The ongoing campaign to #STOPCOPCITY gained national and international attention on Wednesday, January 18th, when a law enforcement Joint Task Force in Atlanta, which included the FBI, brutally murdered forest defender Manuel “Tortuguita” (the Little Turtle) Esteban Paez Teran (may he Rest in Power). Tortuguita’s murder is a dire warning to the land defenders, the surrounding community, their supporters, and activists around the United States that the government is prepared to exercise any and all means at its disposal to ensure that this development project comes to fruition. Kali Akuno and Kamau Franklin, one of the key organizers engaged in the resistance against Cop City, interrogate why the state of Georgia and the forces of capital underwriting this project are so determined to see it completed. We examine: What strategic purposes does this project aim to serve? Whose interests will it advance? And what can and should the forces on the left do to defeat this project, and others like it throughout the US empire? We will also discuss how the diverse coalition that has come together on the ground is overcoming the historic sectarian divides that plague the left, and why it is critical that Indigenous sovereignty, Black liberation, human rights, and climate justice activists make this fight a strategic focus in 2023 and beyond.
* * *
Kamau Franklin is the founder of Community Movement Builders, Inc. Kamau has been a dedicated community organizer for over thirty years, beginning in New York City and now based in Atlanta. For 18 of those years, Kamau was a leading member of MXGM, a national grassroots organization dedicated to the ideas of self-determination and the teachings of Malcolm X. He has spearheaded organizing work in various areas including youth organizing and development, police misconduct, and the development of sustainable urban communities. Kamau has coordinated and led community cop-watch programs, liberation/freedom schools for youth, electoral and policy campaigns, large-scale community gardens, organizing collectives, and alternatives to incarceration programs. Kamau was an attorney for ten years in New York with his own practice in criminal, civil rights, and transactional law. He now lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife and two children.
