Week of Action to Stop Cop City: Full Compilation

Parts 1-4, and the bonus Retrospective episode, combined into one large file. 

This complication contains all our coverage of the March 2023 Week of Action in Atlanta.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's a warm spring afternoon in Atlanta, Georgia. You and
some of your friends are dancing in the sunlight at
a music festival in South Atlanta. It's day two of
the South River Music Festival. Last night, you stayed up
till three am, alternating between moshing in the pit and
laying down on a blanket looking up at the night sky,
trying to see stars through the light pollution. After you

(00:27):
had your fill of DM you called it a night
and hastily set up a tent in the forest near
the edge of the festival. You tried to sleep as
long as you could, but soon enough the hustle and
bustle around the forest beckoned you out of your tent.
As you mosed on over back to the music festival,
immediately something new caught your eye, a large, multi colored
inflatable bouncy castle sitting right in the middle of the

(00:50):
field with a big stopcop City banner hung along the side.
After you fully woke up, you grabbed a free breakfast
burrito and took a walk through the winding forest. Now
that you've finished your breakfast, you're back at the far
end of the open field in front of the stage,
where there's been live music playing for the past few hours.

(01:12):
You and some friends briefly try a stint in the
bouncy castle, but quickly return to the festival stage as
you tire out much faster than you expected. As the
sun is barely starting to set around six pm, suddenly
you notice the faint scream of police sirens piercing through
the music being blasted from on stage. You stand up

(01:33):
as the sirens get louder and closer, until a burst
of police cars zoom past the music festival at high speed.
A short sigh of relief is followed by confusion where
else would a whole bunch of police cars be going,
But as nothing seems to come of it, everyone starts
to relax and begin enjoying music once again with the

(01:56):
apparent absence of police. There's a if you brief moments
of peace at the festival as things continue as scheduled,
except you can't help but notice the police helicopter is
flying across the forest toward the festival. As you take
note of the chopper, you receive a signal message from
a friend quote cops have entered the parking lot with

(02:18):
AR fifteen's. You lift up your mask and start running
across the field to the parking lot at Willawnee People's Park.
But before you even make it halfway across, you notice
up ahead a few dozen police officers sprinting into the
open field from the festival side entrance. As the sun

(02:39):
is setting, a group of cops run past the bouncy
house and start chasing down seemingly random concert goers and
loan stragglers. One officer points his rifle at the bouncy
house as another turns off the generator. You group up
with other people from the festival in hopes of working
together to incentivize police to leave the area. As you

(03:01):
get closer, the cops start getting more aggressive. Just up ahead,
a bit further into the woods, close to where you
set up your tent, you hear some loud bangs and
see a flash of bright light. First, you assume it's
just fireworks being used to hold off the cops, until
you start coughing and see the faint plume of tear

(03:21):
gas seeping in from the forest. You're forced to fall
back to the festival and regroup with people by the
stage where music is still being played. As you're running back,
you can see dozens of people in zip ti cuffs,
many still pinned to the ground, still coughing from the gas.
You make your way back to where you are washing
the previous night. The crowd of festivalgoers tightens up as

(03:45):
riot vans and a bear cat pull into the field
next to the deflated bouncy castle. Police swat teams surround
the South River Music Festival and creep towards the stage,
threatening to charge hundreds of people with domestic terrorism. Hanging
on the backdrop of the stage is a massive banner
that reads, quote in the eyes of the state, all

(04:07):
who resist white supremacy, colonialism, environmental racism, gentrification, and police
militarization are domestic terrorists unquote. That was the evening of Sunday,
March fifth, twenty twenty three. This is it could happen here.
I'm Garrison Davis. I arrived in Atlanta a few days

(04:30):
prior in preparation for the March Week of Action to
defend the Atlanta Forest and stop cop City. This is
part one of a four part series covering this week
of action, featuring interviews, reportbacks, and analysis from both participants
and observers like myself. This four part series will be
a follow up of sorts to the four stop Coop

(04:50):
City episodes we put together last January following the death
of forest defender Tortigita at the hands of the Georgia
State Patrol, as well as building off my previous year
of work covering the movement to defend the Atlanta Forest.
But in case you're new or need a refresher, For
over two years now, activists and community members have been

(05:11):
in a fight to save the Wallani Forest from being
turned into a massive ninety million dollar police training facility
stretching across one hundred and seventy acres, with plans to
include a mock city for urban combat training to quell
civil descent. The cop City project is being led by
the Atlanta Police Foundation, one of the most powerful police

(05:32):
lobbying groups in the country. Following seventeen hours of public comment,
seventy percent of which was against the facility, the Atlanta
City Council voted to approve the project's lease in September
of twenty twenty one, despite months of protests and community organizing.
Later that fall, people started occupying and camping out in
the Wallani Forest to maintain a physical presence in the woods.

(05:55):
In hopes of preventing or delaying construction. Infrastructure to support
long time ter encampments grew over the next year, with
forest defenders erecting treehouses, road blockades, and making the forest
a place that people could actually live in with outdoor kitchens,
community gardens, and places to sleep, whether that be up
in a tree or in a tent. For a while

(06:16):
it seemed to be working. Throughout twenty twenty two, construction
continued to stall. Almost every time cops and workers came
in to start cutting trees, they were met with resistance.
Construction equipment left around the forest was routinely sabotaged, and
last year a tertiary targeting campaign resulted in the general
contractor for a cop City Reeves Young construction, to drop

(06:38):
out of the project. Police enacted multiple raids on the
forest in twenty twenty two, trying to flush out any
forest defenders camping out in the woods and tear down
encampment infrastructure, but the occupation was generally able to bounce
back pretty quick. As the movement to stop cop City
was seemingly winning, police intensified their repression as a series

(07:00):
of raids in December of last year decimated much of
the infrastructure that was built up over the course of
that year and left six people with domestic terrorism charges.
But things got worse just a month later. In January
of twenty twenty three, multiple police agencies engaged in a
mass raid of the Wallani Forest, destroying all remaining campsites.

(07:21):
About an hour into the January eighteenth raid, the Georgia
State Patrol swat team killed a twenty six year old
forest defender, Manuel Tehran, also known by their forest name Tortigita.
Decab County's autopsy found at least fifty seven gunshot wounds
from multiple officers. We'll talk more about the results from
various autopsies in a later episode, but just a few

(07:43):
weeks ago, tort would have turned twenty seven. The other
side of the Defend the Forest movement is focused on
a smaller section of the Wallani Forest just east of
Entrenchment Creek. Initially in hopes of expanding his movie studios,
The now former own of Blackhall Studios, Ryan Millsap, has
been trying to gain control of forty acres of public

(08:05):
parkland through a shady landswap deal with Decap County that's
currently subject to legal disputes. The slate of land in
question contains the popular meeting spot in the forest known
as the Living Room, which acts as a sort of
central hub, as well as what's referred to as Wilawni
People's Park, where the Park gazebe used to be before
Ryan Millsap demolished it, later ripping out all of the

(08:28):
grass and sidewalks in a once again legally questionable move.
In January, Wilani People's Park also became home to the
vigil site for Tortigita all at Let Matt from the
Atlantic Community Press Collective explain the other happenings in the
woods since January.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
They got their land disturbance permit in late January, and
the first phase of the land disturbance permit only allows
for soil erosion control work, So to this point, essentially
what they've done is they've cut some paths into the
forest into the proposed site, and then around the exterior

(09:08):
of the site they've clear cut a line in order
to install silt fencing, so there isn't a large amount
of infrastructure. They're not allowed to do a large amount
of disturbance right now. They're in like the pre construction
phase right now. So they started in February and they
did a lot of work very quickly. They installed a

(09:29):
privacy fence, so you can't really see what's going on,
so our general understanding of it, like comes from drone footage.
It actually slowed down a couple weeks later, and from
what I understand, they began to pull some construction equipment out,
probably not wanting to leave, you know, a target for
shall we say, any sort of spicy activities.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
But not all of their construction equipment was removed, As
everyone would soon find out, the deadly Jenny left the
community in the morning and unsure of how the fight
to stop copp City would evolve. With the use of
lethal force and the loss of a friend, the Forest
Defender's semi permanent occupation of the Wallani Forest ended after

(10:14):
that raid, but the fight was far from over. About
a month after the January raid, local Atlantans put out
a call for supporters across the country to converge in
Atlanta in early March for a mass gathering known as
a Week of Action. There have been four previous Weeks
of Action, but this one, more than any other, would

(10:36):
be crucial in reifying what the next stage of the
movement would be. I started off this episode with the
Sunday night police raid on the South River Music Festival, because,
for better or worse, what happened on that evening set
the proverbial stage for what the majority of this Week
of Action would look like and how its effects would
ripple out in the coming months. But before we get

(10:59):
to the rest of the week, we first have to
go back to the official start of this Week of
Action to explain how we got here in the first place.
To kick off the Week of Action, a rally was
planned for the morning of Saturday, March fourth, at Gresham
Park in southeast Atlanta. By the time I arrived around
eleven am, hundreds of people were already in the park.

(11:21):
Music was blaring from loudspeakers. Some kids and a few
brave adults were running around throwing multicolored powdered paint at
each other. It was a pretty festive time. Soon enough,
it was time for things to begin. Matthew Johnson, the
interim executive director of Beloved Commune, formerly kicked off the week.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
Hoday, let's get started, all right.

Speaker 4 (11:47):
I just want to make sure that everybody is in
the right way. I came here to stop cop city.

Speaker 5 (12:00):
What did you all come here to do? What did
we come to do? What are we come to do?
What have we come here to do?

Speaker 6 (12:15):
All right?

Speaker 7 (12:16):
I'm glad that everybody found the right address. Thank you
everybody for joining us.

Speaker 8 (12:25):
It's about two years ago.

Speaker 7 (12:28):
In what was formerly known as Entrenchment Creek Park now
known as Wolani People's Park, where a ragtag bunch of
individuals gathered under a gazebo. That gazebo was illegally destroyed
by Ryan Millsap and his henchmen in an attempt to

(12:59):
break this movement, in an attempt to bury this movement.
Yet every single time that they have tried to bury us,
they have forgotten that we were seeds. Every time they
thought that they backed us into a corner with their repression,

(13:23):
we had more of you show up and support this movement,
and we thank you so much. They have set every
hurdle in the way of every day at Lantern's to
intimidate them and stop them from.

Speaker 4 (13:41):
Supporting this movement, and we still show up. We appreciate
every single person that has come here to support us
in spite of the terror that the state has right
to instill in us. We must be very careful and

(14:04):
understand the gravity of the situation that we are in,
especially after we've lost a friend.

Speaker 7 (14:10):
Okay, thank you for standing with us. And now there
are many things that we do not agree on. But
what did we all come here to do?

