Among the groups backing the effort are the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Working Families Party.Ĭonstruction crews have already begun clearing wide swaths of the overgrown, urban forest in unincorporated DeKalb County ahead of the planned construction of the 85-acre (34-hectare) campus. About 97,000 people voted in the first round of the city’s 2021 mayoral race. Opponents of the proposed training center say they need to gather the signatures of 15% of the approximately 469,000 city residents who were registered to vote in the last election, which would be 70,330 signatures. Joseph said she expects city officials to file legal challenges to try to halt the effort, but that she and other attorneys are working to ensure that the referendum passes legal muster. The Georgia Supreme Court in February unanimously upheld the legality of the Camden County referendum, though it remains an open question whether citizens can veto decisions of city governments. Rico) (AP)Īlex Joseph, a local attorney who is helping to lead the legal effort, said the referendum campaign is modeled after a successful effort in coastal Georgia, where Camden County residents voted overwhelmingly last year to block county officials from building a launchpad for blasting commercial rockets into space. Hundreds of people gather in Atlanta's City Hall on Monday, June 5, 2023, to speak ahead of a council vote over whether to approve tens of millions in public funding for the construction of a proposed police and firefighter training center that activists decry as 'Cop City.' More than 350 had signed up to speak during the meeting, with hundreds more unable to sign up in time, including a large crowd prevented from entering City Hall due to capacity concerns. What (the council members) want is what the Atlanta Police Foundation wants, which is to continue to militarize police and to attack our movements and criminalize our people. “The City Council has failed over and over again to listen to the masses of people in Atlanta. “The people need to have a voice in whether or not there is a Cop City,” community organizer Kamau Franklin said during a news conference. They would also have to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay canvassers to help them do that. In order for the language to get on the ballot, though, organizers must first gather the signatures of more than 70,000 Atlanta voters over 60 days once the city clerk approves the petition.

Under the proposed referendum, voters would choose whether they want to repeal the ordinance that authorized the lease of the city-owned land upon which the project is set to be built.

ATLANTA (AP) - Activists announced an effort Wednesday to force a referendum that would allow Atlanta voters to decide whether the construction of a proposed police and firefighter training center should proceed, in a potential last-ditch effort to halt the project that its opponents refer to as “Cop City.”Ī day after the City Council rejected protesters’ pleas to refuse to fund the training facility, the activists returned to City Hall to file a referendum petition, hoping to take the fight to the ballot box.

Doppler radar flint