Activism / StudentNation / October 26, 2023

Will Atlanta’s “Stop Cop City” Referendum Make It Onto the Ballot?

Organizers collected 116,000 signatures in support of a referendum to repeal the ordinance authorizing the police training facility, but it’s unclear if—and when—the initiative will be voted on.

Mira Sydow
Stop Cop City Protest

Activists participate in a protest against the proposed Cop City being built in an Atlanta forest in New York City.

(Spencer Platt / Getty)

This summer, Stop Cop City organizers pivoted to use the state’s legal processes to advance their goals. What started as a neighborhood environmental campaign two years ago has grown into an international climate and anti-policing outcry and—most recently—a potential voting matter for the city of Atlanta.

In 2021, Atlanta City Council announced plans to build a 85-acre, $90 million police training facility, nicknamed “Cop City” by activists, in the Weelaunee Forest south of the city. The project generated staggering backlash—protest encampments on the proposed construction site in the Weelaunee Forest, a summer of marches, mutual aid, and community-building, and 17 hours of public comment overwhelmingly opposing the facility.

Lisa Baker, a Dekalb County resident and Stop Cop City organizer, recalls that the idea for a ballot referendum, a process of allowing constituents to directly vote on an issue of interest, was tossed around as early as September 2021, but organizers decided against it until the movement grew significantly. Eventually, they revisited it with force, zeroing in on canceling the Atlanta Police Foundation’s contract to lease the land that the training center would be built on.

“If you look historically at other similar land defense projects, they’ve always had two branches. They’ve always had an occupation, kind of direct action, strategy and also a legal strategy,” Baker says. “We have to have legal grounds where we can force them to stop this project.”

Georgia’s ballot referendum laws are notoriously restrictive, but Alex Joseph, a former prosecutor working on the Stop Cop City ballot initiative, says that a movement in Camden County broke the ice for Atlanta’s referendum. In March of 2022, Camden residents voted on a referendum to block the construction of a spaceport in coastal Georgia county. County commissioners who spearheaded the project sued to overturn the result of the election, but in early 2023, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld Camden voters’ decision.

With the knowledge that it was possible to push a successful referendum in Georgia, the Stop Cop City organizers launched their campaign on June 7. Almost immediately, they encountered significant barriers. Putting Stop Cop City on the ballot meant collecting roughly 58,000 signatures, representing 15 percent of the city’s registered voters, in person and witnessed by an Atlanta resident, in 60 days, which placed the deadline around mid-August.

As a resident of Dekalb County, just southeast of Atlanta, Baker lived closer to the proposed training facility than most Atlanta voters. Still, she wasn’t eligible to vote or even collect signatures. In early July, Baker joined three other Dekalb County residents in filing a lawsuit against the City of Atlanta to allow Dekalb residents to collect signatures and restart the 60-day countdown under these new circumstances. In late July, Baker and her co-filers won the lawsuit, and the 60 days restarted, extending the due date to mid-September.

After delivering dozens of boxes of signatures to the city’s elections office, activists were told that they had missed the mid-August deadline to submit signatures. Organizers responded that the deadline had been extended after Baker’s lawsuit, but the elections office argued that the decision was being challenged again—they would have to wait for yet another judgment to be handed down. Most recently, in late September, the city started processing the signatures by uploading them online, needlessly publishing every signer and witness’s name and address, initiating an approval process that could take months.

In total, the organizers say they have collected 116,000 signatures in support of the ballot referendum. Yet the question remains if—and when—the Stop Cop City initiative will be voted on. The referendum could potentially appear on the March 2024 presidential primary ballot.

Unfortunately, the challenge is nothing new. Local police and Georgia government officials repeatedly style the organizers as lawless: Atlanta police and Dekalb County police arrested dozens of peaceful protesters, and a Georgia State Patrol officer brutally shot and killed organizer Manuel Terán (“Tortuguita”) during a raid of a Stop Cop City encampment. Recently, the barrage continues: last month, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr announced a sweeping indictment of 61 activists involved with Stop Cop City on racketeering charges.