Speaker 9 (14:28):
So let's remember what got us this far was a
diversity of tactics, and now it's time for.

Speaker 8 (14:41):
Us to double down.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
The crowd gathered was a pretty diverse mix of people
from a variety of backgrounds, beliefs, and preferred tactics. On
this is Saturday morning, everyone felt pretty united, whether you
were a kid running around with paint all over your
body or an anarchist to dressed head to toe and camo.
Next up, somebody read a statement from the Muscogee elder
Miko Chabon.

Speaker 10 (15:04):
Colonel, I'm here to read.

Speaker 11 (15:06):
A statement from my Miko, Miko Shabbon.

Speaker 6 (15:12):
Yeah, my name is Marty. I'm Muscoge on my father's side.

Speaker 11 (15:17):
On my mother's side, I'm Atham both Acmel and Thana,
and my dad's also Filipino. Miko asked me to read
this statement. Band Strijaio mart At this time, I would
like to express my gratitude to all who have conversed
onto these ancestral territories of Muscogean ancestors and modern spiritual

(15:38):
inhabitants of the earth that we now stand on today.
We represent a vast society of peoples whose presence in
the colonized named states of Georgia, Alabama, and.

Speaker 6 (15:50):
Florida have existed for over thirteen thousand years.

Speaker 11 (15:54):
We represent a way of life that strove to minimize
the harm that humans can.

Speaker 6 (15:59):
Do to the earth, to other species, and to each other.

Speaker 11 (16:04):
Today, we continue this movement that begun many years ago,
and we honor those who have taken footsteps to protect
this forest and our relative who gave the greatest of sacrifices,
just as ancestors existed on these very grounds and carried
of faith and confidence in what our ancient ones passed
on to us. May the hope of peaceful existence for

(16:28):
all be achieved for many more centuries to come. This
existence can only occur when we realize the sacredness of
the Wilani Forest, that all that is natural on this earth, Mother.
This type of existence can only occur when we realize
that we all belong to this earth, and she does
not belong to us. This type of holy existence can

(16:50):
only occur when we realize that no cop city can
ever exist because more weapons only create more violence. With
these efforts to begin today, perhaps reason will prevail and
we could create a future where all people have.

Speaker 6 (17:09):
The right to exist.

Speaker 11 (17:12):
Today, may our dreams for this forest and the surrounding
community come true.

Speaker 6 (17:16):
For those who can hear, let them hear.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
The next speaker was from Community Movement Builders, a local
black collectives that focuses on combating and gentrification and police violence.

Speaker 12 (17:28):
I may be a little bit selfish, and my reason
for being here I want to be free.

Speaker 6 (17:37):
I want my children to be free.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
I want my mother to be free.

Speaker 12 (17:41):
I want my father, my brothers and sisters to be free.
And I don't want to have to live a life
in ten years when my babies, my nieces and my
nephews come to me and ask, come, I see, where
were you What were you doing when they destroyed our
clean water, destroyed our clean air happened?

Speaker 6 (18:01):
Why were you not around?

Speaker 12 (18:02):
What were you doing when when my babies twenty ten
years and they say, comasie, what were you doing when
this country turned into a fascist dystopia?

Speaker 13 (18:09):
What were you doing?

Speaker 14 (18:10):
Where were you where you're around. I can't sit here
best shit back and say I just sat home and
watched this.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
Whole world burn to hell.

Speaker 6 (18:21):
I don't believe in the power.

Speaker 5 (18:23):
I don't believe in the power of being periless.

Speaker 13 (18:27):
I believe in the power of the people.

Speaker 14 (18:34):
So I said to everyone today that during this week
of action, I don't know where you will be. I
don't know what you will be doing, but we standing
behind you and we're staying with you. And we want
to show the city of Atlanta. We want to show
Mary Dickens that he is not fit to rule and
he does not runing city way.

Speaker 15 (18:55):
We want to show.

Speaker 12 (18:56):
Them said, the ninety million dollars that they took to
build this very warfare training facility will not cross our
communities wheo. And we also want to show the city
of that letter that again we are ready to stop
really surviving to start living.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Finally, our last person Reverend Leo'she is a Baptist minister
part of the Stop Copp City Clergy Coalition, which we'll
talk a bit more about in the next episode.

Speaker 16 (19:30):
And I believe my faith compels me and convicts me
that in this moment, the work that has been.

Speaker 13 (19:37):
Done, and the work that is to come to.

Speaker 16 (19:40):
Defend this, our beloved family, this, our siblings.

Speaker 6 (19:46):
The earth is a holy and righteous work.

Speaker 16 (19:55):
It is a holy and righteous work that is grounded
in a faithful rage, rage which has been boiling in
the human family's blood for centuries and meets us care
at this moment and asks us, what will you do

(20:15):
to defend those who have no defense?

Speaker 13 (20:19):
What will you do to protect those who have no shelter?

Speaker 16 (20:23):
What will you do when the time comes to decide
on whose side you are on? Will you stand for
oppression or will you stand for the liberation of all people?

(20:46):
My friends, I come with so good news if that's okay.
And the good news is that God stands on the
side of the oppress. God stands on the side of
the forest defenders. Law stands on the side of the
most marginalized. And let us make no mistake that in

(21:11):
our protests and in our rage, we also have to
cry out and lament. We cannot be silent as dou
Gita's blood cries out from the ground. We must honor
a life that did not have to be lost. It

(21:32):
did not have to be this way. Do not listen
to anyone who tells you that there is not a
better way, there is always a better way. I come
with my faith and the conviction that in this work,
in this moment, a prophetic imagination, a creative vision, is

(21:57):
needed for the world that we want to see. I'm
not here to wait for the Kingdom of God. I
want the Kingdom of God right now, right now.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
After the speeches were finished, it was announced that the crowd,
now nearing a thousand strong, would gather up together and
march to Wilani People's Park to retake the forest. As
everyone was getting ready to leave, you could see the
care and solidarity people had for each other on full display.
Bike scouts were checking to see if the path was clear,

(22:33):
volunteer street medics ready to help anyone in need. Water
bottles are being handed out to keep everyone hydrated, while
others autonomously coordinated rides for people unable to make. The
walk looks like approximately one thousand people marching from Gresham
Park to Alani People's Park on.

Speaker 10 (22:51):
The bike path.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
That's a I can't even see the end of where,
of where, the of where the people's it's a long,
long stretch of people marshing, hundreds and hundreds of feet.
There's some banners in front of the march. One of
them reads disarm, defund, dismantle, no cop city. There's one
of the sun shining over a pink sky with a

(23:17):
little blue turtle and their shell is the earth. Massive
like ten person banner that reads defend the Forest. The
energy of the march remained high as people chanted to
the beat of drums. I sat down with Matt from
the Atlantic Community Press Collective towards the end of the
week to talk about what we saw throughout this week

(23:40):
of action.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
At one point, the entire crowd, seemingly the entire crowd
was chanting if you build it, we will burn it,
which seems.

Speaker 10 (23:49):
Almost like a thousand people.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yeah, and it was being chanted like, you know, looking
around the crowd, you saw everyone for the most part,
partaking in that.

Speaker 10 (24:06):
So that was a very interesting.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Moment where it felt like there was that sort of
solidarity amongst the varied groups that make up the Defend
the Atlanta Forest movement.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
As the march went on, the path was getting increasingly forested.
About two thirds of the way to Allani People's Park,
after turning a bend, the crowd noticed three deer frolicking
alongside the march from further within the tree line. To

(24:38):
quote the Atlanta Community Press Collectives right up of the
march quote. The joyous mood shifted slightly as the protest
closed in on the People's Park, passing over the remains
of the bike path destroyed in December by film executive
Ryan Millsap. Activists were uncertain what they were walking into
or whether the police would offer any resistance.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
Activists thought that there was going to be an issue.
They were concerned about the police being in willani People's Park.
So about halfway we saw that stack of makeshift shields
made out of plastic rain barrels.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
About two dozen of those five gatlandrum shields just mysteriously
showed up along the bike path. We are arriving at
Willannee People's Park, no cops.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
But then when we got there there was no police whatsoever.
From what the scanner people told us, there were police around,
they were just kind of monitoring from afar, but no
police ever entered the park. And it was I would
say it was a really nice high point return to the.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Forest, banners and shields moving around Willane People's Park as
hundreds and hundreds of more people still pour in from
the bike path. As the back of the march finally arrived,
the crowd gathered up one more time to all chant
out a promise.

Speaker 17 (26:03):
In unison, I will, I Will.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
One of the activists I interviewed during the Week of
Action was Matthew Johnson, the person who kicked off the
rally at Gresham Park. We talked about the methodology of
starting off this Week of Action with this big inclusive
march and how that may have helped achieve the goal
of retaking the forest that first day.

Speaker 18 (26:37):
We wanted to be sure that we would be able
to reoccupy the park and what that would entail is
having a wide swath of the larger public involved with
any efforts to enter into the park. And so we

(27:00):
had the rally Aggresshiam Park and there was a march
planned from that part to Wallani People's Park. There is
violence that people have become accustomed to when it is
people on the political fringes. That's just where we're at

(27:21):
in the political situation in Atlanta. However, when you have
several people that you would consider more normal, liberal, progressive, etc.
Like representatives from NGO's nonprofit organizations, just normal people that
also wanted to see the project shut down cop City.

(27:43):
That's when you have the ability to move towards people
that want to reoccupy, having the space to do that
without seeing tons of police repression as we have seen
in the movement recently.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
After reaching Wolaanni People's Park, many of those who arrived
from out of town for this week of action, myself included,
stopped by the shrine for Tortigita just off of the
tree line. People added new wildflowers and packs of fruit snacks.
I'm going to walk over to the Torti Guita vigil site.
Looks about the same as last time I was here.

(28:24):
Many candles, little turtles, still a few fruit snacks. Although
the vigil shrine was the same as last time I
saw it, almost everything else about being in this place
was different. When I was here last time in January,
it was a dark place of grief. The forest was barren,
with all of the trees in their bare winter state.

(28:45):
But looking around the forest this first sunny day, you
could see new life growing all around you. To quote
the Community Press Collective again quote, small campsites began to
crop up across the landscape. Some nestled in sunny air spaces.
Others tucked into thickets, providing shelter and cooler climate for
the new residence. The trees themselves reflected this next phase.

(29:09):
Sprigs of new growth leaves appeared on the ends of
barren branches. Small white flowers bloomed along the periphery of
the parking lot. After months of desolation and death, life
prevailed and spring arrives in the forest.

Speaker 10 (29:25):
I'm excited to.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
Get back into the forest because it is so hot,
and get back in the forest I did. One of
the events that happened almost daily throughout the week was
tours of the eastern side of the Wallani Forest. The
walks through the woods were led by Joe Perry, a
member of the South River Forest Coalition. I was able

(29:46):
to attend the first tour during the Week of Action
and got consent to record some of the forest walk.

