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"Stop Cop City" Booklist

These are books we recommend to help ground our collective thinking on the "Stop Cop City" movement here in Atlanta and on the larger movements to end prisons and policing and fight environmental racism. 

Click here to read the Stop Cop City Toolkit developed by Micah Herskind of The Southern Center for Human Rights.

Click here to read Charis' statement about Cop City and the Forest Defenders.

Read Color of Change's report on Police Foundations including the Atlanta Police Foundation here. 

Watch the replay of the Stop Cop City teach-in here.

No More Police: A Case for Abolition By Mariame Kaba, Andrea Ritchie Cover Image
$18.99
ISBN: 9781620977323
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Published: New Press - August 30th, 2022

An instant national best seller

A persuasive primer on police abolition from two veteran organizers

"One of the world's most prominent advocates, organizers and political educators of the abolitionist] framework." --NBCNews.com on Mariame Kaba


We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice By Mariame Kaba, Tamara K. Nopper (Editor), Naomi Murakawa (Foreword by) Cover Image
By Mariame Kaba, Tamara K. Nopper (Editor), Naomi Murakawa (Foreword by)
$16.95
ISBN: 9781642595253
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Published: Haymarket Books - February 23rd, 2021

"Organizing is both science and art. It is thinking through a vision, a strategy, and then figuring out who your targets are, always being concerned about power, always being concerned about how you're going to actually build power in order to be able to push your issues, in order to be able to get the target to actually move in the way that you want to."


Creative Interventions Workbook: Practical Tools to Stop Interpersonal Violence By Creative Interventions Cover Image
$25.00
ISBN: 9781849354660
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Published: AK Press - September 27th, 2022

The companion text to one of the most popular toolkits for ending interpersonal violence.


Understanding E-Carceration: Electronic Monitoring, the Surveillance State, and the Future of Mass Incarceration By James Kilgore Cover Image
$17.99
ISBN: 9781620976142
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Published: New Press - January 18th, 2022

A riveting primer on the growing trend of surveillance, monitoring, and control that is extending our prison system beyond physical walls and into a dark future--by the prize-winning author of Understanding Mass Incarceration


A World Without Police: How Strong Communities Make Cops Obsolete By Geo Maher Cover Image
$19.95
ISBN: 9781839760068
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Published: Verso - November 8th, 2022

If police are the problem, what’s the solution?


See You Soon By Mariame Kaba, Bianca Diaz (Illustrator) Cover Image
By Mariame Kaba, Bianca Diaz (Illustrator)
$18.99
ISBN: 9781642597639
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Published: Haymarket Books - March 1st, 2022

From New York Times Bestselling Author Mariame Kaba, a poignant, beautifully illustrated story of a little girl's worries when her Mama goes to jail, and the love that bridges the distance between them.

Even though I'm away,

My love is always here to stay.
See you soon, Queenie.
Love, Mama


How We Can Live: Principles of Black Lives Matter By Laleña Garcia, Caryn Davidson (Illustrator) Cover Image
By Laleña Garcia, Caryn Davidson (Illustrator)
$20.95
ISBN: 9781643794969
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Published: Lee & Low Books - October 18th, 2022

Bookstagang Best Books of the Year, Bookstagang
Best Social Justice, Black Kidlit Awards

The first children's book to feature material from the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, this beautiful picture book will engage hearts and minds as it introduces children to the guiding principles of the Black Lives Matter movement.


Collaboration: Ways We Work Together By Tomas Moniz, Alicia Dornadic (Illustrator) Cover Image
By Tomas Moniz, Alicia Dornadic (Illustrator)
$14.95
ISBN: 9781849353120
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Published: AK Press - October 2nd, 2018

Collaboration playfully explores the various ways we work and play with one another and the world around us. Dancing between poetry and narrative, the story rhythmically demonstrates how collaboration shapes our lives.


Lessons in Liberation: An Abolitionist Toolkit for Educators By Collective the Education for Liberation, Bettina L. Love (Contribution by), Mariame Kaba (Contribution by) Cover Image
By Collective the Education for Liberation, Bettina L. Love (Contribution by), Mariame Kaba (Contribution by)
$25.00
ISBN: 9781849354363
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Published: AK Press - September 28th, 2021

A political vision for a future ripe with alternatives to imprisonment and punishment.


