Report-back from the 2024 Stop Cop City Cup!
On September 14, 2024, the Autonomous Football League hosted the first invitational Stop Cop City Cup, with participation by the following clubs: Stop Cop City United, Rent is too Damn High FC, Leftwing Futbolistas, Soccer Lovers of Bushwick, Soccer Mommies, Newcomers FC 1, Newcomers FC 2, Team 5, Grand Street Orcas, and NYC ICE Watch! Shout out to winners Newcomers FC and to Soccer Lovers for grabbing a valiant second place!
We are so grateful to all the crews and comrades who collaborated to organize this special day. There was tabling by Common Notions, Property is Theft , Pluto Press (thanks Joy James!), NYC City Workers for Palestine, Cafe Anarquista, NYC Resists with Gaza, and the Autonomous Football League (who raised $1,500 for Gaza funds in one day from limited edition merch!). Weelaunee Defense NYC organized a walking tour and teach-in. Food Fight and Maricela prepared delicious food. Rude Mechanical Orchestra performed beautiful anti-fascist anthems during the championship game. And many folks brought clothes and other items for distribution!
Here we share some reflections from the day and thoughts on how to build the struggle against cop cities everywhere.
This past Spring members of Stop Cop City United and other clubs set up a soccer league called the Autonomous Football League (AFL). Through that configuration, we continue to host pickup matches that are open to all skill levels, all abilities, and do not require any fee or signup in advance. We hope that this model can be picked up by collectives and individuals all over since it is a very feasible method for growing organizational capacity and trust.
The invitational was held a year into Israel’s genocidal invasion into Gaza, and the Zionist entity’s aggression which has now spread to Lebanon and Syria. We acknowledge that we gathered on Lenni-Lenape land and are grateful to them for stewarding this land. We stand against the settler-colonization of Turtle Island and all Indigenous lands everywhere. We recognize that these various struggles operate in concert. Thus, our gathering served to express collective power, joy, and popular defense against all the forces of racialized, gendered, and colonial capitalist violence. We reject the turn to a fully surveilled and fully carceral urban space. With football and comradery, we actualize other forms of collective life.
The invitational was organized at the doorstep of an existing police training facility which the Adams administration announced it plans to expand with $225 million in 2026 (more than twice the budget of the 85-acre Cop City currently proposed in Atlanta — which will never be built). As reported by Natasha Lennard in the Intercept, “The mayor’s decision to pour further public funding into policing comes as he slashed services to the city’s most vulnerable, including cutting library budgets by $58.3 million.” She continues: “The site will be used to train law enforcement officers for all the city’s agencies — including the departments of Sanitation, Homeless Services, the Administration for Children’s Services, and the Taxi and Limousine Commission — under one roof, alongside New York Police Department officers.” While it is significantly different from the proposed training facility in Atlanta, the New York expansion “reflects an agenda that sees the whole of New York as a cop city.”
We convened this invitational to get to know the area and to demonstrate united opposition from networks and communities across the city to these continued increases to policing and disciplinary budgets. As Lennard concludes, “The fight against a ‘cop city’ in New York cannot focus solely on a Queens police training campus. The mayor’s plan, after all, is a grim reminder that, four years after the George Floyd uprisings, Cop City is everywhere.” This alarming investment into the technologies of repression can only be interpreted as an escalation on the part of the city. As a banner drop in September put it: “This means war.”
Our gathering, in the spirit of collective joy and play, framed by the long-term goal of abolition, helps lay the groundwork for future actions at this location to inaugurate a new moment in the fight against Cop City in Atlanta and cop cities everywhere. As comrade Joy James writes in her recent book Beyond Cop Cities: “If militarized policing is a colonizing project for cities writ large, it is imperative to think beyond the plans and protests of individual cities, and political betrayals, in order to map trajectories that inform war resistance strategies.”
In addition to the continuous soccer matches, comrades organized various events throughout the day. In the afternoon, Weelaunee Defense NYC hosted a walking tour of the nearby Queens “Cop City.” As one of our teammates reports back:
A lot of people came on the walk, which went from the soccer field to the police training academy and back. I would say 30–40 people. We did a little scouting exercise and the hope was that people would chat with each other as we walked and make new connections for future organizing at this location and others, while also having a chance to actually see the site that we are opposing in its material form. Overall the morale at the tournament was super heartening and I am glad we got to be part of it ⚽️
There was also teach-in to share best practices for attending protests and participating in actions. The group discussed phone security, forming affinity groups, de-arrest tactics, and what to wear/bring.
Lastly, we also held a raffle through which we raised nearly $1200 over the course of two weeks. Our friend Lahat, a recent migrant and La Mif member, generously contributed a beautiful painting as the grand prize. It’s no wonder we sold more than 200 raffle tickets! It was professionally framed by Moondog Atelier & Framing in Ridgewood. We were able to donate $1,050 to Rola Ameen and her family who are currently living in northern Gaza. Lahat was also paid for his work. We hope to showcase more of his work and other newcomers in an art show this winter as well.
As politicians from across the political spectrum continue to invest in and expand the technologies of total surveillance, stooping low enough to criminalize the wearing of sanitary masks, comrades stressed the importance of keeping us safe from the state’s eyes. This was materially evident the entire day as dozens of police (including those not in uniform as well as whiteshirts) surrounded the festivities, anxious and in fear of our collective joy which calls for their abolition. They continued to try and engage us but were met with refusal. Perhaps they got the message when at the end of the day, we unveiled a gorgeous, huge piñata in the shape of an NYPD surveillance camera. The winning team — made up of asylum seekers — took turns taking penalties at the piñata until candy flowed out, and was distributed to children that had gathered. It is in this spirit that we ended the day: joy, fun, sweetness, and the collective sharing of art and resources, something Paris Communards once called “communal luxury.” This is what stands in the way of further policing, collective power and organization.