Speaker 19 (29:52):
All right, hey, y'all, welcome to the living room, so
named because it's it's a very inviting and comfortable place.

Speaker 20 (30:00):
Relax.

Speaker 19 (30:01):
This is where a lot of the meetings happened during
the previous Week of action. People gather and have different
events here. Oftentimes it will be food available here campfires, silverware.
So it's also just a very very comfortable place to

(30:24):
relax because it's in this pine forest and so not
really any undergrowth and just super comfortable. It's a really
good place to have meetings and just kind of get
to know each other and establish some calm.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
We made our way from the living room to the
Grandmother Tree, a large oak that is estimated to be
a few hundred years old. On our way to Ryan
Millsaps proposed a site for so called Michelle Obama Park,
which is currently a forty acre mount of dirt about
thirty feet high. We walked past to some old tents
that were slashed apart during the January raid. Among the

(31:05):
destroyed remains were little pink flowers growing out of the ground. Next,
we headed to Entrenchment Creek. Joe Perry explained some of
the background regarding the environmental state of the watershed and
how protecting the forest is a crucial step in the
process of helping the land heal itself.

Speaker 19 (31:23):
I got involved with a group called the South River
Forest Coalition. We are trying to help further the vision
of the South River Forest that Ryan Gravelle and the
Nature Conservancy came up with to try to interweave about
thirty five hundred acres of forest with the other businesses

(31:44):
and homes and lands around this area that are in
the watershed of the South River forest. And the Entrenchment Creek,
which we will see on this tour, is the main
tributary to the South River. The South River is the
fourth most endangered river in this country, and Trenchmit Creek
is one of the most polluted creeks in this county.

(32:07):
And so that is what we're trying to protect. And
in order to protect a river and a creek and
a watershed, you have to protect the forest that's around it.
I've been exploring these woods for the last decade and
leading tours and talking to people about it, trying to
explain what's going on with a lawsuit, trying to explain
what's going on the difference between in Trenchmen Creek Park

(32:29):
and the prison farm and the acreage and all these
other things, and all that stuff. It's just like it's
just gears turning in your head because when you come
out here and enjoy this, I mean, this is really
what it's all about. This is all we have to
do to convince people that this is worth saving it.
Just bring you out here and let you appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
As masses of people converged at Wallani People's Park Saturday afternoon,
almost immediately a whole bunch of pop up infrastructure was
set up to facilitate an encampment in the woods once again,
really for the first time in any kind of large
capacity since January and even December. The December raids decimated
much of the camp infrastructure, which still had not been

(33:11):
rebuilt since then. But upon arriving from Gresham Park on Saturday,
both first time of visitors to the Wallani Forest and
seasoned forest defenders worked together to rebuild a lot of
that infrastructure to support camp life for the next week.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
One of the things that we saw on the march
in was like eight cinder blocks right at the entrance
to the living room, and then you and I went
into the living room, we saw these huge water tanks.
So later they moved those water tanks to those cinder
blocks and they that has become or a watering point
for everyone. So like twice a day a truck comes

(33:50):
with a water tank on the back and then they
go through the arduous process of filling that water. So
that everybody in camp can have water, and they had
this system that was seemingly self organized. And then that
first day we were sitting in the parking lot and
it seemed like every time you turn around there was
like a different train of people carrying supplies into the

(34:12):
living room. The second day, there was a woman who
was shoveling gravel from the torn up concrete on the side,
and she was filling all of the brandom holes in
the ground so that carts could go up them. And
I was like, you know, did somebody assign this to you?

(34:34):
She's like, no, I saw this. It just needed to
be done, and I did it. And that was very
much the entire vibe of those first I would say
twenty four hours was Okay, what do we need to
do to get this thing running?

Speaker 1 (34:48):
As encampments were being established, simultaneously, infrastructure for the South
River Music Festival was being erected in the adjacent radio
control field. Within a short amount of time, a full
stage was constructed, complete with lights and speakers, lining the
sides of the field, where various tables and booths. One

(35:09):
side featured a large variety of refreshments, as well as
a medic tent, and the other side was home to
free hot food and freshly grilled burgers and hot dogs.
Next to the food were a few tables distributing an
array of radical literature posters and stickers. What was your
favorite stuff at the music fest? Suture?

Speaker 2 (35:27):
So well, there was an arapa table, and I'm very
food motivated, so the arapas were delicious, and we had
walked a bunch that day, so I needed sustenance. And
then there was the burger table as well, but we
I don't think. I don't know if you got a burger,
but I did not get a burger.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
I got I got one burger, but they were out
of buns when I got a burger, so I had
a lettuce burger. And then soon after they got the
buns back, and I was kind of kind of bummed.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
Yeah I did not at least you got something, but
I had the arapis.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
So I mean still hardworth to be fair, hundreds of
people were they've fed for They've had five hundred people,
you know, And at one point they made announcement that
like they needed to do another food run just to
go get more more food, and like a bunch of
people volunteered and you know, only I think two or
three went down to Walmart to get a bunch of
more burgers and hot dogs, and it was just a
really cool moment.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
So I think by the end the end of the
night when I was there, there were about five hundred
people just enjoying the music and looking at the sky.
It was just an immaculate vibe. There was a little
fire pick off to the side. And yeah, you talked
about the setting up the stage. You know, I didn't
know what to expect walking in there is not expecting

(36:39):
quite that much of a production. I wasn't expecting a
light pledged stage with lights all around sort of in
this really like the lighting worked really well for it's
it backdropped the surrounding for.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
It like nice like green and purple lighting.

Speaker 10 (36:54):
Yeah, it was. It was great.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
And then they had that green room tent back there,
and then they had a separate tent for a quick like.
It was a very well thought out festival in the
middle of nowhere.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
The South River Music Festival began early Saturday evening at
five point thirty, kicking off two days of local musical
artists playing shows free of charge. Before the lineup of
live music began. Someone on stage read out a small
flyer that was being passed around, detailing the reasoning for
the festival and its place within the fight to defend

(37:27):
the forest, and I got permission to share that reading.

Speaker 21 (37:31):
In the limitless possibilities of the cosmos, in the mad
flecks of events, reactions and anomalies of the past twelve
billion years since the birth of our universe, it's a
statistical impossibility.

Speaker 20 (37:45):
That we would be here now, But here we are alive.

Speaker 21 (37:49):
Together Such incredible circumstances have brought us here. Among them
the incredible and innovative resistance to defend this place. From
becoming a poet least training compound.

Speaker 10 (38:05):
Magic mushrooms out.

Speaker 21 (38:07):
This resistance, which brings us together the most cunning and
resilient techniques of the radical environmentalist movement with the incredible
courage and ferocity of the George Floyd Uprising, is not
just about a small piece of land.

Speaker 20 (38:21):
It's not about being fought.

Speaker 21 (38:23):
Between police and their goons on one hand and some
activists and their friends on the other. We are witnessing
a collision of two competing ideas of happiness.

Speaker 20 (38:32):
Of life, of the future.

Speaker 21 (38:37):
In this competition experiments with new types of free culture
play a decisive role. This movement cannot be reduced to
what is happening in city hall, on social media, or
in meetings. For two years, we have descended on these woods,
finding refuge from the high rents and predatory bookings fees
of the corporate venues and bars. We have not come

(38:59):
here to redecorate the actions of some activists as allies,
lending our service to the drab and loveless militancy of
something we do not otherwise care about. As the gentrification
of Atlanta intensifies, more and more diy venues and clubs
are shutdown, and free spaces to play, shows and dance
are push further and further from the city center. Our

(39:21):
free time is pinched as rents increase and traffic keeps
us waiting longer and longer.

Speaker 20 (39:26):
That is going to change.

Speaker 21 (39:31):
Music is not like other forms of human culture. It
is different from painting, drawing, poetry, literature, or film art. Politics,
and symbolic culture in general represent the passions conjuring strong
feelings from the shadows of reality, pulling them from the
depths of the soul or the back of consciousness.

Speaker 20 (39:51):
Music, on the other hand.

Speaker 21 (39:53):
Is perhaps the only form of human creativity that contacts
those feelings without any mediations. Music is physics, music is reality.
The system we live in is at war with reality.
The system is destroying forests, rivers, mountaintops, and oceans. It's
destroying our imaginations, our bodies, and our world. To defend

(40:16):
ourselves from certain annihilation, it will not be sufficient to
strike the right notes at the right time. We will
have to make recourse to other means, to more direct means,
and that is why we're all here. The defend the
Atlanta Forest Revolution will be economic, political, as well as cultural.

(40:37):
We're building a new era of human history where music
will be at the steering wheel. What is needed cannot
be taught without first being discovered. We are those adventurers
plunging the depths of the cosmos for the contours and
textures of a free existence, of a life without dead time.
When it is necessary, we will defend ourselves by the
means appropriate to the task. Not with words, not with denunciation,

(41:00):
but with actions, real and concrete, actions as real as
this sounds, as real as reality.

Speaker 20 (41:10):
I'm so lucky to be here with y'all. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
Across the middle of the field, hundreds of people laid
out blankets on the grass and dirt. Concertgoers alternated between
a dancing in front of the stage and relaxing and
eating food on picnic blankets. As the night approached, over
a thousand people were spread out across the RC field.
Amoshe pit had formed directly in front of the stage.

(41:34):
Musicians led stop Coopcity chants, and between sets, people spoke
on mic about the movement.

Speaker 22 (41:40):
Everybody say stop cop City, Stop cop City.

Speaker 3 (41:48):
That's right, that's right.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
Saturday Night was headlined by local Atlanta rapper Zach Fox.
Zach told stories about how he and his friends used
to hang out in this very forest as teenagers.

Speaker 23 (41:59):
All Right, man, hey, i'm gonna say this, Fuck the mayor.
I'm gonna say this, fuck the mayor, and fuck all
this shit. And I love everybody for coming out to
support this ship.

Speaker 8 (42:14):
And you're really fucking.

Speaker 13 (42:19):
When I tell you me, Archie.

Speaker 24 (42:21):
Everybody used to walk back in these woods and drink
red stripes and and walk our dogs and shoot guns
and shiit. So I really don't want to see this
shit happen. And I really appreciate Allia for coming out
to do this shit.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
Fuck cop City Chance erupted pretty regularly throughout the night.

Speaker 23 (42:42):
And this is all I'm gonna tell the police. This
is all I'm gonna tell the police. Okay, hold on,
let me make sure I push the right button.

Speaker 25 (42:53):
Say that ship. Let's go. Fucking run it. Fucking run it. Fucko,
run it, fucking run it, fucking run it, fucking run it.

Speaker 3 (43:06):
FUCKO, run it, Atlanta. I love y'all so much.

