August 24, 2023 • 47 mins
As the Week of Action comes to a close, a resurgent wave of direct actions happen across the country.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome back to it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis.
This is part two of my mini series about what's
been happening this summer in Atlanta to stop cop City.
Last episode we left off with the attempted march from
Gresham Park to Entrenchman Creek Park, which some might say
was a disappointment, but it also gave everyone more clarity
about the current state of these types of direct action
(00:28):
marches in Atlanta and the necessity for evolution. The main
event on Thursday, June twenty ninth was a protest outside
the Home Depot in the upscale retail district off of
Ponce de Leon Avenue. Home Depot is one of the
Atlanta Police Foundation's financial backers.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
There had been a rumor that Home Depot was going
to be close earlier in the day. I got there
four thirty. It wasn't closed, so I didn't see any signage.
So I went and parked my car and came back
and like, I think I got out there for fifty
and people were starting to line up along the road, like, uh,
there's a Starbucks. And they were lining up along ponts
(01:07):
next to the Starbucks. And you know, I'm I'm talking
to them watching this. They're chanting, they're they're pulling out banners,
and we get a call that they are arresting Lorraine Fontana.
So Lorraine Fontana is a seventy six year old activist
in Atlanta, and she's great like she she pops up everywhere.
She's beloved by everyone. And so we get this call
(01:31):
that Lorraine Fontana is being arrested, and I bolts as
far as my little legs will take me, and then
I have to stop and catch my breath, like right
before I get there. But Lorrain and one other person
were arrested in the parking lot right outside the Home
Depot store.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Is here and not want anybody protests in the store.
When they start reading, now the layer.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I asked them to boy headed said the practices.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
And the time I also issued them.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
As learning, telling them there how people cannot want their faces.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Or define side.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
After protesters left the store, they stood by a corner
in the parking lot to holding signs, where they were
then approached by APD officers, who then arrested two people
without warning.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
It does kind of just show APD like basically doing
exactly what they would with anyone except in this case
it's a seventy six year old woman who's like five
or four eleven or something like that, Like yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Yeah, no, I mean it was a lot of people
were like surprised that this happened, Like how could the
police do this? I think others were like not as surprised,
be like no, it's the APD. They like it was
a good demonstration for people being like showing that they
do not care. They don't really care if you're a
seventy seven year old woman or if you're a nineteen
(02:56):
year old eco terrorist, they're gonna treat you roughly the same. Yeah.
After Lorraine's arrest, more and more people began showing up
across the street from home Depot calling for their divestment
from the Atlanta Police Foundation.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
It got up to like thirty maybe forty people mostly
just like chanting on the sidewalks sidewatch, but then they
started to like walk back and forth when when the
crosswalk was like there, yeah, and they were they were
pushing the limit, like seeing seeing what they could get.
But there was also my favorite part was the APD
officer who was sitting in his I'm sorry. My favorite
(03:34):
part was fuck I gotta do this about breaking down
in the middle.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I did hear a little bit about this? All right?
Take three? Take three.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
There was the APD officer that was sitting in his
ford explore on Ponts and at one point he calls
out on his you know, loud speaker, I'm not an idiot.
I swear I'm not an idiot. While he's backing up
on Ponts with his lights on, just like what are
you doing?
Speaker 1 (04:05):
People are asking a lot of questions they already answered,
I'm on an idiots shirt. Oh it was great.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
So I caught like the briefest snippet of that audio, thankfully.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
That's funny. On Thursday night, after the Home Depot rally,
there was a jail vigil around ten pm for Lorraine
at the Rice Street Fulton County Jail.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
So there there are two jails. There's Atlanta City Detention
Center and then there's Fulton County Jail, which we just
call Rice Street because it's off off Rice Street. So
when you get charged with criminal trespassed, it's like a
misdemeanor charge, and typically you would go to Atlanta City
Detention Center, which still a jail is still terrible, but
relatively like better. Okay, Fulton County Jail is you know, atrocious,
(04:54):
it is h you know, Leshawan Thompson. Of course that
the guy who was eating a lot in his cell
by bugs because of neglect, that is Rice Street Jail.
That's the Fulton County Jail. That's the Fulton County Jail.
So we get worried that Lorraine is at Fulton County
Jail and not ACDC, which is pretty striking. So everybody
(05:17):
goes down to do a jail vigil and noise demo
for context.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Last September, Lashawan Thompson, a thirty five year old man,
was found dead after spending three months in an infested
Fulton County Jail psychiatric cell. His body was covered in
a thousand bug bites and insects were found in his mouth, ears, nose,
and all across his body. Such inhumane incidents are not
in irregularity in Fulton County Jail. Just earlier this month,
(05:45):
a thirty five year old named Christopher Smith died in
Fulton County Jail. He had been held in custody since
October sixth, twenty nineteen, without bond on several unspecified felony
and misdemeanor charges, according to the County Sheriff's office. Last month,
a nineteen year old girl died in Fulton County custody
after being arrested on a minor misdemeanor charge. This past
(06:07):
year alone, six people have died in the Fulton County
jail system. People in Atlanta have been doing jail vigils
and noise demos for years and it's never really been
a problem. Cops might tell people to move off to
the side if the crowd gets to a certain size,
but they have typically gone on without issue. But this
time Fulton County deputies came out and declared that people
(06:29):
are not allowed to protest outside the jail and ordered
everyone to completely leave the parking lot and go all
the way to the other side of this big hill
off of Rice Street to jail property in order to
continue protesting, which no one was really keen on doing.
So this kind of game of chicken began.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
They eventually they pull on a bunch more sheriff's deputies
and threatened arrest, So people started making their way up
the hill, linking arms and get to the top of
the hill and they're they're met with another group of
protesters who had tried to come down, but they were
stopped by police at the top of the hill. So
now the crowd size like essentially doubled. Yeah, and the
(07:11):
energy just goes through the roof. You know, both sides
are just going back and forth. This This deputy is
like completely overmatched, doesn't really They didn't seem like Fulton
County had a plan. You know, usually APD or the
cab they have some sort of protest planned. Fulton was
flying by the seat of their pants. And so all
(07:32):
of our cars were down at the bottom of the hill.
They were back in the right street parking lot. And
this this becomes like an issue because some of the
protesters cars are there, all of the media cars are there,
like down at the bottom of this.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Hill, and.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
They're not letting anyone go down there. And this woman
shows up to like put I think money on her
son's commissary car and they don't let her.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Now she is like they're just shutting down j oracial loud,
yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
So they finally first they're like we're gonna let you
go down one by one, and everyone's like hell no,
like we are not trusting you.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, sure, sure, sure, buddy, let's go. Let's isolate, isolated
move through this police fortress in an isolated vennor.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Here. Uh So then they're like, okay, you can go
as a group. Yeah, okay, as long as you have
your vehicles down there, you can go as a group.
So they slowly start to make their way down.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
They do not see in the next five minutes we
want to start. We have to do.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
They get all the way to the bottom hill. They're
in the parking lot and just like on the edge
of where the cars are, and they kind of stop moving,
and the shriff's deputy is like, yeah, I gotta keep moving,
and so they start moving again and then stop again,
and then the shriff's deputy says, all right, get them,
and so then the deputy start moving in to make
a rest. And quickly, you know this, this march kind
(08:59):
of becomes this backward moving thing.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeah I can't see that.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
I'm moving my hands to showgasson, but it becomes this
backward moving thing up up the hill.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
That's the bottom line.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
I couppoted be you in the street, who will.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Be taking ample cush, get out the street, Get out
the street.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Screen will be taking in the crowd was able to
leave before anyone was detained, but it was a quite
tense situation. The sort of dynamic we saw at the
jail vigil and home depot protest led it directly into
the next event on Friday morning, a previously announced second
protest outside of Cadence Bank in Midtown calling on Cadence
(09:39):
Bank to cancel the Atlanta Polace Foundation's twenty million dollar
construction loan. All Right, people had a protest on Friday
morning at Cadence Bank in Midtown Atlanta. There's maybe like
around a dozen people here, uh, chanting outside of the building.
Also about a dozen ap the officers walking walking down
(10:02):
from up the street, preparing to meet the crowd. They're
moving in closer that they're walking in again people still.
I don't think anyone's even touched touched the class door.
Most of the people are just standing here on the sidewalk.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
You know that game you play with your cats where
they come at you but they stop when you're watching them.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, that's the game we're playing. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
we turn away the cops advanced We like this is
also like half of like the Loony Tunes gags. Is
this they're doing a Michelin frog, all right, and they're
they're now on the King's Bank property. They're start starting
to advance. Police were yelling at people that they couldn't
touch any of the steps leading up to the bank
(10:46):
entrance and that you weren't allowed to lean against any
hand rails because the metal pole was bank property. So
once again we got this little game of back and forth,
except one side has guns and the power to rescue properly.
(11:23):
This cup said in the crowds trying to incite a riot.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
It feels very much like what you saw. I guess
I'm Portland, obviously I wasn't there. Where there's an object
that becomes this sacred goal, and.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Then you're you're battling over the thing because the thing
has now been given.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
You've given something like me actual physical like presence, and
that is the thing that you are now fighting for.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
It becomes it.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Becomes a symbolic in front of a building. It don't matter,
but the police gave it significant.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Because the police turn it into this like symbolic thing,
it now means more than a just just being stabbed.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
So there was this camera guy who like kept kind
of stepping up and like pushing the envelope.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
And eventually or activists put one foot on the steps,
being like, Okay, if you're gonna come after us for
putting a foot on the bank steps, fine.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Come at us, like call the bluff.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah. So there was like people yelling at the CoP's
face for like forty five minutes, maybe maybe longer. Time
always stretches during these sorts of things. It's hard to
start to keep it's hard to keep a sense of
like temporal stability, even just during during weeks of action.
