Jokes from the Atlanta Forest

Garrison presents a brand new comedy special, compiled out of all the jokes, bits, goofs, and gaffs from the Week of Action this past March.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, Welcome to It could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. Recently,
I just wrapped up a whole five episodes about the
previous week of action to stop Coop City in Atlanta, Georgia.
In a somewhat unsuccessful attempt to shorten the running time
of those episodes, I had to cut out many of

(00:31):
the funny bits, jokes, gaffs, goofs, bloopers, and related tomfoolery.
But as demonstrated by the police's massive mobilization to shut
down a canceled comedy event in the woods on March seventh,
the Wollanee Forest and surrounding area of Atlanta are often
home to manifestations of absurdist humor. There's been a lot

(00:53):
of not great news recently. Well, there's kind of always
a lot of not great news now that we live
in an ever expanding hyperreality oversaturated with information. But I digress.
I think it's just as important to not overlook the comedic,
lighthearted side of things as it is to keep up
with all of the doom and gloom that we usually

(01:14):
platform on our show. So, without further ado, I present
to you jokes from the side note. I am now
invoking Jester's privilege. Legally, everything we say in this episode
is a joke as a little headstuff. Okay, this episode

(01:37):
will probably make more sense if you listened to the
four part Week of Action series or the retrospective episode.
But also I will do my best to pop in
via this narration to help fill in any gaps so
that listeners will not be completely lost if you've not
listened to those to those other episodes. Anyway, we shall
start by tuning back into my conversation with Matt from

(01:59):
the Atlantic Community Press Collective as we discuss the March
fifth police raid of the South River Music Festival. Welcome
to it could happen here cast on Garrison Davia's in
World of Warcraft, you can Shield Bash. So there's been

(02:20):
this effort from police and media to frame these arrests
as like these were arrests that happened at a crime scene,
like these these arrests were people who were who were
torching equipment, who were involved in all these actions, who
were doing domestic terrorism. But all the rest that happened
were at a music festival, like they were in a
completely different section of the forest, like at a music
festival at the parking lot even away from the music festival.

(02:42):
And you know, police surveillance may be good and they
may have been able to pick out an individual or two,
but for the most part, like you had something like
two hundred people partaking this direct action and then disappear
into the woods, there's really no way too. And of
course most of them were wearing block of some form

(03:04):
that there's really no way much of that block which
has now been burnt and there's no longer existing in
the physical material realm, so there's there's no way to
like really tell who was there, and other than allegedly
having mud on your clothes, you want to talk about
what the warrants were in the oddity of how how

(03:25):
the warrants were formatted. Once you started to listen to them,
you notice this very repetitive nature of them. And so
about halfway through we get to a lawyer who straight
up calls out the fact that these warrants seem like
they were just copy pasted, like every single person all
the way downline. And one of the such claims the

(03:50):
mud mud. So I don't know, I don't know how
many festivals you've attended um in your life, but I've
been to a few, and they are never clean affairs.
So it rained like one day before the night before
the festival started, there was a tornado warning in Atlanta.

(04:12):
I've forgotten about that, and there was rain, which makes
I don't know if the prosecutors know this, but when
rain mixes with dirt, it creates something called that we
that we refer to as mud. My Doc Martins are
still caked in mud. Future me cutting back in here
for a sec So for the record, I have since

(04:33):
cleaned my Doc Martins, but the mud was still on
there for well over a month until I was forced
to wash my shoes after I stepped in much much
more mud while in the Telemac forest as I was
failing to shoot a Keltech, which yeah, that is that
was That was probably my bad. These chargers don't make

(04:54):
any sense. There's no evidence these people committed any any
actual crimes, so they're just being charged with terrorism. This
like a nebula less concept um. The judge said that
the legal basis of these claims will have to be
decided on another day. Um. Similarly, they said that in
regards to like actual evidence that these people charged did
any crimes. She said that she had none of this,

(05:15):
none of the She said that she had none of
this evidence in front of her, and that evidence is
for another day. So it's absolutely I think bonkers. It's
inappropriate words, one of those one of those kangaroo court moments.
It really uh, my faith in the legal system was
really solidified this day. There was also the threat of
arrest for the New York Times reporter that happened forgot