Speaker 23 (43:13):
Man, Hell yeah, hey, man, let me say something real quick.
Let me say something real quick before I get the
fuck out saves. Let my hummies right this shit. I
love y'all so much for supporting this shit I have.
Let me tell you. Let me tell you something. I'm
thirty two. A lot of niggas start getting old and
they lose faith in the youth. I got so much

(43:34):
faith in everybody in this motherfucking bitch. Wherever y'all going,
I'm going, I truly believe that y'all gonna save this
motherfucking world.

Speaker 26 (43:44):
So I'm with y'all.

Speaker 23 (43:46):
Fuck cop City, fuck cops in general, fuck twelve, fuck authoritarianism,
fuck capitalism, fuck all that bullshit. I'm with y'all to
the end. So I motherfucking die so let me hear
y'all say this one more time.

Speaker 25 (44:04):
Start bawow, start bobow. Stiit bob wow, side bobow.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
Besides the domestic terrorism banner I mentioned in the opening
of this episode, another banner was hung up beside the
stage featuring turtles and butterflies, along with the Asada Shakur quote.
Love is our sword, truth is our compass.

Speaker 19 (44:31):
This kind of.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
Music is about the Nazi to nature, filling the trees,
feeling the ground, filling each other.

Speaker 3 (44:39):
Look right up there, look.

Speaker 10 (44:41):
At the fucking moon.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
To quote a communicate from the Sonic Defense Committee quote.
At this point, it was impossible to imagine a meaningful
police intervention. The crowd was made up of elderly people,
university students, rappers and did US activists, toddlers and newborns, skaters,
people of all imaginable Atlanta demographics. The night ended around

(45:08):
three thirty am to sounds of house techno and drum
and bass without any notable incident.

Speaker 10 (45:13):
Unquote.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
Tents were set up all over the eastern side of
the forest, with many people choosing to sleep under the
tree canopy between the living room and the music festival
for that first night. As the night went on, people
carefully tended small campfires both in the festival field and
in the middle of the living room. To quote the
Press Collective, the movement was once again living in joyous

(45:37):
harmony with the forest it had promised to protect. Tomorrow's
episode will cover day two of the music festival, the
frankly unprecedented direct action that took place Sunday afternoon, and
a more detailed look at the police raid that happened
later that evening. See you on the other side, welcome

(45:59):
back to it could happen here. This is part two
of my mini series detailing the March Week of Action
to defend the Atlanta Forest and stop Coop City. Last episode,
we covered the Week of Action kickoff rally at Gresham
Park and day one of the South River Music Festival.
Will be picking up basically right where we left off,

(46:20):
starting with my conversation with Matt from the Atlanta Community
Press Collective. Saturday night, there was music going on to
like four am. It was a long night, but like
a really good night. What was your Sunday?

Speaker 3 (46:31):
Like Sunday?

Speaker 2 (46:33):
You know, Sunday started off really great, Like walking in
the first thing you see when you walked back onto
the festival grounds was this amazing bouncy house that they
had written some guidelines up there that it did seem
like everyone followed. You could fit six adults, which like
for a bouncy house, that's pretty large.

Speaker 10 (46:53):
It was a big bouncy house.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
It was like six of dollars through twelve kids or
something like that. So, yeah, you see bouncy house and
like when you see that the first thing, but I
think that visually sets the entire expectation, like that is
a statement in and of itself of like what they
were going for that first.

Speaker 1 (47:12):
Day, Day two of the music festival started around noon.
Right in the middle of the RC field was this
large rainbow colored bouncy castle adorned with a stop Copcity banner.
People slowly trickled in all over the course of the afternoon,
culminating in about a thousand people scattered across the field
by four pm. Just like the night before, people enjoyed

(47:33):
free food, Defend the Forest related literature, and a bustling
refreshment booth while listening to live music. People played a
soccer and frisbee in the open field, while others were
continuing to build camp infrastructure in the forest.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
So I think the bouncy Castle set the tone, and
everything was really lighthearted for the first few hours. I
spent most of that day walking around watching the autonomous
infrastructure in the forest kind of pop up on its own.
It's like everywhere I went, you know, to the parking lot,
you saw trains of people carrying like water and supplies

(48:13):
deep into the forest. Everyone seemed to just be trying
to find a place to fit in and to work
and to really participate in the week of Action.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
As the day went on, rumors started to circulate about
inaction happening later that afternoon. Word quickly spread that people
would meet up in the RC field at five pm. Eventually,
a flyer was posted to social media, and sure enough,
come five o'clock, a group of a few hundred people
made up of individuals and affinity groups, gathered behind the

(48:45):
bouncy Castle, most of whom were masked up and a
donning some form of black block or camo block. A
communicating posted later on the website scenes dot no blogs
dot org described the feeling on the ground quote the
air was tense, no visible rage, just a stealed determination.
No one knew what was coming next, but we knew

(49:07):
it was something big that.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
That was quite the visual like this, this crowd of
Camo and black block and like some people wearing normal
clothes who I don't think quite knew what they were
about to do next to this massive bouncy castle. And
I think that that the visual of it kind of
represents like two aspects of the movement, right, like the

(49:32):
militant aspect and the joyful aspect, and I think they're
both very central to what you know, the movement is.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
Yeah, it's a pretty good encapsulation of the diversity present
around the Defend the Forest and Stop cup City movement.

Speaker 10 (49:48):
There's a few.

Speaker 1 (49:48):
Hundred people in Camo Block walking down, I believe is
a constitution, a lot of people addressed in Black Block,
mix of legal observers here, police shoppers overhead are Currently
people are marching west in the direction of the old

(50:15):
Atlanta prison farm, the slate of the forest that cop
City is planned to be built on. There has not
really been a mass convergence of people like this in
the forest in a long long time. I cannot remember
the last time there was anything quite like this. This
is definitely the biggest group of people who's ever like

(50:37):
converged on marching on the old Atlanta Prison farm area.
Last year, people were occupying and living in the forest
in that side. Since the repression has intensified, more people
have moved over across on the other side of the
Churchman Creek Park, on the slate of land closer to
Wollani People's Park and the section that Lion MILLSAP is

(51:00):
wanting to develop. Definitely never seen this many people marching
like this near the forest. In a much more militant
seeming group of the crowd, as opposed to Saturday's first march,
which was like a thousand people of various types. Everyone
here looks much more willing to throw down. As the group,

(51:23):
around three hundred strong, left the RC field, they calmly
marched west down Constitution Road toward the power line cut,
accompanied overhead by a police chopper equipped with a thermal camera.

Speaker 10 (51:37):
Popped as still overhead. I'm sure you can hear it.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
To get a clear picture of what actually happened that day.
It's useful to understand the geography of the Wilauni Forest,
especially since the police have tried to make it sound
like the individuals who were arrested later that night were
apprehended at this scene of the crime, which is not
actually the case.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
The entire area that the defenders are trying to defend,
the entire Weilani Forest, the contiguous part of it is
surrounded in sort of a triangle by three different roads, Constitution,
Key and Bouldercrest. All the way to the east is
Wilani People's Park, and like just to the west of

(52:18):
that is the RC Field where the music festival was happening,
where the bouncy castle is and where our group that
we're following here starts to gather. And then all the
way to the west is the proposed site of copp
City along Key Road. So to get there through the

(52:39):
forest takes a good thirty forty five minutes to get there,
you know, if you're on the road, is still like
a twenty five thirty minute walk. It is not like
anywhere close on foot. No, it's from point A to
point B.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
And if you're crossing through the woods, you also have
to like jump over Entrenchment Creek, which is not the
easiest creek to cross over.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
It's not the easiest and it's not the cleanest something
you want to step in.

Speaker 10 (53:06):
I'm at the back of the march.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
Now everyone's kind of tightened up into one larger, larger group.
They've paused briefly and are retrieving some tires that have
been found near the ditch on the road here, dozens
and dozens of tires are blocking are blocking the road.
They're getting moved out pretty quick and the march is

(53:28):
moving on. Oh, and looks like people arrived at the
power line cut. This massive clearing for power lines to
run north south. People are now marching on the green
grass underneath the power lines. The thin clear cut for
power lines has been there for years and directly leads
to where cop City pre construction work is taking place

(53:51):
near the North Gate. The open area makes it easy
to traverse, but on the flip side that also makes
it easy to surveil. There were only a little over
a dozen cops stationed at the North Gate, as well
as the police chopper circling overhead. The group of block
is slowly, slowly moving north along the power line cut.
I'm keeping my distance for now so that I can

(54:13):
continue doing stuff without being extremely jeopardized. The block approached
the North Gate in broad daylight, with shields in hand
and people behind throwing projectiles in the direction of police,
a barrage of fireworks, rocks, and just the sheer size
of the crowd overwhelmed police, causing officers to retreat as
a swarm of hundreds of people overtook the proposed cop

(54:35):
city construction site and current police security upost within the
Wollani Forest. All right, the group has marched a decent
ways up. There's now fireworks in the distance. Police helicopter
is still overhead. Looks like most of the crowd is
still in the area of the power line cut.

Speaker 10 (54:52):
Pretty condensed.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
Large group of people up there, lots of fireworks. Like
I said, some individuals chose to focus their efforts on
pelling the nearby police, giving the opportunity for others to
set their sights on various targets. The large number of
people in the block together allowed for individuals to feel
more safe and capable of taking action. The APDs put

(55:14):
a call out to get any available units down here
by the old line of prison farm property and a
quote from the scanner audios get here now assholes. Forest
defenders smashed up and set ablaze and office trailer, two UTVs,
a surveillance tower and a front end loader as the
police ran for cover behind a fenced off secondary, smaller
outpost across from Key Road, despite the police helicopter circling

(55:39):
overhead the gathering spot for a good thirty minutes. It
seems APD was not fully prepared in their response or
just did not know what was going on, because they
made a decent way without any visible resistance so far.
A communicate posted online reads quote when we approached the gate,
finally it was not chaos, but it was something like it.

(56:00):
Our crowd unleashed a wild burst of energy. It was
incredible and I will never forget it. It was rhythmic
almost We devastated all of their work, their vehicles, the trailer, everything.
But it looks like Atlanta Police is now trying to converge.
Lots of fireworks are still. I see smoke. Oh, a
lot of smoke. WHOA A lot of smoke very fast

(56:22):
is filling up, filling up the area around the little
It looks like it's by the little control tower in
the middle of the power line cut. Wow, that smoke
is thick. That's a fire. That is a decent fire.
You can I can see the orange flame now as
the few police officers stationed at the North Gate were
forced to fall back under pressure. Force defenders leveled months

(56:44):
of their work within a few minutes. To quote the
scenes dot no blocks communicate quote. This act of mass
collective sabotage was done methodically and without anxiety. The crowd
destroyed all of their equipment with ease and confidence.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
So the excavator there was a utility train vehicle, which
is what the police have been using to sort of
move in and around the woods, and sort of motorized
move in and around the woods. And then the office
space and the storage space.

