers were joining hundreds of activists from across the nation and even a few from Europe who have flocked to this Deep South metropolis to fight plans to build an 85-acre police and firefighter training complex in an urban forest just south of the city limits. Portraying the complex as a dystopian hub for law enforcement to practice urban warfare against poor Black residents, the activists have dubbed it "Cop City."
"We know that Cop City is nothing but a strategy for over-policing our communities," said Kamau Franklin, founder of Community Movement Builders, an Atlanta nonprofit that has led opposition to the project it sees as a response to 2020 protests against police brutality. "They are cutting down a forest to build a militarized training center."
The demonstration has grown into the latest epicenter of left-wing activism, drawing in climate warriors and other protesters in what