(05:39):
to mention that. So you know that commentary by itself,
they should they should have charged Sean Keenan with domestic terrorism.
Sorry for making fun of noted trans ally the New
York Times. I promise it won't happen again. Wait wait, no,
that's that's a lie. There's at least two more New

(06:01):
York Times jokes in this script. Fock. I guess let's
talk about Monday. Monday Monday? So, uh, don't do is
the editor now, Danyl Daniel. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.
He's not going to hear any of this shit because

(06:22):
the way these works, I transcribe them and then I
copy and pay sections. They only move the section over.
So when I when I say ask Garrison about okay,
So it turns out that was a lie. Daniel did
need to hear that, So sorry, danel full full transparency.
Most of those bleeps were me making horrible, horrible slurping

(06:44):
noises into the microphone, as Daniel can probably attest. So
really all of you should be thanking Daniel for suffering
through those to bleep them out. Daniel died for your sins.
I mean content truly, truly braver than the troops. Insert joke. Anyway,
back to me from the past. So let's talk about
Let's talk about Monday. I don't want to talk about
the clergy event that happened in from a city hall,

(07:07):
so city council meeting. UM. You work for the Atlantic
Community Press Collective. UM, you've you've covered a lot of
city council meetings in Atlanta before. This was my first
time covering an Atlanta City council meeting. UM. Due to
your you know wisdom in this in this field, I
would like for you to to to discuss what happened
at the city council meeting and in relation to your

(07:30):
to your two years of experience in covering these these
uh these meetings. So I city council meets every other
week on Mondays. I cover several other committees, but uh,
you know, the big one is always the City Council meeting,
and over over the course of time there there's like

(07:50):
a cast of characters that that you just begin to
understand are going to appear either every week or or
from time to time. And um, you you had the
pleasure of actually getting to see a few of these
and I was like, there were we were there were
a few of us media folks there and I was
actually really happy that like people got to experience this
with me, because I usually have to do it by myself.

(08:12):
So you got to meet three of the characters. You
got to meet brother Hakim m you got to meet Rachel,
and you got to be your favorite chef doctor. So
this is just somebody who everyone refers to as chef doctor.
He is dressed up as what you can only describe
as a chef doctor, someone wearing half of a chef's
outfit half of a doctor's outfit. He had a Freemason

(08:35):
pin on his shirt because of of course he did.
And I just like watched him for a while because
like initially in the City Council meeting, they were just
like handing out awards to like the proclamation ceremonies, the
proclamations and awards to like various people, including like former
city council members, like whatever. And then eventually public comments
started and I guess, let's let's talk about doctor so well. No,

(09:03):
so for the entirety of the city council meeting during
the proclamations in the back, in the back of the
back of city Council, there was this large red like
like heart just just sitting sitting in the back. But
it looked like Bob the tomato from Vegie table. Look,
it looked that was exactly what I thought. I like,

(09:25):
this heart, Like, why is there this Bob the tomato
ass heart mascot just sitting in the back of city council.
No one was inside the costume. It was just like
the heart sitting there next to like another massive heart
made up of like flowers. Um. So I was kind
of confused for why that was there. There was like
a pediatric surgeon that got like one of the awards.
I'm like, oh, maybe the heart's there because of like

(09:47):
because of like heart surgery or something. I don't know. No, no,
that would make sense. And you have to you have
to get out of that mindset for for public comment
for the most part. So then chef doctor gets ten
minutes of public comments, so that we should explain that mechanism.
Everyone who who signs up a public comment gets two minutes.
You can award your time or give over your time

(10:09):
to somebody else. So there were four other people who
gave their time over to Chef doctor to give him
ten minutes, and he used all ten minutes. And so
what was chef doctor trying to get out of the city?
What why why was he giving public heart? So a
shout out to chef doctor. Okay, like is chef doctor

(10:29):
wants to create a soul food museum in the West
side of Atlanta, India. And he's she's shown up a
few times to kind of ask city council for money.
And as far as I know, that has gone nowhere.
But that was what he is ostensibly there for today. However,
beyond just the heart, the dancing, we haven't got there yet. However,