Speaker 10 (57:21):
We're all torched.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
I think that that comprised like everything that was over.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
There, and then the police surveillance tower, which has been
taken down a few times.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
Surveillance towers in that area, they have this tendency.

Speaker 10 (57:33):
To fall over.

Speaker 1 (57:34):
The fire has gotten a lot lot bigger. Police scanner
audio is saying officer needs help, calling for all available
units to converge on the spot. Wow O, the fire
is getting so much brighter, smoke is incredibly thick. It
looks like some people are starting to move out of
the area back into the woods.

Speaker 10 (57:51):
But wow, that is.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
A huge fire. It was at least two separate things
lit on fire. There were, in fact, more than two
things on fire. Looks like crowd is going to be
starting to move because a lot of police is about
to show up. Unsure what the response will be for
people at the music festival or at a Wolani People's
park who are camping out for the Week of Action.

(58:13):
But this is a pretty pretty big action for Week
of Action Day two. Wow, this smoke plume is massive.
While the action itself was a success, the notion of
an overall one sided victory was about to come crashing down.
A whole bunch of sirens just flew by about a

(58:36):
dozen cop cars, lots of cop cars by the music
festival entrants as well by the RC field. Looks like
the cop cars are converging at the festival, not at
the fire. Okay, back at the music festival. As you
can hear, it is it is. It is still ongoing.
There's still hundreds of people, probably like five hundred people

(58:58):
gathered here at the music festival. You can see smoke
in the air from this vantage point, from the spot
by the power line cut where.

Speaker 10 (59:07):
Those two fires took place.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
One indication that this night was far from over was
that the police helicopter seemed to be moving toward the festival.
The chopper has moved from being near the power line
cut to the music festival and Wailani People's Park. Vibe
seems to be pretty chill on the ground here. I'm
not sure how many people that are present know what's
going on, but the chopper is still stationed above the

(59:32):
entrance to the festival, so I think they're looking to
see if the group that march is going to march
back the same direction, which I don't think they will, but.

Speaker 10 (59:42):
That is what's currently going on.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
People still still seem to be coming like to and
from the festival. Sure enough, within minutes, an increasingly large
number of police started to stage by the entrance to
the RC field. Doesn't the police cars are now stationed
outside the entrance to the RC field where the music
festival is taking place. There's a lot of police here,
some with rifles. They're getting their zip ti cuffs ready.

(01:00:07):
They've not entered the festival area yet, but I got
word from somebody that they have entered the Wolani People's
Park parking lot and it looks like movement is to
be expected very soon. At around six thirty pm, police
began to raid the South River Music Festival and started
what I think is accurately described as the police's own

(01:00:29):
counter protest to the events that transpired the past hour.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
So when the police came running up onto the tarmac
at Rcy Field where the bouncy castle was, of course
they had to point a rifle at the bouncy castle.
And if that doesn't show that police are not here
to have fun and have joy, I don't know what is.
I don't know if anyone was in it at the time.
I don't think so. I think they were literally just

(01:00:53):
pointing a gun at an empty bouncy castle, which they
have they destroyed, And I think we have to take
a moment to mourn that.

Speaker 10 (01:01:04):
Lots of police running into the music festival.

Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
They're running someone down, chasing down a few people, Cops
approaching for multiple sides. Instead of immediately trying to confront
the hundreds of music festival attendees head on, the still
extremely outnumbered cops ran to the opposite side of the
music festival and started to indiscriminately go after isolated stragglers

(01:01:29):
people running into the woods trace by police. Someone's tackled,
no one early arounded to arrest someone else being arrested one, two, three,
four or five six people currently arrested that I can

(01:01:52):
see or at least being detained.

Speaker 10 (01:01:56):
Looks like an NLG person's on the ground.

Speaker 1 (01:01:59):
Eventually, the certain goers realized what was happening, and a
little over one hundred people mobilized to pressure the cops
out of the field.

Speaker 10 (01:02:07):
People from the.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Music festival are now running behind the police that have
rushed into the RC field, cops being flanked by hundreds
of people.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
So the first thing that happened was a few officers
entered the RC field, which is where the music festival
was happening, and made a few quick arrests.

Speaker 10 (01:02:30):
Yeah, like five or six, I would say.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
And I would assume, seeing like the crowd and realizing
that a small force of officers is easily overwhelmed, kind
of pulled back with their arrests. And then just after that,
over in Wielani People's Park, that's when the CAB came
in with their SWAT teams. There was a group that
was meeting in the gazebo and they report like dozens

(01:02:52):
of police officers running by. One of them stood up
to record, and an officer with an ar fifteen and
yelled at them and told them to sit the fuck
back down, and they did. They were allowed to finish
their meeting. But they report this very surreal experience of
just officers like flying by and also making arrest of

(01:03:14):
individuals who were running.

Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
And then the third.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
Wave, I would say, came in on the back of
a armored police vehicle with an L RAD, good old
DJ L rad.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
It brings it brings back all the memories.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
And so from there they sort of launched into the forest,
launching tear.

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
Gas again also brings back all of the memories. Police
are starting to come back into the music festival. Fireworks
are happening in the woods near the living room.

Speaker 10 (01:03:46):
It looks like.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
The police that entered via the RC field advanced up
to join another group of cops who came in from
Wolani People's Park and were already in the woods. What
I first assumed were just fireworks were actually in exchange
of munitions, with cops firing explosive tear gas canisters into
the forest and people trying to hold the cops off
with fireworks.

Speaker 10 (01:04:10):
Tear gas is in the woods. Fucked, it's hard. I
can't get any I didn't I didn't bring my gas
masks because this was a music festival.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
It's just the woods are completely caked and gas everyone
who's inside. I don't know how they're gonna get out.
Cops have the place surrounded. It's so gassed up in there.

Speaker 10 (01:04:29):
Police raided.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
They tear gased a section of the woods close to
the RCA field, kind of blocking off the RCA Field
from from the Wanni People's Park parking lot and the
camp sits nearby, So you couldn't like really get away
or run through that area because your breathing would stop,
as mine temporarily did as I tried, as I tried
to run through there, and then policer just took over

(01:04:54):
this entire section of southeast Atlanta, just this entire section
of the woods, all the intersections in this.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
Area, except for the very small space at the music
festival was still going on during this entire time.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
The section like right in front of the stage where
people continued to have the music festival for the next
few hours. As police were as like, I kid you not,
Like over five hundred police officers were in this surrounding area.
There was the most amount of police I've ever seen
respond to anything ever, it was wild.

Speaker 10 (01:05:29):
I am currently heading out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
I will try to loop back around to a lot
of People's Park because there's just no way through it
right now with all the tear gas. But a cop
van has pulled into the rc Field Music Festival. People,
some of them are study by the stage, others are
kind of dispersing. Night's getting pretty hectic. Cops fully surrounding
a lot of People's Park and the music festival on

(01:05:52):
all sides. There was at least one individual of note
who was witnessed to be at the music festival the
entire time during the direct action, and they were one
of the very first arrests. Police chased this person down,
tased and violently tackled them. Were you on the festival
at that time?

Speaker 18 (01:06:09):
I was around the festival at that time. I even
saw the police tackle someone at the festival and tackle
and tase an indigenous person at the festival. And initially
the police officer Georgia State Patrol and these are the
folks that were responsible for killing Tortigita and making up

(01:06:31):
a lie about it. They started running and there were
three people in front of them. All three of those
people started running and then there were two white folks
that veered off to the left and one Indigenous person
that veered off to the right.

Speaker 8 (01:06:46):
Go figure, the.

Speaker 18 (01:06:48):
Georgia State Patrol veered to the right and then tased
and tackled the indigenous person. And then and there's the
footage of this that may may not be released, where
I was trying to de escalate the situation because this
police officer, with no grounds to attack this person, is

(01:07:08):
choking them on the ground and then really just asking
you like literally what are you doing, Like why are
you doing and then the persons that I didn't do anything,
and then the Jorgia State Patrol officer responded, well, you ran, right,
as if running when somebody with a gun chasing you

(01:07:30):
is an admission of guilt of something. So the response
was nonsensical and stupid.

Speaker 2 (01:07:39):
So they're tear gassing the forest and again, you know,
grabbing from reports anyone who's who's running, anyone who who
you know rightfully runs from a police officer running at
them with an AR fifteen, which you know, we've been
around police all week, and like the instinct to run,

(01:08:00):
you know, even even now, is still pretty high.

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
No, absolutely, and if you've never been chased by police before.
Your first instinct isn't to like let them get you.
Like I've had police just charge at me for filming
police brutality before, and yeah, you generally want to move away.

Speaker 10 (01:08:21):
It is your immediate reaction.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
Yeah, anyone running at you with a gun is caused
for fear and a police officer even more so.

Speaker 10 (01:08:29):
Okay, I am out of the area.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
Police have surrounded on basically every side of the line
People's Park, the section of the four people are camping
out of the music festival, All entrances and exits are stage,
a whole bunch of intersections.

Speaker 10 (01:08:42):
This police stage.

Speaker 1 (01:08:43):
They're letting some people go, obviously they're arresting a whole bunch
of other people. No clear indication on who they're arresting
or why. It's pretty chaotic right now.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
They put out this officer needs help. Call that expanded
beyond just APD. But the first thing they did was
was calling every available APD officer. Fulton County Sheriff's Office
joint to cab County started to mount up, and then
of course the Georgia State Patrol definitely had to get
in on this action. So jurisdictionally wide or this multi

(01:09:14):
jurisdiction wide force of police amassed on Key Road with
the cab kind of coming in on the other side.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
I passed through at least five hundred individual police officers. Yeah,
that like that would check out because I walked a
decent a decent, decent ways, I passed by many an
intersection with at least fifty to one hundred cops was
stationed at like each intersection.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
Oh and we can't forget the Sandy Springs Police Department
also ends way down from outside the premier.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
Multiple swat teams. There was like I think three different bearcats.
After I evacuated the area, I was still in shock
about how many police officers mobilized to raid the festival.
This is the biggest police response I've seen to anything
in Atlanta in the time that I've been here. This
is bigger than the police response is to most of
like Portland actions compared to like twenty twenty, massive, massive

(01:10:08):
amount of cops from multiple agencies taking over a huge
area of South Atlanta and de kep County. As the
second wave of police charged in and detained several music
festival attendees, panic spread throughout the crowd. Hundreds of people

(01:10:29):
rushed to the exits in an attempt to evacuate. Police
blocked exits and arrested, detained, or harassed and threatened those
trying to leave. One concertgoer reported that they received death
threats from an intruding officer quote you're going to get shot.

