Garrison Davis

quote, an Atlanta anarchist, quote, I think an important aspect of this phase is obviously supporting your defendants, preparing for the potential of long-term prisoner support, and also not letting the state be the one to close the book by doing this.

Because you don't want to let them define the narrative of this forever by getting to put their rubber stamp on the end of the trial and calling it.

Otherwise, the movement gets stuck in this permanent, like, zombie phase where we're still saying Stop Cop City is this thing that's happening when it's built.

It's built.

It's right there, right?

Like, it doesn't mean that we all just go home, but it means that you're like a veteran of this battle now and there's new shit to do, new stuff to work on.

Unquote.

Even in retrospect, people have been largely hesitant to assign blame to a specific factor in why the fight to stop Cop City fell short of achieving its stated goal.

But we can track a decline in momentum which allowed the state to gain the upper hand.

For nearly three years, state repression tactics failed to disrupt the growing momentum against the Cop City Project.

Forced raids, arrests, and criminal charges made little impact.

The use of terrorism charges as a repression tactic started back in December of 2022, following an encampment raid resulting in six people being charged with domestic terrorism.

This was the first time that charge has been used in Georgia following its adoption in 2017 in response to the West Permacist mass shooting by Dylann Roof.

Just a month after domestic terrorism charges were first deployed, Tortuguita was killed by police in another forest raid.

But this tragedy only seemed to strengthen the resolve of the movement to fight Cop City, which then only grew.

Similarly, the clear-cutting of the force itself wasn't enough to demoralize the people in Atlanta.

Rather, the hesitation to build on the momentum of a widely publicized direct action, like March 5th, provided the state an opening while the movement was stuck in limbo.

Throughout this limbo phase, the movement was adjusting from intensified momentum and the high octane aspects leading to March 5th.

But as the energy tapered down, the state jumped on that dip in momentum, then dealt a pretty significant blow with the RICO indictment.

The RICO charges in August of 2023, followed by the series of house raids in February of 2024, were a pretty crippling one-two punch that stifled the momentum to almost a complete standstill.