(10:55):
beyond just the big red heart, and like the paper
mache flower heart, he he brought a floutist. A floutist,
So a flutist is someone who plays the flute. If
you are like an uncultured person, who's who's who's listening
to this? And he walked up to the microphone and
then for five minutes he got a flutist to play

(11:16):
a flute cover of Amazing Grace. Yes, but but he
had backing music from a laptop that just kind of
appeared out of nowhere, and so he played into the microphone.
They played this funeral song as as this. Now heart
that's been brought to life starts dancing, starts dancing. So

(11:39):
this person wearing like heart pajama pants changed into this
hard questume at some point. I didn't see them change
into this. I don't know how this happened. I must
have missed its City Council Magic. Next will be Chef
doctor Kenneth Wilhoyte. You'll have ten minutes due to yielded time. Chef,
let's go ahead and get started. My name is Chef

(12:04):
doctor Kenneth Willhod. I'm the president of the Soul Food
Museum and the Soul Food University. We are celebrating our
twentieth anniversary and we are asking for the City Council
and our honorable Mayor to get behind us and support

(12:27):
and support us with donating a museum space building and
land with parking in the city of Atlanta for our
tourists that come here to have a place to come
and experience our hospitality, agriculture service of Atlanta. I'm a

(12:51):
self quick prayer because I'm spirit led. I do things
by spirit. I'm at that Asian or. It's not about me,
it's about the spearing. Now we'll have a song that
was selected by the spirit of the ancestors, not by me,
but by the spirit of dancers. I asked God and said, Hey, God,

(13:11):
what songs shoot we introduced today? This is the one
that was shot. But this this guy in the hard

(13:33):
costume walks up and he starts like kind of dancing
to this float music for five minutes. Talk talk about
the dancing. I don't think it was so much dancing
as a swing with a little bit of hand emotion
along with the swan um. But like I, I wasn't
expecting it. I thought someone like dosed me with hallucinogens.

(13:55):
I did. Actually, um, there were there were some stretch ballast.
I put them in your water bottle when you went looking.
This explains so much about what happened on Monday. No,
it would make much more sense if that's what happened. Unfortunately,
Atlanta is a cartoon town and that's not what happened.
This was real life. So this, this this flout cover

(14:19):
of Amazing Grace played for five minutes along with the
dancing heart um and then we finally got to public
comment for the reason for the reason for the reason
for why we were there. Not only were we blessed
with that stunning rendition of Amazon Grace, the flutist himself
was was briefly able to address a city council before

(14:39):
President Dave Shipman rudely, very very rudely called time. Amazing
Grace and Mason went to the world. So that's it,
thank you, okay, and we are back. And just as

(15:15):
a note, I forgot to put this in the script,
so I'm gonna say it now. It turns out that
that heart costume that was quote unquote dancing to the music,
that's actually rentable. You can rent that in Atlanta. So
I I have some really good ideas for the next
for the next week of action, since we can rent
more more bouncy castles and also that heart costume, I

(15:37):
think there's a lot of potential, extremely funny things that
could happen. Anyway, back to my conversation with Matt from
the Atlantic Community Press Collective, there there are a couple
of like things to note about how city council public
comment works. Um. City council doesn't tend to pay attention
to them. Essensibly, the only one who pays attention is

(15:58):
City Council President Shipman, because it is his job to
call time and to call up the next person. But
you know, city councilors will like step in and out
of the room, get something to eat. Um. During the
seventeen hours of a comment for cops city, like one
of them held a press conference like it is. It
is weird how they're like legally allowed to not pay
attention like that is that is bizarre. You would you

(16:19):
would you would think that if you allegedly work for
the people, like you would have to actually listen to them. Um.
So amongst the city council, there are two in particular,
UM that I'm glad you got to see. There. There's
Mary Norwood, who who represents Buckhead. And then there's Dustin Hillis,
who is the um the committee chair for the Public

(16:40):
Safety Legal Administration Committee. UM. So he's basically in charge
of police here throwing all atof cocktails at officers and
uh damaging millions of dollars of equipment. And he gives
off of that vibe, and neither one of them will
pay attention. They were they were on their phone from
almost the entire time I was there. Um the the

