It Could Happen Here Weekly 82

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode, So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
you can make your own decisions.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Other podcast fans. Today, it's me James, and I'm joined
by Cave Hoda, who's a doctor in the Bay Area
and also host of the House of Pod podcast, which
NEXTI podcast. For you to add to what you've done
listening this podcast, you can add that to your podcast rotation.
But we're talking today about medication abortions, and specifically about

(00:47):
attempts to ban medigation abortions by anti abortion activists, which
included a recent case at the Supreme Court. So, Cave,
would you maybe like you to add anything I'd missed
from your introduction?

Speaker 3 (01:00):
No, yeah, that was pretty much all the good stuff.
Thank you for having me. This is super fun. I
love all your podcasts. I like your work, so thank
you for having me. And yeah, the topic is. It's
super duper important, and it is in the headlines a lot,
but at the same time, not enough, you know what

(01:21):
I mean. It's like people are talking about it a ton,
but I don't know if they're talking about it enough,
or if the gravity of the situation is really hitting people,
or if it is. We're just overwhelmed by how much
bullshit we've had to deal with in regard to this,
and people are kind of feeling a little bit beaten
about it and feeling a little bit disheartened. But I

(01:41):
am super glad that we're going to discuss it today.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah, I think maybe it is bizarre, how I don't Yeah,
I think we're dealing with so much bullshit and every
day something terrible happens, and so I can understand how
this kind of came and went in the news cycle.
At the same time, it does seem like why the
fuck where they're not ten million people out in the
street to try to burn things down when like, like,

(02:06):
if you're listening to this and you don't think you
know anyone who's used this, it's most likely because someone
in your life hasn't shared that with you. Like I
can think of more people than I can count on
my fingers who I care about very dearly who have
used this absolutely.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Someone posted this once and I thought it was really
actually pretty brilliant. It was like, if you don't know
anyone that has, that means they don't trust you enough
to tell you, or they think you're a douche, So
like there's a reason you know.

Speaker 4 (02:37):
So, yeah, it's it's very.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Common, right, and so I think maybe to start out with,
we should explain, like what is a medication abortion and
how does it work? And why is it so common?

Speaker 4 (02:49):
Yeah, I'll talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
I think maybe we could touch a little bit on
the history of it too, because I think it is
kind of interesting to look at it from a bigger perspective.
Medication abortions, they account for more than half of all
abortions nationwide. It's usually done. There are a couple of
different ways of doing it, but the most common one
by far is a two drug combination mif for pristone

(03:11):
and misoprostol, and these are the ones. They are used
generally in the United States and in other countries as well.
You can use misoprostle alone, but it's just not as
effective as these two drugs together. Mifa prostone blocks progesterone
and what that is. It's a hormone that you need
to make the pregnancy happen.

Speaker 4 (03:32):
It makes the uterus a hospitable place for it to occur.
And we'll talk a little bit.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
I think about the the mifa prostone the misoprostole as well,
because that's a prostac land and they do a bunch
of things in the body, but one of them is
to cause contractions of the uterus. In that that's two
these two drugs together. One makes the pregnancy less able
to progress and then the other one expels it. So

(04:00):
that's how these two medications work. What I think is
really interesting about them is a little bit of the
backstory to it. So my understanding that there might be
some medical anthropologists or historians who know more about it
than me. I'm sure that's the case, but it's you
have to put this all in perspective because when I

(04:22):
grew up, abortions were all invasive, surgical essentially, and it
was a you had to have it done in a
very specific manner. Now we have the opportunity and the
option to do it in a much I think safer,
control less traumatic way. And you know, it kind of

(04:43):
started in Brazil because in Brazil, you know, I know,
because it doesn't make sense, right, but abortion is illegal there,
as you might imagine, and women there, like women in
any place, are going to look for ways to have
abortions if they want or need one.

Speaker 4 (05:00):
And one of the.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
Things they would do is it basically go to like
a drug store or a pharmacy and they would look
for medications that said beware, this could cause abortions. That's
that's one of the ways this all started. One of
those was mister prostal that medication I mentioned, that's a
prostaglandin Again, prostal glands do a lot of things. I'm
a gi doctor by trade, and you know from my perspective,

(05:24):
they're also used for treatment of ulcers, not really something
we go to that much or anymore, but there are
other uses for it. And so they found that it
could cause these contractions of the uterus and they would
use it there for that purpose. The French were actually
the ones that worked on mifiprostone or RU four eighty six,
and that's the one that blocks the progesterone and stops

(05:44):
the pregnancy from progressing. So the background, I think is
really interesting and how far it's come during this time.
You know, how it started when our use here, to
how it changed during COVID, I think is a really
fascinating thing. And where we're at now with these medications.
I can't we're gonna talk about it. I'm sorry, I

(06:05):
don't want to jump ahead, but I'm just so I'm
so upset, And I know I should be at this
point in my life much more used to like these
weirdly cynical bs moves of a Republican judge or whatever
promoting this as being a safety issue. I know I

(06:26):
shouldn't be surprised and upset by it, but I am.
And that's the part that really bothers me right now
is the argument they're using against it is so bullshit
and cynical that.

Speaker 4 (06:39):
And again I don't think enough people are talking about it.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
No, it is like I'm the same way, like I
should be, a lot of my work has been border reporting,
and like I should by now be Like, no, I shouldn't,
because those people are fucking terrible. Like there's a group
of journalists who just seem to have lost their capacity
to care for other human being and can report on
human suffering without taking any toll on their on their

(07:05):
personal mental health, and they congregate on various Facebook groups
and in bars and expensive hotels all around the world.
And I don't like that. But like, similarly, a number
of contive conservatives around word, like anti immigration States used
Title forty two. They soon to keep Title forty two right,
citing the risk of COVID nineteen from migrants crossing our borders.

(07:29):
And these are the same fucking people who have been like,
we don't want to wear masks, we shouldn't have vaccine mandates,
Like yeah, it is infuriating that they can't just be like, yeah,
I don't think you should have the right to bodily autonomy,
and I don't care how I get there, so I'm
just going to use this troll ass methodology.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
It bothers me that there were doctors involved in this case,
the court case, and it does bother me that there
are doctors that are fighting this. I mean, I get
it if not every doctor wants to do an abortion,
I totally understand that. But to not stand for a
woman's autonomy over her own body is the part that

(08:11):
I can't get. I mean, it's like it's I'm not
an ethicist by any means, but that's like the bare
minimum is like you're supposed to believe in someone's autonomy
over themselves, and the fact that it's being removed piece
by piece it should be bothering doctors who are who
are supposed to be following ethics, you know what I
mean it.

Speaker 4 (08:31):
So I'm also a little bit from that end.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
I'm mad at our own I'm mad at our own people.
I'm mad at doctors and I and I am on
my little echo chamber in Twitter, where there's lots of
doctors who feel the same way I do, and I
hear from them, but I know that it's kind.

Speaker 4 (08:49):
Of there alone. I'm not hearing it from other doctors
out in the real world, you know, and not enough
at least.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yeah, we should explain a little bit that like the
original case, the complainants were doctors, right, who were claiming
that they were having to treat complications that arose from
medication abortion. Is that right?

Speaker 4 (09:08):
Yeah, they're a part of it.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
I don't know how big a part of it, or
if they're just used because they're Like a lot of
times people for good or bad reasons, will bring a
doctor out in a white coat at like a press conference,
which is like, you know, like we're just wearing white
coats all the time, you know, and just the sand
in the background and sort of add some sort of
weight to the argument. And so I don't know how

(09:30):
much of it was that in this situation, but I mean,
the argument that they're making that these medications are not
safe just it's a silly argument. I mean, we know
that the mortality rate for medical abortion is less dramatically
than the mortality rate for childbirth. And that changes too
depending on if you're like a white woman in a

(09:50):
wealthy neighborhood or a black woman. There's different mortality rates,
but pretty much across the board it's going to be safer.
I mean, the chance so a serious complication is there.
It can happen any medication. It can happen penicillin, it
can happen higher rates. By the way viagra.

Speaker 4 (10:08):
Viagra came out, there was the first year it came out,
there was about five hundred and fifty deaths from viagra.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
We granted the cardiovascular problems patients had, whatever, but still
there was It's not without risk. You don't see any
judge from Texas you know, coming out to talk about
viagra being an issue.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
No, I think you're right to highlight that, like being
pregnant is also a risk, and much greater risk in
many cases, especially like you said, because of these different
intersectional things which can make it a greater risk for
some people. So I would love to talk about why
these became more popular's the wrong way, but maybe more

(10:49):
widely used to facilitate abortions during coviduse. That's super interesting.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah, So the long and the short of it is
when they first started doing these tests, I'm sorry, when
they first started doing these medication abortions, there was a
bit of a process that had to go into it,
Like doctors were worried. I mean, we're always conservative. Doctors
are always conservative. We always start with like probably more

(11:15):
than it's absolutely necessary, and then over time we do
enough research, we get enough like evidence behind us that
we can peel back parts of it. So when it
first started, you know, people wanted ultrasounds, lab tests make
sure that they weren't people weren't mnemic or didn't have
a risk of bleeding. They wanted to make sure the
livers were okay, labs are probably weren't totally necessary. The

(11:37):
ultrasound I think scared people a lot or people really
wanted there always be an ultraound just to make sure
there wasn't like an ectopic pregnancy or a pregnancy or
it doesn't occur where it's supposed to outside of where
we expected to and those can be dangerous. And if
you do take these medications, you know, obviously you're going
to be a bit more of a risk if you don't.

(11:57):
If you don't know, that's an ectopic pregnancy. So there
was a lot of a lot of things that people
had to do back then. Then then started to peel
away slowly, like doctors might were starting to be like,
all right, do I really need to get liver tests
if I'm going to give this patient a medicational abortion. Uh,
And those tests started to peel off slowly. And then
when COVID happened, basically people weren't able to go to

(12:19):
the doctor as much or as easily. There weren't doctor
offices that were open. It was harder for people to
get to in the beginning, you know, and it only
got harder with COVID. So the ACLU actually sued the
FDA and they actually won and through that the women
did have to come in anymore for these They could
all be done via like teleconference or a video chat basically.

Speaker 4 (12:43):
Okay, so which is a big game changer.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes it much easier. And so
it used to be the case at least, so you
could get these things in the mail, right particably after
some kind of teleconference or video chat. Is that still
the Is that still the case in states where there
isn't like the strictest kind of abortion ban or is

(13:06):
it universal?

Speaker 3 (13:08):
No, it's my understanding it's still, as of now possible.
It's still available. You're supposed to be able to do it.
I think we're going to find that it's becoming more difficult.
We're already seeing cases. I mean they've been highlighted on
social media. How often they're happening now, I don't know,
but there we see cases now of you know, a
pharmacist not fulfilling medical abortion pills. And in the comments

(13:32):
section when you look at why why not, they're saying
because is now banned by a federal judge.

Speaker 4 (13:37):
So, I mean it's not true it was.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
The Supreme Court has you know, has okayed it for now,
I mean for now it's still okay and allowed, but
there's gonna be enough confusion about it. There's going to
be enough worry about it that people are going to
have a harder time doing it, getting it or.

Speaker 4 (13:58):
Even finding you know, people that are willing to do it.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
At this point, there's probably a lot of concern from
patients and medical providers. So, you know, even though it
is technically still allowed, I mean, I don't know how
for how long you know, I am worried.

Speaker 4 (14:13):
And also I.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
Don't know if this is really hindered you know, people
being able to access this, and I think it probably is.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, it certainly hasn't made it smoother, as you said,
right that it it only takes you know, one person
to have delay of a number of weeks or whatever,
and it might not be an option or it might
not be as safe. And how do you know how
long how far along these these medical medication abortions are
like generally advised, you.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
Know, the medicational abortions are considered safe in the second
and I think even parts of the third trimester, but
generally after the first trimester is when it's it's considered
a little bit more dangerous and most medical professional would
want you to come in to have it done.

Speaker 4 (15:03):
So, I mean that's my understanding.

Speaker 3 (15:05):
I'm not obigian, I should make that clear, but I
think for for the most part, within the first trimester,
people generally consider that's something that's manageable at home. Outside
of that, I think you're probably more likely to have
the medical professional want you to come in and see them.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Yeah, that makes sense, and in some states it's going
to be a lot harder, if not impossible, or countries
like I know, for instance, I've come across groups in
Myanmar were distributing these drugs. Abortion has been illegal, they're
more or less for since British colonial rule. I think
it was United as a as a sort of state,

(15:46):
not really a nation. The it's been a it's been illegal.
They've sort of made some moves towards it being less illegal,
and then obviously with the with the coup, it's it's
become more illegal again, and people there have been It
was a website up in in twenty twenty one about
how they facilitated mutual aid distribution of it, which I
found super interesting. And then at some point they obviously

(16:08):
that must have got them some heat and they took
it down, but it's used all over the world in
places where people don't have access to care, right alongside
being used here where people may or may not have
access to care, which is pretty fucked up.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
Yeah, I mean it's funny that, like, you know, we're
comparing ourselves. I mean, it's you would think twenty twenty three,
we wouldn't be, you know, looking to other countries to
guide us at this point. You would hopefully we would
have figured this out by ourselves after everything. But yeah,

(16:42):
I mean it's funny. You look at the historical you
look at it from a global perspective, it is interesting.

Speaker 4 (16:47):
It's really a global effort to.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
Try and get these medications out to people. One of
the major major companies that sends these pills and mails
these pills is in Europe, and they try to to
other countries. It is sort of a global effort at
this point to try it, which is kind of cool.
That's one good thing about this. It shows you that
most of the world seems to be on board with this,

(17:10):
whether or not governments are or not. You know, I
hear eighty percent here in the United States is it's
for it. I mean, I think that sounds about right,
you know, and the fact that there's so many people
in the country and then the world trying to figure
out ways to get these medications to people. That's one,
I guess, sort of reaffirming thing about this.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
It's impressive to see people just doing ground streets to
meet too laid. One thing that was very popular around
the time of the Adobe's decision. A lot of people
were sharing these videos on do it yourself abortion pills
or like homemade I think it was misaprosto, it may
have been both. It may have been Mithipristoine as well. Obviously,

(17:55):
like this is empowering and like we want people to
be empowered to extitgings about their own body, but perhaps
you could explain why, like it's also suboptimal.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
Yeah, you know, it's it is definitely suboptimal. I mean
I'm not every time I say something like that, there's
always some corner of the Internet that's like, well, you're
a shill for big farm or you're like part of
the medical industry or whatever, and yeah, sure whatever.

Speaker 4 (18:22):
But I mean it is it's a risk.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
I mean, these medications, like I said, they're safe, but
they're not without risk. You know, there are things that
can occur when you have this are contradications to some
of these medications, like there's contradications to mif aprosta and
like ectopic pregnancy like I mentioned, and you can get
that worked up to be evaluated, or you could at
least have the very basic questionnaire filled out that would

(18:48):
help at least give you the hint if it's there.
Chronic adrenal failure, porphyria, inherited porphyria. These are things that
are that doctors who do this think about and know
and as part of the process to get these medications,
even if it's just a questionnaire that you fill out online.

Speaker 4 (19:08):
So there there are risks.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
There are bad things that can happen with these medications,
as there are with penicillin.

Speaker 4 (19:13):
Like I mentioned.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
I've seen people with, you know, life threatening allergies to
to penicillin. I've seen people with who have liver failure
from basic stuff that you know people take all the time,
like tail and all. So you know, it's it's it
doesn't make me very nervous, and I like, do it yourself.
Is I like that that people are trying to find

(19:35):
ways around it. But and I hope we never get
to a place where this is that's absolutely necessary. I
hope you know, but I understand why people are curious
about it and why you're looking into.

Speaker 4 (19:49):
It and reading about it.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
I obviously I'm not going to ever really promote do
it yourself medicine to that Farvard degree.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah, like someone, I use insulin every day, right, and
people have been making their own insulin. I've seen on
the internet for for a long time, and I find
it super fascinating. Incident, also costs fuckle to produce, like
like a couple of cents, and it costs hundreds of
dollars to buy. Folks can accuse me of being a

(20:18):
shell for big Farmer, but I have plenty of publications
pointing in the other direction.

Speaker 4 (20:22):
You and me both, brother.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah, yeah, look at us, two guys just rigging in
the pharma doel.

Speaker 5 (20:29):
That's it.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yeah, that's that's why I'm recording in this shed provided
by FISA. No, and yeah, there is. These things are
not expensive to make, they shouldn't be expensive to buy,
and they can be had extremely safely. And the things
that are stopping you from accessing them cheaply and safely
and easily are politicians and also pharmaceutical companies. Sometimes.

Speaker 6 (20:55):
You know.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
That's the funny thing too, is that you think for
like these right wing are always talking about like relaxing
regulations and whatever. It's like, I wonder if they recognize
that on some level, what this is doing is it's
just going to impinge on you know, quote unquote innovation
in pharma. Like if you're a farm company and you're
thinking about some medication that could be used for this,

(21:18):
or you're thinking about creating a new medication for something
that could in the slightest way be deemed inappropriate by
some judge somewhere, and then if they're making the decision,
not the FDA, Like if you're a farm industry, you
may be like, it screwed. I'm not going to worry
about that medication at all, you know, nothing else.

Speaker 4 (21:36):
This is going to cut back on innovation in pharmacy.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yeah, And like anything with a contry indication for being
pregnant would be vulnerable to this. Right, we should probably
explain that the use of myth of pristone as an
abortion drug was approved by the FDA in an expedited process, right,
and that was what was being challenged. Can you explain

(21:59):
why although it's faster that doesn't mean it's any less thorough.
In my understanding, I might be wrong. The FDA went like, yeah,
fuck it, let's give it a try and see what happens.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
No, I mean it's a very good question. I mean
we do have safety data behind it. So again, you're
exactly right. This is not done in a vacuum. It's
not done haphazardly. I mean there is there still always
is a pretty strict process.

Speaker 4 (22:25):
To go through for these medications.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
It kind of it's the same thing that we had
to deal with with operation warp speed one of the
worst names or a very important medical advancement. So, you know,
people like, how can these things be safe? It's happened
so quickly, and it's not really true. I mean, there

(22:48):
is years of research behind all these things. There's years
of research behind it. There was a study from the
Newly Journal of Medicine about the safety of these abortion pills.
It had been studied worldwide and been looked at for
a while. You know, because abortion is so common and
there are so many of so many done that it

(23:08):
makes it easier to see the results. It makes it
easier to see the numbers. Part of the reason we
were able to follow COVID so well and get information
so quickly. Was because it was everywhere, and when it's everywhere,
it does raise the numbers. It makes it easier to
get people enrolled in the study, it makes it easier
to make a study happen. So that's kind of what

(23:30):
was happening here. This is something that was there wasn't
a lot of question about. Again, are there risks to
the medication. Absolutely, there's risks to every single medication that
you get. I mean, I've heard toxicologists say that if
Thailand all had to go through the same vetting process
that we have medications go through today, that talanol wouldn't

(23:52):
make the cut.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
And as a liver specialist to myself, I can attest
to that. I mean, how talanell is a great medication
if it's used, but I've also seen it cause a
lot of liver failure. It's a very common cause of it.
So there's there's a pretty strict and there always is
a pretty strict method to the FDA when it comes
to this sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
It's not done haphazardly, right, and I think most of
the people attacking it and not attacking it from a
place of deep concern for the health of people who
can get pregnant. It's quite the opposite. It's an attempt
to control people's bodies, right, right.

