On Saturday, March 4, I arrived at Intrenchment Creek Park in DeKalb County, Georgia, for the first day of a week of action against a $90 million construction project undertaken by the Atlanta Police Foundation—a private entity, backed by local CEOs and political leaders, that advances police interests. The foundation wants to raze eighty-five acres of public forest to build the largest police training facility in the United States, complete with a firing range, a burn building, and a “kill house” designed to mimic urban combat scenarios. It also argues that the facility will boost morale among officers. The size and scale of the project, and the destruction and deforestation it will require, have led a growing number of activists, organizers, and community members to object to what they call “Cop City.” The campaign against Cop City is simultaneously a campaign to defend the Weelaunee Forest, the name used for the area by the Muscogee Creek people forcibly displaced by settlers from the land in the early 1800s before it became the site of the notorious Atlanta Prison Farm. These elements of the campaign—the histories on which it draws, what it’s fighting against and for, who it is bringing together, and how—have given it tremendous staying power despite extraordinary odds.

3 月 4 日星期六，我抵达佐治亚州迪卡尔布县的战壕溪公园，开始为期一周的行动，反对亚特兰大警察基金会开展的一项耗资 9000 万美元的建设项目，该基金会是一家私营实体，得到当地首席执行官和政界人士的支持领导人，这会促进警察的利益。该基金会希望将 85 英亩的公共森林夷为平地，以建造美国最大的警察训练设施，包括射击场、燃烧建筑和旨在模拟城市战斗场景的“杀戮屋”。它还认为，该设施将提高军官的士气。该项目的规模和规模，以及它需要的破坏和森林砍伐，导致越来越多的活动家、组织者和社区成员反对他们所谓的“警察城市”。” 针对 Cop City 的运动同时也是保卫 Weelaunee 森林的运动，该地区是 Muscogee Creek 人使用的名称，在 1800 年代早期被定居者从这片土地上强行迁移，之后这里成为臭名昭著的亚特兰大监狱农场所在地。这场运动的这些要素——它借鉴的历史、它反对什么和为什么而战、它把谁聚集在一起，以及如何——尽管困难重重，却赋予了它巨大的持久力。