[Pictured: US and Israeli soldiers conduct joint urban warfare training near Jerusalem. Credit: Tsafrir Abayov/AP]
By Alex Ackerman
On May 31st, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Atlanta Police Department conducted a raid and arrested three Atlanta Solidarity Fund organizers. The activists’ work has supported those arrested for protesting against Cop City, a $90 million police training facility planned to be built in the Weelaunee Forest, known as one of the “four lungs” of Atlanta. In 2021, the Atlanta City Council voted to approve the plan to build Cop City, despite overwhelming popular opposition. In an eerie echo of history, on June 5th of this year, the council voted to approve the funding of Cop City, culminating in $67 million of taxpayers’ money. Hundreds of Atlanta residents spoke for more than 17 hours in opposition, yet the City Council aligned with the ruling class and the forces of capital.
The “Stop Cop City” movement opposes the construction of this facility due to the combination of environmental harm it stands to inflict and the heightened threat of police violence against the surrounding neighborhoods, whose residents are primarily Black. The imminent destruction of 381 acres of forest to build a mock city for police training epitomizes the United States’ settler-colonial legacy of theft of indigenous life and land. Cop City would strengthen police tactics and expand resources for urban warfare, which law enforcement currently utilize across the country, particularly against Black people. The raid against the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, carried out by a heavily armed SWAT team, marks an escalation of state-sanctioned violence, as those in power work to maintain the hegemony of the capitalist state at any cost.
The recent raid against bail fund organizers highlights the encroaching presence of fascism and the broader militarization of police. In the United States, police violence serves as a continuation of settler violence waged against internally colonized populations, particularly Black and indigenous communities. In January of this year, queer and indigenous forest defender and “Stop Cop City” organizer Tortuguita was shot 57 times by Georgia state troopers, who were carrying out a similar militarized raid of the protestors’ encampment in the forest that is slated for destruction. This execution exemplifies the necessity of resisting Cop City, as such indiscriminate executions will only continue and be systematized with the completion of the facility. On a national level, this escalation of police violence is evidenced by the fact that police killed more people in 2022 than in any other year on record, with 1,241 people murdered, 97 percent of whom were killed in police shootings. Originating from slave patrols, police in their modern context function as an extension of the state to terrorize captive populations, preventing any potential disruption of the capitalist status quo. When any threats to this domination arise, the ruling class will expend all available resources to quell the opposition. For example, 42 protestors face domestic terrorism charges after Atlanta police stormed a music festival held by activists in the Weelaunee Forest. Additionally, three organizers face felony charges, with the potential of serving 20 years in prison, for the simple act of placing flyers that identified Tortuguita’s killer on mailboxes. These tactics of repression reflect a concerted effort to crush the growing dissent of the Stop Cop City movement. In this manner, the police raids in Atlanta, the murder of Tortuguita, and the charges of domestic terrorism demonstrate the lengths to which the capitalist class will go to preserve their hegemony, weaponizing the police as a cudgel against the masses.
The United States is not the only settler-colonial, imperialist force heightening state-sanctioned violence. Across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have carried out mass raids, indiscriminately arresting Palestinians and wreaking havoc through destruction, injury, and death in the dead of night. Specifically, occupation forces murdered two-year-old Mohammed Al-Tamimi, who succumbed to his wounds after being shot in the head. Furthermore, on Wednesday, June 7th, the IOF detained university student and ex-political prisoner Layan Kayed after ransacking her family home at dawn. The state-sanctioned inhumanity against the Palestinian people serves as a means of tormenting Palestinians, enforcing their subjugation by the Zionist entity with the aim of humiliation and demoralization. In essence, the cruelty is the point. These nightly raids comprise a fraction of the extensive violence enacted by the Israeli state and settlers, which are co-constitutive, whose goal is the complete eradication of Palestinians from the land.
