Podcast for Social Research, Episode 63: What is Cop City?
In episode 63 of the Podcast for Social Research, a live-recording of our Wednesday, May 3rd event Cop City: Police, Protest, and Social Control, BISR faculty Nara Roberta Silva, Patrick Blanchfield, Geo Maher, and guests Natasha Lennard and Kamau Franklin examine and contextualize the planned construction of “Cop City”—the Atlantan “state-of-the-art public safety training academy” that features classrooms, firing ranges, and a “mock city” in which police trainees can practice the methods of tactical urban warfare.
Who and what is driving the creation of Cop City—and why is it a phenomenon of national significance? How can we understand the “boomerang” effect that has brought imperial counterinsurgency “back,” as it were, to U.S. shores? What is the nature of the opposition to Cop City? How, here and elsewhere, have authorities wielded statutory law to intimidate protesters and effectively prohibit protest? What are the politics on the ground, in Atlanta, a majority black city with a majority black political leadership? Finally, for a society unwilling to address extreme racial and material stratification, is Cop City its inevitable future?