This year marks five years since “Cop City” was built. But the movement it ignited was never just about a police training center.
Stop Cop City brought together a multiracial, multigenerational group of environmental justice, land conservation, police abolition, and grassroots organizers.
They built power across ideologies, worked through decentralized networks, and shaped the public narrative to reveal why saving the environment means opposing expanded police power.
In the newest episode of A People’s Climate, host Shilpi Chhotray and founder of Community Movement Builders, Kamau Franklin, discuss the strategies behind the Stop Cop City movement — and the lessons it offers for organizing under a state trying everything to divide, intimidate, and silence you.
"There's a propaganda machine that's built into organizing more than ever. That says that there's a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things," Franklin said.
“No one has a right to tell you how to organize, to free yourself, and to liberate yourself."
A Note from Shilpi
We're bringing narrative justice to the forefront
Stories shape whose knowledge we trust, how we understand a crisis, and which solutions we believe are possible.
Thank you to Rachel’s Network for hosting our Narrative Justice workshop at ANV Farm West Oakland and making space to explore how storytelling and philanthropy can help build community power!
Interested in hosting a Counterstream workshop? Get in touch: hello@counterstream.org.
Upcoming Events
November 1: Last chance to see Diane Wilson’s new film at our FREE Story Salon in Austin, TX!
Join us for a free screening of HELLCAT: The True Story of an Unreasonable Texan, a documentary about Goldman Environmental Prize winner Diane Wilson's harrowing 35-year war against the petrochemical polluting the Texas Gulf Coast. Wilson will be joined by Texas leaders Alexia Leclercq, Frankie Orona, Jo Banner, and Joy Banner to discuss how communities can build power in the face of extraction. Attend
Worth Revisiting
DHS lied about why it targeted Stop Cop City activist
Immigration officials told Samuel Tunick they wanted to search his phone for child abuse material, but they lied. Read more
DOGE took nearly half a billion dollars from Indian Country
A new Brookings report details the more than $470 million in federal funding the Department of Government Efficiency cut for Native programs. Read more
350 protests Ron DeSantis’s climate record with a statue of him that melts
The Florida Governor is notorious for his inaction on climate change, going so far as to erase the term from state law. Candice Fortin, Peace & Riot contributor and U.S. Campaigns Manager at 350, discussed the act of protest. Read more
Worth Revisiting
Protest With Candice Fortin
One of the most fundamental freedoms in American democracy is the freedom of expression and assembly. In other words: our right to protest.