(01:10:52):
I don't know how to put it, but you're going
to get shot with a bullet unquote. That same person
who recorded that interaction also reported that you heard an
officer with his side arm drawn in the living room
is say, quote, I swear to God, I will fucking
kill you unquote. Some people opted for safety in numbers
and decided they'd rather stay together as a group as

(01:11:13):
opposed to the risk of trying to escape through the
woods alone. That night, about one hundred and fifty people
congregated in front of the festival stage, and musicians that
stuck around continued to play music.

Speaker 2 (01:11:25):
So the music festival continues unhindered until dusk, and about
then is when DJ l Rad comes up and officers
get out and call over like five people from the crowd.
And so at this point I think there's like somewhere
between one hundred seventy five to one hundred people still

(01:11:49):
at the music fest, watching the music, and people are
calling out from the stage like we have a legal
right to be here, this is public property.

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
We had we had dueling loud speakers trying to two
people having a regular conversation across a field via opposing
loud speakers.

Speaker 2 (01:12:10):
Very Scott Pilgrim versus the world right, like.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
You know, as the police are trying to shut down
a concert, and there's like punks screaming into the bike
and police officers using the yell red to scream back.

Speaker 2 (01:12:23):
It's just amazing. I mean, the visuals of this whole
day I think are kind of really easy to imagine,
even if you're not there.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
Yeah, Roughly after two hours of hunting down and detaining
stragglers from the festival, dozens of swat in riot gear
with high end rifles and armored vehicles slowly moved in
towards the stage. Police told festival goers that they had
three minutes to leave the festival under threat of arrest
for domestic terrorism, to which festivalgoers responded by shouting no.

(01:12:55):
In front of the stage. The crowd linked arms and
enchanted let us go home. And we have children who
apparently unable to mass arrest one hundred and fifty people.
For whatever reason, police called for five individuals from the

(01:13:16):
festival to engage in a brief discussion. After this odd
negotiation with a handful of random concertgoers, festival attendees were
told they had ten minutes to walk to their cars
and go home or else be charged with domestic terrorism.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
About half the crowd has cars parked in the rc field,
and the police allow them to go to their cars
and leave, leaving like somewhere between you know, three dozen
somewhere around three dozen people without cars still remaining at
the festival, And this whole time they're also chanting, we

(01:13:52):
have kids, let us go, and like it's this very
big moment of solidarity that I've been told from like
people who were there that you could tell that everybody
was like really interested in keeping each other safe.

Speaker 1 (01:14:04):
Yeah, it was weird because police, definitely they were letting
some people walk away and leave a place, some people
drive away, arresting others not really with no clear indication
for why they're letting some go and not letting others go.
But then this crowd of people around the stage were
eventually allowed to leave the music festival in big rent
of vans. The police then id'd the people who rented

(01:14:28):
the vans and were driving the vans, but everyone was
able to exit who stayed by the music festival. Around midnight,
the Atlanta Police Department posted a press release saying that
thirty five people have been detained, which was kind of
weird language because everyone assumed that those who had been
taken by police were all going to be arrested and charged.

(01:14:50):
But then less than an hour later, twelve individuals were
suddenly released from police custody back to Gresham Park. Since then,
witnesses and lawyers have claimed that police separated out people
with Atlanta addresses on their IDs and released those individuals,
and then the remaining twenty three people, mostly with out
of state ideas or a non Atlanta address, were arrested

(01:15:14):
and charged with domestic terrorism to continue the outside agitator narrative,
bringing the total number of people charged with domestic terrorism
to forty two. Ever, since Sunday night, there's been this
effort from a police and their media allies to frame
these arrests as if they happened at the scene of
the crime, alleging that the twenty three people arrested were

(01:15:36):
themselves torching equipment or actively engaged in domestic terrorism. Yet
all of the arrests took place almost a mile away
at the music festival, and even further away in some cases,
like in the parking lot, which is on the other
side of the forest from the north gate. To quote
an article in Truth Out by Candice Burned, quote, law enforcement,

(01:15:56):
failing to apprehend specific individuals at the site itself, indiscriminately
targeted the music festival, pouring into the field, campgrounds and
parking lot with weapons drawn. They issued commands, chased people down,
and threatened to shoot and arrest festival attendees. Still, major
news outlets all but ignored the fact that all arrests

(01:16:18):
occurred seemingly at random. During a police raid of the
nearby South River Music Festival, where people gathered to see
Zack Fox Live, to jump in a bouncycastle and enjoy
the outdoors. Many attendees had little to no idea of
what had occurred at the cop City construction site. Those
who got lucky were forced to walk through tiergas to
get to their cars, while others were assaulted by police

(01:16:41):
and charged with domestic terrorism, risking thirty five years in prison.
Here's a clip from NBC's Today Show, We.

Speaker 27 (01:16:48):
Got breaking news out of Atlanta over night. Dozens arrested
after what's being described as a coordinated criminal attack. It
happened at the future site of a police training center.
And this is Blaine Alexander's on the story for US
Blaine Good.

Speaker 28 (01:17:01):
Officials say protesters burned construction vehicles and a trailer and
set off fireworks toward officers stationed nearby.

Speaker 29 (01:17:08):
And this wasn't about a public safety training center.

Speaker 30 (01:17:10):
This was about anarchy, and this was about the attempt
to destabilize.

Speaker 28 (01:17:13):
Police point to a group of what they call outside agitators,
saying they left an event nearby, changed into black clothing,
and mounted a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers.

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
To quote a statement from the Sonic Defense Committee. Quote,
the indiscriminate brutalization and arrest of festivalgoers suggests that law
enforcement agencies will go to great lengths to paint the
movement to stop Copcity and Defend the Atlanta Forest as
a criminal organization. It is, in fact, a broad, decentralized
movement with no ideological or organizational unity, only of shared goal.

(01:17:49):
They believe that the movement is made up of bad
actors who betray otherwise peaceful protesters, but the movement is
not committed to any particular tactic, instead accepting the diversity
of approaches to stop the project. The police claim that
the movement is not made up of any Atlantans, while
Atlanta University Center students, local clergy, faith leaders, small businesses,

(01:18:11):
and dozens of locally famous artists and musicians organize themselves
within the movement. The police's false narrative and heavy handed
approach to dealing with the opposition to the Cop City
project is slowly starting to enclose them in. As the
movement grows and city and state officials refuse to see
the reality of what they are dealing with, their own

(01:18:33):
authority is being brought into question. If they are not careful,
the stakes of the movement will soon exceed the bounds
of the forest and Cop City. In fact, that process
may already have begun.

Speaker 2 (01:18:45):
I think to talk about what happened, we kind of
do have to go back to put it in context
and going back to January that was the end of
the occupation or the you know, continuous encampments in Wilani
and then flash uh fast forward to to late January,

(01:19:09):
they get the LDP and so all of these people
who have been protecting the forest for so long are
now watching construction equipment roll in and they're watching clear
cutting and they can't do anything about it. And you
had that action, uh, just after Tortigita's death in January,

(01:19:29):
which was a very targeted you know, only two funders
and other supporters of cop City and you know, maybe
a random police vehicle. But it wasn't really like this
this letting of energy. It was a very like specific
sort of purpose. And so you have this like build
up of energy that I think is really important to

(01:19:52):
keep in mind with with what is about to happen
in this story. And they so they can't do anything.
And then you have Saturday where you see this massive
people return to the forest, and I think it's almost
unavoidable in retrospect to look at that and for them

(01:20:13):
not to have said, what can we do now that
we couldn't do before? So they gather and they do
what they couldn't do before they head over to the
construction site.

Speaker 1 (01:20:27):
There had not been an action like this in the
woods for a long time. Bulldozers and equipment had not
been damaged in quite a while, but on Sunday, people
were able to use the safety in numbers that comes
with a week of action to feel more empowered to
take direct action against the actual machinery that is destroying
the forest and building cop City. Sunday's action can be

(01:20:49):
seen as a demonstration of the pent up righteous anger
from watching the slow destruction of the forest. Participants view
what happened as a justified strike against the active struction
of the forest, a strike back made an anger after
watching the Atlanta Police Foundation make steady progress over the
course of the past few months.

Speaker 2 (01:21:08):
The day before, there was this chant that was taken
up by the entire crowd, and I think we talked
about this and.

Speaker 8 (01:21:16):
Earlier.

Speaker 2 (01:21:18):
If you build it, we will burn it. And that
was something that if you looked all throughout the crowd,
like they were chanting everybody, everybody, like not just people
wearing camera or black block, like.

Speaker 1 (01:21:30):
A thousand people, everybody, Yeah, a thousand people watching from
Gresham Park.

Speaker 2 (01:21:34):
And I think that this is that promise come true.

Speaker 1 (01:21:38):
Sunday's action was itself a pretty unique moment in the
recent history of environmental and anti police struggles. Watching hundreds
of people go on the offensive. To participate in a
mass coordinated sabotage in defense of both the forest and
targets of police of Islands felt like an unprecedented moment
in our modern paradigm of resistance in the United States.

(01:22:01):
But the raid on the music festival on March fifth
was also just the start of an unparalleled wave of
police repression during this week of action, which we will
cover in the next episode. But throughout the whole week,
the assurance that copcity will never be built never faltered,
as demonstrated by common chance such as I believe that

(01:22:22):
we will win. So I'm going to end this episode
with the final chant from the Saturday a Gresham Park rally,
right before a thousand people marched to the Wallani Forest
in Atlanta.

Speaker 31 (01:22:34):
We always in with the asslogan.

Speaker 3 (01:22:37):
We're with the words of our.

Speaker 32 (01:22:39):
Love or assonas schoor because we have a judy.

Speaker 33 (01:22:44):
There's been so much blessed built here.

Speaker 34 (01:22:48):
Repeat up to me, give us our duty, the flag
for our freedom.

Speaker 20 (01:22:56):
It's our judy to wed.

Speaker 10 (01:23:00):
Does not each other, irons at each other. I'm not
gonna lose flaun Change.

Speaker 3 (01:23:12):
I'm not gonna loose Balanche.

Speaker 35 (01:23:17):
I'm not annose, but godzizea.

Speaker 1 (01:23:34):
Music festival audio courtesy of Unicorn Riot. Come Monday morning,
basically no one was in the forest. The police raid
the night prior pushed out most of the people gathered
for the music festival and week of action, and it
was still unclear how the rest of the week would

(01:23:55):
now proceed. This Monday happened to be the Jewish holiday Perham.
Initially there were plans to have a Perham celebration in
the forest that evening, but it was unknown if people
would feel comfortable returning to the woods. Welcome back to
it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. This is episode
three of my mini series covering the March twenty twenty

(01:24:18):
three Week of Action to defend the Atlanta Forest. Monday,
March sixth also happened to be the day of an
Atlanta City Council meeting, and the Stop Coop City Clergy
coalition held a well attended press conference at noon outside
City Hall. Reverend Keana Jones opened up at the press
conference by making the Clergy's position clear.