Speaker 4 (24:28):
Yeah, they're not. These are the same people.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
They're not concerned about the fact that the mortality rate
in like African American women who are pregnant is so
much higher.

Speaker 4 (24:35):
They'll never hear them talk about that.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
They don't give a damn, unless, of course, they want
to somehow cynically tie this into like racism or something.
They'll find a way to twist it in this weird
way to be like, yes, you see Livprostone is racist
or something, you know, so I yeah, yeah, sorry.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
No, Yeah, it's cynical and asinine, empathetic, but sadly like
it's also the reality. Yeah, I wonder, like, obviously none
of us can see the future. And we've talked about
how mister prostal can be used on its own if
I'm not mistaken, right.

Speaker 4 (25:12):
Yeah, it's not as good, it's not as good if
it's used together.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
But yeah, do you foresee a world where like that
is targeted next?

Speaker 7 (25:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (25:20):
I mean, if they're really serious about that, they're going
to try. I mean, I think at the end of
the day. We can keep zelots out of the Supreme
Court somehow.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Get a while before we get another crack at that.

Speaker 3 (25:34):
Yeah, then I think we should be okay, because I mean,
it's it's a bad argument. The argument doesn't really hold up.
I mean, some judge interpreting the medical data with or
without the help of some you know, quasi scientific group
of like pro life doctors. It's just not going to

(25:55):
hold up to what the FDA has done and has
to go through. So I don't I don't know, I
don't know. I want to say, I really want to say,
I don't think it's going to be an issue, but
I can't guarantee it because the fact that you know,
this is such a relatively safe drug and it's been
called the question, I mean, it's pretty brazen. I think

(26:15):
that they're doing this and well they do it against
other medications. Yeah, probably well win though I hope not.
But yeah, I think this is setting they're setting basically
a roadmap for this to be done again and again
for medications they don't like.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah, and those are all going the medications they that
like are all going to affect a certain group of people, right, Like,
that's right, that's just that seems to be the sort
of target group and for like you said, a very
small percentage of the of the population who are just
on their culture or bullshit and don't really care how
this affects thousands of people's lives. Obviously, Like folks are

(26:54):
also facing like they can't access gender firming care and
lots of places, right, this is the other massive area
of healthcare that Republicans seem to be very willing to
ignore the some Democrats ignore the evidence on it and
just attack people for culture war reasons. And I know
that one thing folks do there is organized mutual aid
networks to help people access medications that they need for

(27:15):
their gender firm and care with medications like this is
it like like you said, there are lots of contraindications
and it's not always safe, Like are these things that
people like people will be inclined and get to be like,
oh shit, maybe I should stock up, maybe I should
like load my medicine cabinet, and maybe we could discuss that,

(27:39):
like you said that there are risks that come alongside that.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
Yeah, I mean I certainly would understand if I was
in a position where I thought my bodily autonomy could
be going away anytime soon. I think I could see
why someone would stock up on it. I mean, I
don't know enough about the medication to tell you about
its shelf life. I know that it is just require

(28:07):
some special handling, So I don't know if it's the
kind of thing that you can keep for long periods
of time. But you know, at that part of it
was worked out, I certainly don't see. I mean, I
could see why you'd want it. Again, it comes down
to the do it yourself nature of it. Now, the
beauty of this is these what these what we've seen

(28:28):
with these medications is when we did the COVID, we
took it when COVID happened, and we kind of took
it out of the doctor's hands and made it more
directly to the patient.

Speaker 4 (28:37):
Actually, the outcomes weren't much different. So that seems to
be a very reaffirming thing. But you know, I still
I would like for there to be medical involvement in this.
I would like doctors to be involved in this.

Speaker 8 (28:51):
You know.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah, perhaps we are progressing towards a place where like
technology can help with some of that and take way
the liability from doctors in places where they could face
a long time in jail.

Speaker 4 (29:05):
Yeah, I mean, that's that's the other thing.

Speaker 3 (29:06):
It's going to be interesting to see how this pans out,
like from doctors in the future, if there's gonna be
people still willing to learn these skills, you know, because
not every abortion can be done, you know, medically, still
going to be a need for for the the more
older fashion forms of abortion that's still going to need

(29:29):
to be done. So, you know, I'm hoping that people
are still going to be willing to learn from this,
and if anything, I'm actually hoping that people young medical
students are more interested to learn from it.

Speaker 4 (29:40):
So we'll see how it goes. Like you know, when
when COVID.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
First started, there was a huge burst of people interested
in medical school and going into facious disease. But then
you know, over time, and and in the ER for
that matter too, they saw the need for it, They
saw the call to arms, you know, and it took
three years of seeing what kind of bullshit ID doctors

(30:04):
and ER doctors had to deal with before those medical
school numbers dropped way off and people interested in those fields,
you know, in fact, er for people trying to go
into er, they have to go through this full match process,
which is like a big deal. Like it's a stressful
thing where you try to get into the best place
you can. And r has always been a pretty like

(30:25):
sought after field. It's not the most competitive, but you know,
there is there is a good amount of competition to
get into the good places. And this was like the
first year I remember where there was a ton of
unfilled spots at good institutions too, So, like you know,
how I do worry will this be the.

Speaker 4 (30:43):
Same sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
Will there be an uptick of people interested in women's
healthcare and and providing that vital that vital need. I
think there probably will be, But will it be sustained?

Speaker 4 (30:55):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
Will they just give up after seeing how much bullshit
has thrown their way. It's totally feasible.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
Yeah, I mean, if you're looking, it has to be
like an idea, Like my sister is an obg wayn
and like does my sister doesn't live in the United States,
who doesn't have to deal with any of this bullshit,
and so like that very much enjoys a job and
it's very passionate about it. But I can see how
doing get here. It would have to be almost a
political idea or your commitment as well, Like you can't

(31:21):
practice your your your career in half the state. I
don't even know if you can go to medical school
in like states where it's banned, And like that's a.

Speaker 4 (31:32):
Really interesting question.

Speaker 3 (31:32):
I wonder if it will affect the medical training in
medical school. Yeah, in places where that's really interesting and
scary now that I think about it, it, Yeah, it's
gonna be.

Speaker 4 (31:45):
It's going to be available for people.

Speaker 3 (31:47):
There's always going to be organizations fighting to do this
and to get it out there. But how how hard
it's going to be to find a provider to help
you with this that in the future. I'm hoping U
does not become a problem.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
Right, Yeah, I did all these little sort of It's
really important, I guess like that folks do whatever they
can to preserve these rights because generally, like the state
doesn't give back power that it's able to take from people.
And this could mean a lot like this, And I'm
not like trying to conflate fucking having to have a
vaccine to breathe on someone and and like you know,

(32:24):
like that is not really attacking your body autonomy, like
you're attacking someone else's body autonomy if you want to
give them an effects disease, right, But when it takes
away things like this, they you know, like like that
has other consequences. Even if you're not a person who
can get pregnant and you don't think you're ever going
to be getting somewhat pregnant, like this should matter to you,
because your autonomy should matter to you.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
It seems a matter to most of the people in
the country, So I mean, that's a part of this
I don't understand. I mean, I guess it's all ideologically driven,
but because it doesn't seem like a winning proposition if
you're a politician to do something this unpopular.

Speaker 4 (33:01):
But I don't know much about politics, I suppose.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
Yeah, I mean, what is popular and what wins elections
in the United States can be vastly disparate things, as
we've seen, given the system which is deliberately organized to
befuddle the results of a popular vote.

Speaker 5 (33:21):
Okavit.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
I wonder if there's anything else you wanted to discuss
around this issue of abortion and bodily autonomy. Obviously it's
going to be one that plays out massively in twenty
twenty four.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
But I want to make it clear. I mean, this
should be pretty evident my stance on it. But I
do believe abortion is essential and evidence based healthcare.

Speaker 4 (33:42):
It's in that evidence based part of it.

Speaker 3 (33:45):
I think is important to reiterate because we do have
data on it, we do have data that it is safe,
we do have data that it's safer than some of
the other options. And if it's removed as option, we
are not only taking away, you know, a woman's right

(34:06):
to attimey over her own body, but we're putting them
at more health risks potentially for it. And you know,
I'm not an er doctor, I'm not obi gine, but
I can guarantee that they're going to have to deal
with a lot more problems because of this. If that happens,
They're going to be dealing with a lot more complications
and difficulties because of it.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, there's one thing I wanted to hit that I
totally forgot about. I don't want to I don't want
to phrase this in terms of like people wanting to
end a pregnancy have any more or less right to
do so than people needing to end a pregnancy, because
everyone should have the right to choose what happens to
their body equally.

Speaker 4 (34:43):
Yeah, but.

Speaker 9 (34:45):
I am.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
I believe I'm right in thinking that many of these
drugs are relied upon by people who have miscarried or
have a pregnancy isn't compatible with life, right And.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean the horror stories about women
that are forced to carry if you know, baby it's
a term that are not compatible with life, or you know,
a severe critical illness it's those are horrifying. And these
are medications that can be done again at home for

(35:15):
some For some patients it can be done at home,
which is you know, not great. You know, it's still
not gonna be maybe a fun process, but it'll be
a much better process for them, much less traumatic, I
would hope, you know, than having to to have it
done later on and in a hospital in a much
more clinical, cold setting. And we try to make these

(35:37):
things as good as possible. Our nurses are amazing, and
our doctors who do this are are compassionate.

Speaker 4 (35:43):
But you know, if someone could do something.

Speaker 3 (35:46):
Safely at home, you know, and it can be done safely,
I don't see why not.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
Yeah, it can. The dignity and privacy of your own
sting where you to use your home or you know
whatever with your family. Then yeah, I suppose being forced
to carry a baby which isn't compatible with life like
that's got to really fuck you up. And it's I
don't know, I don't think people are thinking about what
they're doing to other people when they make these these
I don't know, horrible decisions, but yeah, I hope they

(36:16):
didn't get to keep making them. I guess we can
all interpret that however we want. Are there any Are
there any organizations that you'd suggest folks follow get involved with,
like their groups that are helping to facilitate access to care,

(36:36):
either where it's difficult or just trying to campaign to
keep it legal.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
You know, I know there's been a lot of criticisms
in the past towards its organization from all sides, But
you know, I've known a lot of people who work
for Planned Parenthood, and I still think they do good work.

Speaker 4 (36:52):
You know, They're not perfect by any means, and they have.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
Valid criticisms from both from really from from a couple
of different angle but still, the people I know that
are working there are aren't doing their best and are
really want to help.

Speaker 4 (37:08):
And then there are international organizations still.

Speaker 3 (37:11):
That are involved in the abortion making the abortion pill accessible,
and there's a lot of different ways to get to that.
I don't have one in particular that I would recommend,
but the one that I have worked with people that
I've met in seen and talked to and have learned
so much from a lot of those people are from

(37:32):
Plant Parenthood.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
Okay, yeah, yeah, And like you said, they have been
criticized that they've also stepped up to meet like what
is a pretty terrible situation, and they're building more clinics
on the borders of states where you don't have the
right to terminate your pregnancy so that people can travel.
And yet it's pretty fucked up that that's what we're

(37:55):
doing now we have the underground railroad for abortion kind
of thing. But yeah, I mean it takes a big
organization to deal with the organization that is the state
or you know, the state of Texas or whatever. It's
done really well. Is there anything like you'd like to
plug or do you like to tell people where they
can find you?

Speaker 3 (38:15):
So I'm available on Twitter at the House of Pod
if you do Twitter, and you can listen to our podcast,
The House of Pod it's pretty much everywhere you find
your podcast, and guests range from like world Expert physicians
to like Garrison Davis, so like you.

Speaker 4 (38:34):
Know, contrasting those two things. They're an expert of their
own way.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
And and I'm sure I'll get you on soon enough,
whether you like it or not.

Speaker 4 (38:44):
And so we get a lot of the different guests.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
The range is pretty wide, and we talk about medical
related health topics and try to do it in a
relatively informal way, and so it's I think it's relatively fun.
It's been really educational for me. I'm really enjoying doing
it and I get to be cool people like you.
So it's a good show, I think. But I'm biased

(39:10):
because it's my show.

Speaker 2 (39:11):
I enjoy it. People should listen. Thank you, Thank you
very much, Thanks a lot.

Speaker 9 (39:15):
Mate.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
Hey everybody, this is Robert Evans. Welcome to It Could
Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and occasionally
about how to stop things from falling apart. Today we're
doing one of those latter episodes. I'm happy to say
we've actually got kind of something that's overall uplifting to
talk about. If you are someone who pays much attention

(39:52):
to the right wing, and particularly to the current right
wing campaign against LGBT and most particularly transgender people. You
are aware of a guy named Matt Walsh. He is
a you might call him a pundit at the Daily
Wire who has taken it upon himself to become kind
of one of the central figures in the present campaign

(40:12):
against trans people, to limit their rights to transition, to
push laws that criminalize their existing in public spaces. He's
a real piece of shit on, one of the worst
people in the country presently, and like all terrible people,
he has been going around in a series of speeches
invited generally by local student body republican organizations at universities.

(40:34):
It's not the only people who invite him to speak,
but that's what we're talking about today. Oliver Wyline is
a local community activist who showed up at one of
these events and who recorded what was happening the reaction
to Matt Walsh being invited to speak at a college
in Iowa City. And yeah, Oliver, welcome to the program.

Speaker 4 (40:54):
First off, Yeah, thank you so much for having me on.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
And yeah, I just kind of wanted you to start with,
how did you become aware of what was happening and decide,
you know, to show up and do what you did,
because I became aware of you just reading your thread,
which was a mix of you know, Twitter uh posts
on what was happening in some videos of what had
been happening on the ground.

Speaker 4 (41:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (41:14):
So I am a towney here in Iowa City. I'm
not a student, but I have you know, I'm very
close both physically and you know, just personally with lots
of activists on campus at Iowa City, lots of young activists,
particularly organizations like the y DSA. They have a couple

(41:36):
immigrants rights associations, some lgbt q IA associations and everything.
So when this was made public that the YAF the
Young Americans Foundation, that's what it stands for, right I think.
But they announced that Matt Wall was indeed going to

(42:01):
be speaking in April, and of course, you know, lots
of people just started sending me things like Wow, I
can't believe these motherfuckers are bringing Matt Walsh out of everybody,
even though it wasn't very surprising because they love to
have the YAF here loves to bring people to speak
that are objectively terrible people. They just recently had al

(42:24):
Alan West.

Speaker 4 (42:26):
Oh yeah, I'm sure you know all about him.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
Oh no, yeah, he's yeah, yeah, playing the hits with
Alan Dubbs.

Speaker 11 (42:33):
Yep.

Speaker 10 (42:34):
So yeah, the reaction was, you know, just kind of
like a general we should do something about this, that
Matt Walsh has come to campus or is going to
come to campus. So you know, there was lots of
flying campaigns, lots of calls online. There is a petition

(42:56):
circulating trying to get the university to not allow Matt
Walsh on campus. But here in Iowa, the board of
regents is all just appointed by a Republican governor, Kim Reynolds,
so you know, there's no way that they would do that.
And yeah, so that's how everybody found out about it.

(43:19):
And you know, it was just a lot of the
YAF would put up flyers and then they would instantly
get torn down and they would cry about it. Yeah,
that was a lot of the build up to this event.

Speaker 4 (43:31):
Yeah, that's how I knew.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
And one of the things, I mean, the thing that
because obviously there are different right wing shitheads speaking in
various places and protests against them, you know every day
that go a variety of ways.

Speaker 8 (43:43):
One of the.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
Reasons I was interested in what you had to say
and I think that this is a worthwhile one to
talk to people about. Is that I think the Young
America's Americans Foundation kids who invited him wound up demoralized
at the end of this. That was my take on this.
This is not an event that seems to have gone
well to them. So I want you to walk through
kind of what happened that night, both in terms of

(44:03):
what you saw from the folks showing up to see
Walsh and what you saw kind of from the response
to him.

Speaker 10 (44:11):
Yeah, I would say it's a fair assumption that the
YAF people were demoralized after this. So the protests, it
was last Wednesday, the nineteenth, and the protest was very
you know, there was no leader. It was very decentralized,
you know, just lots of people showing up and instantly
when everybody showed up, like at four o'clock, when the

(44:33):
documentary was showing before Matt Walsh was going to speak
his you know, shitty documentary What Is a Woman showed beforehand. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it was like a joyous occasion almost People just were
trickling in on the park right across the street. From
the IMU and more and more people, just hundreds of
people came, you know, not just students, but like people
from Iowa City and Cedar Rapids and you know, just

(44:57):
eastern Iowa in general that were just like, we do
not you know, we're feeling really bad that this absolute
fucking shithead is in our state right now. You know,
the air smells bad, so we got you know, yeah,
So it was it was very joyous, and then people
were like, Okay, the documentary is about to get out.

(45:17):
And the way this event was set up was the
documentary was being shown in a theater that's in the IMU,
the Memorial Union, just a student hangout spot basically, and
then all the people that were in the documentary were
going to then file into the main lounge whereas where
he was speaking. And so when the documentary got let out,

(45:42):
all the activists or just the people that came to
protest him, we're just like, all right, we're going inside.
You know, We're not we're not gonna, you know, just
stand out here. You know, We're going to make sure
that they know every second that this is bullshit that
you came to see this guy speak, and especially in
Iowa city. This isn't going to fly, you know, without

(46:03):
some type of resistance. So everybody that lined up for
the Matt Walsh speaking event and who came out of
the theater after watching his documentary had to wait in
line and be screamed at by protesters for like an
hour at least. And it was so funny just these people,

(46:25):
like they started out at first, you know, for a
few minutes being like haha, look at all these triggered libs.
But then after like twenty minutes they were just kind
of like thousand yards staring, you know.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
Yeah, Yeah, that's really interesting to me because obviously, like
one of the particularly with the younger right right, you know,
I think there is sort of a dividing line, both
in my head and in physical behavior between kind of
like older and maybe even less radical Republicans who are

(46:57):
really tied to this idea of the silent and get
a degree of emotional comfort from the idea that most
people do think like them, they just don't want to
talk about it. And then there's sort of not an
entirely separate, but certainly much more common attitude among the
younger right wing activists, people who were raised online in
places like four Chan about the where a lot of

(47:18):
their focus is on the joy of triggering the left,
which they see as like controlling the culture to a
large degree. And so it's interesting to me, you know,
that's something that these people like to talk about a lot.
They like to at least portray themselves as sort of
above caring, but very few people are capable of like

(47:40):
just being screamed at by a crowd of people and
not feeling shitty after a while. That makes a lot
of sense to me.

