Stop Cop City Takes Fight to Tucson as GA Aims to Expand Domestic Terror Statute

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https://truthout.org/articles/stop-cop-city-takes-fight-to-tucson-as-ga-aims-to-expand-domestic-terror-statute/

Stop Cop City Takes Fight to Tucson as GA Aims to Expand Domestic Terror Statute

Activists targeted insurers and investors in Tucson as the Georgia legislature and police target organizers in Atlanta.

By Candice Bernd , TRUTHOUT
Published February 26, 2024

UPDATE: At least six activists were arrested later Monday after blockading the entrance to a gated community in Fountain Hills, Arizona, by duck-taping their hands to concrete-filled tires. An executive of Nationwide Insurance allegedly lives in the subdivision.

On Monday morning, about 50 activists and organizers targeted the offices of the primary insurer of the $109 million police training center under construction in unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, that opponents have dubbed “Cop City.” A few activists briefly blocked entrances before rallying outside the Scottsdale, Arizona, offices of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company subsidiary Scottsdale Insurance Co. Truthout first obtained Cop City’s certificate of insurance, which revealed the company’s involvement, in May 2023.

The action capped off the four-day Nationwide Summit to Stop Cop City in Tucson, Arizona, in which activists from more than 30 Weelaunee Defense Society chapters across the United States held camp at a parking lot near Mansfield Park and organized decentralized workshops and panels focusing on the interconnections between proposed police training facilities across the country, violence on the border, and Israeli apartheid and genocide, among other linkages. Activists refer to forested area of the Cop City site as “Weelaunee,” the Mvskoke word for the watershed, in part to highlight the tribe’s forced relocation from the area in the 1830s.

“The movement stop Cop City has experienced pretty significant repression, from the killing of Tortuguita, to the three raids that happened [this month], to the [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO)] charges,” said Sasha Berkman, who requested a pseudonym and traveled to the Tucson summit from Austin, Texas, in an interview with Truthout. “But the Nationwide Summit has been a way to retake the initiative to show that we aren’t afraid to expand the struggle nationwide to Nationwide [Insurance Company].”

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Tucson police detained at least five people Sunday night following a separate protest in which about 90 activists marched through downtown as some smashed windows at Wells Fargo and a PNC offices, according to organizers. A Wells Fargo executive sits on the board of the Atlanta Police Foundation, the nonprofit backing Cop City. PNC is a funder of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which activists also oppose. Local Tucson Stop Cop City activists are planning to demonstrate outside Tucson Police Department headquarters to demand activists’ release.

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