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No Cop City, No Cop World: Lessons from the Movement
A collection of essays from the Stop Cop City movement on the fight for police abolition and for a liveable planet for all, with gripping reporting from activists on the ground and rousing articles from renowned radical academics
The Stop Cop City movement is a decentralized effort to stop the construction of a $120 million police training facility and the destruction of 170 acres of the Weelaunee Forest outside of Atlanta, Georgia. This is the first collection of essays bringing together organizers and activists who have been involved in the years-long struggle to Stop Cop City. Connecting movements for environmental justice, police abolition, and Indigenous sovereignty, this expansive collection highlights the strategy, tactics, and ideologies that transformed a local collective action into a powerful international movement.
Featuring the voices of forest defenders, environmental justice advocates, political prisoners, Indigenous activists, abolitionists, educators, legal scholars, and academics, these wide-ranging essays explore the history of the intersectional movement, the diverse tactics embraced by activists, tributes to Tortuguita, the 26-year-old queer Indigenous forest defender murdered by Georgia State Patrol troopers, and the intense police and legal repression faced by organizers. Making critical connections between oppression and resistance at home and abroad, the movement to Stop Cop City has expanded to a fight against a Cop World.
The Stop Cop City movement is a decentralized effort to stop the construction of a $120 million police training facility and the destruction of 170 acres of the Weelaunee Forest outside of Atlanta, Georgia. This is the first collection of essays bringing together organizers and activists who have been involved in the years-long struggle to Stop Cop City. Connecting movements for environmental justice, police abolition, and Indigenous sovereignty, this expansive collection highlights the strategy, tactics, and ideologies that transformed a local collective action into a powerful international movement.
Featuring the voices of forest defenders, environmental justice advocates, political prisoners, Indigenous activists, abolitionists, educators, legal scholars, and academics, these wide-ranging essays explore the history of the intersectional movement, the diverse tactics embraced by activists, tributes to Tortuguita, the 26-year-old queer Indigenous forest defender murdered by Georgia State Patrol troopers, and the intense police and legal repression faced by organizers. Making critical connections between oppression and resistance at home and abroad, the movement to Stop Cop City has expanded to a fight against a Cop World.
379 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 20, 2025
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567 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 11, 2025
“And we must acknowledge that no matter what we do, we cannot win if we do not bring our communities along with us.”
August 27, 2025
Talk about intersectional - this is a must read. WOW.
July 18, 2025
The story of the Stop Cop City fight in Atlanta is one of the most important stories of organizing against the present state of affairs in the U.S. It is a great use then, that this book is an incredible anthology of this struggle - why it is occurring, how it took shape, how it struggled against behemoth odds, and how it should inform all of our work moving forward.
It is critical to understand the Stop Cop City fight as the epitome of the current inflection point of racial capitalism after decades of neoliberal economic order. Atlanta has long been understood as a city that is "open for business", a city with a tamed and docile Black working class that can be exploited when necessary and displaced when necessary. But deep inequalities were forced into the mainstream when the "Atlanta Way", the compromise political order between white business leaders and Black centrist Democrats, was exposed for its hollowness amidst the summer 2020 uprisings, particularly after the police murder of Rayshard Brooks.
White capital did not take kindly to this confrontation, and Cop City, a massive sprawling cop training facility proposed to be built on an Indigenous forest, was the solution. The manufactured "crime hysteria city in chaos" narrative needed to be resolved with a massive infusion of public and private dollars to crush Black working class organizing.
So what did people do about it? Short answer: everything they physically could. And all of it mattered.
First, they successfully forced the conversation to shift from the official name - the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center - to what it truly deserved to be called, Cop City. People protested, petitioned, they took over public comment at public meetings, they canvassed their neighbors. They forced mainstream churches and civil rights orgs to come out against it. They launched targeted pressure campaigns on the contractors and banks, which helped delay the project. Media collectives investigated the deep ties between the Atlanta Police Foundation and the politicians and business leaders that supported the deal, when the mainstream media was openly campaigning for it. And even after the City Council approved the deal, the fight did not end - because an autonomous network of anarchists took to the Welaunee Forest and occupied it, literally putting their bodies on the line, modelling a better vision of communal care, while directly interfering with the developers plans for construction, and actively sabotaged construction equipment, significantly delaying the project. The police responded to this by murdering beloved comrade Tortuguita, a name now made famous around the world as an reminder of the brutality and inhumanity that lies at the core of projects like Cop City. Folks even attempted to launch a referendum campaign to block the project - which secured significantly more signatures than necessary but is still tied up in the courts.
No one of these efforts was sufficient to defeat Cop City - in fact, this is still fundamentally a battle in progress that is unfortunately not going how we'd want it to. But every single step of this struggle mattered. It built up new networks of resistance, it mobilized and radicalized many, and it is one front of a larger battle against the Cop World we will be trapped in if we do not continue to fight back.
