Antifa activists belonging to the Stop Cop City group have been engaged in a series of acts of vandalism across the US.
The group, which claims to be anti-police, has been protesting against plans to build a sprawling $90 million police training facility known as Cop City, in a forest outside Atlanta, Georgia.
According to the group’s anonymous blog called Scenes From the Atlanta Forest, the activists consider themselves to be “forest defenders”. The blog has become a gathering place for the activists who are protesting the construction of the facility, and the police in general.
Stop Cop City has claimed responsibility for acts of vandalism in 19 states over the last nine months, targeting businesses such as Amazon, Porsche, and Wells Fargo, based on their affiliation with the Atlanta Police Foundation and Cop City.
The group has also targeted Atlas Technical Consultants and Bank of America, which are linked to plans to build the police training facility in Georgia. The group has taken credit for more than 15 attacks on Atlas Technical Consultants since May, according to Vice.
Activists have also been targeting staff, with reports of doxxing and staking out homes of Atlas Technical Consultants employees. They have also claimed responsibility for destroying ATMs and slashing tires.
In February, Stop Cop City claimed to have stopped a freight train belonging to Norfolk Southern outside of Philadelphia by laying copper wire across train tracks and cutting out the signal on the rail.
The group wrote on their blog that the act was in protest of Norfolk Southern donating $100,000 to the Atlanta Police Foundation.
The campaign of vandalism has escalated since environmental activist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán was shot dead by police while routing out a protest in the Atlanta forest in January.
Terán was one of many activists who had been occupying the forest, some of whom had been living in a treehouse there since 2021. The activists have pointed to this incident as justification for escalating their tactics.
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