Original letter available as a living document here
February 22, 2023
Dear Reader,
The undersigned members of the Spelman College faculty join our students, our colleagues at Morehouse College, and community activists to publicly denounce Atlanta’s initiative to build a $90 million police training facility, popularly known as “Cop City.” The potential site for Cop City is the Old Atlanta Prison Farm which was once a slave labor camp and, before that, the Weelaunee Forest of the Muscogee Creek people. The violent histories of settler colonialism and slavery abound in this project which will contribute to militarization, deforestation and gentrification, making the lives of Atlanta’s Black population infinitely more difficult. The cancellation of Cop City would thus be a profound act of abolition and a step toward letting the world know that, in Atlanta, Black lives truly matter.
As Morehouse faculty point out, the most famous alumnus of the Atlanta University Center, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., repeatedly spoke against police violence. In his often quoted “I Have a Dream” (1963) speech, he clearly stated: “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.” It’s ironic, then, that Georgia, the state from which MLK hailed, has the highest rates of correctional control in the nation, twice as many as almost every state — and the city in which he was born is not rectifying, but compounding the state’s tendency toward militarization. Indeed, history has shown that the systemic violence of “law enforcement” has not eased since the 1960s; rather, it has escalated. NBC and other news outlets have reported that, after all the attention the Black Lives Matter-led racial justice movement generated after George Floyd’s death, the number of Black people killed by police has actually increased over the last two years. Latinx environmental activist and Cop City protestor Manuel Terán, known lovingly as Tortuguita, has already been tragically murdered — shot at least 13 times — by authorities on the potential site.
We commiserate with our Morehouse colleagues. Time and again, we have held the hands of our saddened and frustrated students who regularly confront the dehumanizing horrors of policing. As Black feminists like Kimberlé Crenshaw, Che Gossett, and our very own students remind us, Black cis and trans women are not shielded from the violence of law enforcement. Though their names are not always amplified in the same ways as their male counterparts, Black cis and trans women are brutalized and killed by the police. As such, abolition has always been a touchstone of Black feminism. Angela Davis has been protesting the prison industrial complex since the 1960s, reminding us that, “There is an unbroken line of police violence in the United States that takes us all the way back to the days of slavery” and “just as we hear calls today for more humane policing, people then called for more humane slavery.”
Following rich and radical Black feminist thought, the undersigned Spelman faculty say, loudly, STOP COP CITY — before it becomes a national hub, attracting police from all over the country for law enforcement “training” that has no evidence of assuaging violence. We urge our civil leaders to heed history, engage a Black feminist praxis, listen to the people, and cancel the project. We urge Spelman’s president and the college’s board to use their prestigious platforms and join us in the denunciation of Cop City.
As teachers and mentors, we link arms with our students who — energized by the organizing legacy of the AUC and motivated by their own hostile encounters with the police — offer an alternative vision for the city of Atlanta. Their hope is ours: that the city, as the country’s historic “Black mecca,” becomes a global model not for militarization and fear, but for robustly loving and fostering Black life.
