The Atlanta Forest: Structure and Anti-Structure in the Stop Cop City Movement Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

For two years, activists occupied a forest south of Atlanta to block two development plans. One, a movie soundstage complex, would be built on public parkland that the county had “swapped,” for already clear-cut land, with a private developer. The other, a police training center the activists called “Cop City,” would be built on city property adjacent to the public park and financed by a private police foundation. Many considered the occupation to be the frontline of an existential fight against the militarization of the police, a resurgent fascism, the atomization of social life, and the destruction of the natural world. Calling themselves “forest defenders,” hundreds of people from around the country travelled to Atlanta to dwell in a communal encampment united by a bold yet enigmatic slogan: “Defend the Atlanta Forest.”

As the movement gained national attention, however, a dominant narrative coalesced around its new identity as the “Stop Cop City movement,” drawing focus away from the issue of public land and reframing the occupation as a mere political tactic, one among many. By contrast, my dissertation explores how the occupation of land and the struggle against its privatization were essential to the movement and enable new interpretations of social conflicts in the United States. At the same time, attending carefully to the experiential, and not just the tactical, dimensions of the occupation takes seriously the activists’ objective: to not only stop a particular project but contribute to a revolutionary struggle to find social and ecological alternatives to capitalism. Apprenticing myself to the forest defense movement, and using a range of media, I worked from the ground up, tracing the outline of a utopian alternative in the forest defenders’ material engagements with the landscape over time. My dissertation brings Victor Turner’s processual anthropology to bear on the Marxist tradition of political-economic critique, and vice versa, reflecting on the possibilities and limitations of direct experience for anthropological theory and practice.

Table of Contents

Contents

 

Introduction 1

 

PART I ABANDONMENT 16

1 Ways of the Atlanta Forest 26

2 Seeing the Forest 39

3 Seeing the Past 70

Conclusion: Abandonment 118

 

PART II DWELLING 124

4 Dwelling: A Measure of Life in the Atlanta Forest 131

5 Working in the Forest 132

Conclusion: Dwelling 162

 

PART III ENCLOSURE 170

6 Enclosure Acts 173

6.5 Final Enclosure 200

7 Barricades and Rubble 204

Conclusion: Enclosure 222

 

Conclusion 225

Afterword: Consequences 240

 

Appendix

i   Map of the forest 243

ii  Timeline of key events 244

Bibliography 247

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Anthropology
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Anthropology, Cultural Cinema American Studies
Keyword	Photography 21st Century Capitalism Liminality American South Ethnographic Cinema U.S. Social Movements
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Grimshaw, Anna, Emory University
Committee Members	Francisco, Jason, Emory University Nugent, David, Emory University Phillips, Kristin, Emory University

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