Speaker 10 (47:48):
Yeah, I mean it was definitely breaking through to a
lot of them, I could tell, And I even heard
some conversations amongst them, like very taken aback and like
in shock, you know, like voice shaking when talking about it,
just like why are they doing this? You know, I
mean like putting two and two together. Like it was
very fascinating to hear to eavesdrop on these conversations, and

(48:13):
it was a lot of that, and it was also well,
one thing that happened is I don't know if they
oversold tickets or just didn't track like how many people
were going to be there, but half of the people
that showed up to see Matt Walsh, I would estimate
about half half of them were not able.

Speaker 4 (48:30):
To go see him.

Speaker 10 (48:32):
They were told they were keeping track of how many
people were going into the main lounge, and then just
randomly they were just like, all right, that's it. You know,
the cops there and the staff and the Matt Walsh's
private security, which I will say there was more private security,
or there was more security there in general than when

(48:53):
Mike Pence spoke at the exact same place, at.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
Least obvious security with Pench.

Speaker 4 (48:59):
More obviously more obvious security.

Speaker 10 (49:01):
Yeah, and you know they had bomb snipping dogs and everything.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Oh wow, interesting, yep. Do you know how full the
actual theater was.

Speaker 4 (49:10):
The YAF claims seven hundred.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
People, and what's capacity for them, I.

Speaker 10 (49:17):
Don't exactly know, but they said that seven hundred people
were able to see Matt Walsh. And then so I
would say more people came to see Matt Walsh, like
maybe a thousand or something. That's another number that the
YAF threw out there. Yeah, but I would say there
was at least an equal amount of protesters there at
its peak too. And I will also say that there

(49:40):
were people keeping track of the cars leaving when they
were able to leave, and there was a considerable amount
of out of state plates and out of county plates.
People traveled pretty far to see Matt wallsh speak is
kind of and there were people that showed up that,
you know, the right wing weird was that I know

(50:01):
that live in Des Moines, which is like two hours away,
and even some in Omaha that came that I recognized personally. So, yeah,
people came pretty far for this, and a bunch of
those people that came pretty far were not able to
see Matt Wall speak, and they were extremely pissed. And
so I was watching a lot of these people yell
at staff and trying to bargain with police officers like

(50:23):
come on, we drove, like let us in and everything.
The cops were just not having it, and so the
mood turned pretty angry.

Speaker 12 (50:34):
At that point.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
I would say, I'm interested in sort of are you
aware kind of like who was organizing the counter response
and how that was. People were like informed that there
was going to be something, because you know, it's it's
not usually a simple matter to get that folks. Many
folks to show up around one thousand for a counter protest.

Speaker 10 (50:54):
Yeah, I think mainly there were multiple student orgs. I
think I named them a little bit earlier that you know,
there was the Graduates Union, a Coggs Union, a graduate
students union. They put out a statement inviting you know,
not only their members to come, but everybody to come.

Speaker 4 (51:12):
They do a lot of good work around the university.

Speaker 10 (51:15):
The why dssay the Young Democratic Socialists of America. They
have a chapter here and they were organizing. They did
heavy flyering campaigns around town, not just campus, but around
Iowa City itself. And on top of that, I would
say just sharing liars and word of mouth like on

(51:36):
the internet too. People know that Matt Walsh is kind
of public enemy number one when it comes to the
LGBTQ community, specifically the trans communities. So I think a
lot of people were just extremely pissed that he was
here in this town.

Speaker 4 (51:53):
In Iowa City.

Speaker 10 (51:55):
People call Iowa City a gayer town than San Francisco.
Have referred to Iowa City as that.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
I don't know, if high bar it is San Francisco
is a very gay town.

Speaker 10 (52:06):
Yeah, well if you Iowa City people call it little
San Francisco for that reason.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
That's sweet. I don't think I've actually been to Iowa City.

Speaker 10 (52:13):
Yeah, I mean it is definitely the place in Iowa
where it is, you know, eastern Iowa. It's considered the
lib part of Iowa, but specifically Iowa City. People call
it the People's Republic of Iowa City because like the
right wingers think it's so left wing here, but in
reality it's our city council is run by like Pete

(52:35):
Boota Judge supporters, but you know, to them, that's communism. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
So I think just the spirit of Iowa City in general,
like everybody was just pissed that this guy was coming
to town, and everybody found out one way or another,
and yeah, people showed up and showed out for sure.

Speaker 1 (52:53):
When it comes to like, uh kind of confrontations and stuff,
how would you describe sort of the uh, the general
mood towards that sort of behavior outside Like, was this
the kind of thing where there was there uh action
sort of taken beyond like the yelling, or was it
kind of like, uh, mostly focused on demoralization and providing

(53:14):
kind of a visual show of how much resistance there
is to Walsh in his ideas well.

Speaker 10 (53:22):
After a lot of them were denied entry, I think
a lot of them were extremely pissed off. And at
that point I saw a bunch of old like, not
a bunch, I would say, a handful of almost scuffles
breaking out. The couple I saw were definitely the fault
and instigated by Matt Walsh attendees, because you know, they

(53:44):
probably drove really far and weren't able to get in.
And now you've got all these people with trans flags
screaming at you and calling you a Nazi and a
fascist and that you're a piece of shit, you know.

Speaker 5 (53:56):
And so.

Speaker 10 (53:58):
But there was a lot of people and a lot
of cops that were really, really really wanting to make
sure that that didn't happen. So after these people weren't
allowed in, they were being escorted towards the back entrance
where they came in. And so they all went back
towards the back entrance, and that is when somebody or

(54:18):
some people I didn't see it, I only heard it
dumped thousands and thousands of marbles by that exit.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
Yeah, that was my favorite thing that I saw on
your thread.

Speaker 10 (54:28):
Yeah, So then the cops were like, well, shit, sorry, guys,
you can't come this way, So you have to go
back through the gauntlet of screaming protesters to get out.

Speaker 5 (54:38):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (54:38):
Yeah, area denial, taking a ya area denial and also
kind of rerouting them from an area that's going to
force them to confront the least pleasant aspect of it.

Speaker 4 (54:47):
Yeah, that's very smart exactly.

Speaker 10 (54:49):
And then even after that, lots of people were going
to like the way the imus set up. There's a
park by it, and there's also a parking garage right
across the street from it, and there's a one way
out of the parking garage, so there's one way out
if you parked in the parking garage. And towards the

(55:09):
end of his talk and when everybody was filing out
of the Matt Walsh event, protesters had completely taken over
that street. So there was no way any of these
people were getting out. They just kind of like came
out in a giant like horde of people. And then
they slowly started realizing, you know, since all these people

(55:30):
were blocking the street and there is a pet band
in the middle of the street playing you know, yea,
they were starting to understand that, oh shit, we're not
going to be able to leave. So a lot of
them were really mad about that, and they started going
up to police officers and staff saying like, you got
to get these people out of here.

Speaker 4 (55:48):
I'm trying to leave, you.

Speaker 10 (55:49):
Know, and the cops there was only like outside, I
would say, there was only like seven police officers and
there is no way. Like the cops tried to get
people to move out of the street. They even put
their hands on some people to try to move them,
but then forty more people would just get in the street,
and so they realized that that wasn't going to happen.
So after going through a gauntlet of protesters and stepping

(56:12):
over marbles, you know, these people are then also not
able to leave the event when they want to, and
I would say the road was blocked probably for like
an hour hour fifteen minutes until the police were finally
able to kind of like wedge a way out for
these people. And that's when one confrontation that I know

(56:34):
happened where one of the Matt Walsh attendees started shining
a strobe light in people's faces and someone put a
sign in front of it to stop them from doing that,
and then that person grabbed the other person and there
was kind of a fight that happened, But that was
the only physical confrontation that I saw the entire night,
besides cops putting their hands on protesters trying to get

(56:57):
them out of the street at one point.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
So what would you say, we're kind of the main
takeaways from this for people. You know, this is going
to continue to be a thing if folks are looking
at participating in or organizing responses to events like this
in the future. What were your kind of big takeaways.
My takeaways is that marbles obviously great idea. Marbles, Yes,
marbles are a great idea, you know, But also what

(57:21):
I think is kind of worth taking from that is
that like it's not enough. We often see this when
like different tactics go viral. Don't like do the cargo
cult version of it? Right, The reason why the marbles
were effective wasn't just that like it made an exit inaccessible.
It's that because it made it was in a situation
where it rerouted people back through that screaming gauntlet of
counter protesters, which was demoralizing. So strategy is also like

(57:45):
worth taking into account when you're adopting new tactics.

Speaker 10 (57:48):
Yeah, certainly, And from how it seemed to me is
that that was intentional, that it was meant to block
that exit, so they had to go back through the
screaming people to get out.

Speaker 4 (57:59):
Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 10 (58:01):
You know, marvels are funny, but it was deployed in
such a way where it was even more funny, yeah.

Speaker 4 (58:08):
And effective.

Speaker 10 (58:09):
A takeaway that I had was that, you know, there's
always going to be risk with this type of thing,
risk of you know, risk of anything really, you know,
physical harm, emotional harm, people getting in trouble at school
or something. But I think these kids and a lot
of these attendees went there expecting to own the libs

(58:31):
and then walked away really demoralized, you know, And so
I think it was definitely worth it to put our
bodies on the line and everything and put ourselves on
the line to just send that message and also make
it clear that other people can do this too. And
Matt Walls speaks, you know, just make it miserable. You know,
you don't even necessarily have to prevent him from speaking,

(58:54):
even though that would be pretty cool. But even though
he did speak, like, no one's talking about that, and
no one's.

Speaker 4 (59:01):
Talking about what he said.

Speaker 10 (59:03):
People are talking about how all the Matt Walsh people
got stranded and how there were marbles that blocked their exit.
And how the pet band came and played to a
cadence of Buck Matt Walsh you know, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
All right, was there anything else you want to talk
about before we roll out?

Speaker 10 (59:20):
I'd say that about does it for me, unless you
have any more questions about specifics of the night.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
No, thank you for coming on, Oliver. Is there any
sort of plugs you've got for anything you want to
direct listeners towards before we end?

Speaker 10 (59:33):
Yeah, there's an organization around here called Iowa Trans Mutual
Aid that does a lot of really really really good
work for people in the state of Iowa that currently
is experiencing, like so much of the country, really really
really bad anti trans legislations. So if you find it
in your heart or have the means to donate to
such an Iowa Trans Mutual Aid, I really I really

(59:55):
can't recommend it enough.

Speaker 4 (59:56):
Awesome.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
Well, thank you so much, Oliver, and a big thank
you to everybody who showed up that night in Iowa City.
That is it for us today. Everybody, have a great
rest of your day.

Speaker 4 (01:00:07):
All right, thank you so much.

Speaker 5 (01:00:24):
Welcome to Take It Happened here a podcast about the transgenocide,
because it keeps happening and so we keep having a
new episodes about it because it just gets worse. Yeah,
I'm Mia Wong with me as James.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
I'm yeah, I'm excited to hear more about what people
are doing to trans people in different partsitive country.

Speaker 5 (01:00:44):
Yeah, the answer is not good.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
So okay, at about.

Speaker 5 (01:00:48):
Five am this morning, I was watching a video from
last year, and you know, I had this line about
how like there's been one hundred anti trans bills in
twenty twenty two alone, and like, oh oh boy, that
is a quaint figure from a more civilized age. We
are three months into twenty twenty and there's been five
hundred anti trans bills across the country.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
That was a Freudian slip. We have three years into
twenty twenty, my friend.

Speaker 5 (01:01:16):
Oh god, yeah, twenty three that one, which I guess
it won't work out like this, But technically, speaking of
this pace continues, we're on track for what. Yeah, we're
on track for I think two thousand this year, which
would be great.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Heyce, Yeah, it's good. We'll be rebing Mansona by November.

Speaker 5 (01:01:37):
Now. Most of these bills, have we've talked about before,
are going to fail, but a lot of them haven't.
And the other sort of aspect of this. I think
it's been less reported on, but is also extremely important.
Is that. Okay, so if you want to do anti
trans bullshit, you have like three options. Basically, you have
you try to get a bill through the legislature, You
have the governor doing a and date or something, and

(01:02:01):
then you have the attorney general doing some bullshit. And
our first story from the front lines of the worst
shit that's happening is from Missouri, where Missouri's Attorney General
Andrew Bailey has issued a quote emergency rule that claims
that because gender affirming care is quote experimental, it's already
banned by state law, which is nonsense, but it gets worse.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
I don't know if it's worth like addressing this shit
head on because it's such so clearly bullshit. But like,
we have more than a century of people seeving gender
firming care and auditioning. It's it's like people, people, television
is more experimental than gender affirming care. Yeah, like this stuff,
like aeroplanes are more experiment This stuff predates the Nazis,

(01:02:50):
Like it's like it's old. Yeah, it definitely predates passenger flight.

Speaker 5 (01:02:55):
Yeah. Like so okay, I mean that there's like a
standard turf argument though, is that it's like, oh, it's experimental.
It's like, now it's not okay, so these rules are
oh boy, okay, here's from so I think it was
Saint Louis. Yeah, the city government of stint Lewis put
out a thing about it that was basically like, this
is bullshit. They said, quote the Interney General's Emergency Regulations

(01:03:18):
institute extreme restrictions that require one medically documented gender just
for you for three years, to at least fifteen consecutive
therapy sessions over eighteen months, and three that all mental
health conditions are treated and resolved prior to gaining access
to gender affirming care. There's also this section that is

(01:03:40):
I'm just gonna read it. I don't have any words,
I don't have any analysis for this, so it's saying
like you can't have care. That quote fails with respect
to a patient who is a minor to ensure that
the patient has received a comprehensive screening at least annually
for social media addiction or compulsion, and has not for
at least six months prior to the beginning of any

(01:04:01):
intervention suffered from social media addiction or compulsion. So wow. Yeah. Now,
so the good news is that this rule is supposed
to go into effects, like before this episode is recorded,
it was there instantly. There are a bunch of lawsuits.
It's been blocked by a judge until May fifteenth, so

(01:04:23):
hopefully the judge will be like, this is obviously illegal,
not holding out hope for that.

Speaker 4 (01:04:28):
This is.

Speaker 5 (01:04:31):
Probably the worst law in the books anywhere in the
country right now. Maybe we'll also I'll show you the
other really bad one and what we'll see. But okay,
so the notable thing about this law is that this
is not just a band from minors. This is for everyone.
And you know, there's lots of atrocious stuff in here, right,
Like if you have autism, for example, and there's a

(01:04:52):
bitfy thing about screening for autism. If you have autism,
you cannot transition Jesus, and you know, and then you
know there are right, even if you're like a ninety
nine year old on your fucking deathbed, you can't transition
unless you feel fill all of these bullshit requirements. There's
this like there's a social media compulsion thing, which is
this sort of bizarre like social contagient bullshit that these

(01:05:13):
people have been spreading for a.

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):
Long time, especially given like where the fuck do we
think their trans panic comes from? It's because they logged
onto Facebook and you're racist. Uncle Joey had posted to
think about like how Twitter is transing his niece's gender.

Speaker 5 (01:05:27):
Yeah, and you know, and like all of this stuff
is very like we're getting into we're getting into the
part of this where it's just sort of like they're
like copying and pasting turf rants into like laws. The
mental healthcare thing is like just awful.

Speaker 8 (01:05:46):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:05:46):
For example, if you have depression, one of the reasons
you might have depression if your trans is because you
have dysphoria. So you're caught in this loop. If you
try to get care for the depression, you can't get
like treatment for the dysphoria. What if you get treating
for the dysphoia, you can't get it for the depressions, right.

Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
Yeah, you're totally alienated from getting care. And like I'm
sure living in a fucking state which is trying with
surgical precision to force you to pick which way you
want to be suffering. It's not like great for your
mental health to be like being a trans person in
Missouri would be pretty hard, given that the state is

(01:06:21):
taking or its powers to stop you getting anything of care.

Speaker 5 (01:06:25):
And you know, I mean everything that's about this is
like the therapy requirement, the fifteen therapy things over eighteen
months is just effectively a ban because you know, do
you know how fucking hard it is to get an
appointment with a gender therapist, Like it is so like
there are we are talking about something where there are
optimistically dozens of these people for an entire state. It

(01:06:49):
is fucked. It is so bad even in states where
it's legal. Right this this is sort of the grim
joke of like the anti trans canard that like it's
too easy for kids to get gender firming care and
they're giving out hormones like candy. It's like, no, no,
it's really even in states where it's legal to get
gender firming care, it's hard as fuck, takes forever and
is expensive, and you know, given how through few therapists

(01:07:12):
there are and how hard it is to clear these requirements,
the Missouri rule is just effectively a ban on gender
ferman care for everyone. Now it's been stayed for now,
but this is really bad. People are fleeing the state,
we're gonna talk more about trans refugees yeah later, But

(01:07:33):
you know, basically every state that has passed one of
these laws has refugees already. I know, I personally know
multiple people who fled multiple states. Yeah, it's really fucking bad.
It's also you know, I mean, like it is genuinely
important to make sure that people get supported and make

(01:07:53):
sure people have a way out. It's also not a
solution because there's just going to be new trans kids
born into these states.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
So yeah, yeah, we can't fix it by the existing
trans people leaving, and like obviously those people have their
friends in their family and their community there. Like we
didn't fix it by them getting someone completely different.

Speaker 5 (01:08:12):
Yeah, so now we're gonna move to the next state
where shit's happening that this one, I don't know. The
stuff that's happening in Kansas is also like, okay, relative
to the amount of media attention it's gotten, this is
the worst thing that's happening in absolute terms, it's unbelievably bad. Okay.

(01:08:33):
So there's a bill in Kansas that people are calling
a bathroom bill, and they're calling it that because bathroom
bill is the terminology that they have This is not
a bathroom bill. We need to be very clear about this.
This is way, way, way, way fucking worse than a
bathroom bill. So this is a bill that what it
does is in the eyes of the state, it legally

(01:08:54):
assigns you a gender by defining male and female in
all states, in all state laws as and I'm going
to let the legislature take it from here. Women are
those who quote biologically whose biological reproductive system is developed
to produce OVA, and men are those quote whose biological
reproductive system is developed to fertilize the OVA of a female.

(01:09:19):
Which hey yeah, hey Radfams, I hope you're fucking happy.
Now you've gotten the state to legally define your gender
as based on your reproductive capacity.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
Yeah, we've great job. Feed run of the fucking what's
the thing where they will wear the bonnets?

