#StopCopCity Activists Target Nationwide Insurance in Scottsdale, AZ

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 26th, 2024

#StopCopCity Activists Target Nationwide Insurance in Scottsdale, AZ Through Protests, Sit-ins at Executives’ Residences for Its Role in the Controversial Project

SCOTTSDALE, AZ — At least 6 activists have been arrested after chaining their bodies to the entrance of the Hidden Hills neighborhood, home to an executive at Nationwide Insurance who is currently insuring the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center in Southeast Atlanta, more commonly known as “Cop City.” Delays are expected to hour as the police extract protestors.

“I’ve decided to lock myself down today to show that there will be no peace in your home while you attack ours” says Stella Bogart shortly before locking themselves down. Stella identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns.

This evening’s action follows a flurry of protest activity coinciding with the National Stop Cop City Summit in Tucson, Arizona. The goal of the summit was to bring together activists around the country who oppose the expansion of police power and environmental destruction to meet one another, develop stronger networks, and connect the movement in Atlanta to movements in the Southwest opposing similar issues. This morning, over 50activists gathered to rally near the main headquarters of Nationwide Insurance in Scottsdale, Arizona, to protest the company’s ongoing involvement in the Cop City project outside Atlanta, Georgia. Nationwide Insurance had pre-emptively shut down its headquarters in anticipation of protests.

Nationwide Insurance, through its subsidiary Scottsdale Insurance, currently holds the liability contract for the Cop City project currently underway outside Atlanta, Georgia. The multi-million dollar militarized police training facility has already destroyed 85 acres of the Weelaunee Forest on unceded Muscogee territory. 

“The expansion of police power in Atlanta is intimately connected to the violence of the border here in the Sonoran Desert, which is intimately connected to the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” said Ian Blank, an activist who came out to rally near Nationwide Insurance Headquarters this morning. “The same corporations profiting off the genocide in Gaza, such as Tucson-based weapons manufacturer Raytheon, are also innovating surveillance technologies along the U.S./Mexico border while Israeli Defense Forces plan to share militarized tactics at Cop City.”

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