The Nation Weekly

Fridays. A weekly digest of the best of our coverage.
By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You may unsubscribe or adjust your preferences at any time. You can read our Privacy Policy here.

Still, the possibility has Stop Cop City organizers hopeful. “The exciting thing about the referendum was always the fact that we have a chance of forcing the city to do this,” said Baker, “forcing the city to do something other than ignore the will of the people and just shove this down our throats.”

Read the rest of StudentNation’s dispatches on the 2023 election here.

Be part of 160 years of confronting power 


Every day,
The Nation exposes the administration’s unchecked and reckless abuses of power through clear-eyed, uncompromising independent journalism—the kind of journalism that holds the powerful to account and helps build alternatives to the world we live in now. 

We have just the right people to confront this moment. Speaking on Democracy Now!, Nation DC Bureau chief Chris Lehmann translated the complex terms of the budget bill into the plain truth, describing it as “the single largest upward redistribution of wealth effectuated by any piece of legislation in our history.” In the pages of the June print issue and on The Nation Podcast, Jacob Silverman dove deep into how crypto has captured American campaign finance, revealing that it was the top donor in the 2024 elections as an industry and won nearly every race it supported.

This is all in addition to The Nation’s exceptional coverage of matters of war and peace, the courts, reproductive justice, climate, immigration, healthcare, and much more.

Our 160-year history of sounding the alarm on presidential overreach and the persecution of dissent has prepared us for this moment. 2025 marks a new chapter in this history, and we need you to be part of it.

We’re aiming to raise $20,000 during our June Fundraising Campaign to fund our change-making reporting and analysis. Stand for bold, independent journalism and donate to support The Nation today.

Onward, 

Katrina vanden Heuvel 
Publisher, The Nation

Mira Sydow

Mira Sydow is a Puffin StudentNation fall writing fellow and a student and community organizer at the University of Pennsylvania who writes about education, local politics, and her home state, Georgia.

More from The Nation

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks before crowd of 25,000 in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 25, 1965.

5 Lessons From the Real Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 5 Lessons From the Real Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

This Juneteenth we need to discard the caricatures of King that we so often see and learn from what he actually did and believed.

Jeanne Theoharis

At least we are many: Tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in The Hague to protest Israel’s war on Palestinians.

At Least We Are Many: Resisting the Drums of War At Least We Are Many: Resisting the Drums of War

Israel’s assaults on Iran are attacks from an actively genocidal nuclear state on an already oppressed people. We must oppose US involvement and calls for craven acquiescence.

Kaveh Akbar

Protesters tried to hold a line against riot police but pushed back with less lethal munitions during a march against ICE raids in Downtown Los Angeles, June 15, 2025.

An Urgent Message From the Streets of Los Angeles An Urgent Message From the Streets of Los Angeles

“Nos tienen miedo porque no tenemos miedo” (They fear us because we do not fear them).

Roberto Lovato

A solidarity demonstration in support of Palestine held in front of the New York Public Library ahead of the Labor Day March in New York on September 7, 2024.

We Can’t Silo Our Struggles for Justice, Freedom, and Liberation We Can’t Silo Our Struggles for Justice, Freedom, and Liberation

Showing solidarity with Palestine isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s tactically smart.

Jaz Brisack

A large crowd of protesters gathered in front of the Idaho capitol during a “No Kings” protest in Boise, Idaho.

The No Kings! Movement Trumped Trump The No Kings! Movement Trumped Trump

On a day that the president spent millions of tax dollars to celebrate his ego, millions of Americans protested his flailing rule.

John Nichols

People in Chicago protesting against recent ICE raids and President Trump.

“Every Single Day I Pray”: Young People Protest ICE in Chicago “Every Single Day I Pray”: Young People Protest ICE in Chicago

Thousands of protesters marched in Chicago against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in their city and President Trump’s deployment of troops in Los Angeles.

StudentNation / Ava Menkes