“Prisons Make Us Safer”: And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration (Myths Made in America) By Victoria Law Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9780807029527
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Published: Beacon Press - April 6th, 2021

An accessible guide for activists, educators, and all who are interested in understanding how the prison system oppresses communities and harms individuals.


Defund Fear: Safety Without Policing, Prisons, and Punishment By Zach Norris Cover Image
$16.95
ISBN: 9780807003022
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Published: Beacon Press - February 2nd, 2021

A groundbreaking new vision for public safety that overturns more than 200 years of fear-based discrimination, othering, and punishment


Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) By Dean Spade Cover Image
$14.95
ISBN: 9781839762123
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Published: Verso - October 27th, 2020

Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world.
 


Red Hot City: Housing, Race, and Exclusion in Twenty-First-Century Atlanta By Dan Immergluck Cover Image
$29.95
ISBN: 9780520387645
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Published: University of California Press - October 11th, 2022

An incisive examination of how growth-at-all-costs planning and policy have exacerbated inequality and racial division in Atlanta.
 
Atlanta, the capital of the American South, is at the red-hot core of expansion, inequality, and political relevance.


Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation By Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Brenna Bhandar (Editor), Alberto Toscano (Editor) Cover Image
$29.95
ISBN: 9781839761706
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Published: Verso - May 10th, 2022

The first collection of writings from one of the foremost contemporary critical thinkers on racism, geography and incarceration


Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom By Derecka Purnell Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9781662601668
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Published: Astra House - October 4th, 2022

One of the New York Times' 6 New Paperbacks to Read

Now in paperback and with new material, a 2021 Kirkus Best Book of the year in both Nonfiction and Current Events, the book Naomi Klein called: “a triumph of political imagination and a tremendous gift to all movements struggling towards liberation.”


Rehearsals for Living By Robyn Maynard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Ruth Wilson Gilmore (Foreword by) Cover Image
$19.95
ISBN: 9781642596892
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Published: Haymarket Books - June 28th, 2022

A revolutionary collaboration about the world we're living in now, between two of our most important contemporary thinkers, writers and activists.


As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock By Dina Gilio-Whitaker Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9780807028360
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Published: Beacon Press - March 31st, 2020

The story of Native peoples’ resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community’s rich history of activism


Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine (Indigenous Americas) By Steven Salaita Cover Image
$27.54
Email or call for price.
ISBN: 9781517901424
Published: Univ Of Minnesota Press - November 1st, 2016

“The age of transnational humanities has arrived.” According to Steven Salaita, the seemingly disparate fields of Palestinian Studses and American Indian studies have more in common than one may think.


How two centuries of Indigenous resistance created the movement proclaiming “Water is life”

In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century.


Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code By Ruha Benjamin Cover Image
$19.95
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ISBN: 9781509526406
Published: Polity Press - June 17th, 2019

From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity.


The American Surveillance State: How the U.S. Spies on Dissent By David Hotchkiss Price Cover Image
$19.95
ISBN: 9780745346014
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Published: Pluto Press - November 20th, 2022

New evidence has come to light proving how far the FBI monitored its citizens throughout the Cold War and beyond.

When the possibility of wiretapping first became known to Americans they were outraged.


Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families--and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World By Dorothy Roberts Cover Image
$32.00
ISBN: 9781541675445
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Published: Basic Books - April 5th, 2022

An award-winning scholar exposes the foundational racism of the child welfare system and calls for radical change 
 
Many believe the child welfare system protects children from abuse. But as Torn Apart uncovers, this system is designed to punish Black families.