I am so grateful to all of the organizers who shared their POVs to help write this book. The lesson I've learned from this fight is to focus on our opponents, and to use every single tool in our toolbox to fight them. To avoid fixating on dividing the movement between "good" and "bad" tactics and stay clear-eyed about the core battle we are up against.
From the ending of the book: "For Tortuguita, for Palestine, for the forest defenders and the land defenders, for all struggling for liberation locally and globally, we must continue to fight and to say: No Cop City, No Cop World!"
It is critical to understand the Stop Cop City fight as the epitome of the current inflection point of racial capitalism after decades of neoliberal economic order. Atlanta has long been understood as a city that is "open for business", a city with a tamed and docile Black working class that can be exploited when necessary and displaced when necessary. But deep inequalities were forced into the mainstream when the "Atlanta Way", the compromise political order between white business leaders and Black centrist Democrats, was exposed for its hollowness amidst the summer 2020 uprisings, particularly after the police murder of Rayshard Brooks.
White capital did not take kindly to this confrontation, and Cop City, a massive sprawling cop training facility proposed to be built on an Indigenous forest, was the solution. The manufactured "crime hysteria city in chaos" narrative needed to be resolved with a massive infusion of public and private dollars to crush Black working class organizing.
So what did people do about it? Short answer: everything they physically could. And all of it mattered.
First, they successfully forced the conversation to shift from the official name - the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center - to what it truly deserved to be called, Cop City. People protested, petitioned, they took over public comment at public meetings, they canvassed their neighbors. They forced mainstream churches and civil rights orgs to come out against it. They launched targeted pressure campaigns on the contractors and banks, which helped delay the project. Media collectives investigated the deep ties between the Atlanta Police Foundation and the politicians and business leaders that supported the deal, when the mainstream media was openly campaigning for it. And even after the City Council approved the deal, the fight did not end - because an autonomous network of anarchists took to the Welaunee Forest and occupied it, literally putting their bodies on the line, modelling a better vision of communal care, while directly interfering with the developers plans for construction, and actively sabotaged construction equipment, significantly delaying the project. The police responded to this by murdering beloved comrade Tortuguita, a name now made famous around the world as an reminder of the brutality and inhumanity that lies at the core of projects like Cop City. Folks even attempted to launch a referendum campaign to block the project - which secured significantly more signatures than necessary but is still tied up in the courts.
No one of these efforts was sufficient to defeat Cop City - in fact, this is still fundamentally a battle in progress that is unfortunately not going how we'd want it to. But every single step of this struggle mattered. It built up new networks of resistance, it mobilized and radicalized many, and it is one front of a larger battle against the Cop World we will be trapped in if we do not continue to fight back.
I am so grateful to all of the organizers who shared their POVs to help write this book. The lesson I've learned from this fight is to focus on our opponents, and to use every single tool in our toolbox to fight them. To avoid fixating on dividing the movement between "good" and "bad" tactics and stay clear-eyed about the core battle we are up against.
From the ending of the book: "For Tortuguita, for Palestine, for the forest defenders and the land defenders, for all struggling for liberation locally and globally, we must continue to fight and to say: No Cop City, No Cop World!"
September 25, 2025
This is a valuable book in teasing out the multiples strands of movements and influences that comprised the Stop Cop City and Defend the Forest movements. It is particularly noteworthy of identifying the historical conjuncture this emerged from, not simply the protests over the George Floyd killing and the Covid pandemic but also the local issues of the murder of Rayshard Brooks, local the Occupy movement, and gradual gentrification/land theft of Atlanta happening since the Olympics in 1994.
This is a book written by and for activists, so it offers a rich tapestry of voices and influences that comprised the multidimensions of this movement.
The one negative is that the books largely halts at 2023-- ostensibly when most of the pieces within the collection were submitted. Some are slightly updated beyond that, but none of the pieces grapple with the populist backlash we are living within, how it impacted the movement, and the internal failures that movement fostered that might have assisted in its dissolution. There's always a danger when reading a book written from the inside of the movement: although it is often nuanced in what goes correctly within it, it often shies away from internal problems and failures for fear of making such grievances public and augmenting them.
One could leave after reading this books assuming the movement was a success, and on one level, in terms of building capacity, forming new networks, exploring multidimensional tactics and strategies, it was. But on another level, the repression against activists along with the broader reactionary populist rise helped end the movement and ultimately allow Cop City to be built. It would have been interesting, for example, for a piece reflecting upon the changing national/global tide occurring while the protests were going on: what was it like to be at the crest of the wave of the George Floyd protests where racial justice and abolition were creating new found interest and then having the worm turn, as the saying goes, and seeing counter-forces starting to prevail elsewhere (and analyze what this meant for the movement).
