How can I get involved?

The vote passed. What’s next?

City Council voted to approved the ordinance at the Tuesday Sept. 7 City Council meeting. Despite over 16 hours of public comment with 70% of resident callers against the proposal, and despite a survey showing that 98% of Atlanta residents oppose building Cop City, the following Council-members have voted to put profits over people, clear-cut Atlanta’s historic forest, and build an 85 acre, $90 million Cop City: Joyce Sheperd, Andre Dickens, Cleta Winslow, Dustin Hillis, Matt Westmoreland, Michael Julian Bond, Andrea L. Boone, Howard Shook, Marci Overstreet, J.P. Matzigkeit. Read our chapter statement here.

Under the new administration, it’s possible for the Mayor and City Council to reverse the decision. Keep up the pressure and call/email City Council and Mayoral incumbents and candidates! See call script & more here.

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What is Cop City & Why is City Council Bulldozing a Forest?

In a move that underscores the strong ties between policing, Atlanta City Government, and corporate elites, Atlanta’s ruling class is plotting to demolish a large portion of historic forest to construct a new, privately funded $80,600,000 cop training facility — equipped with a shooting range, and space for weapons and explosions testing, and burning buildings tests. This plan not only ignores residents’ demands to reduce the scope and size of policing in Atlanta, but it also follows an undemocratic process and ignores community needs. Read more here!

While it’s clear now more than ever that our elected City Council intends to prioritize development projects and capitalist interests over the needs of working people, we have the power to organize against their plans!

Corporations, Cops, and Cash — Oh, my!

The land is being leased to the Atlanta Police Foundation — a board of corporate ghouls which acts as the PR machine for the Atlanta Police Department, actively gentrifies neighborhoods and funds mass surveillance projects. The APF’s training facility will be supported by the Atlanta Committee for Progress, a committee of over 40 corporate elite figures, including the CEOs of Coca-Cola, Home Depot, and Cox. These close relationships underscores the ties between policing and capitalist interests, and the Mayor and City Council’s endorsement of this proposal exemplifies their alignment with corporate elites over the working-class people of Atlanta.

We want community, not cops!

After a year of uprisings in response to police violence in which Atlanta residents were brutally teargassed, tased, and shot with rubber bullets by APD officers, it is disgraceful that City Council intends to offer more physical space and resources with which APD can practice brutalizing residents. True safety in Atlanta will not be attained via increased policing, militarization, and carceral punishment — and it will only be made worse by the construction of cop city! Atlanta City Council must be held accountable to everyday working class people, and provide for people’s basic needs — including food security, clean water, housing, public and mental health care, and education.

Get Involved

The Atlanta Democratic Socialists of America (ATL DSA) is one chapter of the largest socialist organization in the United States, with over 1,000 members. We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few.

Ready to join the fight to Stop Cop City? Join DSA at www.atldsa.org/join