Speaker 36 (01:24:41):
We are the faith Coalition against Cop City, and we
are here so again raise our voices so that Mayor
Andre Dickens and the members of the City Council of
Atlanta know that we will not stand for the atrocities
that have been occurring. I will not stand for cop
City to go forward. The community came out and made

(01:25:05):
public comment for over seventeen hours when given an opportunity,
and said emphatically, no, we don't want your cop City.

Speaker 13 (01:25:15):
We don't want more repression of black people.

Speaker 36 (01:25:19):
We don't want more polluted air, we don't want less
green space in our community. We don't want more policing
and terrorizing of black, brown, indigenous bodies in our community.

Speaker 1 (01:25:33):
Reverend Jones gave her own perspective as a local Atlanta
with deep ties to the city.

Speaker 36 (01:25:39):
So we are here as faith leaders today and we
are here to say, Mayor Dickens, if you didn't hear
us the first time, we are here once again to
let you know that we don't want cop City. This
is our community, this is our land. I am a
daughter of East Atlanta. I still live in East Atlanta.

(01:26:02):
I don't want cop City. My granny owns a home
that she's been in for almost fifty years in the
heart of East Atlanta village. She does not want cop City.
My neighbor across the street does not want Cop City.
The teachers at my daughter's school do not want Cop City.

Speaker 1 (01:26:21):
She also addressed the outside agitators narrative that police and
media have continued to craft against force defenders, including by
only arresting and charging people thought to be from out
of town at the music festival that previous night.

Speaker 36 (01:26:36):
So we're here today to make sure that we ring
the alarm and dispel the false narrative that it's outside
agitators who don't want this. We know that this is
the rhetoric that's been going on ever since abolition began,
that it's outside agitators. They said slaves didn't want to
be free, but it was white people from the North
who wanted it.

Speaker 28 (01:26:56):
That's the lie.

Speaker 36 (01:26:57):
They said that black people in the South didn't want
civil rights, but it was white people from the North.
That's a lie. Today they are claiming that the black
people love Cop City. It's outside agitators from elsewhere, and
that again is a lie. Simply because the police have
chosen to systematically arrest people from out of state doesn't

(01:27:19):
mean that what they're saying is the truth.

Speaker 1 (01:27:22):
Reverend Leoshe addressed to other faith leaders and ask them
to join in their calls to stop the cop City project.

Speaker 16 (01:27:30):
We local Atlanta clergy and religious leaders representing diverse communities
call on clergy, religious leaders and people of faith in
moral conscience across this nation and in solidarity with local
Atlanta leaders to stop cop City, stop the swap, and
defend the Atlanta forests.

Speaker 13 (01:27:50):
Wilani People's part.

Speaker 37 (01:27:52):
Today, we're gathered for this press conference and we will
be delivering a letter to Atlanta City Council. But we
invite you to continue in this faithful work that we
are doing and contribute wherever you find.

Speaker 13 (01:28:05):
Your space in this growing movement.

Speaker 37 (01:28:07):
We call on clergy religious leaders, who are a moral
authority in our society, to use your power in support
of the forest protectors.

Speaker 13 (01:28:18):
We are deeply.

Speaker 37 (01:28:19):
Concerned for the greater Atlantic community and the implications for
the future of public safety in the United States if
Kopsudy moves forward.

Speaker 1 (01:28:28):
At the press conference, the coalition presented a letter to
the City Council signed by over two hundred clergy members.
Reverend Leoshe also read it aloud.

Speaker 37 (01:28:38):
Despite a record breaking amount of public comment opposing the facility,
Atlanta City councils still pass legislation to build cop City.
We are troubled by leadership that stops acting on the
will of the people and aligns itself instead with corporate
money and the dominant power structure. Urged on by the

(01:28:59):
message of peace and compassion in all our faiths, we
deplore escalating militarization by city and state government, most recently
since the police killing of Rayshard Brooks here in twenty
twenty by the Atlanta Police Department and Tortugita January eighteenth
of this year by Georgia Patrol. We applaud the rising

(01:29:22):
consciousness and the need to protect humans and the more
than human by resisting police violence everywhere.

Speaker 13 (01:29:30):
Yes, and may I add that in the face.

Speaker 37 (01:29:32):
Of the violent raid that took place last night, as
city residents gathered in solidarity to defend this forest, that
is an example of the militarization that we are calling out.
Through violence and greed, these lands have been subjected to
centuries of abuse, from the forced removal of indigenous communities,

(01:29:53):
to serving as a plantation for enslaved African labor, to
the site of the old Atlanta prison farm in the
twentieth century that produced immense profits for the prison system.

Speaker 13 (01:30:06):
Today, the sounds of berg.

Speaker 37 (01:30:07):
Song from the forest canopy live alongside the sound of
gunfire and the adjacent APD firing range.

Speaker 13 (01:30:15):
We are troubled.

Speaker 37 (01:30:18):
By the commodification of community, land, water, and air on
which all of us depend. We are profoundly troubled by
the use of military tactics and escalated legal charges on
members of our community, suppressing legitimate resistance, while at the
same time clearcutting the forest trees despite not having the

(01:30:40):
appropriate permits. The lands and the people of Atlanta have
suffered violence for too long.

Speaker 13 (01:30:49):
We say no more.

Speaker 37 (01:30:51):
We declare with faith, commitment and hope that this land
will be a part of healing and repair. We Atlanta clergy,
religious leaders, and all of those across the nation and
world who are in agreement join our voices with calling
for the following, a complete stop of the cop City
project and cancelation of the Atlanta Police Foundation's lease, dropping

(01:31:15):
all charges against forest defenders and protesters. We demand an
independent investigation into the uses of domestic terrorism charges. We
demand an independent investigation into the killing of Manuel Tehran Tortugita.
We speak their name, for which recently released video footage

(01:31:37):
of the event suggests there was lying and deceit surrounding
the incident on part of law enforcement in their initial
reporting of the incident.

Speaker 1 (01:31:46):
The Muscogee elder Miko Chabbon, Colonel spoke at the press
conference and called for land back and for the Muscogee
people to return and remtreat the Wailani Forest in community
with the black and brown residents of the area.

Speaker 38 (01:32:01):
Our ancestors lived here for over thirteen thousand years, and
if you're to do the math correctly, this country that
we now call the United States is somewhere in the
neighborhood of two hundred and forty just over nearly two
years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:32:16):
I came here to the Launi Forest.

Speaker 38 (01:32:18):
I came here with my own family, my own children,
with some of my elders, to just share a little
bit about how this territoryiness land feels to us as
Muskogee people, because, let it be known today, it was
not our choice to leave here. We did go to
war to protect these areas. We did go through much
burden to protect these areas, only to be forced to

(01:32:39):
leave here under military occupation, but also to be forced
to leave here after treachery, after illegally lands were taken
from us.

Speaker 3 (01:32:48):
This is our homeland.

Speaker 38 (01:32:50):
My ancestors for generation upon generation, for millennia are buried
on the very ground that you walk on every day.
And I think we have a say and how we
should live as a society in this day and time.
And so in this moment, our hope is to be
able to come back to rematriate, to take our lives
back and to the intimacy that we once had with

(01:33:12):
everything that grows here in what you now call the
state of Georgia, because no matter who we are and
where we come from, we have to have air, we
have to have water, we have to have the elements
of this earth to take care of us.

Speaker 3 (01:33:24):
Regardless of what we think.

Speaker 38 (01:33:27):
We're dependent on this earth Mother, and she has been
faithful in taking care of us. It's us that has
not been faithful and respecting her. Our hope is that
this earth is not destroyed before we even have a
chance to come back, that lives aren't destroyed before we
have a chance to come back. So today, in whatever way,

(01:33:47):
I come here to join the choruses of voices that
you hear all around you saying what is going on
now is a violence against all of creation? What is
going on now bringing death and harm and hurt is
a violence against all of creation. And we stand in
solidarity as Muskogie people. I stand in solidarity with the

(01:34:10):
voices that we hear of those tenants, those persons who
live in the land now. But my hope is now,
at this moment in time, that somehow we can change
the trajectory of our species and go into a direction
where we can value each other, and we can stop

(01:34:31):
the criminalizing of descent. We should be able to say no,
the increasing of the militarized forces out there does not
ever create peace. It only creates harm, and it only
harms those that are most vulnerable.

Speaker 3 (01:34:47):
That's the prayer that I carry today.

Speaker 1 (01:34:49):
Reverend Darcy Jarrett joined in the call for a stewardship
of the Wallani Forest to be returned to the Muscogee people.

Speaker 34 (01:34:57):
City Schools of Decatur has a of solidarity an acknowledgment
of harms to cab County and the City of Atlanta.
We call on you to make good on these words,
to give the land back to our indigenous siblings, so
that they, as they have stated and will do and

(01:35:17):
always have done, work in collaboration with the black and
brown community right there near where the site is outside
of the Wilawni Forest. The City of Atlanta is ready
to lease this land at just ten dollars an acre. Instead,
give this land to the native inhabitants. Repatriate this land

(01:35:40):
to the people to whom is their sacred call, to
defend and work in community with the black and brown
communities that are there. We call on you, Atlanta City Council,
to be the moral compass and to not just halt
the building of this structure, but to repatriate the land

(01:36:03):
to the sovereign Muskogee Nation, the sacred keepers of this land.
May it be so amen.

Speaker 1 (01:36:11):
Finally, Matthew Johnson spoke about the worrying amount of police
repression and violence the movement has already seen.

Speaker 18 (01:36:20):
We're projecting by the end of the day, there will
be forty people that have domestic terrorism charges, many of
which just for being in a parking lot. I don't
know how anybody can accept this when you have a
projected forty people that are committed of domestic terrorism, not
one dead body. Meanwhile, we can't even show the bruise

(01:36:43):
on the police officer that was allegedly shut at but
our friend's ashes. We have the ashes of a friend
that we will spread. We can no longer accept this
as a people as at lanterns. If we can't figure
out away to fix public safety without lacking tons of

(01:37:04):
black kids up in the blackest city in America, every
person in that build that needs to step down. If
we can't do it here, we can't do it anywhere.

Speaker 1 (01:37:14):
Both myself and Matt from the Atlanta Community Press Collective
were at the press conference and we met up after
to discuss the events of the day. During the press conference,
some of the media's line of questioning was very much
like aligned with the types of narratives being put out
by police in relation to the events that previous night,
the Sunday Direct Action and Music Festival. I think it's

(01:37:37):
also worth noting that the people at the clergy event
did not openly like demonize the actions that people chose
to take on Sunday, And it was very much like
the media definitely gave them opportunities to try to throw
people under the bus and that did not happen.