1 | Rebecca ‘Reb’ Kumar, Ph.D. | Assistant Professor, English |
2 | Deanna P. Koretsky, Ph.D. | Associate Professor, English |
3 | Erica L. Williams, Ph.D. | Associate Professor, Sociology and Anthropology |
4 | Fernando Esquivel-Suarez, Ph.D. | Assistant Professor, English |
5 | Luis González-Barrios, Ph.D. | Assistant Professor, Spanish |
6 | Cocoa M. Williams, Ph.D. | Senior Lecturer, English |
7 | Sequoia Maner, Ph.D. | Assistant Professor, English |
8 | Mathew RudeWalker, Ph. D. | Lecturer, English |
9 | Pushpa Parekh, PhD | Professor, English; Chair, ADW |
10 | Julie B. Johnson, PhD | Assistant Professor; Chair, Dance Performance & Choreography |
11 | Kelly Piggott | Lecturer, English |
12 | Al-Yasha | Associate Professor of Philosophy |
13 | R. Nicole Smith, Ph.D. | Senior Lecturer, English |
14 | Katie Schaag, Ph.D. | Assistant Professor, Theatre & Performance |
15 | Sharan Strange | Senior Lecturer, English |
16 | Stephen Knadler | Professor and Chair of English |
17 | Nami Kim | Professor, Religious Studies |
19 | Richard Lu | Associate Professor, World Languages & Cultures |
20 | Patricia Ventura | Associate Professor, English |
21 | Maira Goytia | Assistant Professor, Biology |
22 | Alexandria Ree Hadd | Assistant Professor, Psychology |
23 | Michael McGinnis | Associate Professor, Biology |
24 | Anna Powolny Ventura | Senior Lecturer, Biology |
25 | Bailey Brown Ph.D. | Assistant Professor, Sociology |
26 | Banah Ghadbian, Ph.D. | Assistant Professor, Comparative Women’s Studies |
27 | Robert Brown | Associate Professor, Political Science |
28 | Romie Tribble | Professor of Economics |
29 | James Daria, Ph.D. | Assistant Professor, Anthropology |
30 | Aku Kadogo | Chair, Dept. of Theatre & Performance |
31 | Adesi Canaglia-Brown | Associate Professor, Education |
32 | shady Radical, Ph.D. | Visiting Assistant Professor, Art and Visual Culture |
33 | M. Bahati Kuumba, Ph.D. | Professor, Comparative Women’s Studies |
34 | Nicole Johnston | Lecturer, Biology |
35 | Ouida Washington | Lecturer, Documentary Filmmaking |
36 | Kathleen Phillips Lewis | Assoc.Prof,. History |
37 | Esther O. Ajayi-Lowo it | Assistant Professor, Comparative Women’s Studies |
38 | Celeste N. Lee | Assistant Professor, Sociology and Anthropology |
39 | Chad Dawkins | Visiting Assistant Professor, Art History and Curatorial Studies |
40 | Moon Charania | Associate Professor, International Studies |
41 | Sara Busdiecker | Associate Professor, International Studies |
42 | Daniel Ashley | Assistant Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry |
43 | Davita Camp | Assistant Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry |
44 | Félix M. Rosario-Ortiz, Ph.D. | Assistant Professor, Spanish |
45 | Melanie McKie | Senior Instructor, English |
46 | Luisa Arrieta | Assistant Professor, History |
47 | Janike Ruginis Gross | Senior Lecturer, Spanish |
48 | Peter Chen | Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry |
49 | Noah MacDonald | Instructor, Economics |
50 | Francisco Chen-López | Assistant Professor, World Languages and Cultures |
51 | Evelynn M. Hammonds | Visiting Professor |
52 | Trina Gould Williams | Faculty Reader, Braven@Spelman |
53 | Rosetta E. Ross | Professor, Religious Studies |
54 | Jacqueline Alvarez-Rosales | Associate Professor, World Languages and Cultures |
55 | Joan McCarty | Lecturer, Theatre and Performance |
56 | Suneye Rae Holmes | Senior Lecturer, Economics |
57 | Gustavo Segura | Lecturer, World Languages and Cultures |
58 | Fernanda Guida | Assistant Professor, World Languages and Cultures |
59 | P. Kimberleigh Jordan | Lecturer, Humanities & Fine Arts Divisions |
60 | Amber Reed | Assistant Professor, International Studies |
61 | kwame-osagyefo kalimara | ADW Lecturer |
62 | John Givens | Associate Professor, International Studies |
63 | Anastasia Valecce | Associate Professor, World Languages and Cultures |
64 | Alexxiss Jackson | Instructor, Arts & Visual Culture |
65 | Beverly Guy-Sheftall | Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies; Director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center |
66 | Jaycee Hermida Holmes | Co-Director of the Spelman Innovation Lab |
4 responses to “Media advisory: Spelman College faculty call to “Stop Cop City””
Thank you all for your efforts to stop cop city.
THANK YOU TO ALL WHO SIGNED!! NO COP CITY!!
Thank you, Spelman!! From kcmo
The effort to stop Cop City is wonderful. An amazing organization!