In general, it's always hard to keep a sense of
temporal stability. That's the sense of time warps around. Days
blend into each other. A day feels like a week,
(12:31):
a week feels like a day. It's it's very it
gets very fuzzy.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
It gets incredibly trippy, and you're like yeah, and the
exhaustion right like just nomounds.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
There's a lot of things that that feed into it.
Despite about a dozen people putting their foot on the
sacred steps, the police did not decide to arrest anyone
at this protest, and after about an hour of disruption,
the crowd departed. The week of action ended much like
(13:07):
the last one, with the final rally being the Youth
March back at Brownwood Park. Lorraine just got out on
bail and spoke about the jail conditions to the crowd
of one hundred or so people gathered in the park
on the morning of July first.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
And I don't want people to forget that our movement
is connected with lots of other stone, one of which
is prison abolition and the idea that our so quote
criminal justice system is such that people get just shoved
behind bars. We don't want to see them, We don't
(13:42):
care what happens to them. And even if they're not
hadn't gone to trial yet and they're in a jail
awaiting hearing or awaiting a trial, they're treated like they've
already want the people that they're criminals, we don't have
to care as much about them. They're kind of the people.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Lorraine said that she was in a crowded holding cell
with twenty two other women and just a few metal benches,
nothing else. This is where nearly two dozen people had
to sleep, had to eat, used the bathroom, all in
one place for days on end. Women were trying to
sit or sleep on either of the hard benches or
(14:21):
the floor. Some were attempting to use menstrul pads in
place of a mattress. If they were lucky enough to
be asleep, they were woken up at two am for
breakfast and then again at four am for head counting.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
They were so full, I didn't have room for the
people that were being arrested, so they were in this
holding sale. Some of them been there three days. It
was something like eighteen feet by six feet across. The
last six feet were behind a divider that had a
toy as toy, so it was even less. The prison
(14:56):
system is every day doing these kind of being u
and treatment to people that get arrested or not yet
guilty of anything.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Student organizers and parents also briefly spoke on why people
are fighting against cop City. I don't want to live
in a city.
Speaker 5 (15:12):
I don't want to live in a country in a
world that prioritizes the protection of private property through murder
in state violence over the fundamental building blocks of life. Okay,
I think we need to be focusing on giving people
places to live, giving people food to eat, water to drink,
not on giving the police playgrounds where they can blow.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Up bombs and shoot their guns.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
And that's why all of us together here need to
come together, be as one here in beautiful community, with children,
with elders, everything in between, doing this amazing community. I
love being out here with y'all. It's so much fun
to just like be working the popcorn machines and all that.
And that's why we're all here together, because we know
that community is the key for us to stop cop City,
(15:58):
Stop cop City.
Speaker 6 (16:01):
And so as we fight to stop top City, we
are fighting for investment in the things that make families
thrive in this city.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Were telling all dreat chickens.
Speaker 6 (16:10):
We tell them little police foundations, and we command that
money be reinvested, and they're housing for the people, child
care for the people, education for the people, health care
for the people. But those are the things that make
our communities truly safe. And if they won't give it
to us, we're gonna build those networks of care in
our communities ourselves. That is what makes days like today
(16:34):
so beautiful, the fact that the people have the capacity
to feel and feed the people. The people have the
capacity to make sure that people say hi, drating. People
have the capacity to give each other medical care. And
as we build out those networks of care, we make
the government irrelevance.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
You try to tell us what they do all day long.
Speaker 6 (16:53):
But if we continue to build people's.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Power, well they have to say don't even matter. So
are you ready to build that kind of world? As
people got ready to depart, the energy was noticeably higher
than most other events that week. All right, it is
Saturday morning, on July first. This is the last day
of the sixth week of action of the Youth Rally.
(17:17):
Just left Brownwood Park and is now marching through East
Atlanta Village. Shortly before the Youth Rally, news started to
circulate that early early that morning, just after midnight, several
Atlanta police motorcycles and cop cars suffered mysterious damages, which
possibly could have contributed to the more bolsterous energy among
(17:40):
some of the radical attendees. People are driving by and
honking in support. As about seventy five people, maybe one
hundred or marked as about seventy five or one hundred
people are our marching next to Metropolitan Avenue.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Take a fire truck would pull their air horn.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
The fire trucks were kind of busy last night. Actually,
I'm not sure the fire trucks were busy doing what
There's well it seems like a lot of police motorcycles
were found to be set on fire at the sight
of the old Police Trading Academy.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Sounded like some police suck cruisers were wrecked somewhere else
in the city too.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
On Memorial Drive Southeast, it sounded like three cop cars
were also smashed up. Is you think there's something going around?
Is it contagious? So, yeah, the fire crews were a
little bit busy last night.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Spontaneous vehicle vandalism.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Yeah, that's certainly one way to end this week of action.
This definitely feels like the most positive part of the
Week of action so far. Yeah, people have been marching
for about twenty minutes now. The march is now turned
(19:02):
down Glenwood and is heading back towards Brownwood Park. No
police presence at all so far. There was just complete
I've not seen a single cop car in this in
this section of town. There's also three less cop cars
in Atlanta than there usually is, so that might have
something to do with it.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
It was from this zone too, that the second one
where the cop cars are it was like a mile
and a half away.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah, it's very very close, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Very different than what we saw on last Saturday, Yes
where I like, even on my way in, I saw
APD here every you know, twenty feet yeah, and do
not see a single Nope. APD vehicle is notable.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
The youth rally that closed the last week of action
in March kind of felt like the end of an era.
This one on July first felt very different, much more
like the beginning of a new era. After a very
scattered week, the movement finally started to feel like it
had multiple directions to grow. This week definitely started on
(20:10):
I would say, a muted note, and it's ended with
a bit more directionality for the future and a bit
more positivity.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
I think.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
I think people were able to think of ways that
the movement can evolve and grow from here and recognize
the necessity for that and now change and yet recognize
the necessity for change, and people are ready to continue
and evolve as the situation on the ground is also changing.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
And I mean adaptability was was a part of the
movement from the get go. Yes, just I think we
got the movement got very tied to certain modes of
operation that are not available anymore.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
You know, for the past like a few months, people
have been it felt like people have been playing on
the police's like board like they've been They've been following that,
and both both of the actual last night and the
sort of talks that are happening throughout the city. I
think that is probably going to change. All right. We
are about a block away from Brownwood Park on Portland
(21:11):
Avenue and Gresham Avenue, where there is pizza and water waiting.
That is, that is I'm excited for water. I don't
think I can have hot pizza right now. I think
I would just faint. But cold water is certainly, certainly,
enticely certainly. Yeah, and there's music back here in Brownwood.
(21:33):
Tables set up, giving out literature, giving out food, water,
lots of bubbles. Earlier, earlier, at the earlier, at the
rally before the march, there was a water balloon fight
which was very dangerous.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah, I left it. I don't know why you've stayed
around the water move. I took my laptop and left.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
There was there was there was a few very close
moments there. But yeah, no, there's food. There's lots of signs, banners,
lots of a lot of Little Caesar's pizza. There was
much more energy here compared to the Kickoff rally, which
happened in the very same park exactly a week beforehand,
which felt sort of reversed from the previous week of
(22:11):
action this past March, which is interesting because like last
week of action, you know, the kickoff rally was like
the biggest thing, was the biggest energy point, and the
youth rally was kind of the more like muted clothes
And this has kind of been inversed.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Which honestly, for when you're looking at like what has
happened over the last few months, maybe reading leaning out
with a high note is yeah, is the ideal.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
We're also ending with the bouncy castle, which is very
very important.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah, for the full flip, we have to end with
the bouncy castle.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yes, although we should move the bouncy castle to eight
ninety Memorial Drive Southeast, oh my god. Stop. After the
youth rally, Matt and I got some coffee in Eastern
It's a Village and talked about the broad strokes of
the week and the general state of the movement. Like
(23:05):
I said, I think this week started with a lot
of questions being had, and it's ended with some of
those questions being being answered and people figuring out that
to answer some of some of those other questions that
the answer will will will take the form of actions
that happened in these next few months. And I feel
like there's it's it's it's ended with a bit more
(23:26):
directionality than when it began, which is interesting for a
week of action.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, it was needed, though.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
It was absolutely needed. Like at like the first rally
just felt so weird that for the first tick offf
rally that the first day, that the first few days
felt just very very like very scattered. It was unclear
how what was happening was related to stop in Coff City.
And in some ways, this week of action feels like
the reverse of the last week of action, where like
(23:54):
the last week of action, it started with a point
of directionality, like we are going to retake Wallani and
they did. And then they're like, we are going to
do an action to physically stop the construction of cop City,
and they did, like they was doing all these things.
