CPA is in solidarity with peaceful activists protecting our environment.
Young protester resisting the controversial establishment of a massive police training facility dubbed “Cop City” at the urban woodlands outside Atlanta, is gunned down by police.
Violence has left young activist, 26 year old Manuel Esteban Paez Terán dead (nickname Tortuguita) with 13 bullets found at autopsy, a police officer hospitalized and seven surviving protesters arrested for “domestic terrorism”.
Activists claim self-defense against militarized police force “clearing” the protest site.
Civil disobedience for over a year has engaged local activists who have been joined by protesters from around the country. Resisters claim they were sleeping in hammocks and tents as act of civil disobedience when dozens of police stormed the site armored vehicles and Swat operation.
The South River Forest is one of Atlanta’s largest urban forests, borders a predominantly African American neighborhood and is is revered by the Indigenous Muscogee people who previously occupied the land.
This has been called a “dangerous trend of wholesale escalation and violence by US law enforcement, courts, and the fossil fuel industry to attack leaders of the climate movement” (Steven Donziger , a human rights and environmental lawyer, The Guardian).
A militarized state that destroys environmental resources is against the will, health, and security interests of Americans. Terrorism is the random killing of peaceful people, resisters utilizing civil disobedience in pursuit of saving the environment by those who have few other means of asserting their power.
Climate Psychiatry Alliance stands in solidarity with all peaceful activists, and with the family of Tortuguita in their pursuit of justice.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/b/03/cop-city-protester-manuel-teran-shot-13-times-autopsy
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/opinion/atlanta-police-center-protests.html