Last week, police in Georgia shot and killed activist Manuel "Tortuguita" Páez Terán. Tortuguita was one of many forest defenders occupying the Muscogee Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta, where the Atlanta Police Foundation is bankrolling the bulldozing of 381 acres of beautiful forest to develop a $90 million training center for the city’s police.

Cop City will destroy the city’s forest — Atlanta’s main defense against flooding, during a period of rapidly intensifying climate crisis! Instead of safeguarding the city’s infrastructure and protecting essential green space, elected officials are prioritizing the continued militarization of the police.

Click here to tell Atlanta's mayor and city council to stop Cop City!

The shooting is unprecedented in the history of U.S. environmental activism, according to experts. “Killings of environmental activists by the state are depressingly common in other countries, like Brazil, Honduras, Nigeria, but this has never happened in the U.S.,” according to Keith Woodhouse, professor of history at Northwestern University.

Police raids on the forest have continued to intensify. More than a dozen forest defenders have now been arrested and charged with “domestic terrorism” under state law – another unprecedented development in U.S. environmental activism, according to Lauren Regan, founder of the Civil Liberties Defense Center.

Atlanta needs to hear from around the country and the world to stop Cop City and to stop treating nonviolent advocates for environmental and human protection like criminals or military enemies. Click here.

After doing this action, please use the tools on the next webpage to share it with your friends.

Please also consider donating to Tortuguita's family’s GoFundMe and to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund as they work to free forest defenders and stop Cop City.

Thank you!

-- The RootsAction.org team

Background:
>> Stop Cop City
>> The Guardian: "‘Assassinated in cold blood’: activist killed protesting Georgia’s ‘Cop City’"

RootsAction.org