We can take action to reduce the Atlanta Police Foundation’s (APF) power and to prevent APF from being able to build cop city. One way we can do this is by pressuring corporations to stop supporting the APF, including by taking our money out of these companies’ hands.

Find out more about why we oppose Cop City here.

Close your account and tell them why

If you are a customer with APF-supporting companies, especially if you have an account with any of these banks, you can literally reduce the amount of money available to these companies to give to APF by boycotting them or closing your account. When closing your account at a bank, write a note to the bank to let them know why you’re leaving.

Banks supporting APF include:
Wells Fargo
Truist (Suntrust)
Morgan Stanley
Cadence Bank (State Bank & Trust)
Bank of America

Find banking options that may be more responsible with your money here

Call APF-supporting companies

Ask why these companies are investing in more police surveillance and violence, and why they support the Atlanta Police Foundation’s forest-destroying “cop city” project next door to residential neighborhoods. Some companies have made donations specifically for the youth centers that APF pays for, called “At Promise Centers”, but there are plenty of organizations providing youth support programs that don’t shoot down our young people!

Let them know the public is watching and that it’s time to stop supporting police foundations in Atlanta and across the country.

When calling customer support lines, please be courteous to the support staff; the problem is with company executives making these decisions!

Here are phone numbers for some of the companies supporting APF:

• AT&T: 210-821-4105
• Cox Enterprises: 678-645-0000
• Wells Fargo: 800-869-3557
• Cadence Bank (State Bank & Trust): 800-636-7622
• Georgia Power:
  • residential customer service: 1-888-660-5890
  • media representative: 404-506-7676 or 800-282-1696
• Truist (Suntrust): 800-786-8787
• Morgan Stanley: 888-454-3965
• UPS: 888-742-5877
• Georgia Pacific: 404-652-4000
• Delta Airlines: file a complaint here
• Invesco:
  • corporate HQ 404-479-1095
  • media relations 212-278-9205
• Equifax: business support number: 1-888-407-0359
• Coca-Cola: 800-438-2653
• Home Depot: 800-466-3337
• Hilton Atlanta: 404-659-2000
• Bank of America: local grants number: 800-218-9946

More companies can be identified from the list of APF board members here, or by looking up sponsors of APF events such as the annual “Crime is Toast”, “Blue Jean Ball”, and “Link Up Against Crime” fundraisers.

Spread the word!

We have power in numbers. Tell your friends, family, and communities about the connections between Atlanta city government, APF, and corporations that support police foundations. You can also contact Atlanta city councilmembers to let them know you oppose “cop city”, and what your vision for a thriving community involves instead here. We can also begin building what we need with our communities now.

Learn more and stay connected

Find out more, stay up to date, and get involved, through these groups and others:

• Survival Resistance for climate justice in Muscogee Creek land
• Defend the Atlanta Forest
• Women on the Rise GA

More info:

• Corporate Backers of the Blue: How Corporations Bankroll U.S. Police Foundations
• Video report: Councilmember Joyce Sheperd’s press conference in response to local Stop Cop City movement
• Opposition grows to police training center at Atlanta Prison Farm

Survival Resistance is participating in the Defend The Forest campaign’s Week Of Action.  Here is a link tree containing everything that you need to know.

From the Defend The Forest website, this is what we are fighting for:

Atlanta is a city in a forest. We have the highest percentage of tree canopy of any major metropolitan area in America. Our canopy is the main factor in ensuring Atlanta’s resiliency in the face of climate change. The forest in Southeast Atlanta is home to wetlands that filter rainwater and prevent flooding. It is also one of the last breeding grounds for many amphibians in the region, as well as an important migration site for wading birds.

The history of this particular land is deeply scarred. In the 1800s shortly after the land was stolen from Muscogee Creek peoples, it was used as a plantation. In the early 1900s, a prison farm was opened where inmates were forced to perform unpaid agricultural labor, marking the rebranding of slavery into for profit prison labor. The Atlanta Police Department currently uses this hallowed ground as a firing range.

This forest is at risk of destruction as the police and Hollywood make plans to pave over Atlanta’s largest remaining green space.

The Atlanta Police Department seeks to turn 300 acres of forest into a tactical training compound featuring a mock city. This project was recently announced to the shock of community members who had been given no opportunity to weigh in on the proposal. The entire process has been shadier than the forest itself.

Intrenchment Creek is an existing public park adjacent to the Prison Farm. Dekalb County seeks to swap this land with Blackhall Studios, a major film production company. Blackhall wants to clear cut 170 acres of forest to develop into an airport and erect the largest sound stage in America. This project would cement Atlanta as the new Hollywood, making the cost of living in our city outrageous.

We refuse to let our forest be bulldozed in favor of the police and sold out to Hollywood. There are many forms of action and advocacy to be taken. This is a broad, decentralized, autonomous movement. Get involved in whatever ways move you. Take a walk in the forest with your friends.