How to Blow Up a Pipeline By Andreas Malm Cover Image
$19.95
ISBN: 9781839760259
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Published: Verso - January 5th, 2021

Property will cost us the earth


Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire: Twenty years after 9/11 By Deepa Kumar, Nadine Naber (Foreword by) Cover Image
By Deepa Kumar, Nadine Naber (Foreword by)
$19.95
ISBN: 9781788737210
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Published: Verso - September 7th, 2021

A critically acclaimed analysis of anti-Muslim racism from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries, in a fully revised and expanded second edition


The Evidence of Things Not Seen By James Baldwin, Stacey Abrams (Foreword by) Cover Image
By James Baldwin, Stacey Abrams (Foreword by)
$16.99
ISBN: 9781250844897
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Published: Holt Paperbacks - January 17th, 2023

Over twenty-two months in 1979 and 1981 nearly two dozen children were unspeakably murdered in Atlanta despite national attention and outcry; they were all Black. James Baldwin investigated these murders, the Black administration in Atlanta, and Wayne Williams, the Black man tried for the crimes.


Medicine Stories: Essays for Radicals By Aurora Levins Morales Cover Image
$23.95
ISBN: 9781478003090
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Published: Duke University Press - April 26th, 2019

In this revised and expanded edition of Medicine Stories, Aurora Levins Morales weaves together insights and lessons learned over a lifetime of activism to offer a new theory of social justice.


The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class in the Making of Modern Atlanta By Maurice J. Hobson Cover Image
$38.45
ISBN: 9781469654751
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Published: University of North Carolina Press - August 1st, 2019

For more than a century, the city of Atlanta has been associated with black achievement in education, business, politics, media, and music, earning it the nickname "the black Mecca." Atlanta's long tradition of black education dates back to Reconstruction, and produced an elite that flourished in spite of Jim Crow, rose to leadership during the civil rights movement, and then took power in the 197


Imagineering Atlanta: The Politics of Place in the City of Dreams (Haymarket Series) By Charles Rutheiser Cover Image
$24.95
ISBN: 9781859841457
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Published: Verso - April 17th, 1996

In the age of decentralization, instant communications, and the subordination of locality to the demands of a globalizing market, contemporary cities have taken on place-less or a-geographic characters. They have become phantasmagorical landscapes. Atlanta, argues Charles Rutheiser, is in many ways paradigmatic of this generic urbanism.


There's Something in the Water: Environmental Racism in Indigenous & Black Communities By Ingrid R. G. Waldron Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9781773630571
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Published: Fernwood Publishing - April 2nd, 2018

In "There's Something In The Water", Ingrid R. G. Waldron examines the legacy of environmental racism and its health impacts in Indigenous and Black communities in Canada, using Nova Scotia as a case study, and the grassroots resistance activities by Indigenous and Black communities against the pollution and poisoning of their communities.


Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet--And How We Fight Back By Kate Aronoff Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9781568589473
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Published: Bold Type Books - April 20th, 2021

This damning account of the forces that have hijacked progress on climate change shares a bold vision of what it will take, politically and economically, to face the existential threat of global warming head-on.

It has become impossible to deny that the planet is warming, and that governments must act.


The Violence of Climate Change: Lessons of Resistance from Nonviolent Activists By Kevin J. O'Brien Cover Image
$27.45
ISBN: 9781626164352
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Published: Georgetown University Press - June 1st, 2017

It is beyond debate that human beings are the primary cause of climate change. Many think of climate change as primarily a scientific, economic, or political problem, and those perspectives inform Kevin O'Brien's analysis. But O'Brien argues that we should respond to climate change first and foremost as a case of systematic and structural violence.


Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do about It By Mindy Thompson Fullilove, Carlos F. Peterson (Foreword by), Mary Travis Bassett (Foreword by) Cover Image
$22.94
ISBN: 9781613320198
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Published: New Village Press - November 1st, 2016

Like a sequel to the prescient warnings of urbanist Jane Jacobs, Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove reveals the disturbing effects of decades of insensitive urban renewal projects on communities of color. For those whose homes and neighborhoods were bulldozed, the urban modernization projects that swept America starting in 1949 were nothing short of an assault.


Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States By Carl A. Zimring Cover Image
$31.05
ISBN: 9781479874378
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Published: New York University Press - October 3rd, 2017

Clean and White offers a history of environmental racism in the United States focusing on constructions of race and hygiene


Working-Class Environmentalism: An Agenda for a Just and Fair Transition to Sustainability By Karen Bell Cover Image
$32.99
ISBN: 9783030295189
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Published: Palgrave MacMillan - January 11th, 2020

This book presents a timely perspective that puts working-class people at the forefront of achieving sustainability.


Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms By Maya Schenwar, Victoria Law, Michelle Alexander (Foreword by) Cover Image
$26.99
ISBN: 9781620973103
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Published: New Press - July 21st, 2020

A crucial indictment of widely embraced alternatives to incarceration that exposes how many of these new approaches actually widen the net of punishment and surveillance

But what does it mean--really--to celebrate reforms that convert your home into your prison?
--Michelle Alexander, from the foreword


Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, Second Edition By Eric A. Stanley (Editor), Nat Smith (Editor), Cece McDonald (Foreword by) Cover Image
By Eric A. Stanley (Editor), Nat Smith (Editor), Cece McDonald (Foreword by)
$20.00
ISBN: 9781849352345
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Published: AK Press - October 27th, 2015

Pathologized, terrorized, and confined, trans/gender non-conforming and queer folks have always struggled against the prison industrial complex. Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith bring together current and former prisoners, activists, and academics for a new understanding of how race, gender, ability, and sexuality are lived under the crushing weight of captivity.


Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America By Kristian Williams Cover Image
$22.00
ISBN: 9781849352154
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Published: AK Press - August 18th, 2015

Let's begin with the basics: violence is an inherent part of policing. The police represent the most direct means by which the state imposes its will on the citizenry. They are armed, trained, and authorized to use force. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they represent.


The Real Cost of Prisons Comix (PM Press) By Lois Ahrens (Editor), Craig Gilmore (Preface by) Cover Image
By Lois Ahrens (Editor), Craig Gilmore (Preface by)
$14.95
ISBN: 9781604860344
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Published: PM Press - September 1st, 2008

One out of every hundred adults in the U.S. is in prison. This book provides a crash course in what drives mass incarceration, the human and community costs, and how to stop the numbers from going even higher. This volume collects the three comic books published by the Real Cost of Prisons Project. The stories and statistical information in each comic book is thoroughly researched and documented.


All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence (Women, Gender, and Sexuality in American History) By Emily L. Thuma Cover Image
$28.69
ISBN: 9780252084126
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Published: University of Illinois Press - March 2nd, 2019

During the 1970s, grassroots women activists in and outside of prisons forged a radical politics against gender violence and incarceration. Emily L.


Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America By Brett Story Cover Image
$19.95
Email or call for price.
ISBN: 9781517906887
Published: Univ Of Minnesota Press - March 26th, 2019

From broken-window policing in Detroit to prison-building in Appalachia, exploring the expansion of the carceral state and its oppressive social relations into everyday life

Prison Land offers a geographic excavation of the prison as a set of social relations—including property, work, gender, and race—enacted across various landscapes of American life.


Transforming Communities: How People Like You Are Healing Their Neighborhoods By Sandhya Rani Jha Cover Image
$15.99
ISBN: 9780827237155
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Published: Chalice Press - November 7th, 2017

The world around us is a wreck. When there's so much conflict around the country and around the corner, it's easy to feel overwhelmed, powerless, and helpless. What can one person do to make a difference?


Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People's Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time By James Kilgore Cover Image
$18.99
ISBN: 9781620970676
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Published: New Press - September 1st, 2015

A brilliant overview of America's defining human rights crisis and a "much-needed introduction to the racial, political, and economic dimensions of mass incarceration" (Michelle Alexander)


Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?: Police Violence and Resistance in the United States By Alicia Garza (Foreword by), Maya Schenwar (Editor), Joe Macaré (Editor) Cover Image
By Alicia Garza (Foreword by), Maya Schenwar (Editor), Joe Macaré (Editor)
$18.00
ISBN: 9781608466122
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Published: Haymarket Books - June 21st, 2016

Explores the reality of US police violence against Black, Brown and Indigenous communities.


Chokehold: Policing Black Men By Paul Butler Cover Image
$17.99
ISBN: 9781620974834
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Published: New Press - September 18th, 2018

Finalist for the 2018 National Council on Crime & Delinquency's Media for a Just Society Awards

Nominated for the 49th NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Nonfiction)

A 2017 Washington Post Notable Book

A Kirkus Best Book of 2017