#stopcopcity

"Stop Cop City"

Defend the forest

Cop City: Racist police terror continues in Atlanta

By Lev Koufax

On Jan. 18, police and officials demonstrated just how far they would go to secure the Cop City site for what is really a domestic military base. In short, they would kill to do so.

We’ve prepared a zine version of our article, “The Forest in the City—Two Years of Forest Defense in Atlanta, Georgia.”

Please print these out and distribute them in your community!

https://crimethinc.com/zines/the-forest-in-the-city

#StopCopCity #DefendtheAtlantaForest

They completely misrepresented human nature in order to perpetuate capitalism and colonialism.

Instead of the reality of humans being and existing as animals within nature and noting that our evolution and beginning of society was because of our innate sense of empathy and drive for community, our first sign of civilization being that of a healed bone showing that someone protected, fed, cared for, etc. someone else while they healed, we developed sciences, math, art, healing practices not simply for ourselves but to connect and enjoy one another, we have a manufactured reality that we are “born in sin,” innately greedy, selfish, yearning for power. This manufactured misrepresentation is because we are only “allowed” to study white men. Value and humanity is only allotted to white men who now represent human nature. We ignore and devalue indigenous teachings and practices. This makes us accepts the ideas and implications of capitalism and colonialism. We accept the idea that we need to be policed and governed despite the fact that crime diminishes without poverty (why aren’t white neighborhoods as policed and still safe and functioning??) and our accountability to community is what kept society safe and functioning. We accept imperialism and European paternalism. We accept individualism over collective. It endangers us. We accept racism: “there’s always going to be an in group and out group. An us vs them.” Something I’ve heard from peers in “anti-racist” classrooms. We accept this murder of the earth.

We accept the idea that we have to do things. I just realized how powerful the joke, “all I have to do is be Black and die,” is: all we have to do is be and then stop being. We most definitely don’t have to live this uniform, crappy, traumatizing life. We now believe our deserving of love and rest is depending on our productivity. We accept uniform lifestyles despite how unique we all are. We accept unlivable wages, no access to healthcare, inflation, having to pay to exist (food, shelter, water, etc.), horribly lacking miseducation systems, the majority of our lives dedicated to bringing wealth to 1% who spend it on sick shit. We accept wage slavery. We accept chattel slavery (mass incarceration). We accept the fact that children must be enslaved and maimed to give us phones and clothing. We blindly accept propaganda. We accept the fact that America can not fund any of these things for community but can fund wars and ethnic cleansing. But if they were to do anything remotely similar here, we would meddle in their continent for years!! We claim the existence of first world countries and this world countries when our “first world country” is surviving on the land, labor and people of “third world countries.” We accept food apartheid that prevents a lot of people from boycotting heinous companies. We accept the alienation and are lonely with no sense of community.

We accept the idea of anarchy as unbridled chaos, raping, pillaging, murder. No. That’s what’s happening now under this policing institution. Under capitalism and colonialism. Smallville ended an episode about a child veteran who lost his life in combat with the line that he sacrificed his life [in the US military] “saving the world.” Nevermind the fact that he enlisted because he was too poor to pursue college and football like he wanted, but to equate, unequivocally, the US military with saving the world was a powerful statement. How unchecked our propaganda media is. To end an episode with this assertion, left no room for it to be questioned: no thought into why the boy was in this foreign country or what he was doing there and how was it “saving the world.” No room for knowledge. I recall photos and accounts that resurface much later detailing what Americans really do in these foreign countries. What they do to the people. “Winners write history.” For the first time, I am able to see just how one-sided mainstream news outlets are. They show, and now force Americans to live in, a false reality. Journalists are supposed to be protected. But apparently only the ‘winner’s’ journalists are.

People like to claim tv shows, social media, etc. isn’t important and shouldn’t be taken serious. To focus of politics in government. This is art. This is what people are spending most of the free time allotted them consuming. This is an institution. Just as government. Just as religion.

Even in their falsehoods, we can still see the truth. Speaking of this institution that has been weaponized by those in power, didn’t Jesus save us? By your own logic, did he not free us from this so called evil human nature? As someone who has descended from people who were enslaved during chattel slavery, my lens for Christianity has always been different. I never identified with the whitewashed, white supremacist, policing, institutional state force misrepresentation of Jesus and questioned the attempts of the Black church to make him so. Why would he subscribe to the made up idealogy of gender that only exist to reinforce white supremacy? Why would he want me silenced? Why do I have to wear a dress? Why is being ladylike important as a Christian? Why would homosexuality be considered wrong while murdering and spreading hatred was not (mistranslation closer to pedophilia and mostly mentioned in the Old Testament)? I learned to contextualize and understand the history during the Bible and its translations over time. I identified with the wooly haired and “burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace” Jesus that was yelling and flipping tables. I identified with the Jesus that was about listening to sex workers and against policing. I identified with Jesus that ate with people deemed unsavory by the white regime and others of his own people that were hypocrites. I identified with the Jesus that sacrificed for his community, died young, and was about love for oneself and one’s neighbors. Religious trauma has pushed many Black spiritualists away, but I urge people to learn from the theology and not from what it has been weaponized to propose. God is in us. We are made in their image. We are reflections of one another. I feel this when I observe nature. When I experience humanity. I see the patterns throughout other religions as well that seem to reinforce this same premise. I recall indigenous cultures that “worship,” another westernized concept, or express gratitude to things in nature by name. Why not if you see these living things just as valuable as you are? Christians express gratitude for these specific things in nature to One being.

My mom gave me a lecture after finding out about my attempt to protest. She made a valid point about considering my current situation.

Remember when Michael Jackson said

"If you wanna make the world a better place take a look at yourself and then make a change".

My family is in financial debt, so we moved to a cheaper home and are trying to find jobs. We're working on fixing the issues and improving our situation.

When my mother learned about my CeaseFire protesting board for Palestine, she didn't get angry. She did not tell me to stop caring about Palestine. Instead, she suggested that we should first focus on fixing our own problems to be better equipped to help others in need.

I believe the advice given to me was helpful because Palestine has been causing me a lot of stress, along with other issues such as ISIS, America, Vietnam War, and many more. I think it's important to focus on solving our own problems first before getting caught up in other things. However, it's also important to continue talking about these issues that need to be addressed. Recently, Cop City happened and I just found out that the cops in training are trained by 'itisnotreql', which has made me even more stressed than before.

But still even though we're going through a lot of stuff we can't stay silent find any way to talk about Palestine (and many more problems) even if your in 8th grade.