(17:02):
the Buckhead woman gave off ontologically evil vibe. Like I
I did not know like who she was when I
went to the city council, but once I saw her,
I was like, Okay, this person is like obviously evil, right,
And I asked people about it afterwards. It's like, oh, yes,
that is a person that represents Buckhead. I'm like, okay, yes,
of course, of course Bucket of course being um the

(17:25):
like primarily white neighborhood in North Atlanta, that part of
it wants to secede from the city. And that's that's
a whole. Yes, that is a whole another issue. But
to kind of give context of of what Buckhead is
red lining, that's not a question, that's just a observation.
And so sitting directly next to her is Dustin Hillis,

(17:48):
who like is known for not paying attention ever, except
except they did both pay attention after public comment when
police gave their testimony on what happened the night previous,
and then these two people were very engaged. We will
hear more from Mary Norwood ontologically evil in a bit,

(18:09):
but first I have to staw Jesus Christ fucking fuck Jesus.
My cats are just running amuck. All right. We will
hear more from Mary Norwood ontologically evil in a bit,
but first I have to I have to include some

(18:31):
of Councilman Antonio Lewis's response after Police Chief Darren Cherbaum
gave his little presentation at city council because I don't
think I've ever heard January sixth, the Atlanta Way, and
six Flags all get mentioned in the same sentence before
it look like January six I ain't never seen police
run from a group of people, and so the only

(18:52):
thing I could think about when I saw that video.
I saw it on Ato Scoop, the videos all out there.
I've been seeing it all over and when I saw
the police officers run, I mean I was a little nervous.
When I saw the heat map, I saw a hundred people,
I saw it. I saw it. I mean like that
ain't the Atlanta Wait. I mean, I ain't never seen.

(19:13):
I'm just thinking about the At the same time, at
six Flags, we had some young men that were fighting
at some of our teenagers fighting at six Flags. They
didn't run up on the police. They didn't run up
on the police with molatail cocktails throwing to burn up stuff.
What I will say, I thank you so much for
last night for working. I want to really commend the
officers because y'all were under some immense pressure and to

(19:37):
not see a gun fire back because when I see
the firecrackers, I'm I'm from Cleveland Avenue. If they throw
firecrackers at me, I don't know those firecrackers. I've never
seen that. So I appreciate APD for doing that. Truly,
truly a stunning admission, just perfect. So I had to

(19:58):
listen to Atlanta Police Chief Darren Sheerbomb's testimony a few
times for the five episodes that were released earlier this month,
so I didn't really feel like fully listening through again
to find any you know, funny bits to put in
this episode, so I just kind of like skimmed through
while multitasking, and weirdly enough, I noticed that the chief

(20:19):
said some pretty shocking things that I somehow just must
have missed in my previous viewings, so I will play
those for you now, and I will warn you it
is pretty disturbing. Like all the subjects we put on air,
their statements do not reflect our opinions or the official
position held by whatever current company owns this podcast. So yeah,

(20:39):
like I said, warning, these are shocking, but I will
let the chief speak for himself. Take aggressive action against
these officers, moved to the front gate or seller, inflict
bidally harden upon them, launch you illegal and criminal attacks,
attack members of law enforcement, bring harm to our officers.
These attacks are going to contin pretty pretty shocking stuff

(21:02):
coming from a police chief to Jesus, But that is
only the tip of the iceberg. Because to my surprise,
after public covet was over and all the news cameras
left after I left, and you know, everyone everyone left
the building, it turns out Darren sheer Bomb gave a
second testimony at the very end of the city council

(21:24):
meeting that I just completely missed until until now. So
I will warn you it is kind of lewd in nature.
So if you want to skip past lewd police conduct,
just fast forward like a minute or two. But anyway,
without without further ado, here is the secret recently unearthed
second testimony presented by Atlanta Police Chief Darren Sheer. Bomb

(21:47):
person Ship. Members of the Council would like to brief
you on EVINSA transpired yesterday. I don't want to let
the video play here. Why I walked through each of
the situations. What you see here is of our partners
at the Dcap County Police Department, the Share Fulton County,
as well as a Georgia State Patrol. We're seeing changing
out of the clothes that they were wearing. They're going
to position themselves when it appears to be an attempt

