Opponents say move is yet another example of crackdown by officials seeking to disrupt protests against $90m training center

Children and parents from a couple of Atlanta private schools recently showed up at City Hall during a school day to urge city council members not to go ahead with “Cop City,” a $90m police and fire department training base planned in a forest that has become a center of controversy in the US and overseas.

On Monday college students at Emory University, Georgia Tech and other Atlanta schools protested the gigantic project, holding up signs, handing out leaflets and giving speeches. They tried to camp overnight at Emory, but were forced off by Atlanta police early Tuesday morning.

But while the protests against Cop City go on, the project is making headway and a key stretch of public land nearby is no longer accessible to people seeking to defend the forest. For the first time in nearly two years of opposition to Cop City, the public park part of South River Forest south-east of Atlanta has been shut down, allegedly for the public’s safety.

Opponents say the move is yet another example of the heavy-handed crackdown by law enforcement and local officials, who have sought to portray the protesters as “domestic terrorists” and have used a variety of methods to disrupt opposition groups. Dekalb county officials have no timeline for reopening the park.

The park’s secondary-growth forest is where police shot and killed activist Manuel Paez Terán, or Tortuguita, on 18 January, catapulting the fight over Cop City into global headlines. It is also where dozens of people were arrested on 5 March during a music festival and charged with domestic terrorism and where almost all the movement’s “tree sitters” have camped.

Called “Intrenchment Creek Park” – or “Weelaunee People’s Park” by protesters – the part of the forest now closed down has been the physical and spiritual center of the movement to “Stop Cop City”. “Forest defenders” have camped there and dozens of public events around the issue have happened there, including Jewish and Muscogee (Creek) ceremonies, herbal workshops, school events, food distribution to area residents and five “weeks of action”.

Forty acres of the park have also been under threat from a developer’s plans since before the Cop City project became public in late 2021. These plans have been stalled by a local environmental group’s lawsuit.

In response to the park’s closing, the broad range of groups interested in defending the forest are showing up elsewhere around the city – as evidenced by the visits to city hall and this week’s plans by Emory and other Atlanta-area college students. Weekly food distribution and potlucks, formerly held in the park’s parking lot, are now being held right outside, yards away from police.

“The fact we’re not able to be in the forest … makes us shift in different directions, to expand the movement,” said Willow, an Emory student organizer.

Dekalb county CEO Michael Thurmond announced the order closing the park in a press conference, claiming that the protestors had “booby-trapped” the forest, putting the public in danger. He displayed photos of boards with nails in them allegedly found in the park as evidence, and said the order would be lifted when it was “safe” – but to date police and barricades are still blocking public entrance.

County officials barred a local documentary filmmaker and a reporter from the Atlanta Community Press Collective – a leading local source of information about the training center in an environment where the state has been less than transparent – from entering the press conference.

Asked why the park remained closed, and when it would be reopened, Dekalb spokesman Andrew L Cauthen merely sent an email quoting the order: the park “will remain closed ‘until further notice … to protect the safety of the families, residents and visitors and their pets in the area… [and] county personnel.’”

Dekalb county commissioner Ted Terry, a former state Sierra Club director, described the order as a “back-room, behind-closed-doors coordination between Thurmond and [Atlanta Mayor Andre] Dickens … to push visual opposition to what’s happening in South River Forest out of view.” He will be pushing to reopen the park through a resolution being introduced in early May.

Jacqueline Echols is board president of the South River Watershed Alliance, the group behind the three-year-old, ongoing lawsuit seeking to stop the county from giving away 40 acres of the park to a developer named Ryan Millsap, in exchange for another piece of land nearby. Before “Stop Cop City,” there was “Stop the Swap”.

Through their lawsuit, Echols and her group of Atlanta-area residents have essentially been keeping the park open while “Stop Cop City” turned into a local, national and international cause celebre for a range of people concerned about police militarization and abuse of force, and about destroying forest.

The group’s lawsuit also maintained the forest’s accessibility to the public in an area where majority-Black neighborhoods have historically been overlooked, and protected the Atlanta metro area’s largest forest in an era of climate change. “With no lawsuit, after all these years, the land probably would have been sold for a hefty profit … and by this time, there probably would not be a forest,” Echols said.

Echols, who is Black, has been taking mostly Black people from the Atlanta area on hikes and kayak rides down South River – which is fed by a creek that flows between the planned training center and the park – for more than a decade. She is surprised to find herself three years into defending part of the forest against Millsap, a former film studio executive, and that “Stop Cop City” has launched from the same forest.

“I never anticipated this – that Dekalb would do the swap, or that the city of Atlanta would do what they’re doing – particularly because the people running those municipalities are Black, and they should understand the importance of protecting this forest in an area that has suffered so much neglect,” she said – referring to Dekalb CEO Thurmond and Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens.

Joe Peery, an artist who lives near the forest, is a plaintiff on the lawsuit. On a recent Saturday, he got off his bicycle along with several dozen cycling enthusiasts, stood in front of a police car and several concrete barriers blocking the park’s entrance, and took a photo. The idea: sending a letter to the county opposing keeping the park closed.

Peery knows nearly every inch of the forest that stretches out behind the barriers and the police. He has biked and walked there for more than a decade, created or maintained about six miles of trails himself and led hundreds of people on tours.

“There’s a comfort to the forest,” he said. “It’s beneficial to meeting with others, discussing ideas and feeling a sense of acceptance.”

“The park is closed to shut down people protesting against Cop City and the land swap,” Peery said. “But what’s happened is people are finding other ways to express themselves.”