Helen Zivar
January 18 marks the anniversary of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán’s assassination at the hands of Georgia State Troopers. Terán and others were protesting the construction of a militarized police training center, derided as Cop City, in a forest near Atlanta, GA.
In October 2023, a prosecutor announced the troopers won’t be charged because their use of deadly force was “objectively reasonable.” George Christian, the District Attorney who reviewed the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s file on the shooting, released a report stating that when the activist refused to come out of a tent, the troopers fired a pepper ball launcher and Terán responded by firing a handgun four times through the tent, hitting and seriously wounding a trooper. Christian declined to release the underlying evidence.
An independent autopsy showed Terán sitting cross-legged with hands raised in the air when the police officers violently raided the protest encampment, shooting Terán 57 times. In addition, no gunfire residue was found on Terán’s hands—something that should be present had he shot at the police as they claimed.
Cop City was first proposed in the aftermath of the 2020 May Uprisings, which took on a particularly militant character in Atlanta, one of the largest Black-majority cities in the country. Atlanta also has the highest rate of income inequality in the country. Much of the funding for Cop City and other police programs has come directly from a number of corporate backers, particularly those based in Atlanta.
From November 2021, opponents have encamped in the Weelaunee Forest, where Cop City is to be built, delaying its construction. Protesters been attacked by the police many times, as on January 18, 2023, when the cops murdered Terán. In November 2023, police attacked protesters with tear gas, pepper balls, and flash-bang grenades as over 400 marched toward the Weelaunee Forest. Over the course of the struggle, dozens have been charged with racketeering and domestic terrorism for alleged crimes as minor as trespassing. The state has used various tactics to intimidate and criminalize the demonstrators—including submitting Terán’s diary recently as court evidence and alleging that the dairy’s drawings and poetry show the presence of a wide conspiracy—but despite the repression, the protesters continue to fight the construction of the center.
photo: Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, Gabe Eisen/Defend ATL Forest Movement
