Labor Must Join the Fight to Stop Cop City (w/ Kamau Franklin & Mariah Parker)
Working People1 Kesä 2023

Labor Must Join the Fight to Stop Cop City (w/ Kamau Franklin & Mariah Parker)

The 2020 protests that took place in the immediate wake of Minneapolis police murdering George Floyd were a historic call for America to reckon with its racist, oppressive system of state-sanctioned police violence. Three years later, rather than a reckoning, that same system, along with the political and business elites propping it up, are giving us "Cop City" (ie, the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, the Atlanta Police Foundation's 85-acre, $90-million police militarization and training complex where law enforcement from around the US and beyond will, among other things, train for urban warfare scenarios). Plans to build Cop City have been mired in controversy and civil rights violations from the beginning—from the city government's attempts to ignore residents' and activists' objections and force through the construction of Cop City in Atlanta's ecologically vital Weelaunee Forest, to police raiding an encampment of peaceful protestors and murdering one of them, Manuel ("Tortuguita") Esteban Paez Terán, who was shot 57 times, to the truly Orwellian crackdown on protestors and advocates, dozens of whom are being arrested and charged with "domestic terrorism."

As Micah Herskind writes, "The struggle to Stop Cop City is not just a battle over the creation of a $90 million police urban warfare center. It's not just a fight to protect the 381 acres of forest land, known as one of the "four lungs" of Atlanta, currently under threat of destruction. It's not just a conflict over how the city invests the over $30 million it has pledged to the project, to be supplemented by at least $60 million in private funding. The movement is all of those things. But even more fundamentally, the struggle to Stop Cop City is a battle for the future of Atlanta. It's a struggle over who the city is for: the city's corporate and state ruling class actors who have demanded that Cop City be built, or the people of Atlanta who have consistently voiced their opposition and demanded a different vision for the city." Make no mistake, though, the fight to Stop Cop City is all of our fight, and that very much includes the labor movement. In this mini-cast, we speak with Kamau Franklin and Mariah Parker about Cop City, the fight to stop it, and why labor needs to get off the sidelines and join that fight.

Kamau Franklin has been a dedicated community organizer for over thirty years, beginning in New York City and now based in Atlanta. He is also a lawyer, writer, and the founder of Community Movement Builders, Inc. Mariah Parker is labor and community organizer, a rapper (known by the stage name Linqua Franqa), and recently served as District 2 County Commissioner for Athens-Clarke County in Athens, Georgia, from 2018 - 2022.

Additional links/info below...

Permanent links below...

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

  • Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(398)

Layoffs, long waits, obscene prices: Vermont healthcare workers and patients face historic crisis

Layoffs, long waits, obscene prices: Vermont healthcare workers and patients face historic crisis

Frontline healthcare workers and the patients they serve are facing a major crisis at the University of Vermont Health network—the state's leading healthcare provider. "In June, UVM Health eliminated ...

13 Elo 27min

Oil giant BP locks out workers at its last unionized refinery in US

Oil giant BP locks out workers at its last unionized refinery in US

For the last five months, oil giant British Petroleum (BP) has locked 800 workers out of their jobs at a crude oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana. The facility, located on the southwestern shore of Lake...

10 Elo 50min

Railroad jobs have "gotten worse" since Biden and Congress blocked workers from striking

Railroad jobs have "gotten worse" since Biden and Congress blocked workers from striking

In 2022, the United States nearly experienced its first national railroad strike in decades, until then-President Joe Biden, along with Democrats and Republicans in Congress, stepped in to block a str...

5 Elo 1h

Corporate profiteers destroyed journalism. Worker-owned media can save it.

Corporate profiteers destroyed journalism. Worker-owned media can save it.

When workers at the historic Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper hit the picket line in October of 2022, they had no idea that they would be on strike for over three years—or that the strike would end w...

30 Heinä 36min

Data centers are not a "red state" or "blue state" problem; they're a working-class problem

Data centers are not a "red state" or "blue state" problem; they're a working-class problem

In so-called "red states" and "blue states" around the US, from rural areas to urban centers, the explosion of new data center projects is impacting residents in poor, working-class, and middle-class ...

15 Heinä 1h 15min

Train crashes destroyed their towns. Will yours be next?

Train crashes destroyed their towns. Will yours be next?

10 years before the catastrophic train derailment and chemical disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, one of the deadliest rail disasters in North American history took place in the Canadian town of Lac-Mé...

6 Heinä 1h 12min

Toxic Avengers: America's poisoned and abandoned communities must stand together or die

Toxic Avengers: America's poisoned and abandoned communities must stand together or die

From the explosion of AI data centers to the increasing number of toxic spills, explosions, and industrial disasters happening across the country, corporations and the government are turning the USA i...

1 Heinä 1h 8min

UAW becomes first major union to divest from Israel

UAW becomes first major union to divest from Israel

At the 39th Constitutional Convention of the United Auto Workers (UAW) in Detroit, Michigan, union delegates debated and affirmed the aggressive direction the UAW has taken under current President Sha...

26 Kesä 1h 4min

Suosittua kategoriassa Yhteiskunta

olipa-kerran-otsikko
i-dont-like-mondays
hupiklubi
seitseman
siita-on-vaikea-puhua
uutiscast
sita
poks
antin-palautepalvelu
mamma-mia
kaksi-aitia
gogin-ja-janin-maailmanhistoria
kolme-kaannekohtaa
yopuolen-tarinoita-2
loukussa
rss-palmujen-varjoissa
ihme-ja-kumma
aikalisa
rss-haudattu
free-opa