In the record-breaking heat of a blazing summer, a coalition of organizations and individuals has been working to put the fate of Atlanta’s “Cop City” in the hands of the people. The strategy — one of many to halt the construction of Atlanta’s planned police training facility — is to gather more than 70,000 signatures from registered voters to force a referendum onto the ballot. Yet shortly after organizers announced that they'd gathered more than 100,000 signatures, the city announced an elaborate signature verification program for the effort.
For now, organizers are reassessing, putting a hold on their plans to submit the signatures. But their goal remains: giving Atlanta voters the chance to choose whether or not to repeal the ordinance that authorized the lease of the city-owned land upon which Cop City is to be built.
The movement to stop construction of the public safety training center, dubbed Cop City by its opponents, has included encampments, protests, festivals, and rallies. Hundreds of citizens have also showed up to city council meetings to ask their representatives to stop the project. The movement has also seen the killing of activist Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, the police raid of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, and 42 activists facing domestic terrorism charges.
Now the movement hopes to put democracy to the test. Organizers of the Cop City referendum campaign — which officially kicked off in June, after the Atlanta City Council voted 11-4 in favor of providing $67 million in funding for the project’s construction — modeled their approach on the Camden County referendum, where residents in the coastal region voted last year to block county officials from building a launchpad for commercial rockets in the area.
Teen Vogue speaks with five organizers who have been heavily involved with the Cop City referendum campaign: Aimée Castenell, Scarlett Mayoralgo, and Brittney Whaley from Working Families Power; Kamau Franklin from Community Movement Builders; and former Athens-Clark County Commissioner, Mariah Parker. We talk about how they've tried to get the measure on the ballot and keeping hope alive.
This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Teen Vogue: For those of you who were present at City Hall during the June 6 meeting on funding Cop City, can you describe the atmosphere?
Aimée Castenell: We showed up around 9:30-10:00 a.m. The people who were waiting were incredibly organized, and they were trying to prioritize people who live near the [construction site], people who maybe had to leave early and couldn't stay all day. I didn't give my actual comment until, like, 9:30 at night. People were afraid that if they left to get something to eat, they might not be able to get back. But there were a lot of volunteers who showed up with food, and games for kids to play.
Scarlett Mayoralgo: I'm part of a group that met the week before the public comment so we could plan the childcare, the games, and the people’s assembly. There was some intention behind that, but there were also plenty of people that saw others caring and decided to pitch in themselves.
There were cops everywhere…. There's a big, open atrium in the middle [of City Hall]. The cops were on the second and third floors, looking down on all of us assembled.
Mariah Parker: I was there from the start until almost the bitter end. I left and went home around 4:00 a.m.
TV: The referendum campaign was announced right after that meeting concluded. How far in advance was it planned?
Brittney Whaley: I would say after the [May] public comment meeting, I think there were some rumblings about it then. Not knowing how real it could be, but understanding that we weren't going to stop trying to figure out what was the next step — one where people could engage in more direct democracy if our voices weren't heard.
SM: People [suggested] the idea of doing a no-confidence vote; however, we decided that wasn't strategically wise. Then [our] lawyers were like, “Well, there's this thing that Camden County did….”
The Camden County referendum is a bit different because it applies to counties, and Atlanta is a municipality. But the skeleton of the argument and the legal process were there. The Georgia Supreme Court had ruled and affirmed the decision in Camden County. That was kind of our green light.
MP: I became aware of the possibility a couple of days before [the announcement]. I was the one that turned in the application to have the referendum filed.
Also, I was the plaintiff in a lawsuit against the municipal clerk for not approving the [Cop City referendum] petition in a timely manner. We had to resubmit [the petition] thrice for it to be accepted.
TV: What was the initial strategy for the campaign when it launched?
AC: We had a very big meeting that lasted all day. We had mapped out, in broad strokes, how we were going to go about this. It was exciting, but it also felt a little bit like base jumping. We had a small group of very committed, very smart people, but it was a little scary.
