Anarchist Pedagogies Collective

Sharing and Supporting Anarchist Ideas and Experiences

Category: Statements

Includes statements of support for different issues and causes.

Image of a protest with people (whose faces are blurred) holding banners saying Stop Cop City and We Are All Forest Defenders.

Regarding Recent Events in Atlanta, GA: Stop Cop City and Defend Weelaunee Forest

20 January 2023 /

The following post is taken directly from the call for solidarity with the movement in South Atlanta, Georgia. We are reposting it in full and stand in support with all the activists who are working towards stopping the development of Cop City and have been defending the forest in whatever ways they can. You can share and endorse the statement here.

Other updates have been submitted to and posted by the Atlanta Community Press Collective, including the statement about the loss of Tortuguita. Our hearts are with you all.

In solidarity with the movement to Stop Cop City and Defend Weelaunee Forest

We call on all people of good conscience to stand in solidarity with the movement to stop Cop City and defend the Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta.

On January 18, in the course of their latest militarized raid on the forest, police in Atlanta shot and killed a person. This is only the most recent of a series of violent police retaliations against the movement. The official narrative is that Cop City is necessary to make Atlanta “safe,” but this brutal killing reveals what they mean when they use that word.

Forests are the lungs of planet Earth. The destruction of forests affects all of us. So do the gentrification and police violence that the bulldozing of Weelaunee Forest would facilitate. What is happening in Atlanta is not a local issue.

Politicians who support Cop City have attempted to discredit forest defenders as “outside agitators.” This smear has a disgraceful history in the South, where authorities have used it against abolitionists, labor organizers, and the Civil Rights Movement, among others. The goal of those who spread this narrative is to discourage solidarity and isolate communities from each other while offering a pretext to bring in state and federal forces, who are the actual “outside agitators.” The consequence of that strategy is on full display in the tragedy of January 18.

Replacing a forest with a police training center will only create a more violently policed society, in which taxpayer resources enrich police and weapons companies rather than addressing social needs. Mass incarceration and police militarization have failed to bring down crime or improve conditions for poor and working-class communities.

In Atlanta and across the US, investment in police budgets comes at the expense of access to food, education, childcare, and healthcare, of affordable and stable housing, of parks and public spaces, of transit and the free movement of people, of economic stability for the many. Concentrating resources in the hands of police serves to defend the extreme accumulation of wealth and power by corporations and the very rich.

What do cops do with their increased budgets and their carte blanche from politicians? They kill people, every single day. They incarcerate and traumatize schoolchildren, parents, loved ones who are simply struggling to survive. We must not settle for a society organized recklessly upon the values of violence, racism, greed, and careless indifference to life.

The struggle that is playing out in Atlanta is a contest for the future. As the catastrophic effects of climate change hammer our communities with hurricanes, heat waves, and forest fires, the stakes of this contest are clearer than ever. It will determine whether those who come after us inherit an inhabitable Earth or a police state nightmare. It is up to us to create a peaceful society that does not treat human life as expendable.

The forest defenders are trying to create a better world for all of us. We owe it to the people of Atlanta and to future generations everywhere to support them.

Here are some ways to support the defense of the forest in Atlanta:

  • Donate to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund to support legal costs for arrested protestors and ongoing legal action.
  • Organize political solidarity bail funds, forest defense funds, and forest defense committees where you live.
  • Participate in or organize local solidarity actions.

Statement in Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples in So-Called Canada

5 July 2021 /
Image reads “Statement in Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples in So-Called Canada”, written on a light orange background and a darker orange circle.

The Anarchist Pedagogies Network stands in solidarity with the Indigenous First Nations in so-called Canada. For years, they have used their voices to speak out against the terrible abuse, neglect, violence, and oppression suffered by their communities. Today, as they continue conducting searches near former residential schools and find more and more unmarked graves, we stand in resistance with all the survivors and their communities.

These recent findings of the unmarked graves of hundreds of Indigenous children that have been found through the work of Indigenous peoples on the very same sites as residential schools in many parts of so-called Canada serve as evidence on how white supremacist systems, in combination with Catholic and Christian institutions, have been used as brutal colonising tools against Indigenous peoples. All of whom have suffered under the yoke of settler colonialism and capitalism.

We recognise the history of residential schools as supporting the genocide of Indigenous peoples. We support all of the resistance movements that work to dismantle capitalism on a daily basis. We condemn the continued violent assimilation of and oppression against Indigenous peoples.

This requires to not only keep unearthing this important history but looking towards Indigenous peoples throughout the world. We must help them heal from their losses by supporting their sovereignty and giving them their lands back. Further work is required of us, as anarchist educators, to dismantle colonialism wherever it appears, including the education systems which have always promoted settler colonial values. We must come to terms with the ways in which we may also contribute to the anti-colonial project and be aware of our own roles within it, actively working against them.

The Anarchist Pedagogies Network is committed to standing in support of Indigenous peoples in so-called Canada, across so-called North America, and throughout the world to co-create educational spaces of hope, solidarity, and resistance in order to dismantle settler colonialism everywhere.

For more information, go to

itsgoingdown.org/canadian-tire-fire-a-n…/
itsgoingdown.org/ctf-2-statues-fall/
itsgoingdown.org/canadian-tire-fire-3-a…/
itsgoingdown.org/canadian-tire-fire-4-c…/
iaf-fai.org/2021/05/24/autonomously-and…/

twitter.com/RabbitThoughts/status/14106…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBFvxkvpi2w

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