(22:09):
to keep pursuing the officers this as the officers see these,
we had a rapid response from our partners as well
as to change their clothing. Different groups were performing acts
within the manner of their training and their discipline at
this time. Our officers repositioning themselves inside of our partners.
These officers had been stationary to ensure that they are

(22:30):
being restrained. The officers are on city property and are
positioning themselves and repositioning themselves to be prepared to go
back in. Our officers are showing great restraint. They remained
in a position. It's what you see here as a
lieutenant that is discharging. We're very fortunate that that was
the outcome, and I want to commend every man and

(22:52):
woman on duty yesterday as they stood in the gap
to do their job. Those officers entered our partners, and
what you see here, ladies and gentlemen, is as some
of the individuals that had just previously entered into those officers,
they start changing back into the clothes that they were
just wearing moments before. Just last nine officers of this department,

(23:14):
as well as the Cap County to Georgia State Patrol
and the Sheriff's Department moved in it. And I want
to think of the men and women again of the
Atlanta Police Department, the Georgia State Patrol, the Sheriff's Department,
as well as at the Cap County Police Department for
the professionalism that they demonstrated throughout the night and to
the early hours of this morning while many of us
were asleep, they continue to work through the night. I've

(23:36):
never seen that, so I appreciate APD for doing that.
I would have loved for every one of those very
hysterical people that we've been sitting listening to for two
or three hours to have seen an actual video of
what really did happen. And there may be great reasons
if the administration chose to do it this way, but
our media is gone and all the people that needed

(23:58):
to see this are gone. I'm glad that nobody was
hurt and none of our none of our employees were
hurt yesterday. Oh boy woo him. Oh well, that was
That was certainly something I did not did not want
to know that much about what the the APD and
their partners get up to after hours. Anyway, Um, back
to our regularly scheduled comedic japes. I know a sheer

(24:22):
bomb was was addressed with some questions by Unicorn Riot
when he was trying to exit, which he then did not.
He gave a very frustrated face and then denied answering
and promptly left the building. Ah well, in the company
of the New York Times journalist Oh with with with
a friend of the show, Sean Keenan. So that was

(24:44):
that was a That was most of Monday. Yeah, that
is everything that happened on Monday. So what Monday evening? Um,
I went home to start working on article. What did
you do Garrison. I went to the poem in the Woods.
I got to share my memory of the VeggieTales esther
story starring the tickle Monsters. I got to bond with

(25:05):
the few ex evangelicals about that, so that was fine.
Then there was an experimental noise show in the forest,
and then you had a tragic neck injury on Monday night.
So Tuesday, UM, the group that we followed left out
of the church and went to Norfolk Southern UM, which
is one of the funders of APF and a friend

(25:27):
of the environment UM in Ohio. When they finished reading
the letter, like all they asked was that the letter
go to the CEO, and they denied that and all
they had to do was accept it and and move on.
But they, while people were inside the security called NS police.
And if you're wondering, you're like, you know, NS police,

(25:50):
that's not in Atlanta, that is in the city in Atlanta.
What could that be? That is the Norfolk Southern Police,
who are legally allowed to arrest people. And we we
thankfully we avoided going to Norfolk Southern Police jail, um
going to Norfolk Southern Court, which certainly would have been
a very legitimate court. I mean it would have been

(26:10):
almost as legitimate as the real court that that's the
bail hearing has happened. At that same day, after successfully
evading Norfolk Southern Jail, Matt and I headed downtown for
a march that was accompanied by a cadre of over
one hundred officers. Pinning this crowd onto the sidewalk, got

(26:30):
a hoole police cars blocking the sidewalk like a Doorida
State University canine unit. This blocking off the entire sidewalk
next to a Fulton County Sheriff's vehicle. I like the
cops are just also commanding the corporate media on where
they can stand and that whatever, like boomer journalists with whatever,
like mainstream Newslet was very peered off at this cop

(26:53):
for telling you to get on the sidewalk. The next day,
a smaller crowd met up at the same spot and
broke off into little subgroups to walk around downtown Atlanta
and hand out defend the forest to leaflets. So all
the little subgroups kind of meet up on Andrew Young
and Peach Tree, right next to the Hooters and the

