Stop Cop City Activists Respond to RICO Indictments

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Aired on Out-FM on Tues., September 12, 2023 from 8:00-9:00 pm, on 99.5 FM WBAI/NY

Press Play button to stream, or green download buttons below - to download the sound file of the promo, or the program sound file. 

 

Lorraine Fontana

Lorraine Fontana, member, Atlanta Grandmothers for Peace

Out-FM was pleased to present a follow-up program on the ongoing community response to the construction of Cop City​, a giant police training campus, in ​the forest outside Atlanta, Georgia. Producers Stahimili Mapp and Bob Lederer ​interviewed Atlanta activist/organizer Lorraine Fontana, who will update us on the activities of the broad-based Stop Cop City movement.
 
The particular focus was ​the response to the 61 RICO indictments brought last week by Georgia's Attorney General.​ This legal action is the latest repressive attack, following anti-terrorism charges against dozens of movement members in a year beginning with the police assassination of queer Indigenous Venezuelan forest protector and tree-sitter Tortuguita (Manuel Esteban Paez Teran).
 
This segment is part of Out-FM's continuing series Queerly Defiant: Hidden No More.
 
Lorraine Fontana is a member of Atlanta Grandmothers for Peace, which collected signatures for an Atlanta referendum -- still being fought out in the courts -- to stop Cop City.
We had hoped to also interview Kamau Franklin, cofounder of Community Movement Builders in Atlanta, but unfortunately he was not available at air time. 
 
Out-FM will continue to cover the movement to Stop Cop City.
 
For Out-FM's January 31, 2023 program, "Georgia Police Assassinate Queer Indigenous Opponent of Cop City," click here.

Stop Cop City

Stop Cop City Movement

#STOPCOPCITY

#STOPCOPCITY

PROGRAM INTRODUCTION

I am your host tonight, Stahimili Mapp, along with Bob Lederer. We are here to present a topic of continuing concern happening in Atlanta, Georgia. That is the resistance to the development of Cop City, a law-enforcement training campus being developed in a Woodlands forest outside Atlanta. We have with us to discuss the resistance to Cop City an Atlanta-based queer  organizer, Lorraine Fontana. a member of Grandmothers for Peace, an action group working on the referendum campaign to Stop Cop City. Lorraine was arrested in June during one of the many acts of nonviolent civil disobedience to Stop Cop City. 

Before we actually begin our discussion, we’d like to start with a brief overview of things we should know about Cop City .

1) Cop City will fuel the criminalization of marginalized people and further expand the carceral system.

2) Cop City will be disastrous for the environment. Cop City will be built on the largest green space in Atlanta the Weelaunee Forest, or South River Forest. It will include a mock city to practice urban warfare burn towers, bomb simulations multiple firing ranges, helicopter landing pads. One of the many things of concern regarding the climate is that this forest is one of 4 "lungs" of Atlanta and this project will accelerate the urban heat island effect. This will impact on the many black residents whose communities surround Cop City. This forest is really important because its trees as much as 19,000,000 pounds of air pollution each year.

3) Cop City faces intense public backlash. In June, during Public comment at an Atlanta City Council meeting, before voting to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize this project, over 1,000 Atlanta residents spoke out against Cop City development. But the outcry has been largely ignored.

In Atlanta residents have organized demos and rallies in many locations around the City, including in the Weelaunee Forest, with growing solidarity marches around the country.

And as many may know, law enforcement already killed one Cop City protester on January 2023, a 26-year-old Forest Defender named Tortuguita, also known as Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, who used “they” pronouns. Tortuguita was shot 50 times by a task force consisting of Atlanta police, Georgia state police, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation as construction crews were attempting to clear the forest for construction.  Police claimed Tortuguita had shot a police officer and was killed in self-defense, but a subsequent autopsy report commissioned the family showed that they had their hands up and was seated in a cross legged position when they were killed by police.

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