Speaker 5 (01:09:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:09:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:09:36):
And here here's it just intersects people kind of exist.
You're fucking it's worse, Okay, So again here here's kas NT,
which is a news outlet in Kansas. In addition to restrooms,
the legislation would define words like women, man, mother, and
father are in areas like athletics, prisons, or other detention facilities,

(01:09:56):
domestic violent centers, rape crisis centers, locker rooms, and quotes
other areas where biology, safety or privacy are implicated that
could result in separate accommodations.

Speaker 2 (01:10:08):
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 5 (01:10:10):
Yeah, so supposedly this is going to be on a
case by case basis, but you know, like this is
going to lead to trans women being put in Ben's
prisons where they will be raped and almost certain like
almost certainly will be raped, quite possibly will be killed
because that happens all the time. You know, this is
i mean, like kicking trans women out of domestic violence

(01:10:32):
centers and rape crisis centers when you know, and this
is going to happen, and you know, similar like bullshits
gonn happen to trans men and also to non binary
people who all of whom are abused and assaulted at
rates that are fucking indescribable. I mean, there is also
the bathroom bill shit, and like the worst version of
bathroom billshit we've ever seen. And you know, but also

(01:10:55):
so this is not the only one of these bills.
That's what we'll talk about. The other one in Montana
and a little bit. But because the Kansas Republicans are
somehow even more cretnius than their colleagues in Montana. They
have written the bill in such a way that, in
the words of Pink News, quote definitions outlined in the
bill also state that a female the female is a

(01:11:16):
person who produces over in other words, eggs. Meeting sis,
Women who are infertile and are unable to produce eggs
could be barred from spaces under the legislation's legal terms.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
Likewise, sis, man, I guess yeah, it's it's yeah, like
or like you have like fucking had an accident or
you know, like yeah, you know, and and it's bullshit,
like it pointing out the logical errors. It doesn't really
work because that's not really the point, is it. Like,

(01:11:49):
like that point is not to be like logically found,
it's to be cruel.

Speaker 5 (01:11:53):
Yeah. But but but I think there is something very
important about this, which is that this this is a
very very firm example of how the struggle for trans
rights and sort of you know, like trans bodily autonomy
is intimately connected with the struggle with abortion rights. Because
if you look at what's happened here right, Republican lawmakers
are literally defining women by their by their capacity to

(01:12:14):
produce children for them. Yeah, so you know this is
this is not like the these are these are two
very very interconnected struggles and the same people have the
same absolutely dog shit like horrific patriarchal politics in both
of them. So okay, so we're we're gonna we're gonna

(01:12:34):
leave camp in Nebrette. Okay, so we've we've had two
really grim stories in a row. We're gonna have one
that saw less grim, which is Nebraska. So okay, there
has been a bill to ban genuaryfirmin caare for minors,
but it is being staved off, basically single handedly by
the genuinely heroic efforts of state Senators Megan Hunt and
Michelle Kavanaugh, who have been philibustering literally every bill that

(01:12:57):
goes through the State Senate the stopman from happening, which
fucking rips. Yeah, and like you know, because basically the
things like we will, we will, we will fill a
buster literally every single bill until they stop trying to
patch this band through. And you know this is the thing. Okay,
So like there was there was a thing that happened
in the early twenty tens where in the US, like
they're the big US Senate, Right, they change the rules

(01:13:17):
about philibustering so that you don't actually have to stand
there and talk for eight hours because they're fucking cowards
and almays pieces of shit. Uh in that is not
true in Nebraska. If you want to fill a buster
a bill, you have to fucking stand up there and
talk for eight hours. And they have been doing this
for months. Yeah, and it's it's it's it's holding that

(01:13:39):
you know. Basically, So the way philibuster works where it
is you can't kind of like in the Senate, and
then also in the state Senate, you can't stop someone
from talking unless they like dream debate. You can't stop
someone talking unless you get a two thirds vote of
the body for emotion to cloture. So they've just been
forcing you to do it for every single bill, and
they don't have the votes in some of the bills.
So yeah, you know, and the reason I think this

(01:14:01):
is this is happening, you know, the reason that they've
been doing this and not sort of just like doing
bullshit like most of the Democrats. Well, partially it's because
there's a Senate and partially because Senator Hunt has a
twelve year old trans son yeah, which yeah, has has
given her, you know, a sort of urgency that's absent
from Democrats and other states.

Speaker 2 (01:14:21):
Yeah, which is theoretical for her.

Speaker 5 (01:14:24):
Yeah. And I mean, like, this is one of the
things that sucks about this right is like it it
should not fall on you know, like literally the trend,
like the rights of the children of an entire state
are falling on like one mom and the few other
Democrats who decided to take a stand with her, And
that's fucked. That is nonsense.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
Like it's yeah, it's great that she's doing it, but like, yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:14:52):
This is this is horrible. Yeah. Do you know what
else is horrible?

Speaker 2 (01:14:57):
A is it the product services that support podcast.

Speaker 5 (01:15:04):
By FTC regulations. I don't think I can legally say that, but.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):
No, no, we do, don't know, it's not not that.

Speaker 5 (01:15:09):
Yeah, and we're back. Okay, So now we're gonna get
to I think the most famous story or most most
well known story of an anti trans fight that's been
happening recently, and that is Montana. So Montana has passed
a bill that bands gender for macare from binners and
also opposes legal sanctions anyone who does it. Governor greg

(01:15:32):
Giofanti like has a non binary son who's he they
and he like gave a speech it was like dad,
fucking don't sign these bills, and his dad signed them. Anyways. Yeah,
one of the co sponsors of this bill, on the
floor of of of the Montana House said she'd rather
her children die in transition and then had it yeah yeah,

(01:15:55):
And she had to give a press commence later saying
she didn't actually mean that, but like, no, she that's
literally what she said on the floor of the fucking house.
So these people are ghouls and monsters. They are the
dogs of the sort of the Republican Freedom Caucus, which
is their like absolutely deranged like Matt Gates fucking weirdos

(01:16:17):
in Congress who are if you remember that giant fight
over the speaker of the house, like that was those
freaks like the Yeah, these people are like their local
sort of like dogs. There's two other absolutely terrifying bills
that are about to become law. There's HB three fifty nine,
which is a ban on kids attending drag shows, which
like that bill has gotten less bad than it was,

(01:16:40):
which is it's now a ban on kids attending adult entertainments.
But you know, guess he gets to decide what adult
entertainment is eta, et cetera. Right, yeah, and that bill
has passed both the House and Senate is waiting for reconciliation.
There is the even worse SB four fifty eight, which
is basically the bill from Kansas, except I'm just gonna
read some of it. Female. He is a member of

(01:17:00):
the human species who, under normal developments, has produced xx
chromosomes and producers, and would produce regular, relatively large, immobile
gammeys or eggs dreen her life cycle, and has reproductive
and endocrine system oriented around those production of gammes. An
individual who would otherwise fall within this definition but for
a biological or genetic condition, is female. So this is

(01:17:21):
straight turf shit, right. This is the straight up like
a woman as an adult human female thing that like, yeah,
these people walk around saying thinking is like a normal
thing to say, oh.

Speaker 2 (01:17:32):
Yeah, and thinking that like specifically the chromosonality thing we
know has been bull shit for a very long time.

Speaker 5 (01:17:37):
There was nonsense. These people don't underst biology.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
Yeah, sorry, yeah, and we can like the example is
this woman called Mario Jose Martinez Patino, who is a
hurdler who won a number of events and then lost
her medals because she failed a chromosonality test and fucking
ruined her life right, lost her fiance, lost her job,
lost all her competitions, and was able to successfully sue

(01:18:03):
with the help of leading experts in the field, to
prove that like I think she had like mosaics, she
exhibited mosaicism like xx y, and that like this is
in fact a normal fucking variation in the human species.
And like this was in the eighties and we're still
doing this shit.

Speaker 8 (01:18:19):
Yeap.

Speaker 2 (01:18:20):
Her papers are really good, by the way, she's a
professor of philosophy. Now, oh cool, Yeah, yeah, she's yeah,
she's great. I specator a few times, but.

Speaker 5 (01:18:29):
Yeah, rare rare w. Yeah. But like these people are
doing you know, like they are you know this this
this this bill legally rights trans people out of existence,
and it is again another one of these gender pariograph
things where this the state is legally defining what gender
you are. But also you know, but again, like they
have to do all this like bullshit, because you know,

(01:18:51):
there's other thing I said, like these guys, these people
are like slightly I don't know smarter is the right word,
but they're slight there. They're slightly more engaged in turf shit.
So they have a more convoluted, like biological misconception of
what a woman is, which they can't define because it's
not a thing, like.

Speaker 2 (01:19:10):
Yeah, it's a social constructagy yeah, because they can't society. Yeah,
And put in mind of South Africa constantly chasing the
fucking definition of what race was and like trying to
define like a multi racial kids into one box or
another box.

Speaker 5 (01:19:25):
Yeah, it's you know, it doesn't work. But the problem
is this bill is going to be signed by the
governor like next week, probably possibly this week, like in
the next couple of weeks, is going to be signed.
So that's really fucking bad. So the part of the
story that thinks the most well known is Montana Republican's
crusade against Montana House Rep. Zoe Zephyr. Zoe Zephyr is trans.

(01:19:49):
She is a Rep for a part of Missoula, which
is a college town home to the University of Montana.
We talked about this a bit when Zoe won her seat,
but I really before we really get into what's been
happening to Zoie, I want to talk a bit about
Missoula and a bit about the sort of the geography
of transmigration, because the way the media talks about this,

(01:20:11):
right is that you know, transmit like trans trans refugees
and transmigration is something that started with these anti trans bills,
And that's not true. This is this, all of this stuff,
all of the sort of fleeing, all the refugee stuff,
predates Tennessee, it predates Missouri. It's always been happening, yeah,

(01:20:32):
you know, because and the the actual process of this
is that, you know, for for generations and generations, the
retcht of the earth get fed to the wolves, and
then the wolves spit them out of their homes and
their communities, and they fled. They fled to places like Portland,
in Philadelphia, in Atlanta and Chicago, places where people like
us had clawed out in existence in a world that

(01:20:54):
wants us dead, where we countinuously survive off the shit
end of urban labor markets. And this is something that
has happened beneath the notice or even the contempt of
BOSHWS society. But it's been going on for longer than
we've had words that we've had the words that we
used today to describe it. And you know, Missoula is
one of those places where you can go when your
family kicks you out, and then you know and that
that's not the only way people end up here, right,

(01:21:15):
Like there's a lot of people who you know, you know,
have better stories, right they go to college, they discover themselves.
There are people who go here because it's where they've
chosen to make new lives. And you know something, there's
also just people who are from Missulu who just realize
their trans and you know, it's this mix of sort
of trans refugees, transmigrants and the local trans community that

(01:21:37):
you know all fuse together and becomes a sort of
beautiful community that we've been you know, has finally like
stepped out of the shadows in the last like ten years.
And you know, and this is why it's not enormously
surprising that Missoula sent Zoe's efforts to all let it
to represent them, because this is, you know again like
this is one of these places that like collects people

(01:22:00):
from all over Montana and you know, from all over
like eastern Washington too. Some of these people go to Seattle,
some of these people go to Portland's but yeah, they're there.
There have always been these massive networks of migration that
just you know, no one ever, no one researches, no
one talks about, no one even It's it's hard to
even know they exist unless you know the people who

(01:22:23):
like have been moved along them. The product of this
now is that Zoe zephyr is Trans is in the
you know, on the floor of the House debating with
Republican legislatures this bill to uh uh like ban health
care for for like trans youth, and she says, quote,
if you vote yes on this bill and yes on

(01:22:43):
these amendments, I hope the next time there's an invocation
when you bow your hands in prayer, you see the
blood on your hands, which I really wish because I mean,
it talks about the blood on your hands. Thing costs,
and I wish they read the whole quote because it
fucking rips like it's great.

Speaker 2 (01:22:58):
Yeah, I think you need to do you. There's no
fucking point in bourgeois civility with this stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:23:02):
Is that that's noo. And then and this is what
has been one of things that's been happening.

Speaker 13 (01:23:05):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:23:05):
It's like like the Republicans, their backlash that this been
has been a sort of like, oh, you're not being
civil thing right and like in uh like Senator Hunt
in uh uh Nebraska was like literally didn't actually literally
say fuck you. But you know, like I said, like yeah,
like no, I'm I'm not gonna I'm not gonna like
show up to like your like your dinner parties or whatever,

(01:23:27):
like like you don't don't say hi to me in
the halls, like you know, my fucking kid, and you
know what you're doing to them.

Speaker 2 (01:23:34):
That's the way to approach it, right, like like the
person trying to legislate your little trans son out of existence.

Speaker 5 (01:23:41):
Yeah, it was like fuck these people, they're gonna do
this ship. Okay. So there's a couple of theories as
to why what happened next happened next. There's been a
lot of speculation that it's been like, oh, this is
like a gambit by the the the Freedom Caucus to
like turn Zoe's ephyr into like the face of the
Montana Democratic parties they can win a Senate race. Like
I actually don't buy that. I think very specifically the

(01:24:04):
when you close your hands to pray, you see the
blood in your hands thing, I think they got really
fucking pissed off and then they just kept escalating. So
after that happens, the Montana Republicans formally censor her and
they prevent her from speaking on the floor until she
apologizes and as long as like, no, fuck you, I
got much, but she said no, I'm I'm not gonna apologize. Right,

(01:24:27):
there are there are a bunch of like pretty large
protests like in Helena that are like you know that
that are that are like pro trans protests and protests
to like let Zoe speak, and they arrest seven of
the protesters.

Speaker 9 (01:24:40):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:24:41):
One of the people they arrest was I think a
woman on crutches who like couldn't clear the area fast enough. Yeah,
she was on crutches.

Speaker 6 (01:24:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:24:50):
I was like I did go down before people didn't. Yeah,
kinds of shit.

Speaker 5 (01:24:54):
And then and then the so there's like these are
these protests in the gallery right, and the the Montana
Republicans start doing this whole thing about how this is
this is this is the democratic January sixth, and like
they were storming the capital, the capitals in the seats.

Speaker 2 (01:25:09):
They tried to do that in Tennessee as well, Like
it's so pathetic, like so asinine.

Speaker 5 (01:25:16):
Yeah, and the other thing I want to mention about
this right is like okay, like the Montana Freedom Cocus
people and all, like the censors and the fucking press
releases are just constantly misgendering Zoe.

Speaker 8 (01:25:27):
It is.

Speaker 5 (01:25:28):
It's really fucking ugly. Uh yeah. And you know, so
after these protests, the house like banishes her from the
floor and kicks her out of her offices, and so
she shows up like to work from a bench outside
the chambers where like legally they can't kick her out
of But then like this is an ongoing saga, right,

(01:25:49):
like like this morning she showed up and there were
like three really old white women sitting on.

Speaker 2 (01:25:55):
The bed speaker of the house's mum oh speak of
the house as much.

Speaker 5 (01:25:59):
Yeah nice.

Speaker 2 (01:25:59):
Yeah, like this this fucking big Montana tough guy had
to call his mom to fight his battles for him.
Like they just insanely puerile, asinine nonsense. But it's unfortunately
has very real consequences.

Speaker 5 (01:26:15):
Yeah, and like you know, so she was like at
like a lut She was like like had her like
tablet like on a lunch counter, taking meetings from like
like standing at the counter. Yeah, it's it's been a
whole thing. Also, I think earlier today someone someone tried
to swat her girlfriend. Yeah, because the journalist Aaron Reid.
Uh so that's bad.

Speaker 8 (01:26:37):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:26:37):
This whole thing has been getting like an unbelievable amount
of media attention, and you know, in a very very
short period of time, Zoe Zephyr goes from someone who
I know about because I'm trans, and like all trans
people are like four hops away from each other, something
I probably shouldn't say, but like it's true. Yeah, you
kind of get there aren't that many of us, and

(01:26:59):
a lot of sor extremely online, so like, you know,
I'm like two hops away from this person, right, like
from multiple strangles with her, right, Yeah, I met her
like very briefly in a stream. She's you know, like
she's a good person. She I don't know, she's just
like this is one of the things that I think,
like I've met a couple of the or a few

(01:27:20):
of the like very famous like trans people who sort
of come under the gun, and they're just normal fucking people,
like just normal trans people, and this bullshit happens to them.

Speaker 2 (01:27:36):
Yeah, it's so like bullshit that like, like I know
a number of trans ladies who are bike racist, right
and like they like, it must be pretty clear that
if you win a fucking race, you win a big race,
like you know what's coming for you know, fucking bright
Barton News is going to have you on there the
next year. It's and the same for her. Right, she
likely would have been aware that at the moment she

(01:27:58):
like tried to defend right to fucking exist all the
very worst people around the country with baying for blood.
She's very brave she did. Anyway, like that she should
fuck them. They shouldn't be able to side and.

Speaker 5 (01:28:12):
Say yeah, okay, we should take an ad break. Yeah,
one more time and then yeah we'll come back and.

Speaker 2 (01:28:20):
Say something funny. Bit more che che che church Chumber.

Speaker 5 (01:28:25):
Oh, okay, we're back. Okay. So in the middle of
all of this, Zoe went home to I think there
was like a recess or something, because legislatures work like
two days a year, rich people hours. Yeah it's bullshit, like,
yeah they have.

Speaker 2 (01:28:43):
Like a break for fucking horse racing and yeah, had
to do polo or whatever.

Speaker 5 (01:28:48):
Yeah, But so she she went home to Missoula and
there was a just like a massive march. There was
this rally that turned into like this basically like a
twenty four hour long party. People my favorite story for this.
There's some people who Okay, so they brought beer they
had got from rowing a boat out to a derailed train. Yes,

(01:29:13):
I say, the two media narratives of twenty twenty three. Yeah, yeah,
I mean it's great and like you know, I mean,
I think in these sort of moments, right, you can
see the new world there, right, you can see a
world where you know, we no longer live in fear.
This you can see this world where we're free to

(01:29:34):
create joy and meeting in art in our lives, you know,
can be a celebration of the beauty that's in and
around us. But that world, the world that generations and
generations with trans people have fought and died to sort
of claw out of the dirt the world tried to
bury us in, that world will die unless we fight
for it. And that fight cannot be left to individual

(01:29:57):
state representatives. There's not enough of them. Eventually they will lose.
And and this is this is the other story of
Montana rights. As much as you know, as much as
what's been going on in Montana, is a story about
a trans woman defying like all of the sort of
organized power for state, like all of those bills passed,
and there is not enough power to If we keep

(01:30:20):
trying to fight them in legislatures, and we keep trying
to only fight them in in the legislatures and in court,
we're going to lose. But okay, I probably shouldn't say
this before I know we've we've locked in the title.
But the projected title of this is the trans is
the Transgendocide. A siege and a counter attack, And I
promised a counterattack, So now I'm gonna give it to you.

