Police Training and How the Progressive Infrastructure Got it Wrong
I'm a supporter of the Atlanta Public Training Facility ("Cop City") so I'm pleased with the vote and pleased with democracy. In 2021, during the mayor's campaign, Andre Dickens was the only candidate running who actually voted for the facility the first time. The same people making a lot of noise predicted the end of his campaign. Snakes like Kasim Reed (who would surely support this training facility if it was his idea) played both sides, putting out white liberal surrogates to make disingenuous environmental arguments about how bad the facility was while courting (and receiving) the endorsement of the police union.
Dickens and Reed, one running an aggressive technocratic anti-crime campaign (Safe Streets) and the other running a Trump-style "only I can fix it" campaign overwhelmingly - like not even close - combined to win the black vote in the first round. In the runoff, Dickens received upwards of 80%+ of the black vote running a very aggressive anti-crime campaign - he even criticized his opponent for focusing too much on root causes and not reducing crime right now.
I'm sympathetic to many of the arguments the opposition makes and on most issues agree with them. But if I were a community organizer, perhaps I'd take the temperature of the community I desire to organize and work for. Imagine the pilot's union deciding "in solidarity" that climate change is such a critical issue that their #1 priority was grounding all airplanes and putting their members out of a job?
Well, the Georgia Sierra Club took perhaps the best argument the opposition had (the site location) and subordinated it to defund the police rhetoric that's been demonstrated again and again to not actually be popular with actual voters. And now they get nothing - and if I were advising Democratic candidates in a competitive general election, I'd tell them to be wary of taking their endorsement, lest they be accused of taking the support of radical defund the police groups. Don't believe me? Read it yourself here.
We cannot fight the climate crisis without dismantling systems of white supremacy. We must invest in communities, nor further militarize the police that perpetuates violence on communities of color. Cop City must never be built.
Police training is white supremacy, all police perpetuate violence on communities of color? Cop City must never be built - even on an alternate location? Imagine community organizers who realize that police training is both popular and necessary putting their muscle into making sure that Atlanta's officers get the kind of curriculum that can work to reduce or eliminate abuses of power and police brutality?
For me, that was the primary reason to be for local accountable police training. For many activists, when push came to shove and they were forced to reckon with the training argument - they actually said that instead of Atlanta training its own officers, they should just send them to the state's training facility - the same state that doesn't require its officers to use bodycams!
Quite frankly, this isn't community organizing, this is nihilism. It's defund the police and prison abolition dressed up by sympathetic reporters as hyper-technical arguments about budget votes and inaccurate environmental claims. I have no doubt that Ga Sierra Club and other groups will see record fundraising from like-minded wealthy progressives. What I am wondering is, did they get any return on that investment - how exactly was the environment improved over these last two years? Do they even care?