And I think that week ended with more questions than
what it started with because the police did the rate
(24:14):
of the forest, there was a lot of there was
more uncertainty by the end of the week because there
was so much over policing. There was a lot of
a lot of changes through throughout that week. And I
think this week started in like an inverse is people
started this week with a directionless sense, and they had
a lot of questions going into this week, and I
feel like some people have started to kind of figure
out how the movement will evolve in these next few months,
(24:37):
and it feels like people have a better idea of
where of like how they're going to move forward in
these next three months six months, and like the month
and a half when construction is slated to begin in
August later to.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Begain and you know, this referendum is looking like it's
doing pretty well, so hopefully that that does delay. But yeah,
of course we also ended with the bouncy casts. We
can't do it so acknowledging the importance of bouncy castles
to this movement, or at least to Garrison, And I yes, I.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Think the other thing that makes it interesting in terms
of this week being an inverse of the last week
is that you know, on the last week, day two,
there was this very fiery action with vehicles being smashed,
and then on the second to last day, which is
like late last night, either like late Friday night or
(25:31):
early Saturday morning, at like one am, two am, there
was three Atlanta police cars smashed by Reynoldstown I believe.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah, just right like a mile and a half away
from from Brownwood Park.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
YEP and close to the airport at the old Police
training Academy. There was a it looks like a good
fleet of Atlanta Police motorcycles.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yeah, that's where the motorcycle Like, that's where the motors.
The credit quarters is outside and those motorcycles are going
to be no longer functioning.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yes, they are all charged to a crisp with like
incendiary devices found there. Yeah. One of the most noticeable
differences about this week of action compared to the previous
one was the turnout. Out of state support did not
show up in similar numbers as to the last week
of action in March. There's a lot of potential reasons
for this. This week may have simply happened too soon,
(26:20):
It coincided with other events across the country. Its messaging
may not have reflected an adequate level of planning. There
was probably some demoralization from the ninety acres of trees
cut down and with entrenchment, Creek Park closed and under
police occupation. Launching options in Atlanta was more of a
mystery for those coming from outside the city. More time
(26:43):
away from the death of Tortigita is probably also a factor.
People in Atlanta may have to reconcile that the movement
may not have as much widespread national support and all
the ground numbers as it did last March.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
This is the smallest week of action we've had in
over a year in Duisa memory.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
This is the smallest one I've I've reported on.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Right, Yeah, you know, I think it might have even
been comparable to the first week of action, like it
was around there, but it also felt more local.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
It did feel way more local.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Once you go from like something so big as the
last week of action to something more constrained, that is
that sets a like a vibe shift. Yeah, that I
think you've got to kind of come to terms with.
And it's one of those moments where you're like, Okay,
we are in a different paradigm.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yeah, Fewer numbers is not necessarily a bad thing. A
group of five to ten people can sometimes be much
more effective at doing certain things than a crowd of
two hundred or even a thousand. You just have to
specifically prepare for the numbers that you know that you'll have.
For such a long time, I felt like this was
(27:53):
this movement was extremely effective in delaying construction Like that
was like extremely effective deadline year and a half deadlines
kept getting pushed back every single thing. Like the occupation
was very good at doing what it attempted to do,
and at a certain point that became no longer viable.
And things are now changing gears. Yeah, and you have
(28:15):
to allow yourself that evolution like that. It has to
the same way people started occupying the forest in October
after the city council stuff in September twenty twenty one.
Like as the things change, you have to change your
tactics with it.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
And as I mean, as revolutionary strategy goes, that's just
that should be a baseline and adapting to what the
situation is and not what the situation what you want.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
It to be.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Yeah, And I think more people are talking about that
this week and realizing that like maybe even another week
of action does not make sense for this new paradigm
that we're existing in Atlanta. I've talked about the possibility
of changing the week of Action structure before in previous episodes,
and I really only brought that up because that's what
people were conveying to me at the time. And this
(28:59):
has continued to be a topic of debate both during
and since June.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
What do you do with the week of Action format?
And I know that we kind of talked about this
during the last YEP recap episode where you brought up
that that might have been the last Week of Action,
but it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
It wasn't because as I was making these episodes this
week of Action what was announced, I've heard more people
say that they don't think the week of Action format
is applicable Animore more. I've heard more people say that
than I did last week. What if Atlanta has kind
of outgrown this format? This format's proved to be very
useful in these past few years. There's been very positive parts,
(29:38):
it's been very negative parts. And what if there's time
for what if it's time for something like completely new,
something that the police don't know how to respond to.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Because something that matches the new paradigm.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, because that's the other thing. It's like people have
been doing this for like two years now, Like not
only have people gotten used to a pattern, but like
police have gotten used to a pattern, like police have
gotten very good at resting the week of action, like
they have they have had two years to practice, they
have they know how to do this now, So why
why keep playing on their battlefield?
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Like?
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Why why keep doing what APD is expecting you to do?
That's part of what's you know, interesting about this resurgence
of these nocturnal hit and run sabotages that are unannounced.
That we saw the ones earlier in this week with
the with the Brent Scarborough's machines. Then we saw the
APD vehicles get hit last night. So perhaps there there
will be more of that. Perhaps they'll be just new
(30:31):
things that we can't even predict, Like there's so many
other avenues that things could that things could go. Even
during the use March, Matt and I were wondering if
this new spike in sabotage actions would break the spell
and we'd see a return of this type of action
happening more frequently. You know.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
It's it's the sort of direct action that has really
been missing over the last several months.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Yeah, and no, and we've been talking about a lot
this past week We're talking about how there's been a
lot of these sorts of like nocturnal hit and run
direct actions, and late last night it seems like there
was a resurgence.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
So we'll see how that continues, you know, after the
Week of Action, if it continues, or if it was
a Week of Action inspired element. But I have a
feeling we'll see some of those continue to crop up.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Absolutely and this did indeed turn out to be the case,
all right. I will do my best to go over
a short list of the claimed attacks against contractors, building copcity,
(31:44):
and corporations that fund the Atlanta Police Foundation from after
this week of Action. On a July first, over half
a dozen Bank of America buildings in the Bay Area
where vandalized and a dozen or so ATMs were smashed.
In late June to early July, group of friends visited
the home of copp City architect Anthony Kenny in Norcross, Georgia,
(32:06):
while another group paid a visit to ambush Baseil Walla,
a member of the board of trustees for the Atlanta
Police Foundation. People painted messages around their homes and tires
were slashed. On the night of July second, Keith Johnson,
the Eastern Regional president for Brassfield and Gory, the contracting
firm who broadly oversaw the destruction of the forest and
(32:28):
who has decided to physically build cop City, also received
a mysterious visit late in the night. An unknown number
of people evaded security guards and spread blood red paint
around his pool and left a message reading cop City
will never be built. Drop the contract and you can't hide.
(32:48):
According to an online communicay, rotten fish and dirty motor
oil were left hidden somewhere on the property. Part of
the communicay, addressed to Keith reads quote, we know things
haven't been feeling great in the office. You're losing money,
subcontractors are upset. There are fractures everywhere in the cop
City project, and all of that weight and procarity is
(33:11):
on your fragile shoulders. Each time you think of us,
or see the reminders we left you, remember this is
your own doing. You can make all of this stop
by dropping the Copcity contract. On July fourth, in lieu
of fireworks, people claimed to have set two Brent Scarborough
machines on fire in broad daylight due to the lack
(33:35):
of security during daytime. Scarborough is the subcontractor who physically
leveled the ninety sum acres of forest in the Wallani.
The same day, in Michigan, Chase Bank ATMs were sabotaged
with glue and the bank was vandalized with messages of resistance.
Chase Bank's head of Regional Investment Banking serves on the
(33:55):
board of the Atlanta Police Foundation. And on July eighth,
a Bank of America in Berkeley was vandalized with stopcop
city slogans and three ATMs were smashed. During the start
of this little wave of actions, the Mayor's office and
APD were none too happy, so on July fifth, Mayor
(34:15):
Andre Dickens and Atlanta Police Chief Darren Scherbaum put on
a press conference with the ATS, Georgia Bureau of Investigation
and FBI to discuss the recent surge of direct actions.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
Our public safety facilities and property were the target of
an extremely violent and dangerous attack on Saturday, July first,
and there were several other destructive acts of extreme vandalism
on public and private properly property that occurred that we
have reason to believe are related to the construction of
(34:48):
the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center in Decab County the
current Atlanta Police Training Center at one eighty south Side
Industrial Parkway was set up in the early morning hours
of Saturday, July first. The targeted attack utilized extremely dangerous
(35:09):
homemade incendiary devices to set a fire to the building
and completely destroyed eight police motorcycle motorcycles. As shocking as
this is, this was not an isolated incident of violence.
This group actually took credit for these incidents and they
(35:29):
stated it as I quote, we are vengeful wing nuts
with nothing left to lose.
Speaker 7 (35:36):
Prior to that, about one hour prior to the event
of one of the south Side Industrial we had another
precinct that was targeted in the city. This is our
Path Force Precinct Memorial Drive and the eight hundred block
of the Memorial. These officers control the belt line which
many of you all visit frequently. At that location, we
had multiple windows broken on police vehicles. We believe the
intent was to set those vehicles on fire as well.
(35:57):
Half and fire off of the of the red fuse
on the ground that has been used by this group
in the past to set police vehicles on fire that
was dropped when a citizen observed the criminal actions progress
and actually interrupted the crimes that were occurring there. So
we believe that the fire attack that was planned on
Memorial Drive was thwarted by an observant citizen. A short
(36:18):
time later, about an hour, we had the fire at
our facility on Southside Industrial. Our training center has housed
there most recently, and then our special operations precinct is there.