Speaker 2 (01:30:41):
You didn't want like brief notes on the seage, like
you could have gone full maoist on the side.

Speaker 5 (01:30:46):
Why we will, but we did. We did that with
the other one, and I realized after the last episode
we did on this that I could have just called
it counterattack and that would be better. So I've saved
it for this moment.

Speaker 2 (01:30:57):
I'm glad that you get to ease it.

Speaker 5 (01:30:59):
So, Okay. One of the things that's become incredibly apparent
in the last in the last few years is that
as as much as there is sort of passive transphobia society,
transphobia is not a sort of nebulous idea that just
like floats freely around the world. It is brought into
this world by men. And you know, we know the

(01:31:19):
foundational story of how these men and women gain power. Right,
they cut a deal with capital to reconstitute the Republican
Party in the eighties. But you know this is this
is both their weakness and their strength.

Speaker 8 (01:31:30):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:31:31):
It's their strength because this gives them an enormous amount
of resources to pull on. It gives them the institutional
backing of an entire political party. But it's weakness is
and it means that capital and the transphobes are bound together.
And this means that when you scratch a capitalist of
transphobe bleeds. Now, the other things that we know are A,

(01:31:52):
there are power in there's power and logistics, and b
there are companies profiting from genocide. FedEx, for example. FedEx's
headquarters are in Tennessee. Tennessee has passed a bunch of pennesces,
like the state where this shit all fucking started, right
with the original bathroom bills, with their drag bills, with
their n you know, they've also passed bands on miners
getting gender firm and care. There are other states where

(01:32:15):
you know, you can look at the largest sort of
companies in the states like Missouri is probably like Panera, Montana,
Schnyder Electric, Kentucky's probably KFC, And you know those companies
are weaknesses. So what am I talking about here? I'm
not talking about a boycott because this is the US.
Nobody fucking knows how to do a boycott. Like when
when Americans try to do a boycott, they buy like

(01:32:35):
sixteen pallets of bud light and shoot it with a bazuka,
right Like, this is the This is a boycott.

Speaker 8 (01:32:40):
It is not.

Speaker 5 (01:32:42):
What I'm talking about here is something a lot more serious.
You know, we we we've we've we've seen this sort
of so let me praise this. We've sort of the
sort of echoes of what this kind of campaign could
look like with the subcop City protest with you know,
you have protests outside the offices of banks and outside
of corporations that are backing that are backing cop City.

(01:33:07):
But I'm talking you know that and that at the
most mild is something that we should be doing. Right,
These companies that are profiting from genocide, the companies that
are you know, funded by the fucking tax exemptions that
are given out by these states, the companies that are
you know, giving money to the seple political campaigns. But
I'm talking about more than that. I'm talking about blockades.

(01:33:27):
This is you know, very speifically FedEx is quite post
is possibly the best example of a company that you
can that you can just target. Right talking about blockades,
we're talking about supply like disrupting their supply chains. I'm
talking about very specifically a campaign that put the trans
sword to the arteries of capital and make the bassards bleed.
I'm talking about a counter attack. Now. The advantage of

(01:33:48):
the strategy of picking corporations, targeting them and disrupt like
not not not just necessarily protesting outside of their office
so though doing that, but specifically actually making them fucking bleed,
actually just rupting their ability to function as a company.

Speaker 8 (01:34:02):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:34:02):
The advantage of this strategy, which is developed and sort
of broad strokes of my dear friend Vicky Ostroweil, is
that what one of the big, one of the big
problems we have in this whole fight is this sort
of weird is this geo the geographic mismatch, right, the
you know, the majority of people in the US and
also the majority of people in most of the states
where this is happening, right, don't support this ship, but

(01:34:23):
it doesn't matter because you know, the district are jerry
mandered to fuck and you know, but but it means that,
like there's a lot of people who like me, for example,
like I live in Illinois, right, like the the you know,
under normal circumstances, the best I can do is help
my friends in Missouri get out and try to help,
like you know, do do do things like secure access

(01:34:46):
to transport and housing for refugees, secure access to hormones
of people. But if we're if we're going after if
you're going after capital, if we're going after the companies,
the banks, the financial institutions that are funding this ship,
we can hit them everywhere where because states have borders,
but capital doesn't. And that means that you know, you know,
we can if if if if you are specifically you

(01:35:08):
want to target the legislature of Kentucky, you can go
after fucking KFC, right, you can go after their banks,
you can go after you can go after anyone who
funds them. We can hit them on multiple fronts here, right,
we can hit them with protests, but these companies also
they rely on our labor, right, a lot of these
places are you know, are either sort of fast food
change or logistics networks, and that's that's a place where
you know, trans people are overrepresented because trans people are

(01:35:29):
overrepresented in the service sector, you know, again, because it's
easier to get jobs there and institutional transphobia locks you
out of better jobs. They also rely on public infrastructure.
They rely on you know, streets being open, right, they
rely on an entire logistics network to make sure and
not only are they extracting the labor of people that

(01:35:50):
they are like you know, the sort of like theoretical
term for this is realization.

Speaker 8 (01:35:55):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:35:55):
They have to actually be able to sell, They have
to be able to assemble their product, and they have
to be able to sell it. And you can stop
them those things, right, I mean the KFC. And sometimes
it's also kind of hard because there's franchise shit going on.
But that's not true with FedEx, Like every FedEx office
is FedEx, and you know, the these are these are
companies that like, maybe we can't fucking drive them underground, right,

(01:36:18):
but we can make them bleed, and we can make
it we can make it painful enough to be complicit
in this genocide that these people that you know, these
people get fucking asked, right, we can, we can, we
can make them bleed, we can go And you know
another another thing that you know people can do, right
is it's not that you know, if if if you
have like a spare afternoon on a weekend, Right, it's

(01:36:38):
not that hard to figure out that, like the specific
business interests of the legislators who are voting for this stuff.
You can just do this. All these people are unbelievably corrupt.
They have land deals that they're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:36:50):
And so you know, open records and let you see
who donates to all those people as well.

Speaker 5 (01:36:54):
Yeah. Yeah, and there are websites that you can just like,
like you can just google who gives the notions to
people and yeah, it's like donations trackers, and you can
like plug in their name and it will show you
whe who donates to them.

Speaker 14 (01:37:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:37:06):
And so we have learned through the through sort of
the experience of the past few years, right, that these
people cannot be swayed by logic. They cannot be swayed
by they can't be swayed by logic, they cannot be
swayed by science. They cannot be swayed by. You know,
they cannot be swayed by the emotional appeals. They do
not give a shit about trans people. They would literally

(01:37:27):
rather have their kids die than be trans. But again,
the one thing they do care about is capital. And
if you, if you, if you, if you, if you
make capital bleed, these people will bleed to and that
will actually fucking hurt them, and that will give you
the leverage you need to let these people make a choice. Right,

(01:37:48):
it's either us or the world of capital burns.

Speaker 12 (01:38:05):
It's a warm spring afternoon in Atlanta, Georgia. You and
some of your friends are dancing in the sunlight at
a music festival in South Atlanta. It's day two of
the South River Music Festival. Last night you stayed up
till three am, alternating between mashing in the pit and
laying down on a blanket looking up at the night sky,
trying to see stars through the light pollution. After you

(01:38:28):
had your fill of edm you called it a night
and hastily set up a tent in the forest near
the edge of the festival. You tried to sleep as
long as you could, but soon enough the hustle and
bustle around the forest beckoned you out.

Speaker 4 (01:38:40):
Of your tent.

Speaker 12 (01:38:41):
As you mosied on over back to the music festival.
Immediately something new caught your eye, a large, multi colored
inflatable bouncy castle sitting right in the middle of the
field with a big stopcop City banner hung along the side.
After you fully woke up, you grabbed a free breakfast
burrito and took a nice walk through the winding forest.

(01:39:03):
Now that you've finished your breakfast, you're back at the
far end of the open field, in front of the
stage where there's been live music playing for the past
few hours. You and some friends briefly try a stint
in the bouncy castle, but quickly return to the festival
stage as you tire out much faster than you expected.
As the sun is barely starting to set around six pm,

(01:39:26):
suddenly you notice the faint scream of police sirens piercing
through the music being blasted from on stage. You stand
up as the sirens get louder and closer, until a
burst of police cars zoom past the music festival at
high speed. A short sigh of relief is followed by confusion.

(01:39:47):
Where else would a whole bunch of police cars be going,
But as nothing seems to come of it, everyone starts
to relax and begin enjoying music once again with the
apparent absence of police. There's a few brief moments of
peace at the festival as things continue as scheduled, except
you can't help but notice the police helicopter is flying

(01:40:09):
across the forest toward the festival. As you take note
of the chopper, you receive a signal message from a
friend quote cops have entered the parking lot with AR
fifteen's unquote. You lift up your mask and start running
across the field to the parking lot at Willawne People's Park,
But before you even make it halfway across, you notice

(01:40:29):
up ahead a few dozen police officers sprinting into the
open field from the festival side entrance. As the sun
is setting, a group of cops run past the bouncy
house and starts chasing down seemingly random concert goers and
loan stragglers. One officer points his rifle at the bouncy

(01:40:51):
house as another.

Speaker 4 (01:40:52):
Turns off the generator.

Speaker 12 (01:40:54):
You group up with other people from the festival in
hopes of working together to incentivize police to leave the area.
As you get closer, the cops start getting more aggressive.
Just up ahead a bit further into the woods, close
to where you set up your tent, you hear some
loud bangs and see a flash of bright light. First,

(01:41:14):
you assume it's just fireworks being used to hold off
the cops until you start coughing and see the faint
plume of tear gas seeping in from the forest. You're
forced to fall back to the festival and regroup with
people by the stage, where music is still being played.
As you're running back, you can see dozens of people
in zip ti cuffs, many still pinned to the ground,

(01:41:38):
still coughing from the gas. You make your way back
to where you are washing the previous night. The crowd
of festivalgoers tightens up as riot vans and a bear
cat pull into the field next to the deflated bouncy castle.
Police swat teams surround the South River Music Festival and
creep towards the stage, threatening to charge hundreds of people

(01:41:59):
with demes stick terrorism. Hanging on the backdrop of the
stage is a massive banner that reads, quote in the
eyes of the state, all who resist white supremacy, colonialism,
environmental racism, gentrification, and police militarization are domestic terrorists unquote.

(01:42:21):
That was the evening of Sunday, March fifth, twenty twenty three.
This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. I
arrived in Atlanta a few days prior in preparation for
the March Week of Action to Defend the Atlanta Forest
and Stop cop City. This is part one of a
four part series covering this week of action, featuring interviews, reportbacks,

(01:42:43):
and analysis from both participants and observers like myself. This
four part series will be a follow up of sorts
to the four stop Coop City episodes we put together
last January following the death of forest defender Tortigita at
the hands of the Georgia State Patrol, as well as
building off my previous year of work covering the movement

(01:43:03):
to defend the Atlanta Forest. But in case you're new
or need a refresher, for over two years now, activists
and community members have been in a fight to save
the Wallani Forest from being turned into a massive ninety
million dollar police training facility stretching across one hundred and
seventy acres, with plans to include a mock city for

(01:43:23):
urban combat training. To quell civil descent. The cop City
project is being led by the Atlanta Police Foundation, one
of the most powerful police lobbying groups in the country.
Following seventeen hours of public comment, seventy percent of which
was against the facility, the Atlanta City Council voted to
approve the project's lease in September of twenty twenty one,

(01:43:45):
despite months of protests and community organizing. Later that fall,
people started occupying and camping out in the Wallani Forest
to maintain a physical presence in the woods in hopes
of preventing or delaying construction. Infrastructure sure to support long
term encampments grew over the next year, with forest defenders
erecting treehouses, road blockades, and making the forest a place

(01:44:08):
that people could actually live in, with outdoor kitchens, community gardens,
and places to sleep, whether that be up in a
tree or in a tent. For a while it seemed
to be working. Throughout twenty twenty two, construction continued to stall.
Almost every time cops and workers came in to start
cutting trees, they were met with resistance. Construction equipment left

(01:44:29):
around the forest was routinely sabotaged, and last year, a
tertiary targeting campaign resulted in the general contract of for
a cop City, reeves Young Construction to drop out of
the project. Police enacted multiple raids on the forest in
twenty twenty two, trying to flush out any forest defenders
camping out in the woods and tear down encampment infrastructure,

(01:44:51):
but the occupation was generally able to bounce back pretty quick.
As the movement to stop cop City was seemingly winning,
police intensified their oppression as a series of raids in
December of last year decimated much of the infrastructure that
was built up over the course of that year and
left six people with domestic terrorism charges. But things got
worse just a month later. In January of twenty twenty three,

(01:45:15):
multiple police agencies engaged in a mass raid of the
Wallani Forest, destroying all remaining campsites. About an hour into
the January eighteenth raid, the Georgia State Patrol swat team
killed the twenty six year old forest defender Manuel Tehran,
also known by their forest name Torti Ghita. Decab County's
autopsy found at least fifty seven gunshot wounds from multiple officers.

(01:45:38):
We'll talk more about the results from various autopsies in
a later episode, but just a few weeks ago, tort
would have turned twenty seven. The other side of the
Defend the Forest movement is focused on a smaller section
of the Wallani Forest just east of Entrenchment Creek. Initially
in hopes of expanding his movie studios, the now former

(01:46:00):
owner of Blackhall Studios, Ryan Millsap, has been trying to
gain control of forty acres of public parkland through a
shady landswap deal with Decap County that's currently subject to
legal disputes. The slate of land in question contains the
popular meeting spot in the forest known as the Living Room,
which acts as a sort of central hub, as well

(01:46:21):
as what's referred to as Wilauni People's Park, where the
park gazebe used to be before Ryan Millsap demolished it,
later ripping out all of the grass and sidewalks in
a once again legally questionable move. In January, Wilani People's
Park also became home to the vigil site for Torteguita.
All at Let Matt from the Atlantic Community Press Collective

(01:46:43):
explain the other happenings in the woods since January.

Speaker 15 (01:46:46):
They got their land disturbance permit in late January, and
the first phase of the land disturbance permit only allows
for soil erosion control work. So to this point, essentially
what they've done is they've they've clear cut some paths
into the forest into the proposed site, and then around

(01:47:08):
the exterior of the site they've clear cut a line
in order to install silt fencing. So there isn't a
large amount of infrastructure. They're not allowed to do a
large amount of disturbance right now. They're in like the
pre construction phase right now. So they started in February
and they did a lot of work very quickly. They

(01:47:30):
installed a privacy fence so you can't really see what's
going on, so our general understanding of it like comes
from drone footage. It actually slowed down a couple weeks later,
and from what I understand, they began to pull some
construction equipment out, probably not wanting to leave you know,
a target for shall we say, any sort of spicy activities.

Speaker 12 (01:47:52):
But not all of their construction equipment was removed. As
everyone would soon find out, the deadly January raid left
the community in the morning and unsure of how the
fight to stop copp City would evolve with the use
of lethal force and the loss of a friend. The
Forest Defender's semi permanent occupation of the Wallani Forest ended

(01:48:15):
after that raid, but the fight was far from over.
About a month after the January raid, local Atlantans put
out a call for supporters across the country to converge
in Atlanta in early March for a mass gathering known
as a Week of Action. There have been four previous
Weeks of Action, but this one, more than any other,

(01:48:37):
would be crucial in reifying what the next stage of
the movement would be. I started off this episode with
the Sunday night police raid on the South River Music Festival, because,
for better or worse, what happened on that evening set
the proverbial stage for what the majority of this Week
of Action would look like and how its effects would
ripple out in the coming months. But before we get

(01:48:59):
to the rest of the week, we first have to
go back to the official start of this Week of
Action to explain how we got here in the first place.
To kick off the Week of Action, a rally was
planned for the morning of Saturday, March fourth, at Gresham
Park in southeast Atlanta. By the time I arrived around
eleven am, hundreds of people were already in the park.

(01:49:22):
Music was blaring from loudspeakers. Some kids and a few
brave adults were running around throwing multicolored powdered paint at
each other. It was a pretty festive time. Soon enough,
it was time for things to begin. Matthew Johnson, the
interim executive director of Beloved Commune, formerly kicked off the week.

Speaker 7 (01:49:42):
Hoday, let's get started, all right.

Speaker 16 (01:49:48):
I just want to make sure that everybody.

Speaker 8 (01:49:50):
Is in the right place.

Speaker 14 (01:49:54):
I came here to stop cop city.

Speaker 16 (01:50:01):
What did you all come here to do? What did
we come to do? What are we coming to do?
What have we come here to do?

Speaker 8 (01:50:16):
All right? I'm glad that everybody found the right address.

Speaker 14 (01:50:22):
Thank you everybody for joining us.

Speaker 8 (01:50:26):
It's about two years ago.

Speaker 14 (01:50:29):
In what was formerly known as Entrenchment Creek Park now
known as Wolani People's Park, where a ragtag bunch of
individuals gathered under a gazebo. That gazebo was illegally destroyed
by Ryan Millsap and his henchman an attempt to break

(01:51:00):
this movement. In an attempt to bury this movement, Yet
every single time that they have tried to bury us.
They have forgotten that we were seeds. Every time they
thought that they backed us into a corner with their repression,

(01:51:24):
we had more of you show up and support this movement,
and we thank you so much.

Speaker 17 (01:51:34):
They have set every hurdle in the way of every
day at lanterns to intimidate them and stop them from
supporting this movement, and we still show up.

Speaker 14 (01:51:52):
We appreciate every single person that has come here to
support us in spite of the terror that.

Speaker 8 (01:51:59):
They has tried to instill in us.

Speaker 14 (01:52:03):
We must be very careful and understand the gravity of
the situation that we are in, especially after we've lost
a friend.

Speaker 8 (01:52:12):
Okay, thank you for standing with us.

Speaker 14 (01:52:19):
And now there are many things that we do not
agree on, But what did we all come here to do?
So let's remember what got us this far was a
diversity of tactics, and now it's.

Speaker 8 (01:52:41):
Time for us to double down.

Speaker 12 (01:52:44):
The crowd gathered was a pretty diverse mix of people
from a variety of backgrounds, beliefs, and preferred tactics. On
this is Saturday morning, everyone felt pretty united. Whether you
were a kid running around with paint all over your body,
or an anarchist dressed head to toe and camp though.
Next up, somebody read a statement from the Muscogee elder
Miko Chabon, Colonel.

Speaker 8 (01:53:06):
I'm here to read.

Speaker 11 (01:53:07):
A statement from my Miko, Miko Shabbon.

Speaker 8 (01:53:13):
Yeah, my name is Marty.

