by Farrukh Abadi
On March 31, 31-year-old alleged Stop Cop City activist John Mazurek was released on $75,000 bail after being held since a February 8 raid on his house in Atlanta. The conditions for his bond include surrendering his passport, 24-hour house arrest, and prohibiting him and his fiancée from associating with anyone affiliated with “Defend the Atlanta Forest”—a police-generated name for the Stop Cop City movement.
At the hearing, District Attorney George Jenkins tried to convince the judge to oppose letting Mazurek out on bail at all, and if they did, to raise the bail to $2 million on the basis that Mazurek would flee to Mexico to join the Zapatistas—a Red Scare tactic of promoting conspiracies about leftist movements. Mazurek had supposedly attended the 30th anniversary celebration of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico last year.
Mazurek is being charged with first degree arson for allegedly setting fire to 8 police motorcycles at the Atlanta PD special operation center in July 2023. This is one of nearly 30 arson cases linked to the Stop Cop City movement under investigation by the city.
The Stop Cop City movement originated three years ago with the announcement of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, commonly known as Cop City, by former Democrat Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in the wake of the 2020 May Uprisings. The center, which is set to cost $109 million and cover an 85-acre space in the Weelaunee Forest near Atlanta, is aimed at training police in urban warfare techniques as part of the increasing reactionization of the state.
The February 8 raid on Mazurek’s house, along with two other houses in the early morning, were SWAT-style raids that included agents and officers from the FBI, ATF, APD, and Georgia state patrol. In one raid, a woman was forced out of her house without her shirt and was left outside uncovered for hours; a police officer took her photo, claiming it was just of her face. In another raid, state forces left a nude photo of one of the individuals whose house was raided on a table. The police had used a flashbang grenade during their raid and trained a gun on a person who had been sleeping there, grabbing him by his hair and dragging him out.
This follows from the January 2023 murder of unarmed activist Manuel Terán by Georgia state troopers, considered to be the first modern state killing of an environmental activist in the US. In September 2023, 61 people were indicted on racketeering and domestic terrorism charges for their alleged participation in the Stop Cop City movement. Some terrorism charges are for as little as trespassing.
Since the Stop Cop City movement began, companies and political targets associated with Cop City have been targeted across the country in solidarity with the movement. On February 18, supporters of the movement claimed responsibility for puncturing the tires of 10 NYPD vehicles at a Brooklyn precinct, leaving behind red paint on police buses reading “For Tort,” a reference to Terán who went by the nickname Tortuguita. On March 12, three heavy construction machinery were burned in Portland, Oregon, and on March 14, eight heavy construction machinery belonging to Brent Scarbrough—a contractor involved with Cop City—were torched at a construction site in Georgia.
note: This article has been updated to more accurately reflect the DA’s arguments posing Mazurek as a special flight risk
photo: A March 5 rally and concert for Mazurek in Atlanta, GA / Unicorn Riot