The intent was for all forty to be destroyed, and
had all those forty vehicles caught on fire, that police
facility would have been gravely damaged, if not destroyed in
the fire. And we are thankful for a police officer
(36:39):
that saw this unfolding and likely interrupted that plan for
being able to play out in its fullness. There's an
indication that this was likely committed by the exact same intevisions.
We will let and see where the fact tickets.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
According to Chief Sheerbaum and Mayor Dickens, the actions against
Atlanta Police on July first, over the course of just
a few hours equaled over were three hundred thousand dollars
in damages.
Speaker 7 (37:03):
As we're around thirty five thousand, and they once you
outfit us a little bit more so, do that times eight,
that's going to put you in the ballpark yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
And that's not even including the rest of the smoke
and damage and other things, and the broken windows on
the police car, etc.
Speaker 7 (37:19):
So the group that struck this weekend is a dedicated
group of professional anarchists, and I know that may seem
a contradiction in terms. So this is a group of
individuals who don't pray, play by any rules, and we'll
go to any links they need to to carry out.
And this is their words. We will wage a campaign
of violence and destruction, and so what we saw this
weekend was part of that campaign.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
It's always funny when police make anarchists sound very cool
and scary. But Chief Scherbaum also pretty clearly explained the
reasoned methodology behind the pressure campaigns targeting contractors and APF
financial sponsors.
Speaker 7 (37:53):
We know from the postings of this group their intent
to stop the Public Safety Trading Center has left the
democratic pros sess of the city Council and is now
moving to intimidate and force out contractors that are committed
to building the Public Safety Training Center this weekend. During
the week of action, three different locations private residences were targeted.
(38:17):
Tires were flattened on contractors home, a home of an
executive for Brassalgory was significantly vanalyzed in another jurisdiction. And
then we had another location where graffiti was used to intimidate.
And then yesterday morning, slightly after seven o'clock in the morning,
a location at four eighteen McDonough Boulevard belonging to Brent
Scarborough's company, which is a key provider of work and
(38:38):
this training centers was also targeted and attacked and equipment
was set on fire at that location. These acts are
of a small, determined group. These are small individuals from
across the country that are using violence and fear and
intimidation to stop a public safety training center. And this
group cannot hide behind the dark of night or the
(38:59):
home address and feel that they are not going to
be held accountable. I have standing at this podium with
me today representings from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the ATF,
and we are also partner with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
These agencies are working together to determine where federal laws
violated this weekend and ensure that the full expertise of
American law enforcement is present right here in Atlanta to
(39:21):
stop this group. Stop this group across the region, stop
their ability to impact the public safety network of Atlanta
and hold them accountable.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Despite continued threats from law enforcement, the only arrests that
have happened so far in relation to this movement are
from daytime protests, forest raids, and bail fund organizers. We've
yet to see anyone arrested in Atlanta for doing like
a specific one of these nocturnal like nights sabotage actions.
(39:49):
That has not happened. Yeah, I mean, the scariest indictments
everyone's expecting are going to come in these next few years,
after you give the FBI two three, four years to investigate,
after you interview or people whove been arrested, see if
anyone stitches, if anyone turns state's witness. But so far,
it's been safer to do nocturnal sabotage actions than it
has been to attend a public protest. And that is
(40:13):
an interesting paradigm as well, is that no one's actually
got arrested for lighting like cop cars and fire in
the middle of the night. No one's been arrested for
sabotaging equipment in the middle of the night. All of
the arrests that are you know, are being tied to
like violent crime are from like daytime protests, which is
an interesting factor about this movement. Direct action in the
(40:36):
most surveiled city in America can be tricky, and even
just managing cell phones and Internet search data is a
huge factor. But as much real security there is out
in the world, the amount of security theater is arguably
a stronger aspect in getting people to not go out
and do direct action. The implicit threat of the panopticon
(40:57):
is often enough to stifle people's potential action, but these
things are beatable. Guides for how to do it exist
either at your local anarchist book fair or online as
long as the computer is running tour browser and a
reputable VPN. The Internet. The internet's a fun place. That's
there is a lot of no blogs and sites and
(41:19):
the zines that tell you how to do that. I
don't know, I mean they people always make mistakes, People
get caught, sometimes make mistakes.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
It's risky, and there are cameras everywhere in the city.
You have to Yeah, some of them, don't worry. But
it's like, do you really want to play Russian Roulette?
Speaker 1 (41:34):
No, that's a part of that's a part of when
people like plan these nocturnal actions is like just because
it's nighttime doesn't mean you're not sick getting watched or
you're not. Like it's there's a lot of things that
go into that. There's a lot of ways to get
got whether you're like buying supplies and you keep a
receipt and people please find a receipt, They track back,
they find security acount of you'll be purchasing things and
(41:55):
then they're like, oh, this bottle is bought it this
place because you have this receipt in your house and
blah blahlah blah blah. Like there's there's lots of ways
that that stuff happens. So like I'm not going to
give a guide on how to do it right now,
but like the anarchists have been doing this for a
long time. After you do that crime, you've never done
that crime. Like it's it's not something that you do
(42:16):
as a person, like you cease to become a person,
you become like you are that action.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
It is subsumed in the action, and then.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
And then it's you never talked about it ever again.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
It's gone or else you end up going to prison, yeah,
and risking like not just your safety, the safety, everyone's safety,
just by remembering that you did it.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
No, you know, like these become standards and anarchist communities
like you never brag about something, You never allude to
anything like it's it's it's not it's not a game
like you're it's not a game. You're it is your
your life and other people's lives on the line. When
when when you're doing stuff like this and it's yeah,
you you never do it to like cool. You never
(43:00):
do it to brag about it like that. That's just
not how this works, which is why there's kind of
a much more like kind of insular culture around some anarchists,
especially anarchists to identify as like illegalists or like the
types of like like green nihilists or green anarchists. That
kind of pioneered the militancy of this movement both slightly
(43:21):
even slightly before the first City Council vote and then
definitely after the first City Council vote where we saw
a massive explosion no pun intended in the number of
type of sabotages happening in the Wlani Forest. Yeah, which
I think that drew a lot of anarchists do come
to Atlanta because it was like, Oh, they're doing a.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Thing that's been the thing since the end of the
Green Scare.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Yeah, no, this is like the thing that I believe
in that this is like this is my politics. Now
there's a spot where I can do my politics. And
still no one's been caught for that. And I think
that was a big part of why Atlanta got so
big last year, was that people had the ability to
like live free in the forest and then do crazy
shit at night. Like you can you live in this
(44:03):
like autonomous zone during the day, You're able, whether you're
you have housing instability, whether you just want like an
escape from like horrible police state living. Like where in whatever,
wherever the city you're in, you can go live in
the Wilane Forest. You can live in a tent, you
can have friends, you can defend this force during the day,
(44:24):
and then you can do crazy, crazy shit at night.
And that drew a lot of people to Atlanta, and
now with the forest not being there, that also changes
that that changes the type of people who are come,
who are who want to come to the city because
that that was a big draw for people and now
that that's no longer an option, you can't really sleep
in the Wilani Forest as easily anymore. Yeah, that changes
the types of people who want to come to Atlanta
(44:44):
and who are gonna like do crazy shit because that's
just how And further on safety, they're not here. Yeah, no, absolutely.
As the referendum is hoping to stop cop City by
having Atlanta residents vote on whether to cancel the land lease,
other in the Diverse movement have continued their efforts to
pressure contractors and funders to drop out of the cop
(45:06):
City project. This tactic has already demonstrated its ability to succeed,
with Reeve's Young Construction dropping out of the project in
April of twenty twenty two, and some material suppliers have
since cut ties with cop City. This is something that
APD Chief Darren Shecherbaum certainly seems worried about.
Speaker 7 (45:26):
This effort of fear was not going to succeed, and
the coalition of law enforcement from the GBI to the FBI,
to the ATF, Atlanta Police Department, and a slew of
regional agencies is going to stop that campaign so it
doesn't happen and individuals do not leave the project.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
On July second, protesters in Minnesota visited the homes of
Atlas Technical Consultants employees during daylight. People marched around the
neighborhoods with instruments and banners, knocked on doors, talked with neighbors,
and left a letter of demands to drop the contract
and cut ties with the Atlanta Police Foundation. The project
(46:02):
manager for Atlas Technical Consultants engaged with protesters in the
street and told them that Atlas had indeed already dropped
out of the project due to mounting pressure.
Speaker 8 (46:14):
Then we want Atlas is no longer involved.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Why they decid to get out of it?
Speaker 8 (46:23):
We stopped doing that. Why because you guys are fucking
nightmares and you broke all our fucking windows. So you remember,
I don't care what you want to say. So you know,
I sho house and knock on my door and do
this ship. My company is not involved in this, So
(46:45):
get the fuck away from me.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Okay, I'm glad all. A few days later, Atlas and
Long Engineering released an official statement saying that they would
no longer be working on the cop City project. Anarchists
and those on the left in general seem to have
a hard time calling wins, but I'm not sure if
(47:07):
it gets any more definitive than that audio clip in
showing that this type of direct action can absolutely work
in getting businesses to leave the project. In the next episode,
we'll talk more about the referendum, the city's attempts to
divide the movement, and the growing pr battle over the
fate of Copcity. See you on the other side. It
(47:31):
Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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. You can
find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 4 (47:48):
Thanks for listening.