Speaker 11 (01:53:15):
I'm Muscoge on my father's side. On my mother's side,
I'm Atham both Acmel and Thana, and my dad's also Filipino.
Miko asked me to read this statement. Band Strijaio mart
At this time, I would like to express my gratitude
to all who have converged onto these ancestral territories of

(01:53:36):
Muskogean ancestors and modern spiritual inhabitants of the earth that
we now stand on today. We represent a vast society
of peoples whose presence in the colonized named states of Georgia, Alabama,
and Florida have existed for over thirteen thousand years. We
represent a way of life that strove to minimize the

(01:53:59):
harm that human can do to the earth, to other species,
and to each other. Today, we continue this movement that
begun many years ago, and we honor those who have
taken footsteps to protect this forest and our relative who
gave the greatest of sacrifices, just as ancestors existed on
these very grounds and carried of faith and confidence in

(01:54:23):
what our ancient ones passed on to us. May the
hope of peaceful existence for all be achieved for many
more centuries to come. This existence can only occur when
we realize the sacredness of the Wailani Forest, that all
that is natural on this earth, Mother. This type of
existence can only occur when we realize that we all

(01:54:45):
belong to this earth and she does not belong to us.
This type of holy existence can only occur when we
realize that no cop city can ever exist because more
weapons only create more violence. Wo With these efforts that
begin today, perhaps reason will prevail and we could create

(01:55:09):
a future where all people.

Speaker 8 (01:55:10):
Have the right to exist.

Speaker 11 (01:55:13):
Today, May our dreams for this forest and the surrounding
community come true. For those who can hear, let them hear.

Speaker 12 (01:55:20):
The next speaker was from Community Movement Builders, a local
black collectives that focuses on combating and gentrification and police violence.

Speaker 18 (01:55:29):
I may be a little bit selfish, and my reason
for being here I want to be free.

Speaker 19 (01:55:38):
I want my children to be free. I want my
mother to be free. I want my father, my brothers
and sisters to be free. And I don't want to
have to live a life in ten years when my babies.

Speaker 7 (01:55:49):
My nieces, and my nephews come to me and.

Speaker 8 (01:55:51):
Ask, come, I see.

Speaker 18 (01:55:54):
Where were you What were you doing when they destroyed
our clean water, destroyed our clean What happened?

Speaker 8 (01:56:02):
Why were you not around?

Speaker 18 (01:56:03):
What were you doing when when my baby's twenty ten
years and they say, come, I see what were you
doing when this country turned into a fascist dystopia?

Speaker 7 (01:56:10):
What were you doing?

Speaker 8 (01:56:11):
Where were you where you're around? I can't sit here.

Speaker 18 (01:56:13):
Best shit back and saying I just sat home and
watched this whole well burn to hell.

Speaker 7 (01:56:22):
I don't believe in the power.

Speaker 18 (01:56:24):
I don't believe in the power of being periless. I
believe in the power of the people. So I say
to everyone today that during this week of action, I
don't know where you will be. I don't know what
you will be.

Speaker 7 (01:56:42):
Doing, but we standing behind you and were staying with you.
And we want to show the city of Atlanta.

Speaker 18 (01:56:48):
We want to show Mary Dickens that he is not
fit to rule and he does not runing city.

Speaker 7 (01:56:56):
You want to show them, said the ninety million.

Speaker 18 (01:56:59):
Dollars that they took to build this warfare training facility
will not cross our communities, Wheo. And we also want
to ShW the city of that letter that again we
are ready to stop really surviving, to start living.

Speaker 12 (01:57:20):
Finally, our last person Reverend Leo'she is a Baptist minister
part of the Stop Copp City Clergy coalition, which we'll
talk a bit more about in the next episode.

Speaker 13 (01:57:31):
And I believe my faith compels me and convicts me
that in this moment, the work that has been done
and the work that is to come to defend this,
our beloved family, this, our siblings, the earth.

Speaker 4 (01:57:48):
Is a holy and righteous work.

Speaker 13 (01:57:56):
It is a holy and righteous work that is grounded
in a faithful rage.

Speaker 20 (01:58:03):
A rage which has been boiling in the human family's
blood for centuries, and meets us care at this moment
and asks us, what will you do to defend those
who have no defense?

Speaker 6 (01:58:20):
What will you do to protect those who have no shelter?

Speaker 7 (01:58:24):
What will you do.

Speaker 6 (01:58:26):
When the time comes to decide on whose side you
are on? Will you stand for oppression or will you
stand for the liberation of all people? My friends, I

(01:58:48):
come with some good news if that's okay. And the
good news is that God stands on the side of
the oppress.

Speaker 7 (01:58:58):
God stands on the side.

Speaker 13 (01:59:00):
Of the forest defenders, Law stands on the side of
the most marginalized. And let us make no mistake that
in our protests and in our rage, we.

Speaker 7 (01:59:14):
Also have to cry out and lament.

Speaker 13 (01:59:20):
We cannot be silent as do Dujita's blood cries out
from the ground. We must honor a life that did
not have to be lost. It did not have to
be this way. Do not listen to anyone who tells
you that there is.

Speaker 8 (01:59:41):
Not a better way.

Speaker 13 (01:59:42):
There is always a better way. Do I come with
my faith and the conviction that in this work, in
this moment, a prophetic imagination, a creative vision is needed
in the wall that we.

Speaker 7 (02:00:01):
Want to see. I'm not here to wait for the
Kingdom of God.

Speaker 13 (02:00:05):
I want the Kingdom of God right now.

Speaker 20 (02:00:10):
Right now.

Speaker 12 (02:00:13):
After the speeches were finished, it was announced that the crowd,
now nearing a thousand strong, would gather up together and
march to Wilani People's Park to retake the forest. As
everyone was getting ready to leave, you could see the
care and solidarity people had for each other. On full display.
Bike scouts were checking to see if the path was clear.

(02:00:34):
Volunteer street medics ready to help anyone in need. Water
bottles are being handed out to keep everyone hydrated, while
others autonomously coordinated rides for people unable to make. The
walk looks like approximately one thousand people marching from Gresham
Park to Alana People's Park on.

Speaker 5 (02:00:52):
The bike path.

Speaker 12 (02:00:54):
That's a I can't even see the end of where,
of where the of where the people stop. It's a long,
long stretch of people marching hundreds and hundreds of feet.
There's some banners in front of the march. One of
them reads disarm, defund, dismantle, no cop City. There's one
of the sun shining over a pink sky with a

(02:01:18):
little blue turtle and their shell is the earth massive
like ten person banner that reads defend the Forest. The
energy of the march remained high as people chanted to
the beat of drums. I sat down with Matt from
the Atlantic Community Press Collective towards the end of the
week to talk about what we saw throughout this week

(02:01:41):
of action.

Speaker 15 (02:01:42):
At one point, the entire crowd, seemingly the entire crowd
was chanting if you build it we will burn it,
which seems.

Speaker 5 (02:01:49):
Yeah, almost like a thousand people.

Speaker 15 (02:01:51):
Yeah, and it was being chanted, like you know, looking
around the crowd, you saw everyone for the most part
partaking in that. So that was a very interesting moment
where it felt like there was that sort of solidarity

(02:02:13):
amongst the varied groups that make up the Defend the
Atlanta Forest movement.

Speaker 12 (02:02:18):
As the march went on, the path was getting increasingly forested.
About two thirds of the way to Wallani People's Park,
after turning a bend, the crowd noticed three deer frolicking
alongside the march from further within the tree line. To

(02:02:39):
quote the Atlanta Community Press Collectives right up of the
march quote, the joyous mood shifted slightly as the protest
closed in on the People's Park, passing over the remains
of the bike path destroyed in December by film executive
Ryan Millsap, activists were uncertain what they were walking into
or whether the police would offer any resistance.

Speaker 15 (02:03:01):
Activists thought that there was going to be an issue.
They were concerned about the police being in Willani People's Park.
So about halfway we saw that stack of makeshift shields
made out of plastic rain barrels.

Speaker 12 (02:03:15):
About two dozen of those five Gatlandrum shields just mysteriously
showed up along the bike path. We are arriving at
Willannee People's Park, no cops.

Speaker 15 (02:03:28):
But then when we got there there was no police whatsoever.
From what the scanner people told us, there were police around,
they were just kind of monitoring from afar, but no
police ever entered the park. And it was I would
say it was a really nice high point return to the.

Speaker 12 (02:03:48):
Forest, banners and shields moving around willane People's Park as
hundreds and hundreds of more people still pour in from.

Speaker 5 (02:03:56):
The bike path.

Speaker 12 (02:03:58):
As the back of the march finally arrived, the crowd
gathered up one more time to all chant out a
promise in unison, I Will.

Speaker 7 (02:04:09):
I Will.

Speaker 12 (02:04:20):
One of the activists I interviewed during the Week of
Action was Matthew Johnson, the person who kicked off the
rally at Gresham Park. We talked about the methodology of
starting off this Week of Action with this big inclusive
march and how that may have helped achieve the goal
of retaking the forest.

Speaker 5 (02:04:36):
That first day.

Speaker 21 (02:04:38):
We wanted to be sure that we would be able
to reoccupy the park and what that would entail is
having a wide swath of the larger public involved with
any efforts to enter into the park. And so we

(02:05:01):
had the rally Aggresham Park and there was a march
planned from that part to Wolani People's Park. There is
violence that people have become accustomed to when it is
people on the political fringes. That's just where we're at

(02:05:22):
in the political situation in Atlanta. However, when you have
several people that you would consider more normal, liberal, progressive, etc.
Like representatives from NGOs, non profit organizations, just normal people
that also wanted to see the project shut down cop City,

(02:05:44):
that's when you have the ability to move towards people
that want to reoccupy, having the space to do that
without seeing tons of police repression as we have seen
in the movement recently.

Speaker 12 (02:06:02):
After reaching Wolaanni People's Park, many of those who arrived
from out of town for this week of action, myself
included stopped by the shrine for Tortigita just off of
the tree line. People added new wildflowers and packs of
fruit snacks. I'm going to walk over to the Torti
Guita vigil site. Looks about the same as last time.

(02:06:23):
I was here, many candles, little turtles, still a few
fruit snacks. Although the vigil shrine was the same as
last time I saw it, almost everything else about being
in this place was different. When I was here last
time in January, it was a dark place of grief.
The forest was barren, with all of the trees in

(02:06:44):
their bare winter state. But looking around the forest this
first sunny day, you could see new life growing all
around you. To quote the Community Press Collective again quote,
small campsites begin to crop up across the landscape. Some
nestled in sight on air spaces, others tucked into thickets,
providing shelter and cooler climate for the new residence. The

(02:07:07):
trees themselves reflected this next phase. Sprigs of new growth
leaves appeared on the ends of barren branches. Small white
flowers bloomed along the periphery of the parking lot. After
months of desolation and death, life prevailed and spring arrives
in the forest. I'm excited to get back into the

(02:07:27):
forest because it is so hot, and get back in
the forest I did. One of the events that happened
almost daily throughout the week was tours of the eastern
side of the Wallani Forest. The walks through the woods
were led by Joe Perry, a member of the South
River Forest Coalition. I was able to attend the first

(02:07:48):
tour during the Week of Action and got consent to
record some of the forest walk.

Speaker 22 (02:07:53):
All right, hey, y'all, welcome to the living Room. So
named because it's it's a very vital and comfortable place
to relax. This is where a lot of the meetings
happened during the previous Week of Action. People gather and
have different events here. Oftentimes it will be food available here, campfires, silverware.

(02:08:22):
So it's also just a very very comfortable place to
relax because it's in this pine forest and so not
really any undergrowth and just super comfortable. It's a really
good place to have meetings and just kind of get
to know each other and.

Speaker 4 (02:08:41):
Establish some calm.

Speaker 12 (02:08:44):
We made our way from the living Room to the
Grandmother Tree, a large oak that is estimated to be
a few hundred years old. On our way to Ryan
Millsaps proposed a site for so called Michelle Obama Park,
which is currently a forty acre mount of dirt about
thirty feet high. We walked past some old tents that
were slashed apart during the January raid. Among the destroyed

(02:09:06):
remains were little pink flowers growing out of the ground.
Next we headed to Entrenchment Creek. Joe Perry explained some
of the background regarding the environmental state of the watershed
and how protecting the forest is a crucial step in
the process of helping the land heal itself.

Speaker 22 (02:09:24):
I got involved with a group called the South River
Forest Coalition. We are trying to help further the vision
of the South River Forest that Ryan Gravelle and the
Nature Conservancy came up with to try to interweave about
thirty five hundred acres of forest with the other businesses

(02:09:45):
and homes and lands around this area that are in
the watershed of the South River Forest. And Entrenchment Creek,
which we will see on this tour, is the main
tributary to the South River. The South River is the
fourth most dangered river in this country and trenchmck Creek
is one of the most polluted creeks in this county.

(02:10:08):
And so that is what we're trying to protect. And
in order to protect a river and a creek and
a watershed, you have to protect the forest that's around it.
I've been exploring these woods for the last decade and
leading tours and talking to people about it, trying to
explain what's going on with a lawsuit, trying to explain
what's going on, the difference between in Trenchmth Creek Park

(02:10:30):
and you know, the prison farm and the acreage and
all these other things and all that stuff. It's just
like it's just gears turning in your head because when
you come out here and enjoy this, I mean, this
is really what it's all about. This is all we
have to do to convince people that this is worth
saving it. Just bring you out here and let you
appreciate it.

Speaker 12 (02:10:50):
As masses of people converged at Wallani People's Park Saturday afternoon,
almost immediately a whole bunch of pop up infrastructure was
set up to facilitate an encampment in the woods once again,
really for the first time in any kind of large
capacity since January and even December. The December raids decimated
much of the camp infrastructure, which still had not been

(02:11:12):
rebuilt since then. But upon arriving from Gresham Park on Saturday,
both first time of visitors to the Wallani Forest and
seasoned forest defenders worked together to rebuild a lot of
that infrastructure to support camp life for the next week.

Speaker 15 (02:11:27):
One of the things that we saw on the march
in was like eight cinder blocks right at the entrance
to the living room, and then you and I went
into the living room, we saw these huge water tanks.
So later they moved those water tanks to those those
cinder blocks, and that has become or a watering point
for everyone. So like twice a day a truck comes

(02:11:51):
with a water tank on the back and then they
go through the arduous process of filling that water so
that everybody in camp can have water. They had this
system that was seemingly self organized. And then that first
day we were sitting in the parking lot and it
seemed like every time you turn around there was like
a different train of people carrying supplies into the living room.

(02:12:15):
The second day, there was a woman who was shoveling
gravel from the torn up concrete on the side, and
she was filling all of the random holes in the
ground so that carts could go up them. And I
was like, you know, did somebody assign this to you?
She's like, no, I saw this. It just needed to

(02:12:38):
be done, and I did it. And that was very
much the entire vibe of those first I would say
twenty four hours was okay, what do we need to
do to get this thing running?

Speaker 12 (02:12:49):
As encampments were being established, simultaneously, infrastructure for the South
River Music Festival was being erected in the adjacent radio
control field. Within a short amount of time, a full
stage was constructed, complete with lights and speakers, lining the
sides of the field, where various tables and booths. One

(02:13:10):
side featured a large variety of refreshments, as well as
a medic tent, and the other side was home to
free hot food and freshly grilled burgers and hot dogs.
Next to the food were a few tables distributing an
array of radical literature posters and stickers. What was your
favorite stuff at the music FESTE tu?

Speaker 15 (02:13:28):
Well, there was an arepa table, and I'm very food motivated.
So the arapas were delicious, and we had walked a
bunch that day, so yeah, I needed sustenance. And then
there was the burger table as well, but we I
don't think. I don't know if you got a burger,
but I did not get a burger.

Speaker 12 (02:13:44):
I got I got one burger, but they were out
of buns when I got a burger, so I had
a lettuce burger, and then soon after they they got
the buns.

Speaker 4 (02:13:53):
Back, and I was kind of kind of bummed.

Speaker 15 (02:13:55):
Yeah, I did not, Well, at least you got something,
but I had the arapis.

Speaker 12 (02:13:59):
So I mean stundth To be fair, hundreds of people
were they've fed for They've said five hundred people, you know,
And at one point they made announcement that like they
needed to do another food run just to go get
more more food, and like a bunch of people volunteered.

Speaker 15 (02:14:13):
And you know, only I think two or three went
down to Walmart to get a bunch of more burgers
and hot dogs. And it was just a really cool moment.
And so I think by the end the end of
the night when I was there, they were about five
hundred people just enjoying the music and looking at the sky.
It was just an immaculate vibe. There was a little
fire pick off to the side. And yeah, you talked
about the setting up the stage. You know, I didn't

(02:14:35):
know what to expect walking in there, was not expecting
quite that much of a production. I wasn't expecting a
light fledged stage with lights all around sort of in
this really like the lighting worked really well for it's
it backdropped the surrounding for it like.

Speaker 5 (02:14:53):
Nice like green and purple lighting.

Speaker 12 (02:14:55):
Yeah, it was, it was.

Speaker 5 (02:14:55):
It was great.

Speaker 15 (02:14:56):
And then they had that green room tent back there,
and then they had a separate ten for equipment. Like
it was a very well thought out festival in the
middle of nowhere.

Speaker 12 (02:15:07):
The South River Music Festival began early Saturday evening at
five point thirty, kicking off two days of local musical
artists playing shows free of charge. Before the lineup of
live music began, someone on stage read out a small
flyer that was being passed around, detailing the reasoning for
the festival and its place within the fight to defend

(02:15:28):
the forest. And I got permission to share that reading.

Speaker 23 (02:15:32):
In the limitless possibilities of the cosmos, in the mad
flocks of events, reactions, and anomalies of the past twelve
billion years since the birth of our universe, it's a
statistical impossibility that we would be here now, But here
we are alive.

Speaker 24 (02:15:50):
Together.

Speaker 23 (02:15:51):
Such incredible circumstances have brought us here, among them the
incredible and innovative resistance to defend this place.

Speaker 24 (02:15:59):
For becoming a police training compound.

Speaker 8 (02:16:06):
Magic rooms.

Speaker 23 (02:16:08):
This resistance, which brings us together the most cunning and
resilient techniques of the radical environmentalist movement with the incredible
courage and ferocity of the George Floyd Uprising, is not
just about a small piece of land.

Speaker 24 (02:16:22):
It's not about being fought.

Speaker 23 (02:16:24):
Between police and their goons on one hand and some
activists and their friends on the other. We are witnessing
a collision of two competing ideas of happiness, of.

Speaker 24 (02:16:33):
Life, of the future.

Speaker 23 (02:16:38):
In this competition, experiments with new types of Greek culture
play a decisive role.

Speaker 24 (02:16:43):
This movement cannot be reduced.