After two years of organizing in so-called Atlanta, we’re making a change: 

We’re leaving Extinction Rebellion and changing our name to Survival Resistance. 

Here’s why. 

Last year, when the pandemic began, we were in the middle of planning a coalition action for Earth Day. When the lockdown began, our coalition agreed to move the action online. At that point, we didn’t know how COVID-19 spread, and we didn’t know how dangerous (or not) in-person actions would be. 

In-person actions have always been the core of what we do, and without them, we were on hold. In the spirit of coalition, many members of our chapter plunged into COVID support work, building the networks of mutual aid that are essential in any crisis (and will be even more essential in the climate crisis). 

Then, last summer happened. We poured into the streets to protest for racial justice. But even though we have always declared that the climate crisis and racism are inextricably intertwined, and we have always fought not just for climate mitigation but for climate justice, we still didn’t feel it was right for us to organize XR actions. The climate emergency is no less pressing than it was, but there’s a moment for every message, and last summer was the moment for one message only: Black Lives Matter. 

Now, a year later, little has fundamentally changed. 

Police brutality is still rampant. 

Right here in the heart of Atlanta, the battles against police brutality and for climate justice are becoming more and more intertwined. 

Why the Change?

Now, it’s time for our message again. 

Over the past year, there have been a lot of changes in the Extinction Rebellion movement. We’ve done a lot of thinking about who we are as a chapter and what our role is in the fight for climate justice.

And as a result, we’re leaving the name of Extinction Rebellion behind. 

Although we will continue to work in coalition with many other XR groups as well as other climate groups, both nationally and globally, we no longer wish to be associated with the XR brand. 

The main reason for this is Roger Hallam. The founder of XR, Hallam has repeatedly publicly demonstrated his racism and his poor understanding of white supremacy. His ideas have always been foundational to the tactics and approach of XR, which has always meant that we as a chapter have always felt that we needed to adjust and change the “norms” of XR in order to be truly antiracist in our organizing. The XR tactic of intentional arrests is dangerous for all activists, most of all for organizers of color, and the XR approach of pure disruption for its own sake usually did more to harm workers than to halt the machines of destruction and power. 

Further, the XR demand for the government to create solutions always fell short of our desire to organize the solutions we need in our own community. 

Before the pandemic, Hallam was actively working to undermine the movement of XR in the so-called United States by funding and organizing an alternate version of XR here that was less focused on racial justice, more welcoming to white supremacists, and, therefore, more true to his vision of what the movement should be. 

We waited for XR global to denounce and deplatform Hallam, but they have failed to do so effectively. Therefore, as long as we use the brand, anything Hallam does will continue to reflect on us. 

We have never received any resources or support of any kind from XR global. Our opportunities to organize and build coalitions locally and nationally have been more impeded than helped by the XR name. We no longer believe that XR is capable of inspiring the change we need. Extinction Rebellion as an organization movement has outlived its usefulness. 

As a chapter, we have always been autonomous and locally-focused in our actions and our organizing, and we now feel we can continue to organize better under a different name, without the brand of XR. 

Our New Name

Our new name is Survival Resistance. 

Our mission is: 

• to bring attention to the climate emergency through direct action, 
• to build sustainability through community-determined solutions, and 
• to create a mutually beneficial relationship with our local ecosystem. 

We recognize that the ecological crisis is rooted in capitalism, colonialism, racism, and patriarchy, and we work toward the abolition of those systems. We acknowledge that we are doing this work on the native lands of the Mvskoke / Muscogee (Creek) Nation, with an awareness of the forced removal of the Muscogee people from this land by the U.S. government in the 1830s.

Over the next few months, we’ll be organizing with a new campaign – the most important one we’ve ever been part of. 

What’s next? 

On April 1, Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced a plan to build a new police training academy over the ruins of the old Atlanta prison farm. Despite its terrible history, the old prison farm now lies deep in the heart of the largest contiguous greenspace inside Atlanta’s city limits. The South River Forest is home to old growth trees, rare wetlands, and endangered wildlife. And as the largest remaining area of Atlanta’s tree canopy, the forest is essential to our city’s resilience in a chaotic climate future. 

The mayor’s plan to bulldoze the forest to make way for a police training academy brings together the movements for racial justice and for climate survival in an unprecedented way. 

And so we’ve joined with a new coalition: Defend the Atlanta Forest. We’ll be working with many other local groups to defend the forest against the development plans that threaten it. Our coalition has called for a week of action beginning June 20, and we’ll be announcing our action soon! 

Our role in the activist movement in Atlanta will continue to be focused on direct action and bringing attention to the climate crisis. We are open to new members who share our vision. 

If you’d like to continue to be part of our work, sign up for our new email list.