In February, Students for Justice in Palestine held their 12th annual conference in Los Angeles for a weekend of critical discussion, movement building, and political education. Michael Arria spoke with a member of the group’s steering committee about the themes of the conference, the state of Palestine activism on U.S. campuses, and the victories of 2022.
After that, we’ll hear about the Stop Cop City protests in Atlanta, and the links between the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange and Israeli police. Adam Horowitz spoke to Kamau Franklin, an activist and organizer in Atlanta involved in the Stop Cop City movement.
On January 18th, police in Atlanta, GA raided a peaceful encampment of protesters in the Weelaunee forest southeast of the city, killing activist Manuel Teran, who went by the name Tortuguita. Their death brought the issue of Cop City, and the movement that had grown over the previous two years to stop it, into the international spotlight.
“Cop City” is the name activists have given to the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, a $90 million+ police training compound proposed by the Atlanta Police Foundation and its corporate patrons such as Cox Media, Delta Airlines, the Koch brothers, and Home Depot, among others. At over 300 acres, the center would be the largest police training facility in the United States and is slated to include a mock city where police will train with firearms, tear gas, helicopters, and explosive devices.
The movement to Stop Cop City has grown since the project was first announced in 2021 and has actively made the connection between the project and a multitude of issues from police violence, climate change, to Palestine and the practice of training US law enforcement with Israeli police.
Kamau Franklin is the founder of Community Movement Builders, a member-based collective of black people creating sustainable, self-determining communities through cooperative economic advancement and collective community organizing, and has been one of the lead spokespeople for the Stop Cop City movement. In addition, he is a founder of Black Power Media, a Black-radical independent media project seeking to challenge the narrative about Black politics and the Black condition.
Articles and Links mentioned in the show
- National Students for Justice in Palestine
- Community Movement Builders — Stop Cop City
- Atlanta 2 Palestine panel discussion (video)
- Inside GILEE, the US-Israel law enforcement training program seeking to redefine terrorism, Anna Simonton
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There have been over 90 campus BDS resolutions, starting with the historic Wayne State University divestment resolution in 2003:
https://www.nationalsjp.org/bds-victories
So now it’s time to move into City Council BDS resolutions as well:
https://weareagainstmilitaryaidtoisrael.blogspot.com/