Organizers call on their allies to join them in continued resistance against Cop City, police violence, land displacement, and imperialist genocide around the world
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ATLANTA—Today, a coalition of Black Atlanta organizers and their allies have announced their #SummerOfResistance campaign, which will launch with a community-building gathering on Juneteenth and close with a fall festival on September 2.
Through this campaign—which will include a series of rallies, demonstrations, teach-ins, and a three-day music festival & convergence hosted by Mainline—organizers and community members hope to reignite various types of activism and community building in the city. While the fight to #StopCopCity continues, organizers say it’s time to bring all intersections of Southern struggle and resistance together to fight against elements that preceded Cop City and allow police militarization to continue.
“The movement to stop Cop City is part of the ongoing story of Black and indigenous resistance and fight for liberation,” says Atlanta organizer Rukia Rogers, member of the Weelaunee Coalition. “Our fight is for a reimagined world; a world where Rayshard Brooks and Tortuguita would be alive; a world where police budgets would dry up instead of our rivers.”
After nearly two years of unprecedented state repression against the Stop Cop City movement—including the trumped-up domestic terrorism charges of forest defenders, the violent police killing of Manuel “Tortuguita” Paez Terán, police terrorization of families at the South River Music Festival, the draconian RICO indictment of 61 protesters, multi-agency police raids including the FBI, anti-democratic efforts blocking the Cop City Vote referendum, and the sustained escalation of police harassment and surveillance of those living near the construction site—people in Atlanta are sending a message that they will not be deterred in their resistance against state violence and attempts to silence those who fight against it.
Organizers call on everyone in their community to submit their own events under the Summer of Resistance banner. Whether it’s to promote housing justice, climate justice, reproductive and gender justice, land back, free Palestine, music, art, or mutual aid … the Summer of Resistance is a moment for people in Atlanta to fight back against escalating state repression and strengthen community relationships.
“Our struggles are deeply interconnected to the global movement for freedom as we witness the same imperial forces inflict the same violence and displacement in Palestine, Sudan, and the Congo,” Rogers says. “The ‘Summer of Resistance’ is a call to action and invitation to joyfully and courageously reclaim our communities and a world worthy of us all.”