In addition to the raids, just this past week, Zionist occupation forces have assaulted Palestinians at apartheid checkpoints, uprooted more than 100 olive trees, demolished at least five family homes in East Jerusalem, and bombed a house in Ramallah. The IOF intentionally targeted and shot Palestinian journalists Mo’men Samreen and Rabie al-Munir, who were wearing their press uniforms, during a Ramallah raid. This attack is reminiscent of the deliberate and cold-blooded murder of Shireen Abu Akleh, another Palestinian journalist. These campaigns elucidate the reality of settler colonialism as an ongoing process of dispossession. Just as the United States arose as a European settler colony, so, too, does “Israel” share such colonial origins. In the monograph Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, Fayez A. Sayegh illustrates the alliance between British imperialism and Zionist colonialism:
“On the one hand, Britain, by utilizing Zionist influence in the United States and in France, would avert international rule in Palestine, on the pretext that a British-sponsored program of Zionist colonization required British rule in Palestine. On the other hand, by playing a catalytic role in bringing about the designation of Britain as the ruling Power in Palestine, Zionism would at last be able to embark upon the long-awaited program of large-scale colonization in the coveted territory under the auspices and protection of a Great power…For the Zionist settler-state, to be is to prepare and strive for territorial expansion.”
Though alliances have shifted with the emergence of the United States as the dominant imperialist power following the second World War, the primary contradiction of settler-colonialism persists. The existence of the Zionist state presupposes the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and the military aid supplied by the United States equips them with the resources to materially realize the decimation of Palestinian life and land.
From Atlanta to Palestine, the resistance against occupational forces is directly enmeshed in the material struggle for the land. As Frantz Fanon elucidates, “For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.” The struggles against Cop City and for the liberation of Palestine are mutually imbricated, as they both demonstrate state-sanctioned, settler-colonial violence by imperialist powers. Furthermore, the collaboration between the US and the Zionist state is the result of the impetus to further entrench their domination over colonized and working class people.
Situated in the very site of the Stop Cop City movement, the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) illustrates this connection between the settler-colonial, imperialist powers. This joint project between Georgia State University and Georgia law enforcement facilitates international exchanges, subsidized by the Department of Justice, wherein the IOF and American police participate in cooperative training sessions. Not only do these settler-colonial states exchange tactics of warfare, but each also manufactures models of surveillance that the other can exploit against its own population. Specifically, the Atlanta Police Department created the Video Integration Center, a network of over 5,300 public and private cameras, after former Chief of Police George Turner visited “Israel” and observed the command and control center in Jerusalem. Such collaboration highlights the boomerang effect of colonialism, in which Palestine is used as a laboratory to develop technologies of surveillance and brutality that are imported into the imperial core and deployed against colonized and working class people.
This boomerang effect remains far-reaching and reveals the interconnected nature of monopoly capitalism, imperialism, and settler-colonialism. Imperialist states and transnational corporations cooperate in a manner that serves their common interests: the perpetuation of their hegemony. Microsoft, for example, funded the startup Anyvision to produce technology utilizing thousands of cameras and facial recognition software to monitor hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across the West Bank and Jerusalem. Employed by Zionist occupation forces, this project directly infringes on Palestinians’ liberties and right to self-determination, especially when even a Facebook post criticizing “Israel” marks a Palestinian as a target. Anyvision’s executives stated themselves that Palestine was a “testing ground” for this technology. In an effort to dodge the backlash sparked by the revelation of Palestinian surveillance, Anyvision rebranded to Oosto. This technology now extends its reach internationally, utilized by both private companies, such as casinos and sporting stadiums, and the American government, specifically the Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol. More recently, the emergence of Artificial Intelligence has engendered new ways by which surveillance technology can be wrought against the colonized. The Zionist entity has installed remote-controlled guns that use AI tracking systems to target Palestinians, with one gun located in the Aida refugee camp. Before long, such weaponry will also be used to target marginalized people and political organizers in the United States, such as those in Atlanta.