Welcome back to it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis.
This is part two of my mini series about what's
been happening this summer in Atlanta to stop cop City.
Last episode we left off with the attempted march from
Gresham Park to Entrenchman Creek Park, which some might say
was a disappointment, but it also gave everyone more clarity
about the current state of these types of direct action
(00:28):
marches in Atlanta and the necessity for evolution. The main
event on Thursday, June twenty ninth was a protest outside
the Home Depot in the upscale retail district off of
Ponce de Leon Avenue. Home Depot is one of the
Atlanta Police Foundation's financial backers.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
There had been a rumor that Home Depot was going
to be close earlier in the day. I got there
four thirty. It wasn't closed, so I didn't see any signage.
So I went and parked my car and came back
and like, I think I got out there for fifty
and people were starting to line up along the road, like, uh,
there's a Starbucks. And they were lining up along ponts
(01:07):
next to the Starbucks. And you know, I'm I'm talking
to them watching this. They're chanting, they're they're pulling out banners,
and we get a call that they are arresting Lorraine Fontana.
So Lorraine Fontana is a seventy six year old activist
in Atlanta, and she's great like she she pops up everywhere.
She's beloved by everyone. And so we get this call
(01:31):
that Lorraine Fontana is being arrested, and I bolts as
far as my little legs will take me, and then
I have to stop and catch my breath, like right
before I get there. But Lorrain and one other person
were arrested in the parking lot right outside the Home
Depot store.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Is here and not want anybody protests in the store.
When they start reading, now the layer.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I asked them to boy headed said the practices.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
And the time I also issued them.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
As learning, telling them there how people cannot want their faces.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Or define side.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
After protesters left the store, they stood by a corner
in the parking lot to holding signs, where they were
then approached by APD officers, who then arrested two people
without warning.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
It does kind of just show APD like basically doing
exactly what they would with anyone except in this case
it's a seventy six year old woman who's like five
or four eleven or something like that, Like yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Yeah, no, I mean it was a lot of people
were like surprised that this happened, Like how could the
police do this? I think others were like not as surprised,
be like no, it's the APD. They like it was
a good demonstration for people being like showing that they
do not care. They don't really care if you're a
seventy seven year old woman or if you're a nineteen
(02:56):
year old eco terrorist, they're gonna treat you roughly the same. Yeah.
After Lorraine's arrest, more and more people began showing up
across the street from home Depot calling for their divestment
from the Atlanta Police Foundation.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
It got up to like thirty maybe forty people mostly
just like chanting on the sidewalks sidewatch, but then they
started to like walk back and forth when when the
crosswalk was like there, yeah, and they were they were
pushing the limit, like seeing seeing what they could get.
But there was also my favorite part was the APD
officer who was sitting in his I'm sorry. My favorite
(03:34):
part was fuck I gotta do this about breaking down
in the middle.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I did hear a little bit about this? All right?
Take three? Take three.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
There was the APD officer that was sitting in his
ford explore on Ponts and at one point he calls
out on his you know, loud speaker, I'm not an idiot.
I swear I'm not an idiot. While he's backing up
on Ponts with his lights on, just like what are
you doing?
Speaker 1 (04:05):
People are asking a lot of questions they already answered,
I'm on an idiots shirt. Oh it was great.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
So I caught like the briefest snippet of that audio, thankfully.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
That's funny. On Thursday night, after the Home Depot rally,
there was a jail vigil around ten pm for Lorraine
at the Rice Street Fulton County Jail.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
So there there are two jails. There's Atlanta City Detention
Center and then there's Fulton County Jail, which we just
call Rice Street because it's off off Rice Street. So
when you get charged with criminal trespassed, it's like a
misdemeanor charge, and typically you would go to Atlanta City
Detention Center, which still a jail is still terrible, but
relatively like better. Okay, Fulton County Jail is you know, atrocious,
(04:54):
it is h you know, Leshawan Thompson. Of course that
the guy who was eating a lot in his cell
by bugs because of neglect, that is Rice Street Jail.
That's the Fulton County Jail. That's the Fulton County Jail.
So we get worried that Lorraine is at Fulton County
Jail and not ACDC, which is pretty striking. So everybody
(05:17):
goes down to do a jail vigil and noise demo
for context.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Last September, Lashawan Thompson, a thirty five year old man,
was found dead after spending three months in an infested
Fulton County Jail psychiatric cell. His body was covered in
a thousand bug bites and insects were found in his mouth, ears, nose,
and all across his body. Such inhumane incidents are not
in irregularity in Fulton County Jail. Just earlier this month,
(05:45):
a thirty five year old named Christopher Smith died in
Fulton County Jail. He had been held in custody since
October sixth, twenty nineteen, without bond on several unspecified felony
and misdemeanor charges, according to the County Sheriff's office. Last month,
a nineteen year old girl died in Fulton County custody
after being arrested on a minor misdemeanor charge. This past
(06:07):
year alone, six people have died in the Fulton County
jail system. People in Atlanta have been doing jail vigils
and noise demos for years and it's never really been
a problem. Cops might tell people to move off to
the side if the crowd gets to a certain size,
but they have typically gone on without issue. But this
time Fulton County deputies came out and declared that people
(06:29):
are not allowed to protest outside the jail and ordered
everyone to completely leave the parking lot and go all
the way to the other side of this big hill
off of Rice Street to jail property in order to
continue protesting, which no one was really keen on doing.
So this kind of game of chicken began.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
They eventually they pull on a bunch more sheriff's deputies
and threatened arrest, So people started making their way up
the hill, linking arms and get to the top of
the hill and they're they're met with another group of
protesters who had tried to come down, but they were
stopped by police at the top of the hill. So
now the crowd size like essentially doubled. Yeah, and the
(07:11):
energy just goes through the roof. You know, both sides
are just going back and forth. This This deputy is
like completely overmatched, doesn't really They didn't seem like Fulton
County had a plan. You know, usually APD or the
cab they have some sort of protest planned. Fulton was
flying by the seat of their pants. And so all
(07:32):
of our cars were down at the bottom of the hill.
They were back in the right street parking lot. And
this this becomes like an issue because some of the
protesters cars are there, all of the media cars are there,
like down at the bottom of this.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Hill, and.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
They're not letting anyone go down there. And this woman
shows up to like put I think money on her
son's commissary car and they don't let her.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Now she is like they're just shutting down j oracial loud,
yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
So they finally first they're like we're gonna let you
go down one by one, and everyone's like hell no,
like we are not trusting you.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, sure, sure, sure, buddy, let's go. Let's isolate, isolated
move through this police fortress in an isolated vennor.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Here. Uh So then they're like, okay, you can go
as a group. Yeah, okay, as long as you have
your vehicles down there, you can go as a group.
So they slowly start to make their way down.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
They do not see in the next five minutes we
want to start. We have to do.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
They get all the way to the bottom hill. They're
in the parking lot and just like on the edge
of where the cars are, and they kind of stop moving,
and the shriff's deputy is like, yeah, I gotta keep moving,
and so they start moving again and then stop again,
and then the shriff's deputy says, all right, get them,
and so then the deputy start moving in to make
a rest. And quickly, you know this, this march kind
(08:59):
of becomes this backward moving thing.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeah I can't see that.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
I'm moving my hands to showgasson, but it becomes this
backward moving thing up up the hill.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
That's the bottom line.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
I couppoted be you in the street, who will.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Be taking ample cush, get out the street, Get out
the street.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Screen will be taking in the crowd was able to
leave before anyone was detained, but it was a quite
tense situation. The sort of dynamic we saw at the
jail vigil and home depot protest led it directly into
the next event on Friday morning, a previously announced second
protest outside of Cadence Bank in Midtown calling on Cadence
(09:39):
Bank to cancel the Atlanta Polace Foundation's twenty million dollar
construction loan. All Right, people had a protest on Friday
morning at Cadence Bank in Midtown Atlanta. There's maybe like
around a dozen people here, uh, chanting outside of the building.
Also about a dozen ap the officers walking walking down
(10:02):
from up the street, preparing to meet the crowd. They're
moving in closer that they're walking in again people still.
I don't think anyone's even touched touched the class door.
Most of the people are just standing here on the sidewalk.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
You know that game you play with your cats where
they come at you but they stop when you're watching them.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, that's the game we're playing. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
we turn away the cops advanced We like this is
also like half of like the Loony Tunes gags. Is
this they're doing a Michelin frog, all right, and they're
they're now on the King's Bank property. They're start starting
to advance. Police were yelling at people that they couldn't
touch any of the steps leading up to the bank
(10:46):
entrance and that you weren't allowed to lean against any
hand rails because the metal pole was bank property. So
once again we got this little game of back and forth,
except one side has guns and the power to rescue properly.
(11:23):
This cup said in the crowds trying to incite a riot.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
It feels very much like what you saw. I guess
I'm Portland, obviously I wasn't there. Where there's an object
that becomes this sacred goal, and.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Then you're you're battling over the thing because the thing
has now been given.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
You've given something like me actual physical like presence, and
that is the thing that you are now fighting for.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
It becomes it.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Becomes a symbolic in front of a building. It don't matter,
but the police gave it significant.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Because the police turn it into this like symbolic thing,
it now means more than a just just being stabbed.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
So there was this camera guy who like kept kind
of stepping up and like pushing the envelope.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
And eventually or activists put one foot on the steps,
being like, Okay, if you're gonna come after us for
putting a foot on the bank steps, fine.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Come at us, like call the bluff.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah. So there was like people yelling at the CoP's
face for like forty five minutes, maybe maybe longer. Time
always stretches during these sorts of things. It's hard to
start to keep it's hard to keep a sense of
like temporal stability, even just during during weeks of action.