(27:15):
hard Rock Cafe, classic examples of Atlanta food. There was
an Atlanta SWAT vehicle parked outside of the Hooters FU
outside of fucking hard Rock Cafe. So I can't keep
picking up the copyrighted music. But there's biga Atlanta Police
swat vehicle parked on the block by the Atlanta Police

(27:39):
Foundation head quarters. All right, there's actually a pretty decent
number of people gathered here for the flowering event today.
They're at the Peach Tree and Young International Boulevard intersection,
right across from the Hooters and the Hard Rock Cafe.
There's a SWAT vehicle parked right behind us. There is
about I don't know, twenty to thirty officers a little

(28:00):
bit to our north, you know, normal police response to
people handing out flyers. Just fifty officers and the SWAT team.
Lieutenant Neil Welch approaches the crowd and gives them a
dispersal order. They cross the street, walk like a black
north past some of the cops that are guarding the
Wells Fargo building. Um. At this point, people chanted the

(28:21):
cops to quit your jobs. Quite your ard, chop, and
one of the cops guarding the Wells Fargo says, that's
actually a good idea. You could always quit your job. Yeah,
I already tried, and he's like, I tried to and

(28:42):
they wouldn't let me. But like, I don't like laughing,
but that one got me. That one got The cop
responded like not in like a glib tone like he
was it was actually actually he wanted serious, like like yeah,
that's actually yeah, that's actually a good idea extremely funny moment.
While this is happening, Uh, there's another group who comes

(29:04):
in to the side of Peatree Center Mall and enters
the mall to find Mayor Andre Dickens. Andrew Dickens is
like the head of some kind of like board or something. Yeah.
There there are a couple boards in Atlanta that stipulate
the mayor is like the head of the board, and
this is one of them. And it meets in Peatree
Center Mall as one does. So the mayor is having

(29:27):
a meeting in the mall. It is office spaces, you know,
sort of above the mall, and so so three indigenous
activists along with Camal Franklin arrive and they find the mayor.
They enter the board meeting and they begin to read
this letter from the miscoge Nation allowed Mayor Dickens in
true mayor fashion, bolts away from this, running through an

(29:52):
exit door which is then like blocked by a guard
which I think that has its own like set of
legal issues, essentially just ignoring them over his shoulder. He
calls out, I've I've got a copy of the letter
and hides just completely trying to escape what is not
a good look for him. This this is what we
call a Ted Wheeler moment. So mayors, so as this happens,

(30:17):
I think like a like Apex Squat is deployed. They
so Apex and Swat had had been elsewhere and they
were called back to their vehicles, um like right before this,
and then the activist exit and almost like in this
very comical moment, after they get out in a way, uh,
squads of of these special units start rushing into the building,

(30:42):
of course, finding no one. Charlie Chapman asked, shit truly okay,
even a more future version of Garrison here. Apparently I've
been told by Daniel that his name is Charlie Chaplin.
I don't know he's a pedophile, so whatever, Charlie not
Dani oh boy, um, And I do want to say

(31:06):
I did try multiple times to take Matt to the
hard Rock cafe or the Hooters either one. Um, and
and he refused my offer multiple times, very very rudely. UM.
So at some point when I'm back in Atlanta, I
will have to gather a troop of em boys and
head over to the Hooters anyway. Uh. Next was the

(31:27):
Community Movement Builders rally on the evening of Thursday, March ninth,
which had fewer jokes that night. But there are a
few embarrassing recording bloopers at the expense of my own ego,
So I will play those for your amusement. You absolute
sec fox. Um, it is a kind of raining. We'll

(31:53):
see how many people show up and how how large
the police response will be in comparison. So what what
what could happen here? Well, it could happen here? A
podcast by Robert Evans. We are at the site of

(32:13):
the Martin Luther King Memorial. Did you see the two
Sandy Springs police buses? I did see the Sandy I
lived in Sandy Springs for a year and STA brought
back some memories. But yes to Sandy Springs police busses.
H Sandy Springs, of course, being um, mostly outside of
the perimeter. Um. A good A good drive from here.
That was good. That was good, all right, poggers, absolutely poggers.