Maybe this was not the book to predominantly to address these problems. It is important to chart the complex ways in which the movement was brought together and successfully fought for roughly four years. But by problems being absent altogether-- with the exception of a few allusions to them -- the collection seems incomplete, not complex enough of what we could learn from the movement-- both the good and the bad. I look forward to reading and speaking with people from the movement who might be more willing to engage with this as time provides a certain salve to grapple the complexly and contradictions that marked this remarkable moment in time along with its victories.
This is a book written by and for activists, so it offers a rich tapestry of voices and influences that comprised the multidimensions of this movement.
The one negative is that the books largely halts at 2023-- ostensibly when most of the pieces within the collection were submitted. Some are slightly updated beyond that, but none of the pieces grapple with the populist backlash we are living within, how it impacted the movement, and the internal failures that movement fostered that might have assisted in its dissolution. There's always a danger when reading a book written from the inside of the movement: although it is often nuanced in what goes correctly within it, it often shies away from internal problems and failures for fear of making such grievances public and augmenting them.
One could leave after reading this books assuming the movement was a success, and on one level, in terms of building capacity, forming new networks, exploring multidimensional tactics and strategies, it was. But on another level, the repression against activists along with the broader reactionary populist rise helped end the movement and ultimately allow Cop City to be built. It would have been interesting, for example, for a piece reflecting upon the changing national/global tide occurring while the protests were going on: what was it like to be at the crest of the wave of the George Floyd protests where racial justice and abolition were creating new found interest and then having the worm turn, as the saying goes, and seeing counter-forces starting to prevail elsewhere (and analyze what this meant for the movement).
Maybe this was not the book to predominantly to address these problems. It is important to chart the complex ways in which the movement was brought together and successfully fought for roughly four years. But by problems being absent altogether-- with the exception of a few allusions to them -- the collection seems incomplete, not complex enough of what we could learn from the movement-- both the good and the bad. I look forward to reading and speaking with people from the movement who might be more willing to engage with this as time provides a certain salve to grapple the complexly and contradictions that marked this remarkable moment in time along with its victories.
July 24, 2025
A well-curated collection of excerpted, reprinted, and original pieces on Atlanta’s continued militarization of its police force, centered around the training facility we know here as Cop City.
What makes this collection so special is not only its comprehensiveness, but the quilt of perspectives it sews together. The sheer number of issues, communities, causes, and countries that intersect is staggering, told by organizers, Indigenous people, environmentalists, grieving parents, saboteurs, children, the incarcerated, academics, nonprofit workers, journalists, and even through posthumously published poetry.
The collection articulates the real depth and breadth of harm these places cause. It also highlights the private and public figureheads who ignore those harms for personal gain and glory.
But importantly, it’s threaded with a sense of hope and joy. The community is acting out of love for one another and a belief that acts, both big and small, are steps toward a better world.
Abolitionist conversations do not always feel joyful. Sometimes they can be real downers. The structures we live within are tough. But these texts show what abolition really is: a deep will for a better world. The freedom to love, to learn, to protect, and to enjoy the natural gifts of the earth.
If so many systemic oppressors are connected and enabling each other, the love of the oppressed, and of those willing and able to resist, are connected too.
What makes this collection so special is not only its comprehensiveness, but the quilt of perspectives it sews together. The sheer number of issues, communities, causes, and countries that intersect is staggering, told by organizers, Indigenous people, environmentalists, grieving parents, saboteurs, children, the incarcerated, academics, nonprofit workers, journalists, and even through posthumously published poetry.
The collection articulates the real depth and breadth of harm these places cause. It also highlights the private and public figureheads who ignore those harms for personal gain and glory.
But importantly, it’s threaded with a sense of hope and joy. The community is acting out of love for one another and a belief that acts, both big and small, are steps toward a better world.
Abolitionist conversations do not always feel joyful. Sometimes they can be real downers. The structures we live within are tough. But these texts show what abolition really is: a deep will for a better world. The freedom to love, to learn, to protect, and to enjoy the natural gifts of the earth.
If so many systemic oppressors are connected and enabling each other, the love of the oppressed, and of those willing and able to resist, are connected too.
July 17, 2025
Recognizing the necessity for all forms of resistance and protest - from boycotts to labor organizing to rioting, destruction of property, and eco-“terrorism” - will always get my attention and respect. All eyes should be on the militarization of the state, and the time to organize is now. No Cop City No Cop World is a great place to start to figure out how.
September 7, 2025
If you want my review, ask me in person! But TLDR.. ENOUGH with armchair PhDs writing about the “movement”
October 26, 2025
A must read for anyone interested in abolitionist organizing
December 22, 2025
obviously a harsh read given the ending of the movement but informative nonetheless on atlantas corrupt democratic regime
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews