Editor’s Note
Amin Jalal Chaoui, a 29-year-old from Richmond, Virginia, drove to Atlanta, Georgia to attend a music festival organized by activists as part of their struggle against Cop City. He ended up being one of 23 people violently arrested on March 05, 2023 as he tried to leave the concert. After being held captive for 18 days, he was charged with domestic terrorism. On September 5, 2023, Chaoui and 60 others were charged with violating Georgia’s RICO Act, or Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
You can find a Mandarin translation of this text here.
Introduction
This week represents the one-year anniversary of the State’s attack and arrest of Amin Chaoui and others who were exposing and challenging the state attempt to build another kop city, this time within the Atlanta, Georgia area.
It’s important to look at the creation of kop city within the larger context and scheme of govt. repression, the creation of a police state of hyper surveillance, for the further intrusion into the private lives of the people, saturation policing and the use of poor or working class folks to police, and dominate and control other poor, oppressed and marginalized folks.
It is also interesting where a lot of these Kop City, modern day forts, for the police, sheriff, modern day posse or local settler population is being built and its use to control and impose minority rule. To monitor, control and secure the natives, the perceived threat population. In whose interest are they serving?
In the old days when genocide was being visited all across this land, military and settler Forts were built to launch raiding parties from, supposedly to protect the local population (we know this isn’t the case here) and a place where captured natives, enslaved Afrikans and others were held, interrogated, tortured or forced into servitude.
“Cop City-ATL is designed to join Michigan Camp Grayling founded in 1913 when local lumber baron, Rasmus Hanson, donated over 13,000 acres to the State of Michigan for military training. Camp Grayling has since grown to 147,000 acres that spans over three counties of maneuver area, state-of-the-art ranges, and modern support facilities, making it the largest National Guard Training Center in the Country. In fact, there are Forty – Seven other States that have the same or similar plans” [1].
Listen to Shaka Shakur Read The Statement
Kop Cities: A Response to Resistance
So why are so many of these being built all over and around the country. Why on such a large scale and why with such a wide array of training dealing with Urban Warfare and Repression? The same Training and Tactics being used and taught to be utilized in theaters of war such as Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and various parts of Afrika and is now being prepared to be visited upon the Neo Colonized Natives and People of Color and other so called disenfranchised folks. Could it be an opportunistic response to the rebellions and BLM protest in the aftermath of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Mike Brown to just name a few? An opportunity to push forward a neo-fascist agenda of further militarization of the initial shock troops of so-called law enforcement.
The rebellions and protest a few years back exposed the flaws and weaknesses within the U.S. govt. and security infrastructure as protesters and resisters attacked and burned down government agencies, police stations, court houses, city halls, etc. all of which invigorated and emboldened the masses who may have before been initially afraid, fearful or intimidated by the state and its and its security forces/apparatus.
This is also why you see the heavy handed response to the cop city resisters. The use of the RICO Act and other Federal conspiracy Statutes, designed to both intimidate, crush and dismantle said organizations and developing political infrastructures.
This is a strategy and tactic hiding in plain sight of supposedly the constitutional right to assemble, to protest, to speak truth to power, but apparently not.
If people like the kop City defendants is convicted on these types of conspiracy charges it sets a dangerous precedent for all revolutionaries and political activist and any organizations that oppose, challenge or expose U.S. domestic policies. The thought police can come arrest you, prosecute you, claim you’re a conspirator if you belong to a political organization or collective.
You then become a terrorist or Security Threat and end up in one of the many Prison Industrial Complex Supermaxes. It’s no different in a prison setting where political org is identified as gang activity or Security Threat Group/S.T.G. activity, our books and literature is deemed to promote terrorism, subversiveness or violence and you end up housed in a Secure Housing Unit or in a Supermax on Admin Segregation Status.
These kop city complexes being built are military bases masquerading as Protect and Serve. It is not to serve the interest of the people and should be exposed and challenged!!!
All Power 2 The People!!
Shaka A. Shakur #1996207
Shaka@ShakaShakur.org
References
[1] Efia Nwangaza, Esquire, “Smash Kop City Atlanta: A Spoke in the National White Supremacist Bulwark for White Minority Rule,” Re-Build: A New Afrikan Independence Movement Periodical (Winter, 2023-24): 8.
Featured photo: Marching protesters in Atlanta, Georgia holding banner that says “Stop Cop City” , Friday, March 10, 2023. (Courtesy Camila Cuevas/Latino Rebels). Reprinted from Black Alliance for Peace.
