Marching protesters in Atlanta, Georgia holding banner that says “Stop Cop City” , Friday, March 10, 2023. (Courtesy Camila Cuevas/Latino Rebels)
The wave of cop cities being constructed across the nation must be analyzed through the lens of settler colonialism and the state's effort to maintain its dominance by expanding the police state.
This week represents the first year anniversary of the State’s attack and arrest of Amin Chaoui and others who were challenging its attempt to build another kop city, this time within the Atlanta, Georgia, area.
It's important to look at the creation of kop city within the larger context of State repression and the creation of an expanded police State of hyper surveillance, pushing ever greater intrusion into the private lives of the people. The repressive State relies upon the use of poor or working class folks to police and dominate other poor, oppressed and marginalized folks.
It is also interesting to note where a lot of these Kop Cities– modern day forts for the police, sheriff, modern day posse and local settler populations– are being built and their function to further impose minority rule. To monitor, control and secure the natives, the perceived threat population. In whose interest are they serving?
In the old days, when genocide was being visited all across this land, military and settler forts were built from which to launch raiding parties, supposedly to protect the local population (we know this isn't the case here) and likewise served as places where captured natives, enslaved Afrikans and others were held, interrogated, tortured or forced into servitude.
"Cop City-ATL is designed to join Michigan Camp Grayling founded in 1913 when local lumber baron, Rasmus Hanson, donated over 13,000 acres to the State of Michigan for military training. Camp Grayling has since grown to 147,000 acres that spans over three counties of maneuver area, state-of-the-art ranges and modern support facilities, making it the largest National Guard Training Center in the Country. In fact, there are Forty-Seven other States that have the same or similar plans." (1)
So why are so many of these being built all over and around the country? Why on such a large scale and why with such a wide array of training dealing with urban warfare and repression? The same training and tactics being utilized in theaters of war such as Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Afghanistan and various parts of Afrika are now being taught and prepared to be visited upon the Neo Colonized Natives and People of Color and other so called disenfranchised folks within the heart of the empire. Could it be an opportunistic response to the rebellions and BLM protests in the aftermath of themurders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Mike Brown to just name a few? An opportunity to push forward a neo-fascist agenda of further militarization of the shock troops of so called law enforcement.
The rebellions and protests a few years back exposed the flaws and weaknesses within the U.S. government and security infrastructure as protesters and resistors attacked government agencies, police stations, court houses, city halls, etc. all of which invigorated and emboldened the masses who may have before been initially afraid, fearful or intimidated by the State and its and its security forces/apparatus.
This is also why you see the heavy handed response to the kop city resisters. The use of the RICO Act and other Federal conspiracy Statutes, designed to both intimidate, crush and dismantle said organizations and developing political infrastructures.
This is a strategy and tactic hiding in plain sight of the supposed Constitutional right to assemble, to protest, to speak truth to power, but apparently not.
If people like the kop city defendants are convicted on these types of conspiracy charges it sets a dangerous precedent for all revolutionaries and political activists and any organizations that oppose and challenge U.S. domestic policies. The thought police can come arrest you, prosecute you, claim you're a conspirator if you belong to a political organization or collective. You then become a terrorist or security threat and end up in one of the many Prison Industrial Complex Supermaxes. It's no different in a prison setting where political organization is identified as gang activity or Security Threat Group/S.T.G. activity, our books and literature are deemed to promote terrorism, subversiveness or violence and you end up housed in a Secure Housing Unit or in a Supermax on Admin Segregation Status.
These kop city complexes being built are military bases masquerading as Protect and Serve. It is not to serve the interest of the people and should be exposed and challenged!!!
(1) Quoted from The Winter 2023 edition of ReBuild
All Power 2 The People!!
Shaka A. Shakur #1996207
Bmcc
3500 Beaumont Rd.
Beaumont, Va. 23014
[email protected]
Shaka Shakur is a New Afrikan political prisoner. For more information on Shaka’s case and how you can donate to his legal fund and sign the petition demanding his release, go to www.shakashakur.org.
Ajamu Baraka is a Black Agenda Report contributing editor and director of the North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights, a project of the Black Alliance for Peace. He recently…
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