In the weeks that followed, we were able to create systems, like a tracking system for the petitions.
BW: We created a whole field-team structure and thought about all the ways people can collect signatures. We have neighborhood captains calling in for their block crews and they are committed to collecting signatures in their neighborhood. We created a process in which we would train them and get them everywhere — from grocery stores, to the bus stations, to farmers markets.
TV: On July 6, four citizens of DeKalb County filed a lawsuit arguing that one of the statutes of the petition, which held that only residents of the City of Atlanta could collect signatures, was unconstitutional. Can you elaborate on that?
SM: When we launched the referendum campaign, a part of our strategy was that there are so many people around the [construction site] that do not want it, we will have so much volunteer power. And then we get handed the petition and those people are explicitly excluded. That's how the lawsuit came about.
Kamau Franklin: The closing off of anybody outside of Atlanta collecting signatures stopped us from bringing people in from not only Dekalb County, but other places where they are eager to come into Atlanta and go door-to-door, go to events, and just collect signatures.
TV: On July 27, a federal judge ruled in favor of the Dekalb County plaintiffs, allowing those who aren’t residents of Atlanta to collect signatures and granting an additional 60 days for the petition. What were some of the direct impacts from that ruling?
SM: The day the judge made the decision, [my friend] literally ran down the hallway screaming, and we all screamed and danced. Sometimes you feel like all the cards are stacked against you, even though we knew that our cause was good, and we knew it was popular among the people….
That same day, I was in the field office and people came in from Decatur like, “I'm here because I read the news.”
MP: I've seen a lot of new volunteers come in who have never participated in something like this before. It makes civic sense to people who haven't really been involved in mutual aid works to build people's power. I think it's great for people to get the skills they need to continue to build community and fight fascism through this process.
TV: Are there specific areas where you've seen a lot of positive feedback or you’ve had to re-strategize?
MP: I've been a shift lead pretty much every Tuesday on the east side, which means I've also been training volunteers, in addition to hitting up hip-hop shows and concerts, going out in the [Atlanta] BeltLine…. The most frequent response you get is people just don't have time. But most people who stop and talk to you are at least interested to hear you out, and most will sign because, regardless of how they feel about it, they believe in democracy.
KF: Our organization, in particular, has focused on southwest Atlanta because that's where we do a lot of our grassroots work. But going to people's homes within a short period of time — people move, people are not home — it's not as effective as going to events.
AC: On the east side [of Atlanta], we had a lot more people coming into the office to sign. But when we were on the west side, we found a lot more people who didn't know anything about it at all. Once we started having conversations with those people, they were also happy to sign.
TV: Is there anything you would like to add?
SM: Yes! It is wrong and egregious that we are doing this referendum with pen and paper. It's totally inaccessible! You can do so many things online, imagine how simple this would be: Enter your information, check your voter registration online. “Okay, you were registered in 2021, would you like to sign the petition?” “Yeah!”
Do you know how many elderly people have shaking hands? How many people have neurological conditions where it's hard to write in small boxes? How many people are homebound? How many people cannot be out in this heat even a little? There are so many people who are effectively written out of the process by the pen-and-paper petition.
BW: The reality is, someone is making this decision for us, and we have not had the opportunity to consent or really have our voices heard. Whether it's public safety and leasing or the environmental angle, whether is it pure democracy and us being able to engage, it's worth having this on the ballot so we can decide.
KF: For all of us, the referendum is the latest strategy, but I think there is a desire for it not to be the only strategy. There are still marches and demos and direct actions and music fests and weeks of action that have been planned and will continue to be planned.
AC: Obviously, there's going to be a campaign to inform people about the decision they have to make in November and to get people to turn out to vote. But we've also been talking a lot about the members of the coalition who are already working in the communities they are a part of, about how we can [continue] to engage with people on the issues that come up around the city.
Stay up-to-date with the politics team. Sign up for the Teen Vogue Take