Speaker 23 (02:16:45):
To what is happening in city hall, on social media,
or in meetings. For two years we have descended on
these woods, finding refuge from the high rents and predatory
bookings fees of the corporate venues and bars, and not
come here to redecorate the actions of some activists as allies,
lending our service to the drab and loveless militancy of

(02:17:07):
something we do not otherwise care about. As the gentrification
of Atlanta intensifies, more and more diy venues and clubs
are shutdown, and free spaces to play shows and dance
are push further and further from the city center. Our
free time is pinched as rents increase and traffic keeps
us waiting longer and longer.

Speaker 24 (02:17:27):
That is going to change.

Speaker 23 (02:17:32):
Music is not like other forms of human culture. It
is different from painting, drawing, poetry, literature, or film art.
Politics and symbolic culture in general represent the passions conjuring
strong feelings from the shadows of reality, pulling them from
the depths of the soul or the back of consciousness. Music,
on the other hand, is perhaps the only form of

(02:17:56):
human creativity that contacts those feelings without any media. Music
is physics, music is reality. The system we live in
is at war with reality. The system is destroying forests, rivers, mountaintops,
and oceans. It's destroying our imaginations, our bodies, and our world.

(02:18:16):
To defend ourselves from certain annihilation, it will not be
sufficient to strike the right notes at the right time.
We will have to make recourse to other means, to
more direct means, and that is why we're all here.
The defend the Atlanta Forest Revolution will be economic, political,

(02:18:36):
as well as cultural. We're building a new era of
human history where music will be at the steering wheel.
What is needed cannot be taught without first being discovered.
We are those adventurers plunging the depths of the cosmos
for the contours and textures of a free existence, of
a life without dead time. When it is necessary, we
will defend ourselves by the means appropriate to the task.

Speaker 24 (02:18:59):
Not with words. It's not with.

Speaker 23 (02:19:00):
Denunciations, but with actions, real and concrete, actions as real
as the sounds, as real as reality.

Speaker 24 (02:19:11):
I'm so lucky to be here with y'all. Thank you.

Speaker 12 (02:19:14):
Across the middle of the field, hundreds of people laid
out blankets on the grass and dirt. Concertgoers alternated between
a dancing in front of the stage and relaxing and
eating food on picnic blankets. As the night approached, over
a thousand people were spread out across the RC field.
Amoshe pit had formed directly in front of the stage.

(02:19:35):
Musicians led stop Kopcity chants, and between sets, people spoke
on mic about the movement.

Speaker 14 (02:19:41):
Everybody say stop cop City, Stop cop City.

Speaker 8 (02:19:49):
That's right, that's right.

Speaker 12 (02:19:50):
Saturday Night was headlined by local Atlanta rapper Zach Fox.
Zach told stories about how he and his friends used
to hang out in this very forest as teenagers.

Speaker 25 (02:20:00):
All Right, y'all, man, hey, I'm gonna say this. Fuck
the mayor. I'm gonna say this, Fuck the mayor, and
fuck all this shit. And I love everybody for coming
out to support this ship.

Speaker 8 (02:20:15):
Do you're really fucking.

Speaker 5 (02:20:20):
When I tell you me, Archie.

Speaker 25 (02:20:22):
Everybody used to walk back in these woods and drink
red stripes and and walk our dogs and shoot guns
and shit. So I really don't want to see this
shit happen. And I really appreciate alli y'all for coming
out to do this shit.

Speaker 12 (02:20:38):
Fuck a cop City Chance erupted pretty regularly throughout the night.

Speaker 25 (02:20:43):
And this is all I'm gonna tell the police. This
is all I'm gonna tell the police. Okay, hold on,
let me make sure I push the right button.

Speaker 26 (02:20:54):
Say that ship. Let's go fucking right it fucking right
it fucking running, fucking running, fucking running, fucking run it,
fucking run it.

Speaker 24 (02:21:12):
Atlanta.

Speaker 25 (02:21:13):
I love y'all so much, man, Hell yeah, hey, man,
let me say something real quick.

Speaker 5 (02:21:23):
Let me say something real quick before I get the
fuck out, savee. Let my hummies right this shit.

Speaker 25 (02:21:26):
I love y'all so much for supporting this shit.

Speaker 8 (02:21:29):
I have.

Speaker 14 (02:21:29):
Let me tell you.

Speaker 7 (02:21:30):
Let me tell you something.

Speaker 8 (02:21:31):
I'm thirty two.

Speaker 25 (02:21:32):
A lot of niggas start getting old and they lose.

Speaker 14 (02:21:34):
Faith in the youth. I got so much faith in
everybody in this motherfucking bitch.

Speaker 25 (02:21:41):
Wherever y'all going, I'm going, I truly believe that y'all
gonna save this motherfucking world.

Speaker 23 (02:21:45):
So I'm with y'all.

Speaker 25 (02:21:47):
Fuck Cop City, fuck cops in general, fuck twelve, fuck authoritarianism,
fuck capitalism, fuck all that bullshit.

Speaker 8 (02:21:56):
I'm with y'all to the end. So I motherfucking die.
So let me hear y'all say this one more time.

Speaker 5 (02:22:05):
Start bud Wow, Start Bob Wow.

Speaker 26 (02:22:10):
Start bob whow stiite Bob Wow.

Speaker 12 (02:22:15):
Besides the domestic terrorism banner I mentioned in the opening
of this episode, another banner was hung up beside the
stage featuring turtles and butterflies, along with the Asada Shakur quote.
Love is our sword, truth is our compass.

Speaker 3 (02:22:32):
This kind of music is about the naty of nature,
filling the trees, feeling the crowd filling each other.

Speaker 5 (02:22:40):
Look right up there, look at the fucking moon.

Speaker 12 (02:22:47):
To quote a communicate from the Sonic Defense Committee quote,
at this point, it was impossible to imagine a meaningful
police intervention. The crowd was made up of elderly people,
university students, rappers, indigenous activists, toddlers and newborns, skaters, people
of all imaginable Atlanta demographics. The night ended around three

(02:23:09):
thirty am to sounds of house techno and drum and
bass without any notable incident.

Speaker 5 (02:23:14):
Unquote.

Speaker 12 (02:23:16):
Tents were set up all over the eastern side of
the forest, with many people choosing to sleep under the
tree canopy between the living room and the music festival
for that first night. As the night went on, people
carefully tended small campfires both in the festival field and
in the middle of the living room. To quote the
press collective, the movement was once again living in joyous

(02:23:38):
harmony with the forest it had promised to protect. Tomorrow's
episode will cover day two of the music festival, the
frankly unprecedented direct action that took place Sunday afternoon, and
a more detailed look at the police raid that happened
later that evening. See You on the other Side. Music

(02:23:59):
Festival audio courtesy of Unicorn Riot Welcome back to it
could happen here. This is part two of my mini
series detailing the March Week of Action to defend the
Atlanta Forest and stop Coop City. Last episode, we covered

(02:24:23):
the Week of Action kickoff rally at Gresham Park and
Day one of the South River Music Festival. Will be
picking up basically right where we left off, starting with
my conversation with Matt from the Atlanta Community Press Collective.
Saturday night, there was music going on to like four am.
It was a long night, but like a really good night.
What was your Sunday?

Speaker 15 (02:24:44):
Like Sunday, You know, Sunday started off really great, like
walking in the first thing you see when you walked
back onto the festival grounds was this amazing bouncy house
that they had written some guidelines up there that it
did seem like everyone fall foh you could fit six adults,
which like for a bouncy house, that's pretty large.

Speaker 5 (02:25:05):
It was a big bouncy house.

Speaker 15 (02:25:07):
It was like six of dollars through twelve kids or
something like that. So, yeah, you see this bouncy house,
and like when you see that the first thing, but
I think that visually sets the entire expectation, Like that
is a statement in and of itself of like what
they were going for that first.

Speaker 12 (02:25:25):
Day Day two of the music festival started around noon.
Right in the middle of the rc field was this
large rainbow colored bouncy castle adorned with a stop Copcity banner.
People slowly trickled in all over the course of the afternoon,
culminating in about one thousand people scattered across the field
by four pm. Just like the night before, people enjoyed

(02:25:46):
free food, Defend the Forest related literature, and a bustling
refreshment booth while listening to live music. People played a
soccer and frisbee in the open field, while others were
continuing to build camp infrastructure in the forest.

Speaker 15 (02:26:01):
So I think the bousing castle set the tone and
everything was really lighthearted for the first few hours. I
spent most of that day walking around watching this like
autonomous infrastructure in the forest kind of pop up on
its own. It's like everywhere I went, you know, to
the parking lot, you saw trains of people carrying like

(02:26:24):
water and supplies deep into the forest. Everyone seemed to
just be trying to find a place to fit in
and to work and to really participate in the Week
of Action.

Speaker 12 (02:26:35):
As the day went on, rumors started to circulate about
inaction happening Later that afternoon, word quickly spread that people
would meet up in the RC field at five pm.
Eventually a flyer was posted to social media, and sure enough,
come five o'clock, a group of a few hundred people
made up of individuals and affinity groups, gathered behind the

(02:26:57):
bouncy castle, most of whom were masked up and a
donning some form of black block or camo block. A
communicating posted later on the website scenes dot no blogs
dot org described the feeling on the ground quote, the
air was tense, no visible rage, just a stealed determination.
No one knew what was coming next, but we knew

(02:27:19):
it was something big.

Speaker 15 (02:27:21):
That was that was quite the visual like this, this
this crowd of camo and black block, and like some
people wearing normal clothes who I don't think quite knew
what they were about to do next to this massive
bouncy castle. And I think that that the visual of
it kind of represents like two aspects of the movement,

(02:27:43):
right like the militant aspect and the joyful aspect, and
I think they're both very central to to what you know,
the movement is.

Speaker 12 (02:27:53):
Yeah, it's a pretty good encapsulation of the diversity present
around the defend the forest and stop cup City move.
There's a few hundred people in camera block walking down
I believe is a constitution A lot of people just
in black block, mix of legal observers here, police shoppers

(02:28:17):
overhead are Currently people are marching west in the direction
of the old Atlanta Prison Farm, the slate of the
forest that cop City is.

Speaker 2 (02:28:34):
Planned to be built on.

Speaker 12 (02:28:35):
There has not really been a mass convergence of people
like this in the forest in a long long time.
I cannot remember the last time there was anything quite
like this. This is definitely the biggest group of people
who's ever like converged on marching on the old Atlanta
Prison Farm area. Last year, people were occupying and living

(02:28:57):
in the forest in that side. Since there are pres
has intensified, more people have moved over across on the
other side of Intrenchment Creek Park, on a slate of
land closer to Willane People's Park and the section that
Lyon MILSAP is wanting to develop. Definitely never seen this
many people marching like this near the forest in a

(02:29:21):
much more militant seeming group of the crowd, as opposed
to Saturday's first march, which was like a thousand people
of various types. Everyone here looks much more willing to
throw down. As the group, around three hundred strong, left
the RC field, they calmly marched west down Constitution Road

(02:29:42):
toward the power line cut, accompanied overhead by a police
chopper equipped with a thermal camera.

Speaker 2 (02:29:49):
Popter's still overhead.

Speaker 4 (02:29:50):
I'm sure you can hear it.

Speaker 12 (02:29:53):
To get a clear picture of what actually happened that day.
It's useful to understand the geography of the Wilaanni Forest,
especially since the police have tried to make it sound
like the individuals who were arrested later that night were
apprehended at the scene of the crime, which is not
actually the case.

Speaker 15 (02:30:10):
The entire area that the defenders are trying to defend,
the entire Weilani Forest, the contiguous part of it, is
surrounded in sort of a triangle by three different roads,
Constitution Key and Bouldercrest. All the way to the east
is Wilani People's Park, and like just to the west

(02:30:30):
of that is the RC Field where the music festival
was happening, where the bouncy castle is and where our
group that we're following here starts to gather. And then
all the way to the west is the proposed site
of copp City along Key Road. So to get there

(02:30:51):
through the forest takes a good thirty forty five minutes
to get there. You know, if you're on the road,
is still like a twenty five thirty minute walk. It
is not like anywhere close on foot. No, it's from
point A to point B.

Speaker 12 (02:31:08):
And if you're crossing through those you also have to
like jump over Entrenchment Creek, which is not the easiest
creek to cross over.

Speaker 15 (02:31:15):
It's not the easiest and it's not the cleanest. It's
something you want to step in.

Speaker 12 (02:31:18):
I'm at the back of the march now. Everyone's kind
of tightened up into one larger, larger group. They've paused
briefly and are retrieving some tires that have been found
near the ditch on the road here, dozens and dozens
of tires are blocking are blocking the road. They're getting

(02:31:39):
moved out pretty quick, and the march is moving on. Oh,
and looks like people arrived at the power line cut,
this massive clearing for power lines to run north south.
People are now marching on the green grass underneath the
power lines. The thin clear cut for power lines has
been there for years and directly leads to where cop

(02:32:01):
City pre construction work is taking place near the north Gate.
The open area makes it easy to traverse, but on
the flip side, that also makes it easy to surveil.
There were only a little over a dozen cops stationed
at the north gate, as well as the police chopper
circling overhead. The group of block is slowly, slowly moving
north along the power line cut. I'm keeping my distance

(02:32:24):
for now so that I can continue doing stuff without
being extremely jeopardized. The block approached the north gate in
broad daylight, with shields in hand and people behind throwing
projectiles in the direction of police. A barrage of fireworks,
rocks and just the sheer size of the crowd overwhelmed police,
causing officers to retreat as a swarm of hundreds of

(02:32:46):
people overtook the proposed cop City construction site and current
police security upost within the Wollani Forest. All right, the
group has marched a decent ways up. There's now fireworks
in the distance. A police helicopter is still over head.
Looks like most of the crowd is still in the
area of the power line cut. A pretty condensed large
group of people up there lots of fireworks. Like I said,

(02:33:09):
some individuals chose to focus their efforts on repelling the
nearby police, giving the opportunity for others to set their
sights on various targets. The large number of people in
the block together allowed for individuals to feel more safe
and capable of taking action. The APDs put a call
out to get any available units down here by the
old line of prison farm property and a quote from

(02:33:31):
the scanner audios get here now, assholes. Forest defenders smashed
up and set ablaze and office trailer, two UTVs, a
surveillance tower, and a front end loader as the police
ran for cover behind a fenced off secondary smaller outpost across.

Speaker 5 (02:33:48):
From Key Road.

Speaker 12 (02:33:49):
Despite the police helicopter circling overhead the gathering spot for
a good thirty minutes, it seems APD was not fully
prepared in their response or just did not know what
going on, because they made it a decent way without
any visible resistance so far. A communicate posted online reads
quote when we approached the gate. Finally it was not chaos,

(02:34:11):
but it was something like it. Our crowd unleashed a
wild burst of energy. It was incredible and I will
never forget it. It was rhythmic almost We devastated all
of their work, their vehicles, the trailer, everything. But it
looks like Atlanta Police is now trying to converge. Lots
of fireworks are still I see smoke.

Speaker 2 (02:34:31):
Oh, a lot of smoke.

Speaker 5 (02:34:32):
WHOA a lot of smoke.

Speaker 12 (02:34:34):
Very fast is filling up, filling up the area around
the little It looks like it's by the little control
tower in the middle of the power line.

Speaker 16 (02:34:42):
Cut.

Speaker 12 (02:34:43):
Wow, that smoke is thick. That's a fire. That is
a decent fire. You can I can see the orange
flame now. As the few police officers stationed at the
North Gate were forced to fall back under pressure, force
defenders leveled months of their work within a few minutes.
To quote the scenes dot no blogs communicate quote. This
act of mass collective sabotage was done methodically and without anxiety.

(02:35:08):
The crowd destroyed all of their equipment with ease and confidence.

Speaker 15 (02:35:12):
So the excavator there was a utility train vehicle, which
is what the police have been using to sort of
move in and around the woods, and sort of motorized
move in and around the woods.

Speaker 14 (02:35:27):
And then the.

Speaker 15 (02:35:30):
Office space and the storage space. We're all torched. I
think that that comprised like everything that.

Speaker 12 (02:35:38):
Was over there, and then the police surveillance tower, which
has been taken down a few times.

Speaker 15 (02:35:43):
Surveillance towers in that area, they have this tendency to
fall over.

Speaker 12 (02:35:47):
The fire has gotten a lot lot bigger. Police scanner
audio is saying officer needs help, calling for all available
units to converge on the spot.

Speaker 16 (02:35:56):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (02:35:56):
Ok, the fire is getting so much brighter.

Speaker 12 (02:35:58):
Smoke is incredibly It looks like some people are starting
to move out of the area back into the woods.

Speaker 15 (02:36:04):
But wow, that is a.

Speaker 12 (02:36:07):
Huge fire. There was at least two separate things lit
on fire. There were, in fact more than two things
on fire. Looks like crowd is going to be starting
to move because a lot of police is about to
show up. I'm sure what the response will be for
people at the music festival or at a Wolani People's
park who are camping out for the Week of Action.
But this is a pretty pretty big action for Week

(02:36:29):
of Action Day two. Wow, this smoke plume is massive.
While the action itself was a success, the notion of
an overall one sided victory was about to come crashing down.
A whole bunch of sirens just flew by about a
dozen cop cars, Lots of cop cars by the music

(02:36:52):
festival entrants as well by the RC field. Looks like
the cop cars are converging at the festival, not at
the fire here. Okay, back at the music festival. As
you can hear, it is it is, It is still ongoing.
There's still hundreds of people, probably like five hundred people
gathered here at the music festival. You can see smoke

(02:37:14):
in the air from this vantage point, from the spot
by the power line cut where those two fires took place.
One indication that this night was far from over was
that the police helicopter seemed to be moving toward the festival.

Speaker 5 (02:37:30):
The chopper has moved.

Speaker 12 (02:37:31):
From being the power line cut to the music festival
and Wailani people's spark vibe seems to be pretty chill
on the ground here. I'm not sure how many people
that are present know what's going on, but the chopper
is still stationed above the entrance to the festival, so
I think they're they're looking to see if the group
that march is going to march back the same direction,

(02:37:51):
which I don't think they will, but that is what's
currently going on. People still still seem to be coming
like to and from the fast. Sure enough, within minutes,
an increasingly large number of police started to stage by
the entrance to the RC Field. Doesn't the police cars
are now stationed outside the entrance to the RC field

(02:38:12):
where the music festival is taking place. There's a lot
of police here, some with rifles. They're getting their zip
tie cuffs ready. They've not entered the festival area yet,
but I got word from somebody that they have entered
the Wolaani People's Park parking lot and it looks like
movement is to be expected very soon. At around six

(02:38:33):
thirty pm, police began to raid the South River Music
Festival and started what I think is accurately described as
the police's own counter protest to the events that transpired
the past hour.