In general, it's always hard to keep a sense of
temporal stability. That's the sense of time warps around. Days
blend into each other. A day feels like a week,
(12:31):
a week feels like a day. It's it's very it
gets very fuzzy.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
It gets incredibly trippy, and you're like yeah, and the
exhaustion right like just nomounds.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
There's a lot of things that that feed into it.
Despite about a dozen people putting their foot on the
sacred steps, the police did not decide to arrest anyone
at this protest, and after about an hour of disruption,
the crowd departed. The week of action ended much like
(13:07):
the last one, with the final rally being the Youth
March back at Brownwood Park. Lorraine just got out on
bail and spoke about the jail conditions to the crowd
of one hundred or so people gathered in the park
on the morning of July first.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
And I don't want people to forget that our movement
is connected with lots of other stone, one of which
is prison abolition and the idea that our so quote
criminal justice system is such that people get just shoved
behind bars. We don't want to see them, We don't
(13:42):
care what happens to them. And even if they're not
hadn't gone to trial yet and they're in a jail
awaiting hearing or awaiting a trial, they're treated like they've
already want the people that they're criminals, we don't have
to care as much about them. They're kind of the people.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Lorraine said that she was in a crowded holding cell
with twenty two other women and just a few metal benches,
nothing else. This is where nearly two dozen people had
to sleep, had to eat, used the bathroom, all in
one place for days on end. Women were trying to
sit or sleep on either of the hard benches or
(14:21):
the floor. Some were attempting to use menstrul pads in
place of a mattress. If they were lucky enough to
be asleep, they were woken up at two am for
breakfast and then again at four am for head counting.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
They were so full, I didn't have room for the
people that were being arrested, so they were in this
holding sale. Some of them been there three days. It
was something like eighteen feet by six feet across. The
last six feet were behind a divider that had a
toy as toy, so it was even less. The prison
(14:56):
system is every day doing these kind of being u
and treatment to people that get arrested or not yet
guilty of anything.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Student organizers and parents also briefly spoke on why people
are fighting against cop City. I don't want to live
in a city.
Speaker 5 (15:12):
I don't want to live in a country in a
world that prioritizes the protection of private property through murder
in state violence over the fundamental building blocks of life. Okay,
I think we need to be focusing on giving people
places to live, giving people food to eat, water to drink,
not on giving the police playgrounds where they can blow.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Up bombs and shoot their guns.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
And that's why all of us together here need to
come together, be as one here in beautiful community, with children,
with elders, everything in between, doing this amazing community. I
love being out here with y'all. It's so much fun
to just like be working the popcorn machines and all that.
And that's why we're all here together, because we know
that community is the key for us to stop cop City,
(15:58):
Stop cop City.
Speaker 6 (16:01):
And so as we fight to stop top City, we
are fighting for investment in the things that make families
thrive in this city.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Were telling all dreat chickens.
Speaker 6 (16:10):
We tell them little police foundations, and we command that
money be reinvested, and they're housing for the people, child
care for the people, education for the people, health care
for the people. But those are the things that make
our communities truly safe. And if they won't give it
to us, we're gonna build those networks of care in
our communities ourselves. That is what makes days like today
(16:34):
so beautiful, the fact that the people have the capacity
to feel and feed the people. The people have the
capacity to make sure that people say hi, drating. People
have the capacity to give each other medical care. And
as we build out those networks of care, we make
the government irrelevance.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
You try to tell us what they do all day long.
Speaker 6 (16:53):
But if we continue to build people's.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Power, well they have to say don't even matter. So
are you ready to build that kind of world? As
people got ready to depart, the energy was noticeably higher
than most other events that week. All right, it is
Saturday morning, on July first. This is the last day
of the sixth week of action of the Youth Rally.
(17:17):
Just left Brownwood Park and is now marching through East
Atlanta Village. Shortly before the Youth Rally, news started to
circulate that early early that morning, just after midnight, several
Atlanta police motorcycles and cop cars suffered mysterious damages, which
possibly could have contributed to the more bolsterous energy among
(17:40):
some of the radical attendees. People are driving by and
honking in support. As about seventy five people, maybe one
hundred or marked as about seventy five or one hundred
people are our marching next to Metropolitan Avenue.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Take a fire truck would pull their air horn.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
The fire trucks were kind of busy last night. Actually,
I'm not sure the fire trucks were busy doing what
There's well it seems like a lot of police motorcycles
were found to be set on fire at the sight
of the old Police Trading Academy.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Sounded like some police suck cruisers were wrecked somewhere else
in the city too.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
On Memorial Drive Southeast, it sounded like three cop cars
were also smashed up. Is you think there's something going around?
Is it contagious? So, yeah, the fire crews were a
little bit busy last night.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Spontaneous vehicle vandalism.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Yeah, that's certainly one way to end this week of action.
This definitely feels like the most positive part of the
Week of action so far. Yeah, people have been marching
for about twenty minutes now. The march is now turned
(19:02):
down Glenwood and is heading back towards Brownwood Park. No
police presence at all so far. There was just complete
I've not seen a single cop car in this in
this section of town. There's also three less cop cars
in Atlanta than there usually is, so that might have
something to do with it.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
It was from this zone too, that the second one
where the cop cars are it was like a mile
and a half away.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah, it's very very close, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Very different than what we saw on last Saturday, Yes
where I like, even on my way in, I saw
APD here every you know, twenty feet yeah, and do
not see a single Nope. APD vehicle is notable.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
The youth rally that closed the last week of action
in March kind of felt like the end of an era.
This one on July first felt very different, much more
like the beginning of a new era. After a very
scattered week, the movement finally started to feel like it
had multiple directions to grow. This week definitely started on
(20:10):
I would say, a muted note, and it's ended with
a bit more directionality for the future and a bit
more positivity.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
I think.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
I think people were able to think of ways that
the movement can evolve and grow from here and recognize
the necessity for that and now change and yet recognize
the necessity for change, and people are ready to continue
and evolve as the situation on the ground is also changing.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
And I mean adaptability was was a part of the
movement from the get go. Yes, just I think we
got the movement got very tied to certain modes of
operation that are not available anymore.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
You know, for the past like a few months, people
have been it felt like people have been playing on
the police's like board like they've been They've been following that,
and both both of the actual last night and the
sort of talks that are happening throughout the city. I
think that is probably going to change. All right. We
are about a block away from Brownwood Park on Portland
(21:11):
Avenue and Gresham Avenue, where there is pizza and water waiting.
That is, that is I'm excited for water. I don't
think I can have hot pizza right now. I think
I would just faint. But cold water is certainly, certainly,
enticely certainly. Yeah, and there's music back here in Brownwood.
(21:33):
Tables set up, giving out literature, giving out food, water,
lots of bubbles. Earlier, earlier, at the earlier, at the
rally before the march, there was a water balloon fight
which was very dangerous.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah, I left it. I don't know why you've stayed
around the water move. I took my laptop and left.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
There was there was there was a few very close
moments there. But yeah, no, there's food. There's lots of signs, banners,
lots of a lot of Little Caesar's pizza. There was
much more energy here compared to the Kickoff rally, which
happened in the very same park exactly a week beforehand,
which felt sort of reversed from the previous week of
(22:11):
action this past March, which is interesting because like last
week of action, you know, the kickoff rally was like
the biggest thing, was the biggest energy point, and the
youth rally was kind of the more like muted clothes
And this has kind of been inversed.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Which honestly, for when you're looking at like what has
happened over the last few months, maybe reading leaning out
with a high note is yeah, is the ideal.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
We're also ending with the bouncy castle, which is very
very important.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah, for the full flip, we have to end with
the bouncy castle.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yes, although we should move the bouncy castle to eight
ninety Memorial Drive Southeast, oh my god. Stop. After the
youth rally, Matt and I got some coffee in Eastern
It's a Village and talked about the broad strokes of
the week and the general state of the movement. Like
(23:05):
I said, I think this week started with a lot
of questions being had, and it's ended with some of
those questions being being answered and people figuring out that
to answer some of some of those other questions that
the answer will will will take the form of actions
that happened in these next few months. And I feel
like there's it's it's it's ended with a bit more
(23:26):
directionality than when it began, which is interesting for a
week of action.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, it was needed, though.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
It was absolutely needed. Like at like the first rally
just felt so weird that for the first tick offf
rally that the first day, that the first few days
felt just very very like very scattered. It was unclear
how what was happening was related to stop in Coff City.
And in some ways, this week of action feels like
the reverse of the last week of action, where like
(23:54):
the last week of action, it started with a point
of directionality, like we are going to retake Wallani and
they did. And then they're like, we are going to
do an action to physically stop the construction of cop City,
and they did, like they was doing all these things.
