Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) member organization Community Movement Builders (CMB) is calling all organizations, organizers and community members to a National Day of Action Against Police Terror on March 9, 2023.
In the wake of the brutal killings of Tyre Nichols and forest defender Manuel Tortuguita, the city of Atlanta is going full steam ahead to build what activists have dubbed “Cop City.” Atlanta officials have proposed a $90 million complex be built on 85 acres of a forest. This would only arm and deploy more police—whom we refer to as the domestic army—in African and colonized working-class and poor communities.
CMB has been at the forefront of efforts to defeat Cop City. CMB’s analysis suggests placing Cop City in the heart of a still-majority African city is an insidious reminder of the collaborative nature of the “Black misleadership class” that serves the white capitalist minority. It also makes clear this minority is preparing for the massive use of physical, repressive power to maintain control of its internal colonies.
Cop City has been ostensibly framed as a neutral tool for fighting crime. But there is no neutrality when confronted with the asymmetrical power of the settler-colonial state in relation to poor and working-class communities. In that relationship of power, the police are instruments of control and containment, with Cop City being a part of the growing infrastructure for increased police terror in the United States, as well as in the U.S. state of Georgia and in the city of Atlanta.
For CMB, as well as for all of BAP’s member organizations and individual members, Cop City is part of the effort by city, state and federal governments to militarize the lives of African and poor people in the United States and around the world. This local, national and international military-police structure wages war in Ukraine, sends U.S. and NATO troops to Africa, advocates military intervention in Haiti, sanctions progressive governments in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and threatens humankind with nuclear annihilation.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! LET OUR VOICES BE HEARD!
Join us in the fight against police terror.
#StopCopCity, end the 1033 Program and end U.S. sanctions against progressive governments. We are asking everybody to organize one or more of the following actions:
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Marches
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Rallies
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Civil disobedience actions
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Direct actions
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Banner drops
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Teach-ins
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Petition drives
In addition, we want to flood social media with the hashtag #STOPCOPCITY.
Register for BAP’s March 9 webinar, “Countering Colonial Policing in U.S. Domestic Colonies.”
Use BAP’s resources on the 1033 program to hold a teach-in.
Defeat the War on Africans in the U.S. and Around the World!
We Are an African People and We Are at War!