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“In prison, time is The Enemy,” wrote Dick Hebert, the undercover journalist, of the day he spent entirely indoors at the Atlanta prison farm. “It is slow-footed. It wants filling, and many of its prisoners find sleep the only recourse.” Is this also what happens, we wonder idly, tracing the curve …

We stay overnight in New York, which feels like Cop City already. Military men in bulletproof pants march in formation through Penn Station, intimidating weary people waiting for trains: no benches, no sitting on the floor. The TSA beeps our belongings. We shuffle along an endless line to fly from …

On a Tuesday in early September, the city council hosts a public meeting over Zoom where Atlantans speak on the record for seventeen hours. At least two-thirds object to the police academy plans. Neighbors hate the snap-crackle-pop of gunshots from the firing range the APF has already built on the …

For a city of mirrored skyscrapers, of fifteen-lane highways, of five million people and building ever faster, Atlanta is run like a small town, or a bloated feudal palace, royal families overseeing serfs sitting in traffic. For almost a century, a not-so-secret compact has governed the city town c…