And I think that week ended with more questions than
what it started with because the police did the rate
(24:14):
of the forest, there was a lot of there was
more uncertainty by the end of the week because there
was so much over policing. There was a lot of
a lot of changes through throughout that week. And I
think this week started in like an inverse is people
started this week with a directionless sense, and they had
a lot of questions going into this week, and I
feel like some people have started to kind of figure
out how the movement will evolve in these next few months,
(24:37):
and it feels like people have a better idea of
where of like how they're going to move forward in
these next three months six months, and like the month
and a half when construction is slated to begin in
August later to.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Begain and you know, this referendum is looking like it's
doing pretty well, so hopefully that that does delay. But yeah,
of course we also ended with the bouncy casts. We
can't do it so acknowledging the importance of bouncy castles
to this movement, or at least to Garrison, And I yes, I.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Think the other thing that makes it interesting in terms
of this week being an inverse of the last week
is that you know, on the last week, day two,
there was this very fiery action with vehicles being smashed,
and then on the second to last day, which is
like late last night, either like late Friday night or
(25:31):
early Saturday morning, at like one am, two am, there
was three Atlanta police cars smashed by Reynoldstown I believe.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah, just right like a mile and a half away
from from Brownwood Park.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
YEP and close to the airport at the old Police
training Academy. There was a it looks like a good
fleet of Atlanta Police motorcycles.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yeah, that's where the motorcycle Like, that's where the motors.
The credit quarters is outside and those motorcycles are going
to be no longer functioning.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yes, they are all charged to a crisp with like
incendiary devices found there. Yeah. One of the most noticeable
differences about this week of action compared to the previous
one was the turnout. Out of state support did not
show up in similar numbers as to the last week
of action in March. There's a lot of potential reasons
for this. This week may have simply happened too soon,
(26:20):
It coincided with other events across the country. Its messaging
may not have reflected an adequate level of planning. There
was probably some demoralization from the ninety acres of trees
cut down and with entrenchment, Creek Park closed and under
police occupation. Launching options in Atlanta was more of a
mystery for those coming from outside the city. More time
(26:43):
away from the death of Tortigita is probably also a factor.
People in Atlanta may have to reconcile that the movement
may not have as much widespread national support and all
the ground numbers as it did last March.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
This is the smallest week of action we've had in
over a year in Duisa memory.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
This is the smallest one I've I've reported on.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Right, Yeah, you know, I think it might have even
been comparable to the first week of action, like it
was around there, but it also felt more local.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
It did feel way more local.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Once you go from like something so big as the
last week of action to something more constrained, that is
that sets a like a vibe shift. Yeah, that I
think you've got to kind of come to terms with.
And it's one of those moments where you're like, Okay,
we are in a different paradigm.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yeah, Fewer numbers is not necessarily a bad thing. A
group of five to ten people can sometimes be much
more effective at doing certain things than a crowd of
two hundred or even a thousand. You just have to
specifically prepare for the numbers that you know that you'll have.
For such a long time, I felt like this was
(27:53):
this movement was extremely effective in delaying construction Like that
was like extremely effective deadline year and a half deadlines
kept getting pushed back every single thing. Like the occupation
was very good at doing what it attempted to do,
and at a certain point that became no longer viable.
And things are now changing gears. Yeah, and you have
(28:15):
to allow yourself that evolution like that. It has to
the same way people started occupying the forest in October
after the city council stuff in September twenty twenty one.
Like as the things change, you have to change your
tactics with it.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
And as I mean, as revolutionary strategy goes, that's just
that should be a baseline and adapting to what the
situation is and not what the situation what you want.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
It to be.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Yeah, And I think more people are talking about that
this week and realizing that like maybe even another week
of action does not make sense for this new paradigm
that we're existing in Atlanta. I've talked about the possibility
of changing the week of Action structure before in previous episodes,
and I really only brought that up because that's what
people were conveying to me at the time. And this
(28:59):
has continued to be a topic of debate both during
and since June.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
What do you do with the week of Action format?
And I know that we kind of talked about this
during the last YEP recap episode where you brought up
that that might have been the last Week of Action,
but it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
It wasn't because as I was making these episodes this
week of Action what was announced, I've heard more people
say that they don't think the week of Action format
is applicable Animore more. I've heard more people say that
than I did last week. What if Atlanta has kind
of outgrown this format? This format's proved to be very
useful in these past few years. There's been very positive parts,
(29:38):
it's been very negative parts. And what if there's time
for what if it's time for something like completely new,
something that the police don't know how to respond to.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Because something that matches the new paradigm.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, because that's the other thing. It's like people have
been doing this for like two years now, Like not
only have people gotten used to a pattern, but like
police have gotten used to a pattern, like police have
gotten very good at resting the week of action, like
they have they have had two years to practice, they
have they know how to do this now, So why
why keep playing on their battlefield?
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Like?
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Why why keep doing what APD is expecting you to do?
That's part of what's you know, interesting about this resurgence
of these nocturnal hit and run sabotages that are unannounced.
That we saw the ones earlier in this week with
the with the Brent Scarborough's machines. Then we saw the
APD vehicles get hit last night. So perhaps there there
will be more of that. Perhaps they'll be just new
(30:31):
things that we can't even predict, Like there's so many
other avenues that things could that things could go. Even
during the use March, Matt and I were wondering if
this new spike in sabotage actions would break the spell
and we'd see a return of this type of action
happening more frequently. You know.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
It's it's the sort of direct action that has really
been missing over the last several months.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Yeah, and no, and we've been talking about a lot
this past week We're talking about how there's been a
lot of these sorts of like nocturnal hit and run
direct actions, and late last night it seems like there
was a resurgence.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
So we'll see how that continues, you know, after the
Week of Action, if it continues, or if it was
a Week of Action inspired element. But I have a
feeling we'll see some of those continue to crop up.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Absolutely and this did indeed turn out to be the case,
all right. I will do my best to go over
a short list of the claimed attacks against contractors, building copcity,
(31:44):
and corporations that fund the Atlanta Police Foundation from after
this week of Action. On a July first, over half
a dozen Bank of America buildings in the Bay Area
where vandalized and a dozen or so ATMs were smashed.
In late June to early July, group of friends visited
the home of copp City architect Anthony Kenny in Norcross, Georgia,
(32:06):
while another group paid a visit to ambush Baseil Walla,
a member of the board of trustees for the Atlanta
Police Foundation. People painted messages around their homes and tires
were slashed. On the night of July second, Keith Johnson,
the Eastern Regional president for Brassfield and Gory, the contracting
firm who broadly oversaw the destruction of the forest and
(32:28):
who has decided to physically build cop City, also received
a mysterious visit late in the night. An unknown number
of people evaded security guards and spread blood red paint
around his pool and left a message reading cop City
will never be built. Drop the contract and you can't hide.
(32:48):
According to an online communicay, rotten fish and dirty motor
oil were left hidden somewhere on the property. Part of
the communicay, addressed to Keith reads quote, we know things
haven't been feeling great in the office. You're losing money,
subcontractors are upset. There are fractures everywhere in the cop
City project, and all of that weight and procarity is
(33:11):
on your fragile shoulders. Each time you think of us,
or see the reminders we left you, remember this is
your own doing. You can make all of this stop
by dropping the Copcity contract. On July fourth, in lieu
of fireworks, people claimed to have set two Brent Scarborough
machines on fire in broad daylight due to the lack
(33:35):
of security during daytime. Scarborough is the subcontractor who physically
leveled the ninety sum acres of forest in the Wallani.
The same day, in Michigan, Chase Bank ATMs were sabotaged
with glue and the bank was vandalized with messages of resistance.
Chase Bank's head of Regional Investment Banking serves on the
(33:55):
board of the Atlanta Police Foundation. And on July eighth,
a Bank of America in Berkeley was vandalized with stopcop
city slogans and three ATMs were smashed. During the start
of this little wave of actions, the Mayor's office and
APD were none too happy, so on July fifth, Mayor
(34:15):
Andre Dickens and Atlanta Police Chief Darren Scherbaum put on
a press conference with the ATS, Georgia Bureau of Investigation
and FBI to discuss the recent surge of direct actions.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
Our public safety facilities and property were the target of
an extremely violent and dangerous attack on Saturday, July first,
and there were several other destructive acts of extreme vandalism
on public and private properly property that occurred that we
have reason to believe are related to the construction of
(34:48):
the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center in Decab County the
current Atlanta Police Training Center at one eighty south Side
Industrial Parkway was set up in the early morning hours
of Saturday, July first. The targeted attack utilized extremely dangerous
(35:09):
homemade incendiary devices to set a fire to the building
and completely destroyed eight police motorcycle motorcycles. As shocking as
this is, this was not an isolated incident of violence.
This group actually took credit for these incidents and they
(35:29):
stated it as I quote, we are vengeful wing nuts
with nothing left to lose.
Speaker 7 (35:36):
Prior to that, about one hour prior to the event
of one of the south Side Industrial we had another
precinct that was targeted in the city. This is our
Path Force Precinct Memorial Drive and the eight hundred block
of the Memorial. These officers control the belt line which
many of you all visit frequently. At that location, we
had multiple windows broken on police vehicles. We believe the
intent was to set those vehicles on fire as well.
(35:57):
Half and fire off of the of the red fuse
on the ground that has been used by this group
in the past to set police vehicles on fire that
was dropped when a citizen observed the criminal actions progress
and actually interrupted the crimes that were occurring there. So
we believe that the fire attack that was planned on
Memorial Drive was thwarted by an observant citizen. A short
(36:18):
time later, about an hour, we had the fire at
our facility on Southside Industrial. Our training center has housed
there most recently, and then our special operations precinct is there.
