Critical Resistance (CR) is supporting campaign development with Atlanta-based movement partners to stop the expansion of policing by shutting down the GILEE program (Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange) through the Demilitarize Atlanta to Palestine Coalition (DA2P). Learn more about the GILEE program and DA2P’s work to end it below.
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What do you know about GILEE?
Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) may be one of the longest standing and most violent deadly exchanges based in the US today. For over 30 years, GILEE has quietly advanced militarized policing, mass surveillance, and escalated warfare on marginalized populations in Atlanta and Palestine. So what is GILEE, and why do so few people know about it?
GILEE is a police exchange program run by Georgia State University (GSU). An insidious invention of the University, the program is housed within the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. This means that student tuition money, Atlantan’s tax dollars, and private donors including Georgia Power, Equifax, and UPS are pouring millions into this police exchange while being shielded by GSU. Founded in 1992 by GSU professor Robert Friedmann – a professor of “criminal” justice who’s career has centered on developing “anti-terrorism” strategy – GILEE has facilitated exchanges with thousands of US-based cops who travel to occupied Palestine and train with the Israeli Occupation Forces – a body notorious for carrying out deadly, discriminatory, and genocidal campaigns against Palestinians.
Under the guise of “counter terrorism” GILEE teaches racial profiling, mass surveillance, detention, quelling dissent, and militarized violence against Black and Brown communities. The Israeli Occupation test out weapons and military tactics on Palestinians, then deadly exchange programs such as GILEE spread these tactics across the globe.
Why does this matter?
According to human rights organizations like Amnesty International, the Israeli Occupation Forces are among the most lethal police force in the world. The Minneapolis police had its own GILEE-police exchange program to Israel in which police officers learned the IOF’s famous “knee on neck” strategy used to murder George Floyd. The cops who train in GILEE learn 28 police training “topics” including urban policing, prison enforcement, and border policing. The IOF regularly use these tactics to brutalize Palestinians. We know the police force in the U.S. will and has used these tactics on Black communities who will suffer the most. The onslaught in Gaza shows us the brutal lengths to which the IOF will go to enforce racist, genocidal brutality- and teaching these tactics to the city of Atlanta as its leaders push for Cop City will be a devastating blow to Black communities. The GILEE program reveals the interconnected nature of global policing as a tool of social dominance and the application of militarized tactics and weaponry agains marginalized populations – and it must be stopped.
The solution? Demilitarize Atlanta to Palestine!
Despite GSU’s pointed attempts at keeping the GILEE program outside of the public eye – even going so far as to pass legislation seriously inhibiting open records requests on the program – the program has been contested since its conception. In late 2023, the Demilitarize Atlanta to Palestine Coalition (DA2P) coalition was revived to take aim at ending GILEE. DA2P is a coalition of grassroots social movement organizations committed to dismantling Atlanta-based militarization and social control programs that expand the U.S. police state and the global Zionist project.
By advancing a strategic multi-tactic campaign, DA2P works to eliminate the GILEE program as a critical step towards eliminating deadly exchange programs and the expansion of the police state in Atlanta while creating locally-based infrastructure for active solidarity with Palestinian and global liberation.