Speaker 15 (02:38:45):
So when the police came running up onto the tarmac
at RC Field where the bouncy castle was, of course
they had to point a rifle at the bouncy castle.
And if that doesn't show that police are not here
to have fun and have joy, I don't know what
what is. I don't know if anyone was in it
at the time, I don't think so. I think they
were literally just pointing a gun at an empty bouncy

(02:39:09):
castle which they have they destroyed, and I think we
have to take a moment to mourn that.

Speaker 12 (02:39:17):
Lots of police running into the music festival. They're rowing
someone down, chasing down a few people, Cops approaching for
multiple sides. Instead of immediately trying to confront the hundreds
of music festival attendees head on, the still extremely outnumbered
cops ran to the opposite side of the music festival

(02:39:37):
and started to indiscriminately go after isolated stragglers. People running
into the woods, chase by police. Someone's tackled, no one
early around it to arrest someone else being arrested. One, two, three,

(02:40:00):
four or five six people currently arrested that I can see,
or at least being detained.

Speaker 15 (02:40:08):
Looks like an NLG person's on the ground.

Speaker 12 (02:40:11):
Eventually the concertgoers realized what was happening, and a little
over one hundred people mobilized to pressure the cops out
of the field. People from the music festival are now
running behind the police that have rushed into the rc field,
cops being flanked by hundreds of people.

Speaker 15 (02:40:32):
So the first thing that happened was a few officers
entered the RC field, which is where the music festival
was happening, and made a few quick arrests. Yeah, like
five or six, I would say, And I would assume,
seeing like the crowd and realizing that a small force
of officers is easily overwhelmed, kind of pulled back with

(02:40:52):
their arrests. And then just after that, over in Wheelani
People's Park, that's when the cab came in with their
SWAT teams. There was a group that was meeting in
the gazebo and they report like dozens of police officers
running by. One of them stood up to record and
an officer with an ar fifteen yelled at them and

(02:41:13):
told them to sit the fuck back down, and they did.
They were allowed to finish their meeting, but they report
this very surreal experience of just officers like flying by
and also making arrest of individuals who were running. And
then the third wave, I would say, came in on
the back of a armored police vehicle with an L RAD.

Speaker 12 (02:41:38):
Good old dj L rad brings it brings back all
the memories.

Speaker 15 (02:41:42):
And so from there they sort of launched into the forest,
launching tear.

Speaker 12 (02:41:45):
Gas again also brings back all of the memories. Police
are starting to come back into the music festival. Fireworks
are happening in the woods.

Speaker 5 (02:41:58):
Near the living room.

Speaker 2 (02:41:59):
It looks like.

Speaker 12 (02:42:01):
The police that entered via the RCA field advanced up
to join another group of cops who came in from
Wollani People's Park and were already in the woods. What
I first assumed were just fireworks were actually in exchange
of munitions, with cops firing explosive tear gas canisters into
the forest and people trying to hold the cops off
with fireworks. Tear gas is in the woods.

Speaker 3 (02:42:25):
Fuck, it's hard.

Speaker 12 (02:42:27):
I can't get any I didn't I didn't bring my
gas masks because this was a music festival. It's just
the woods are completely caked and gas. Everyone who's inside
I don't know how they're going to get out. Cops
have the place surrounded. It's so gassed up in there.

Speaker 5 (02:42:42):
Police raided.

Speaker 12 (02:42:44):
They tear gased a section of the woods close to
the RCA field, kind of blocking off the RCA field
from from the Wallani People's Park parking lot and the
Campsit's nearby, so you couldn't like really get away or
run through that area because your breathing would stop. As
mine temporarily did as I tried, as I tried to
run through there, and then policer just took over this

(02:43:07):
entire section of southeast Atlanta, just this entire section of
the woods, all the intersections in.

Speaker 15 (02:43:13):
This area, except for the very small space that the
music festival was still going on during this entire time.

Speaker 12 (02:43:22):
The section like right in front of the stage where
people continued to have the music festival for the next
few hours. As police were as like, I kid you not,
Like over five hundred police officers were in this surrounding area.
There was the most amount of police I've ever seen
respond to anything ever.

Speaker 5 (02:43:39):
It was wild.

Speaker 2 (02:43:42):
I am currently heading out.

Speaker 12 (02:43:44):
I will try to loop back around to Blanna People's
Park because there's just no way through it right now
with all the tear gas.

Speaker 5 (02:43:48):
But a cop van has.

Speaker 12 (02:43:51):
Pulled into the rc Field music customal people. Some of
them are study by the stage, others are kind of dispersing.
Night's getting pretty hectic. Cops fully surrounding a lot of
People's Park and the music festival on all sides. There
was at least one individual of note who was witnessed
to be at the music festival the entire time. During

(02:44:11):
the direct action, and they were one of the very
first arrests. Police chased this person down, tased and violently
tackled them. Were you on the festival at that time.

Speaker 21 (02:44:22):
I was around the festival at that time. I even
saw the police tackle someone at the festival and tackle
and tase an Indigenous person at the festival. And initially
the police officer Georgia State Patrol, and these are the
folks that were responsible for killing Tortigita and making up

(02:44:43):
a lie about it. They started running and there were
three people in front of them. All three of those
people started running, and then there were two white folks
that veered off to the left and one Indigenous person
that veered off to the right. Go figure, the Georgia
State Patrol veered to the right and then tased and

(02:45:04):
tackled the indigenous person. And then and there's the footage
of this that may may not be released, uh, where
I was trying to de escalate the situation because this
police officer, with no grounds to attack this person, is
choking them on the ground and then really just asking

(02:45:24):
you like literally what are you doing?

Speaker 8 (02:45:27):
Like why are you doing?

Speaker 21 (02:45:29):
And then the persons that I didn't do anything, and
then the uh Georgia State Patrol officer responded, well, you
ran right, as if running when somebody with a gun
chasing you is an admission of guilt of something. Uh
So the response was nonsensical and stupid.

Speaker 15 (02:45:52):
So they they're tear gassing the forest and again, you know, uh,
grabbing from reports anyone who who's who's running? Anyone who
who you know rightfully runs from a police officer running
at them with an AR fifteen, which you know, we've
been around police all week, and like the instinct to run,

(02:46:13):
you know, even even now is still pretty high.

Speaker 8 (02:46:16):
No.

Speaker 12 (02:46:17):
Absolutely, And if you've never been chased by police before,
your first instinct isn't to like let them get you,
like I've had police just charge at me for filming
police brutality before. And yeah, you generally want to move away.
It is your immediate reaction.

Speaker 15 (02:46:35):
Yeah, anyone running at you with a gun is caused
for fear, and a police officer even more so. Okay,
I am out of the area.

Speaker 12 (02:46:43):
Police have surrounded on basically every side of the Lone
People's Park, the section of the four people are camping
out of the music festival, all entrances and exits are stage,
a whole bunch of intersections, this police stage. They're letting
some people go, obviously they're arresting a whole bunch of
other people. No clear indication on who their arresting or why.
It's pretty chaotic right now.

Speaker 15 (02:47:05):
They put out this officer needs help.

Speaker 13 (02:47:06):
Call.

Speaker 15 (02:47:07):
That expanded beyond just APD, But the first thing they
did was was calling every available APD officer. Fulton County
Sheriff's Office joint to Cab County started to mount up,
and then of course the Georgia State Patrol definitely had
to get onto this action. So jurisdictionally wide or this
multi jurisdiction wide force of police amassed on Key Road

(02:47:32):
with the cab kind of coming in on the other side.

Speaker 12 (02:47:35):
I passed through at least five hundred individual police officers. Yeah,
that like that would check out, because I walked a
decent a decent, a decent ways. I passed by many
an intersection with at least fifty to one hundred cops
was stationed at like each intersection.

Speaker 15 (02:47:51):
Oh and we can't forget the Sandy Springs Police Department also,
and its way down from outside the premier.

Speaker 12 (02:47:57):
Multiple swat teams there was like thinks read from Bearcats.
After I evacuated the area, I was still in shock
about how many police officers mobilized to raid the festival.
This is the biggest police response I've seen to anything
in Atlanta in the time that I've been here. This
is bigger than the police responses to most of like
Portland actions compared to Like twenty twenty. Massive, massive amount

(02:48:20):
of cops from multiple agencies taking over a huge area
of South Atlanta and de kep County. As the second
wave of police charged in and detained several music festival attendees,
panic spread throughout the crowd. Hundreds of people rushed to

(02:48:42):
the exits in an attempt to evacuate. Police blocked exits
and arrested, detained, or harassed and threatened those trying to leave.
One concertgoer reported that they received death threats from an
intruding officer quote you're going to get shot. I don't

(02:49:04):
know how to put it, but you're gonna get shot
with a bullet unquote. That same person who recorded that
interaction also reported that she heard an officer with his
side arm drawn in the living room say, quote, I
swear to God, I will fucking kill you unquote. Some
people opted for safety in numbers and decided they'd rather
stay together as a group as opposed to the risk

(02:49:27):
of trying to escape through the woods alone. That night,
about one hundred and fifty people congregated in front of
the festival stage, and musicians that stuck around continued to
play music.

Speaker 15 (02:49:38):
So the music festival continues unhindered until dusk, and about
then is when DJ l Rad comes up and officers
get out and call over like five people from the crowd.
And so at this point I think there's like somewhere
between one hundred seventy five to one hundred people still

(02:50:01):
at the music pest watching the music, and people are
calling out from the stage like we have a legal
right to be here, this is public property.

Speaker 12 (02:50:12):
We had We had dueling, dueling loud speakers trying to
two people having a regular conversation across a field via
opposing loud speakers.

Speaker 15 (02:50:23):
Ry Scott Pilgrim versus the world right like.

Speaker 12 (02:50:26):
You know, as the police are trying to shut down
a concert, and there's like pulks screaming into the bike
and police officers using they all read to scream back.

Speaker 15 (02:50:35):
It's just amazing I mean, the visuals of this whole
day I think are kind of really easy to imagine,
even if you're not there.

Speaker 4 (02:50:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:50:44):
Roughly after two hours of hunting down and detaining stragglers
from the festival, dozens of swat in riot gear with
high end rifles and armored vehicles slowly moved in towards
the stage. Police told festivalgoers that they had three minutes
to leave the festival under threat of arrest for domestic terrorism,
to which festivalgoers responded by shouting no. In front of

(02:51:08):
the stage. The crowd linked arms enchanted, let us go
home and we have children.

Speaker 8 (02:51:14):
Go WHOA.

Speaker 12 (02:51:22):
Apparently unable to mass arrest one hundred and fifty people
for whatever reason, police called for five individuals from the
festival to engage in a brief discussion. After this odd
negotiation with a handful of random concert goers, festival attendees
were told they had ten minutes to walk to their
cars and go home or else be charged with domestic terrorism.

Speaker 15 (02:51:43):
About half the crowd has cars parked in the rc field,
and the police allow them to go to their cars
and leave, leaving like somewhere between you know, three dozen
somewhere around three dozen people without cars still remaining at
the FESTI and this whole time they're also chanting, we

(02:52:04):
have kids, let us go, and like, it's this very
big moment of solidarity that I've been told from like
people who were there that you could tell that everybody
was like really interested in keeping each other safe.

Speaker 4 (02:52:17):
Yeah, it was, It was.

Speaker 12 (02:52:18):
It was weird because police were definitely they were letting
some people walk away and leave a place, some people
drive away, arresting others not really with no clear indication
for why they're letting some go and not not letting
others go. But then this this crowd of people around
the stage were eventually allowed to leave the music festival
in big rent of vans. The police then id'd the

(02:52:39):
people who rented the vans and were driving the vans,
but but everyone was able to exit who stayed by
the music festival. Around midnight, the Atlanta Police Department posted
a press release saying that thirty five people have been detained,
which was kind of weird language because everyone assumed that
those who had been taken by police were all going

(02:53:01):
to be arrested and charged. But then less than an
hour later, twelve individuals were suddenly released from police custody
back to Gresham Park. Since then, witnesses and lawyers have
claimed that police separated out people with Atlanta addresses on
their IDs and released those individuals, and then the remaining
twenty three people, mostly with out of state IDs or

(02:53:24):
a non Atlanta address, were arrested and charged with domestic
terrorism to continue the outside agitator narrative, bringing the total
number of people charged with domestic terrorism to forty two.
Ever since Sunday night, there's been this effort from police
and their media allies to frame these arrests as if

(02:53:44):
they happened at the scene of the crime, alleging that
the twenty three people arrested were themselves torching equipment or
actively engaged in domestic terrorism. Yet all of the arrests
took place almost a mile away at the music festival,
and even further away in some cases, like in the
parking lot, which is on the other side of the
forest from the north gate. To quote an article in

(02:54:06):
Truth Out by Candice Burned, quote, law enforcement failing to
apprehend specific individuals at the site itself, indiscriminately targeted the
music festival, pouring into the field, campgrounds and parking lot
with weapons drawn, they issued commands, chased people down, and
threatened to shoot and arrest festival attendees unquote. Still, major

(02:54:27):
news outlets all but ignored the fact that all arrests
occurred seemingly at random during a police raid of the
nearby South River Music Festival, where people gathered to see
Zack Fox Live, to jump in a bouncy castle and
enjoy the outdoors. Many attendees had little to no idea
of what had occurred at the copp City construction site.

(02:54:47):
Those who got lucky were forced to walk through tier
gas to get to their cars, while others were assaulted
by police and charged with domestic terrorism, risking thirty five
years in prison. Here's a clip from NBC's Today Show.

Speaker 27 (02:55:00):
Got breaking news out of Atlanta. Over nine dozens arrested
after what's being described as a coordinated criminal attack. It
happened at the future site of a police training center.
And this is Blaine Alexander's on the story for US
Blaine Good Morning.

Speaker 28 (02:55:13):
Officials say protesters burned construction vehicles and a trailer and
set off fireworks toward officers stationed nearby.

Speaker 21 (02:55:20):
This wasn't about a public safety training center.

Speaker 5 (02:55:22):
This was about anarchy and this was about the attempt
to destabilize.

Speaker 28 (02:55:26):
Police point to a group of what they call outside agitators,
saying they left an event nearby, changed into black clothing,
and mounted a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers.

Speaker 12 (02:55:38):
To quote a statement from the Sonic Defense Committee. Quote,
the indiscriminate brutalization and arrest of festivalgoers suggests that law
enforcement agencies will go to great lengths to paint the
movement to stop Coop City and Defend the Atlanta Forest
as a criminal organization. It is in fact a broad,
decentralized movement with no ideological or organizational unity of shared goal.

(02:56:01):
They believe that the movement is made up of bad
actors who betray otherwise peaceful protesters, but the movement is
not committed to any particular tactic, instead accepting the diversity
of approaches to stop the project. The police claim that
the movement is not made up of any Atlantans, while
Atlanta University Center, students, local clergy, faith leaders, small businesses,

(02:56:24):
and dozens of locally famous artists and musicians organize themselves
within the movement. The police's false narrative and heavy handed
approach to dealing with the opposition to the COP City
project is slowly starting to enclose them in. As the
movement grows and city and state officials refuse to see
the reality of what they are dealing with, their own

(02:56:45):
authority is being brought into question. If they are not careful,
the stakes of the movement will soon exceed the bounds
of the forest and COP City. In fact, that process
may already have begun.

Speaker 15 (02:56:58):
I think to talk about what happened, we we kind
of do have to go back to put it in context,
and going back to January, that was the end of
the occupation or the you know, continuous encampments in Wilani
and then flash, uh fast forward to to late January.

(02:57:21):
They get the LDP and so all of these people
who have been protecting the forest for so long are
now watching construction equipment roll in and they're watching clear
cutting and they can't do anything about it. And you
had that action, uh just after Tortigita's death in January,

(02:57:42):
which was a very targeted you know, only two funders
and other supporters of cop City and you know, maybe
a random police vehicle. But it wasn't really like this,
this letting of energy it was a very like specific
sort of purpose. And so you have this like build
up of energy that I think is really important to

(02:58:04):
keep in mind with what is about to happen in
this story. And they so they can't do anything, and
then you have Saturday where you see this massive people
return to the forest, and I think it's almost unavoidable
in retrospect to look at that and for them not

(02:58:26):
to have said, what can we do now that we
couldn't do before? So they gather and they do what
they couldn't do before they head over to the construction site.

Speaker 12 (02:58:40):
There had not been an action like this in the
woods for a long time. Bulldozers and equipment had not
been damaged in quite a while. But on Sunday people
were able to use the safety in numbers that comes
with a week of action to feel more empowered to
take direct action against the actual machinery that is destroying
the forest and building cop City. Sunday's action can be

(02:59:01):
seen as a demonstration of the pent up righteous anger
from watching the slow destruction of the forest. Participants view
what happened as a justified strike against the active destruction
of the forest, a strike back made an anger after
watching the Atlanta Police Foundation make steady progress over the
course of the past few months.

Speaker 15 (02:59:21):
The day before, there was this chant that was taken
up by the entire crowd, and I think we talked
about this and.

Speaker 4 (02:59:28):
Earlier.

Speaker 15 (02:59:30):
If you build it, we will burn it. And that
was something that if you looked all throughout the crowd,
like they were chanting everybody, everybody, like not just people
wearing camera or black block, like a thousand people, everybody. Yeah,
a thousand people marching from Gresham Park. And I think
that this is that promise come true.

Speaker 12 (02:59:51):
Sunday's action was itself a pretty unique moment in the
recent history of environmental and anti police struggles. Watching hundreds
of people go on the offensive to participate in a mass,
coordinated sabotage in defense of both the forest and targets
of police of isolence felt like an unprecedented moment in
our modern paradigm of resistance in the United States. But

(03:00:13):
the raid on the music festival on March fifth was
also just the start of an unparalleled wave of police
repression during this week of action, which we will cover
in the next episode, but throughout the whole week, the
assurance that Copcity will never be built never faltered, as
demonstrated by common chance, such as I believe that we

(03:00:34):
will win. So I'm going to end this episode with
the final chant from the Saturday Gresham Park rally right
before a thousand people marched to the Wallani Forest in Atlanta.

Speaker 5 (03:00:47):
We always in.

Speaker 29 (03:00:48):
With the asslogan.

Speaker 24 (03:00:49):
We're with the words of the love or.

Speaker 29 (03:00:51):
Assata Spoor because we have a tuning. There's been so
much bliss built here. Repeat that to me, our duty
to fight for our freedom to each other each other.

(03:01:19):
I'm not gonna lose, but on change.

Speaker 30 (03:01:24):
I'm not gonna loose, Bonchin, I'm nothnna those but on Chinee.

Speaker 31 (03:01:37):
Say Music Festival audio courtesy of Unicorn Riot.

Speaker 16 (03:01:50):
Hey.

Speaker 1 (03:01:51):
We'll be back Monday, with more episodes every week from
now until the heat death of the Universe.

Speaker 15 (03:01:56):
It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 12 (03:01:59):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 10 (03:02:07):
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at Coolzonmedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,