The intent was for all forty to be destroyed, and
had all those forty vehicles caught on fire, that police
facility would have been gravely damaged, if not destroyed in
the fire. And we are thankful for a police officer
(36:39):
that saw this unfolding and likely interrupted that plan for
being able to play out in its fullness. There's an
indication that this was likely committed by the exact same intevisions.
We will let and see where the fact tickets.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
According to Chief Sheerbaum and Mayor Dickens, the actions against
Atlanta Police on July first, over the course of just
a few hours equaled over were three hundred thousand dollars
in damages.
Speaker 7 (37:03):
As we're around thirty five thousand, and they once you
outfit us a little bit more so, do that times eight,
that's going to put you in the ballpark yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
And that's not even including the rest of the smoke
and damage and other things, and the broken windows on
the police car, etc.
Speaker 7 (37:19):
So the group that struck this weekend is a dedicated
group of professional anarchists, and I know that may seem
a contradiction in terms. So this is a group of
individuals who don't pray, play by any rules, and we'll
go to any links they need to to carry out.
And this is their words. We will wage a campaign
of violence and destruction, and so what we saw this
weekend was part of that campaign.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
It's always funny when police make anarchists sound very cool
and scary. But Chief Scherbaum also pretty clearly explained the
reasoned methodology behind the pressure campaigns targeting contractors and APF
financial sponsors.
Speaker 7 (37:53):
We know from the postings of this group their intent
to stop the Public Safety Trading Center has left the
democratic pros sess of the city Council and is now
moving to intimidate and force out contractors that are committed
to building the Public Safety Training Center this weekend. During
the week of action, three different locations private residences were targeted.
(38:17):
Tires were flattened on contractors home, a home of an
executive for Brassalgory was significantly vanalyzed in another jurisdiction. And
then we had another location where graffiti was used to intimidate.
And then yesterday morning, slightly after seven o'clock in the morning,
a location at four eighteen McDonough Boulevard belonging to Brent
Scarborough's company, which is a key provider of work and
(38:38):
this training centers was also targeted and attacked and equipment
was set on fire at that location. These acts are
of a small, determined group. These are small individuals from
across the country that are using violence and fear and
intimidation to stop a public safety training center. And this
group cannot hide behind the dark of night or the
(38:59):
home address and feel that they are not going to
be held accountable. I have standing at this podium with
me today representings from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the ATF,
and we are also partner with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
These agencies are working together to determine where federal laws
violated this weekend and ensure that the full expertise of
American law enforcement is present right here in Atlanta to
(39:21):
stop this group. Stop this group across the region, stop
their ability to impact the public safety network of Atlanta
and hold them accountable.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Despite continued threats from law enforcement, the only arrests that
have happened so far in relation to this movement are
from daytime protests, forest raids, and bail fund organizers. We've
yet to see anyone arrested in Atlanta for doing like
a specific one of these nocturnal like nights sabotage actions.
(39:49):
That has not happened. Yeah, I mean, the scariest indictments
everyone's expecting are going to come in these next few years,
after you give the FBI two three, four years to investigate,
after you interview or people whove been arrested, see if
anyone stitches, if anyone turns state's witness. But so far,
it's been safer to do nocturnal sabotage actions than it
has been to attend a public protest. And that is
(40:13):
an interesting paradigm as well, is that no one's actually
got arrested for lighting like cop cars and fire in
the middle of the night. No one's been arrested for
sabotaging equipment in the middle of the night. All of
the arrests that are you know, are being tied to
like violent crime are from like daytime protests, which is
an interesting factor about this movement. Direct action in the
(40:36):
most surveiled city in America can be tricky, and even
just managing cell phones and Internet search data is a
huge factor. But as much real security there is out
in the world, the amount of security theater is arguably
a stronger aspect in getting people to not go out
and do direct action. The implicit threat of the panopticon
(40:57):
is often enough to stifle people's potential action, but these
things are beatable. Guides for how to do it exist
either at your local anarchist book fair or online as
long as the computer is running tour browser and a
reputable VPN. The Internet. The internet's a fun place. That's
there is a lot of no blogs and sites and
(41:19):
the zines that tell you how to do that. I
don't know, I mean they people always make mistakes, People
get caught, sometimes make mistakes.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
It's risky, and there are cameras everywhere in the city.
You have to Yeah, some of them, don't worry. But
it's like, do you really want to play Russian Roulette?
Speaker 1 (41:34):
No, that's a part of that's a part of when
people like plan these nocturnal actions is like just because
it's nighttime doesn't mean you're not sick getting watched or
you're not. Like it's there's a lot of things that
go into that. There's a lot of ways to get
got whether you're like buying supplies and you keep a
receipt and people please find a receipt, They track back,
they find security acount of you'll be purchasing things and
(41:55):
then they're like, oh, this bottle is bought it this
place because you have this receipt in your house and
blah blahlah blah blah. Like there's there's lots of ways
that that stuff happens. So like I'm not going to
give a guide on how to do it right now,
but like the anarchists have been doing this for a
long time. After you do that crime, you've never done
that crime. Like it's it's not something that you do
(42:16):
as a person, like you cease to become a person,
you become like you are that action.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
It is subsumed in the action, and then.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
And then it's you never talked about it ever again.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
It's gone or else you end up going to prison, yeah,
and risking like not just your safety, the safety, everyone's safety,
just by remembering that you did it.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
No, you know, like these become standards and anarchist communities
like you never brag about something, You never allude to
anything like it's it's it's not it's not a game
like you're it's not a game. You're it is your
your life and other people's lives on the line. When
when when you're doing stuff like this and it's yeah,
you you never do it to like cool. You never
(43:00):
do it to brag about it like that. That's just
not how this works, which is why there's kind of
a much more like kind of insular culture around some anarchists,
especially anarchists to identify as like illegalists or like the
types of like like green nihilists or green anarchists. That
kind of pioneered the militancy of this movement both slightly
(43:21):
even slightly before the first City Council vote and then
definitely after the first City Council vote where we saw
a massive explosion no pun intended in the number of
type of sabotages happening in the Wlani Forest. Yeah, which
I think that drew a lot of anarchists do come
to Atlanta because it was like, Oh, they're doing a.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Thing that's been the thing since the end of the
Green Scare.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Yeah, no, this is like the thing that I believe
in that this is like this is my politics. Now
there's a spot where I can do my politics. And
still no one's been caught for that. And I think
that was a big part of why Atlanta got so
big last year, was that people had the ability to
like live free in the forest and then do crazy
shit at night. Like you can you live in this
(44:03):
like autonomous zone during the day, You're able, whether you're
you have housing instability, whether you just want like an
escape from like horrible police state living. Like where in whatever,
wherever the city you're in, you can go live in
the Wilane Forest. You can live in a tent, you
can have friends, you can defend this force during the day,
(44:24):
and then you can do crazy, crazy shit at night.
And that drew a lot of people to Atlanta, and
now with the forest not being there, that also changes
that that changes the type of people who are come,
who are who want to come to the city because
that that was a big draw for people and now
that that's no longer an option, you can't really sleep
in the Wilani Forest as easily anymore. Yeah, that changes
the types of people who want to come to Atlanta
(44:44):
and who are gonna like do crazy shit because that's
just how And further on safety, they're not here. Yeah, no, absolutely.
As the referendum is hoping to stop cop City by
having Atlanta residents vote on whether to cancel the land lease,
other in the Diverse movement have continued their efforts to
pressure contractors and funders to drop out of the cop
(45:06):
City project. This tactic has already demonstrated its ability to succeed,
with Reeve's Young Construction dropping out of the project in
April of twenty twenty two, and some material suppliers have
since cut ties with cop City. This is something that
APD Chief Darren Shecherbaum certainly seems worried about.
Speaker 7 (45:26):
This effort of fear was not going to succeed, and
the coalition of law enforcement from the GBI to the FBI,
to the ATF, Atlanta Police Department, and a slew of
regional agencies is going to stop that campaign so it
doesn't happen and individuals do not leave the project.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
On July second, protesters in Minnesota visited the homes of
Atlas Technical Consultants employees during daylight. People marched around the
neighborhoods with instruments and banners, knocked on doors, talked with neighbors,
and left a letter of demands to drop the contract
and cut ties with the Atlanta Police Foundation. The project
(46:02):
manager for Atlas Technical Consultants engaged with protesters in the
street and told them that Atlas had indeed already dropped
out of the project due to mounting pressure.
Speaker 8 (46:14):
Then we want Atlas is no longer involved.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Why they decid to get out of it?
Speaker 8 (46:23):
We stopped doing that. Why because you guys are fucking
nightmares and you broke all our fucking windows. So you remember,
I don't care what you want to say. So you know,
I sho house and knock on my door and do
this ship. My company is not involved in this, So
(46:45):
get the fuck away from me.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Okay, I'm glad all. A few days later, Atlas and
Long Engineering released an official statement saying that they would
no longer be working on the cop City project. Anarchists
and those on the left in general seem to have
a hard time calling wins, but I'm not sure if
(47:07):
it gets any more definitive than that audio clip in
showing that this type of direct action can absolutely work
in getting businesses to leave the project. In the next episode,
we'll talk more about the referendum, the city's attempts to
divide the movement, and the growing pr battle over the
fate of Copcity. See you on the other side. It
(47:31):
Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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. You can
find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 4 (47:48):
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Host
Robert Evans
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