A Tale of Two Playgrounds: Cop City, Play Deprivation, and Black Childhoods

Play is unparalleled in its ability to politicize a moment through shameless expressions of Black joy, kinship, and pride. Play creates space for self-definition. Children learn how to meet their needs, resource their communities, struggle collectively, and co-construct safety. Black play practices also contradict mythologies linking police to safety–factually, police are fatalistic to Black childhood. In the most surveilled city in the world, the emergent “Cop City” amplifies the epidemic consequences of intersecting Black childhood with the carceral state. Cop City is a $90 million, 85-acre police military training facility slated for development in the Weelaunee Forest, the city’s last remaining large greenspace in predominantly Black, unincorporated DeKalb County. The proposal includes classrooms, firing ranges, explosives testing areas, and a mock city to practice repression tactics. As a large-scale gentrifier, Cop City will replace neighborhood playgrounds with “police playgrounds.” I argue that various developments around and on behalf of Cop City are particularly harmful to Black play. I highlight cops living in the neighborhoods where kids play; police-sponsored At-Promise youth centers; and the destruction of tree canopies which sustain climates conducive for play.