Criminalization of Land Defenders and Stop Cop City
Indigenous people are at the global forefront of Climate Justice and protect 80 percent of the planet’s ecosystems, even as they make up less than 5 percent of the world’s population. Indigenous-led resistance struggles are often met with extreme violence, repression, and outright assassination, particularly over struggles for land re-matriation and climate justice. There have been at least 1,700 murders of environmental activists recorded in the past decade alone. This number only continues to climb as the effects of the climate crisis and demands for justice increase.
In the past, most of this extreme violence has been outside of the US. However, on January 18, during a raid of peaceful forest defenders protesting Atlanta’s Cop City, 26-year-old Tortuguita was murdered by multiple Atlanta police officers who claimed that they had a gun in their possession. An autopsy report revealed these claims were false and showed that Tortuguita was sitting cross-legged with their hands raised and shot over 13 times. Tortuguita’s life was cruelly stolen from them in a show of power and social control. Their assassination uncovers a blatant disregard for the lives of land defenders and a further normalization of violence against peaceful organizing and climate justice activism.
Cop City is a $96 million dollar police training facility approved by the Atlanta Police Foundation. The facility would include military-grade training facilities, dozens of shooting ranges, and a Black Hawk helicopter landing pad, according to Stop Cop City. Cop City would also cover the expanse of over 381 acres of the Weelaunee Forest, also known as the Atlanta Forest.
The US push towards the criminalization of climate justice activists as terrorists, especially activists of Indigenous and Black descent, have roots that go deep. The United States was built on a foundation of genocide and settler-colonization. Indigenous people remind us that colonization isn’t an event, it is an ongoing process which has been met with continual Indigenous resistance. Indigenous people in the US – or as it is known in Indigenous languages – Turtle Island, sustain this resistance amid ongoing loss of land, livelihood, and culture.
According to the Tribal Clean Water Initiative, 48% of Tribal homes do not have access to reliable water sources, clean drinking water, or basic sanitation. Native American households are 19 times more likely than white households to lack indoor plumbing. Pipelines and other invasive sources of climate destruction continually impact Indigenous communities as a whole.
The protests at Standing Rock are another recent example of the trends of escalating violence and criminalization of Indigenous-led land and water defenders and the brutal and disabling force they are met with by the State. The Standing Rock protests mobilized resistance to the completion of Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) which violated the Fort Laramie Treaty between the government and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and placed the Tribal community, its watersheds and sacred burial grounds at great risk.
Over 400 protestors were arrested as of November 2016. Law enforcement charged water defenders, journalists, and film-makers alike for: “rioting, criminal trespassing, and resisting arrest.” Over 300 water defenders were injured and 26 of them were hospitalized due to the severity of their injuries. Raids on Standing Rock encampments used tear gas and other chemical weapons leaving protestors ill months after their exposures.
Ladonna Bravebull Allard, a member of the Dakota Sioux nation, described the police violence that Indigenous-led resistance was met with this way: “while we stand in prayer, we have assault rifles aimed at us, we are attacked by dogs, pushed from our sacred sites with pepper spray, shot with rubber bullets and bean bag rounds and Tasers, beaten with sticks, handcuffed and thrown in dog kennels. Our horses have been shot and killed.”
While the harm caused to both the land and the people defending Standing Rock was devastating, law enforcement refused any accountability for the events that unfolded on November 22, 2016. In several reports, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier referred to protestors as “aggressive,” “illegal trespassers,” and as having taken part in “criminal activity.”
The violent repression faced by the water defenders in Standing Rock in resistance to the construction of DAPL mirrors the violence enacted against the forest defenders in Weelaunee Forest with the construction of “Cop City.” The Atlanta Forest already has a complicated and painful history of its own when it was repurposed into a prison farm in the 1800s. While the scars of the Atlanta Forest run deep, it is cared for and valued by those who reside in its midst.
Atlanta is one of the most polluted areas in the US, and the inhabitants of Atlanta note that the forest protects them from climate change. The forest has been nicknamed the “lungs of Atlanta” because of its role in “sequestering carbon emissions and providing the greatest amount of tree shade canopy of any urban area in the country.” Atlanta residents, environmental activists, and members of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation were shocked at the announcement of the Cop City project since they had no say in its development.
Weelaunee Forest defenders have continued to battle with law enforcement. During the Week of Action in March 2023, there was a climate justice-themed music festival. During this peaceful gathering, forest defenders, journalists, and filmmakers alike were arrested by police officers on the grounds of domestic terrorism. TruthOut contributor Frances Madeson had been on the scene and said that she witnessed police officers barging into the forest with weapons drawn and promised threats. She said that she saw them “dragging people out of the forest, pinning them to the ground and placing their hands behind their backs in zip ties.”
Police officers violently arrest land defenders and charge them as “domestic terrorists'' while attacking them with impunity to maintain social control. The most important thing we can do is to keep on resisting. Resistance shows our collective refusal to this unjust violence and state control. Dismantling systems and fighting for change takes time, but we can hold each other and hold a vision for the world we want and deserve.
Tortuguita would have celebrated their 27th birthday on April 23rd, just one day after Earth Day. We can honor the unjust taking of their life by uplifting their legacy and what they were fighting for. Here’s how Tortuguita spoke of this fight: "the abolitionist mission isn’t done until every prison is empty. When there are no more cops, when the land has been given back, that’s when it’s over."
You can support the Stop Cop City struggle in a variety of ways. If you are able, please donate to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which provides support to those arrested at protests. You can also write to the Georgia prosecutors to drop the domestic terrorism charges against protestors and call Georgia representatives to tell them to stop Cop City. Defend the Atlanta Forest is an ongoing campaign, and you can keep up with this work by following their social media accounts on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.