(32:40):
The police police has a has been stating, well, never mind,
I cut that. What am I saying, um big puddle
on the street demonstrating the city's commitments to infrastructure. That
was That was a joke because the drawing was ploked.
I accidentally turned off my my, my recording. But tripping

(33:02):
on foostairs, they're so they're so close together, they're just
sandwiched in. Got a New York Times reporters standing in
the middle of the street. Of course, the only person
allowed to stand in the street the one, the one
New York Times reporter. I would estimate almost about a kilometer.
But I'm Canadian, so that's not very helpful to you,

(33:24):
do you us listeners? The real outside adjuctaters is Sandy
Springs police. Yeah, the police were ready to mass rest
the entire time. UM, I don't know if you mentioned this.
So in between the police line in front of the
APF building and the protesters was essentially like a mixture

(33:45):
of Copwatch and National Lawyers Guild and a CLU because
of course you had to have like both both legal
observer factions just to make sure everybody's watching each other. Still,
you can watch lgu the West rerested. Who can watch
a sial you get arrested. It's turtles all the way
down in Bigle observers all the way down. Heho and

(34:19):
we are back. That's great, all right. One of the
stops on the tour of the Wannie Forest that Joe
Perry was doing throughout the week was the area of
the land swap between the former owner of Blackhall Studios,
Ryan Millsap, and the Cabot County's Entrenchment Creek Park. So
on one side there's this beautiful forested park that Ryan

(34:40):
Millsap wants to trade for. Then on the other side
is this massive mound of dirt that he currently owns,
which is right next to Bouldercrest Road. That's a huge,
huge dirt field that you see. And what what happened
is while that swap was being orchestrated, Black Hall was
bringing thousands and thousands and thousands of dump truck loads

(35:03):
of dirt and just filling it up, filling it up,
filling it up. And somebody else is gonna have to
do the math. But I don't know, if you say,
like fifteen acres of dirt that is twenty feet plus high.
How much dirt that is? That's a lot. It's not natural.
It's not something that's helping this flood prone area. All

(35:24):
that's gonna run into here no matter how many silt
fences you put up. So that's what they're calling Michelle obamapart.
That's exactly exactly right. If somebody needs to talk to
Michelle and saying no, you need to take your name
off of that one, I don't know who who got
away with apathetic, that's not it. By the way, you're

(35:46):
seeing the most picturesque side of that piece of land. Yeah,
you get to the top, it's worse. It's just it's
just it's garbage. Well the thing, and it is literally
garbage because a lot of this stuff, this dirt cape.
You know, Ryan millsap has he is. He's not a
movie mogul. He's he's a land baron. He's in real

(36:08):
estate and he's made billions of dollars in real estate,
and so that dirt comes from other properties. He's he's
digging up a place on you know, a boulevard to
put some apartments in. He's pulling dirt out of there.
That's what's coming in here. That's dirt coming from all
these other construction sites you have that is not top soil.
You can and I believe me, I'm not saying I'm

(36:28):
not making that up. I've been over there and I've
walked and I've seen what's in there. I've seen water
heaters in there. I've seen gutters in there, I've seen pipes,
I've seen all kinds of frap. It's trash. It's a
big trash mountain. That's what they want to have be
Michelle Obama Park and hanging half so um, yeah, that's
I just wanted you to kind of lay your eyes

(36:50):
on what the County thought was a good idea, in
what black Hall thought. Of course, you know, Ryan mill
is a great idea for Ryan millsap because the land
that he acquired is we're way more millions more. It's
now worth millions more than when he made the swap.
So he has made a lot of money on this swap,
and that's why he's angry that he can't get his

(37:11):
hands on it. Yet. Nobody knows what he's going to
do with it, because the original agreement between him and
the county was that he was going to build movie
studios on that land. Well he can't now because he
sold his rights to the movie studios to a company
that's now called Shadowbox. They're the ones that owns his
previous studios, so he can't have a rival company right

(37:32):
across the street from them. So he hasn't said and
nobody knows exactly what he's going to do with the property.
If he wins his court case and gets those forty
eight crews, who knows. It's a mystery. So that's where
that stands right now. Hopefully we win the lawsuit. If
we do, he will be he will have to put

(37:53):
the bill for repaving the path and redoing the parking
lot and putting a new gazebo in. That's what the
judge decree. That's why they said we don't need a
restraining or is this all that is replaceable? So except
for the trees that he tore down, you know those
are going to take another seventy five years, but who's counting.
The fate of Michelle Obama Park is still up in