The nature of monopoly capitalism is such that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie entails cooperation between state governments and transnational corporations. Moreover, the alliance between the United States and “Israel” further speaks to their interdependence, characterized by their common weaponization of state-sanctioned violence. The United States funds the Zionist forces by appropriating $3.8 billion annually, the majority of which consists of military assistance. In return, the Zionist entity functions as an extension of American imperial interests in the Middle East. Kwame Ture aptly describes the relationship between the US and the Zionist state in that “[t]he United States is the greatest dehumanizer in the world, and Israel is nothing but a finger of the United States of America.” In this manner, the shared tactics of state repression unite these settler-colonial, imperialist projects with the goal of solidifying their domination. The struggles in Atlanta and across Palestine, therefore, must be understood in the context of the international movement for decolonization and liberation from imperialism.
Confronting the garish violence deployed by the capitalist state and settlers alike, resistance remains steadfast, despite the immense power and resources at the disposal of the settler imperialist empire. Organizers have engaged in a wide variety of actions in opposition to Cop City, including protests, juridical avenues, sabotage of police equipment and surveillance technology, and occupation of the forest through community encampments, which have been continuous targets of police raids. In a groundbreaking moment of direct action, forest defenders overtook a police outpost at the proposed building site, setting ablaze multiple vehicles, construction infrastructure, and a mobile surveillance tower. Pursuing avenues for political expression outside of bourgeois-controlled channels signals a shift in class consciousness and a growing understanding of the power of collective, organized action.
Palestinians resist the occupation on a daily basis, incurring the wrath of Israeli forces yet prevailing nonetheless. The summer of 2021 saw the widespread mobilization of Palestinians across occupied territories, known as the Unity Intifada, resulting in global rallying cries for Palestinian liberation. This mass uprising evinced the revolutionary spirit of Palestinian people in their ongoing struggle for liberation. In September of the same year, six Palestinian political prisoners dug their way to freedom in an historic prison break, using six spoons as their only tools. Militant resistance continues to manifest across Palestine, illustrated by the Lion’s Den, an organization that gained momentum in 2022 after responding to heightened Zionist settler violence. These manifestations of popular revolt against state-sanctioned displacement and death explicate the will of the colonized in that no amount of brute military force can dissipate the steadfast conviction in the cause for liberation.
To bring an end to settler-colonialism, imperialism, and all oppressive systems necessitates resistance by any means necessary. In an effort to maintain their illegitimate power, both settler-colonial entities criminalize this resistance with the aim of intimidating opposing forces into silence. The three Atlanta forest defenders arrested for flyering were detained in solitary confinement for multiple days, a purposefully torturous warning to every activist who dares defy the construction of Cop City. That these organizers faced legal retribution designates them as political prisoners subjected to persecution by the settler capitalist state. This form of state repression is rampant in Palestine, where over 1,000 political prisoners are incarcerated without charge or trial. In the face of this policy of administrative detention, detainees remain at the forefront of the struggle by organizing hunger strikes for their freedom. The deployment of this tactic across Atlanta and Palestine has only further intensified in recent years in response to growing resistance movements.
The interconnected nature of these struggles highlights that resistance to imperialism requires solidarity across borders. The United States finances the Zionist occupation of Palestine, wherein weapons and technology are tested and subsequently imported back into the imperial core. Make no mistake: this fascist violence will not be contained only to Atlanta. If Cop City is built, the implications will reverberate not only across the country but also around the world.
This escalation of state-sanctioned violence represents the fear of popular support and proliferating solidarity. Walter Rodney connects people’s political consciousness to their material conditions, explaining that “[s]o long as there is political power, so long as a people can be mobilized to use weapons, and so long as a society has the opportunity to define its own ideology and culture, then the people of that society have some control over their own destinies…” (255). If people take their destinies into their own hands, if people imagine a future free from capitalist and imperialist domination, these hegemons will crumble before our very eyes. Every martyr who has sacrificed their lives for the sake of this common cause against settler-colonialism and imperialism is not just a number, and they have not died in vain. The people with whom they shared a uniting goal uphold their memory by resisting every day until they achieve victory.
