On Monday, a group of protesters at a conference in Texas challenged the mayor of Atlanta over the city’s ongoing plans to build a massive training center for police and other law enforcement agencies, eventually forcing Andre Dickens to leave the event entirely.
The direct action took place at South by Southwest (SXSW), an annual conference, film, and music festival in Austin, Texas, at a ballroom of the downtown Hilton hotel (one of several sites where the conference occurs). The panel discussion was intended to be about conflict between city and state governments. Instead the audience received a very different lesson in civic engagement, as the Austin chapter of the Weelaunee Defense Society, an activist group devoted to the national “Stop Cop City” movement, would soon dramatically change the agenda.