(38:15):
the air as of time of recording. So yeah, I'm excited,
excited to visit that if the land swap gets past
almost done. We're gonna We're gonna briefly, briefly tap back
into my conversation with Matt from the Atlantic Community Press Collective,
and then unfortunately our jokes must come to an end.
I think one thing that's been lost in all of

(38:36):
this too is all of the lightheardered events that have
continued to go on through the week. And you know,
we have this this, this youth rally or there's the
youth rally that's happening on Saturday. Were of course recording
this beforehand, and like the joy of the movement that
was represented in the Bouncy Castle rip which was first

(38:58):
pointed at I had pointing and we haven't talked about
the guns, talk about talked about the guns in the
Bounty Castle. So so one thing I think that that
we didn't mention. How can you forget about the guns
and the bouncy Castle. Um so, when when the police

(39:18):
came running up onto the tarmac at RCA Field where
the Bounty Castle was, of course they had to point
a rifle at the Bounty 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 castle, um which they

(39:43):
have they destroyed, and I think we have to take
a moment to mourn that. Did they destroyed or like
defleet it? I think they destroyed. It wasn't like a
rental or something. Yes, So r ip Bounty House. You
will be missed and all the joy that you represented. Uh,
my girlfriend's texting me cringe. Let me let me check

(40:09):
my my note in case Garrison doesn't cut this. Ask
about Garrison's neck? What? Mhm, what what'd you say? Ask
about what Garrison did Friday fire, burn tower Saturday, gress

(40:30):
from park Sunday, Monday noon Tuesday? All right, all right, okay,
I'm gonna just gonna look through my other notes app
because I keep my notes in three different notes apps
because I'm normal. So one thing that's been notable, UM,
especially in how the police talk about the forest, is

(40:50):
they've begun using like these these militarized terms, like the
denial of um operating area that we saw when Ryan
mill SAP was important to Cap County, he said. The
GBI told him to clear the area, to deny operating space,
and you know the use of terrorism, Like there's there's

(41:14):
some eerie parallels between the language that was used to
describe insurgencies in countries that America is invading or the
United States is invading, and a lot of that language,
like the military equipment that was used there has come
home and it is now being used against Americans engaged

(41:35):
in like these liberation struggles. I wonder where we've talked
about that before. I don't know it could happen where
speaking of it is still happening. The last week, approximately
five hundred people came out to City Hall as the
city Council is now in the process of voting to
approve public funds for the Cop City project. Nearly three

(41:56):
hundred people signed up for public comment, with hundreds more
or waiting in line. Public comment lasted seven hours, and
during so not a single person voiced support of using
taxpayer money to fund the police training facility. The Atlantic
Community Press Collective have recently reported that the proposed city

(42:17):
funds toward the Cops City project have ballooned to a
minimum of fifty one million dollars, with the thirty million
dollar package awaiting final vote in City Council, plus another
at least twenty million dollar chunk to be given to
the Atlanta Police Foundation via a quote unquote loan, which
indicates that the Atlanta Police Foundation's private fundraising has not

(42:40):
gone as well as they initially had hoped. For more
on that, I'd recommend checking out The Press Collective's recent
article from May twenty fourth, and you can also donate
to them to support their continued reporting of the happenings
in Atlanta. You can find us on Twitter at Atlanta
Underscore Press. Our website is atl Press Collective dot com

(43:01):
and you can find our Instagram at atl Press Collective.
We have partnered with Open Collective. We are fiscally sponsored
now by Open the Open Collective Foundation UM in a
way to transparently fundraise UM in order to sustain our
reporting UM. Everything up until actually the Week of Action
UM we've everything that we have done up until the

(43:24):
Week of Action was all unpaid and UM. It is
our desire to continue to grow with the movement, and
so we were excited to find a partner in the
Open Collective Foundation that can uh continue that sort of
horizontal open um organizing that that we have done internally Okay, yeah,

(43:46):
I think I think. I think we're good. I think
we have a good job team. It could Happen years
a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or

(44:07):
check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for
It could Happen here, updated monthly at Coolsonmedia dot com
slash sources. Thanks for listening.