Category: Art

September 7, 2024

NO COP CITY IN QUEENS! FUCK YOU, ADAMS—THIS MEANS WAR.

In September 2021, the city of Atlanta leased 381 acres of Weelaunee Forest to the Atlanta Police Foundation for a $90 million dollar training facility, funded by bloodthirsty corporations. Atlanta’s Cop City is modeled off of the iof’s “Little Gaza” facility, which was built in 2006 with $45 million dollars of US aid. These mock cities are the training grounds in which the pigs perfect “urban warfare strategies” with the express purpose of stifling organized dissent, perpetuating gentrification, and increasing violence against our most vulnerable communities—particularly Black, Indigenous, and brown communities. As of July 31 2024, there are 80 cop city projects in the works in 49 of 50 states, all of this against the backdrop of a for-profit penal system.

In New York City, the concept of a cop city extends far beyond official training grounds, bleeding into all aspects of civilian life. Even before the greenlighting of Queens’ $225 million dollar pigsty, New Yorkers have been facing unpreccedented levels of state repression, and relentless surveillance by a police force large and powerful enough to be considered a standing army.

The purported goal of Queens’ cop city—set to break ground in 2026, in College Point—is to consolidate training for 18 city agencies, including the department of sanitation, homeless services, the administration for children’s services, parks enforcement, and the department of corrections, among others; essentially, it aims to militarize city government workers.

Meanwhile, eric adams is slashing hundreds of millions of dollars from homeless services, children’s services and other programs that New Yorkers depend on—SNAP, medicaid, libraries, and rental vouchers, for exanple—in order to pad the nypd’s already-bloated budget to a record-breaking $12 billion in 2025. We’ve all seen the increase of pigs in our communities, the national guard at subway stations, private security firms such as Allied partnering with  the MTA. We’ve seen the blueprints for a 300-ft. high jail im Chinatown. We’ve seen an increase in violent sweeps of both street vendors and our homeless neighbors.

NYPD, KKK, IOF, THEY’RE ALL THE SAME.

As we heed the Palestinian resistance’s call, we must remember that the nypd and israel are two heads of the same snake. The “war on terror” of the early 200s led u.s. law enforcement (including the nypd) to attend official training expeditions to the zionist state in order to exchange “best practices” in “counter-terrorism”. After his 2023 trip to the zionist state, adams returned “inspired” by the iof’s use of drone technology, and subsequently implemented unmanned surveillance drones across nyc. In Gaza, drones are used to much deadlier effect. On numerous occasions, such as the Flour Massacre in Februarry 2024, drones have been used to kill unarmed civilians in densely populated areas.

We know by now that pigs do not keep us safe: 600+ people are killed and more than 250,000 civilians are injured by police annually in the united states. Reports of abuse at the hands of the nypd have surged since adams became mayor. Annually, an average of 9 New Yorkers are murdered by pigs—in 2022, that number rose to 13. That same year, 9 people were pronounced dead while in nypd custody, Since 2021, complaints filed with the Civilian Complaint Review Board have increased 51%, with New Yorkers filing 5,604 complaints—a ten-year record. The nypd spent $115 million on misconduct payouts last year alone. Not only that, but officers enjoy relative impunity within the nypd’s internal affairs process. adams’ first police commissioner, keechant sewell, reversed internal affairs’ discipline rulings at a record rate, reducing or annulling penalties for more than half of all pigs found to have committed misconduct at an administrative trial during her term.

What is this cop city for, if not training up masses of trigger-happy pigs? What can we do when these violent hordes are set loose on civilians as a means of protecting the interests of a rich minority? How do we respond to a state and system hellbent on the total suppression of any and all resistance to the capitalist, imperialist nightmare threatening all human and nonhuman life?

What does it mean for us when we’re faced with organized abandonment, dispossession, disenfranchisement, and the reality that our tax dollars are currently funding the Palestinian genocide?

THIS MEANS WAR.

For years, the state has been wielded as a weapon by the owning class in order to dispossess and subjugate those at the mercy of their predations, both within and beyond the borders of the united states. To those who put their faith in reform: you do not understand that the entire system is compromised, septic, unsalvageable. It is not enough to merely “kill the cop in our heads” or “decolonize our minds”. We must attack the physical strongholds of the colonizer, the cop, and all those who unjustly wield their powers, and we must strike from all angles. Leaving them unchecked allows the rot to spread; pig deputy mayor phil banks that he “hopes the academy will be a model for other cities across the country”. We must refute this.

This banner drop is not an action, but a call. May we heed the burning of Minneapolis’s 3rd precinct a thousand times over. We call on our allies to organize, escalate, to shake off the torpor, the weariness, the fear. Resist. As for our enemies—the false comfort and peace that you take for granted is bought with the blood of millions. When our time comes, we will make no apologies for what we do to you.

FUCK 12, FUCK ADAMS, FUCK THE U.S. EMPIRE, AND ALL GLORY TO THE RESISTANCE.

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