Speaker 2 (01:37:53):
Yeah, and we've seen that all throughout the week. Every
chance that the media is trying to throw somebody to
like call cause dissension or a divide, amongst the movement
has been really handily deflected by anyone who's come across it,
and the clergy did not just a good job of

(01:38:14):
like not falling into that trap, but of actually pointing
out how that line of thinking was like missing the
point and where the true violence was coming from this.

Speaker 39 (01:38:27):
And so why are there a majority of people engaging
some funds coming from other states.

Speaker 36 (01:38:34):
The reality of it is that the ones who are
engaging in violence are the police, and they're from right
here in Atlanta, Georgia. You got APD, you got Georgia
State Police, you got GBI, you got Georgia State troopers,
you got everybody except the mart of police who are
engaging in violence and terrorism against the people who are
standing against this illegal land swap. So I would suggest

(01:38:58):
that the next time you decide that you are going
to bring up your police rhetoric that you get from
whichever police source, you go ahead and discuss that with them.

Speaker 13 (01:39:07):
Because we don't know what they're doing.

Speaker 36 (01:39:10):
But what we do know is what we're doing and
what we see from them that we know. I know
when I get hit by an officer. I know when
I see a mother with a child begging to be
let up off the ground because her children are with her.
I know when I see officers pointing a rifle inside
a bouncy house.

Speaker 18 (01:39:26):
If I could just say, I'd like to just bring
up a story. Initially, the colonizers that came onto this
land attempted to use the indigenous folks as their slaves. However,
the indigenous folks knew the land so they could get away. Now,

(01:39:48):
when you ask me about why is it that you
keep catching people that aren't from here that might not
reflect the people that are actually involved in the resistance.

Speaker 8 (01:39:59):
God, bless you, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:40:00):
After the press conference, people from the Clergy Coalition marched
to the front door and entered City Hall before making
it upstairs to sign up for public comment during the
city council meeting.

Speaker 33 (01:40:13):
Hie, we shall not be moved. Fine for read now,
we shall not be moved.

Speaker 20 (01:40:24):
Just like the street collided by the wall, We shall not.

Speaker 1 (01:40:38):
The large group of the clergy and the people gathered
for the interfaith Coalition are now moving through City Hall.
There's a whole bunch of cops here that looks relatively
nervous about the easily sized group of people. The scary
Christians are now invading City Hall lookout.

Speaker 2 (01:40:56):
So usually in city Hall there there are several APD
officers who you know, just kind of hang out. But
while the clergy are walking up to city Hall, you
can look out and there is APD on every corner.
And then you enter into city Hall and there are
clusters of APD. There are I think four floors to
City Hall. There are clusters of APD on three sides

(01:41:18):
of every floor of City Hall.

Speaker 1 (01:41:20):
After an unexpectedly long awards and proclamations ceremony, the public
comment section of the city council meeting finally began.

Speaker 37 (01:41:29):
I'm standing here today with the Faith Coalition.

Speaker 13 (01:41:33):
We are clergy and faith leaders.

Speaker 37 (01:41:37):
We are citizens, and we are protectors of the land
that doesn't belong to us, but belongs to God. We
are deeply concerned for our community members, for ourselves, and
the implications for the future of public safety in the
United States if this cop city development goes forward. We

(01:41:57):
are asking for all people of faith, those of you
who sit on council, regardless of your tradition or background,
and those who stand with moral conscience, to stop the
cop city project. My faith convicts me and tells all
of us that there is a better way. We have

(01:42:18):
a prophetic, moral imagination and opportunity here to do something
different in Atlanta, to do something different for the South. Finally,
we're asking for a community process.

Speaker 13 (01:42:29):
A community process.

Speaker 37 (01:42:33):
Let us come together with moral imagination to envision how
the Wilani River forests can be the heart and lungs
of community wellness and healing, not more militarization of police.
We want a process that centers the voice and needs
of Muskokee leaders and community members, our Indigenous siblings, incarcerated
folks and surrounding prisons, families and neighbors who live in

(01:42:55):
cross proximity to the firing range and under police surveillance.

Speaker 13 (01:42:59):
We want holistic.

Speaker 37 (01:43:01):
Community safety, clean water, tree canopies, a future for every
single one of our children. May it be so.

Speaker 1 (01:43:10):
Someone from the Muscogee Creek Reservation in Oklahoma spoke about
the desire to return to their homeland.

Speaker 40 (01:43:16):
The Miko of our Hellbi ceremonial grounds back home in
Oklahoma has come here where our original fire was started,
and then it was taken all the way to Oklahoma,
and now we want to bring it back to our
land and we want to start those fires again. Well,
when we come back. We need a land to come
back to. This is my first time coming back to

(01:43:39):
visit my homelands. I wanted to visit here where my
ancestors are, as a spiritual and personal journey. I didn't
want to come here to try to fight the violence
that I'm hearing. What I'm hearing is from the residence
is they need investments in housing and public spaces, and
not investment in further melody tries policing. They want investment

(01:44:02):
in the well being of incarcerated and not further violent incarceration,
but the well being of the community members. Thank you,
Moto Chichatis.

Speaker 15 (01:44:13):
I turned seventy last week and I've lived in Atlanta
my whole life. I'm not an outsider, and I am
here to say to you that I find cop City
to be an abomination. My husband is a pastor of
a church a couple of miles from here, and he
could not be here today. He's out of town, but

(01:44:35):
he stands with me with these comments. But people who
have spoken before me have said the things I would say.
But I would like to say that I pretty much
agree with every single thing they have said about this
insanity that you all are calling a police safety training facility.
So I think you need to just cancel it, start

(01:44:58):
having some real conversations with the people of this city
to solve the real problems in a way that will
actually be effective. And this facility is not going to
be it. And the mayor's proposed task force is just
one more way to try to propagandize us to believe
that this is good for us, when we're not stupid
and we know it's just lipstick on a pig.

Speaker 36 (01:45:20):
And if you heart in your heart, be reminded of
the story of another pharaoh who had a very hard heart,
who would not free the people of God, who would
not lead them to their land. You know what happened
in that story. Don't think that you will not suffer
the same fate. Don't think that the infrastructure of this
so called Black Mecca will not come toppling over, because

(01:45:43):
it will.

Speaker 2 (01:45:44):
There are a couple like things to note about how
City Council public comment works. City Council doesn't tend to
pay attention to them. Essensibly, the only one who pays
attention is City Council President Doug Shipman, because it is
his job to call time and to call up the
next person. But you know, city councilors will like step
in and out of the room, get something to eat.

(01:46:06):
During the seventeen hours of public comment for cop City,
like one of them held a press conference.

Speaker 1 (01:46:10):
There are two council members notoriously bad at paying attention
to public comment. Dustin Hillis who is the committee chair
for the Public Safety Legal Administration Committee. Basically he's in
charge of police. And the other is Mary Norwood, who
represents Buckhead and has what I would describe as ontologically
evil vibes. Buckheed is the northern, primarily white neighborhood in

(01:46:34):
Atlanta that is wanted to secede from the city, which
in Atlanta has very uncomfortable segregation and redlining parallels. But
despite not paying attention during public comment, these two in particular,
both paid extra attention after public comment when Police Chief
Darren Sheerbaum gave testimony on what happened the night previous, Where.

Speaker 41 (01:46:57):
There any firefighter or police city employee entries yesterday's event.

Speaker 30 (01:47:03):
Because memory there was not. We're very fortunate that that
was the outcome. We're fortunate that there was no injuries.

Speaker 41 (01:47:09):
If this continues, do we have the ability to deploy
even greater force to quill this. You know, the millions
of damage, millions of dollars of damage to public and
private properties.

Speaker 30 (01:47:25):
We will make adjustments as those that used various tactics.

Speaker 29 (01:47:30):
Yesterday was an escalation.

Speaker 30 (01:47:32):
We had not seen this large number of individuals engaged
in this activity, and the aggressive manner in which the
officers were attacked was a significant change from what we
had seen before when it generally had been setting property
on fire. We'd seen police cars set on fire, win
those buses, but this was started as an attack against individuals,
men and women who are employees of this city, So
that was an escalation. Council Member hillis that we have

(01:47:54):
already made adjustments for both within our capability as well
as with our partners through out to Sheerbombs.

Speaker 1 (01:47:59):
To testimony, it was interesting the degree to which the
Chief framed Sunday's direct action as primarily being targeted against
officers and not the destruction of equipment and machinery at
the North Gate. From the videos that APD themselves released
of the incident, it's clear that engagement with the police

(01:48:20):
was limited to keeping officers at bay as construction equipment
was targeted, and despite the continued referring of fireworks as
quote unquote mortars or explosives, as the chief himself admitted,
no officers were harmed during the direct action. In a
later episode, we'll hear more of Chief Sheerbaum's explanation of

(01:48:43):
Sunday nights events, as it gives insight into the police's
own surveillance capabilities and their ability to respond quickly to
direct actions. But until then, back to the events of Monday,
March sixth. After the city council meeting, I dressed up
in the gayest little outfit that I had with me
and went back to the woods for the first time

(01:49:04):
since Sunday Night for Perhum. Initially, people were very cautious
when entering the woods again, but as the night went on,
more and more people started to pour into the forest,
with some choosing to return to their camp. Later that night,
I enjoyed an experimental noise show in the living room,
probably to the detriment of people trying to sleep in

(01:49:25):
the area. I went to the Perham in the woods.
I got to share my memory of the Veggietail's esther
story starring the Tickle Monsters. I got to bond with
a few expangelicals about that, So that was fine. Then
there was an experimental noise show in the forest, and
really I think it actually is worth talking about because

(01:49:45):
this was the first time.

Speaker 10 (01:49:45):
People returned to the forest. Yeah, this was the.

Speaker 1 (01:49:48):
First time that people like returned to the forest in
mass since Sunday, and he started to kind of feel
people's energy get reinvigorated. The woods became a place again
that people were able to like be in and like
they were able to be in community in the woods again.

Speaker 2 (01:50:03):
And that is in keeping with sort of how this
movement is always responded to what we I guess could
call a loss, right.

Speaker 1 (01:50:11):
Like twenty three people getting arrested in charged is is
a great loss.

Speaker 2 (01:50:15):
Yeah, and the bounce back period is pretty quick. Like
the resiliency is continual and always strengthening every time that,
you know, the repression grows, like it does seem like
the resiliency grows with it.

Speaker 1 (01:50:28):
People were not scared away from the woods. People still
still were like, no, this is something I care about.
I am still going to be in the woods. I'm
still going to defend these woods. And you kind of
have like there's always this essence of like fear kind
of kind of underlying whenever you're like in the Wollani forest,
because you know, people have been arrested and charged for

(01:50:48):
laying in a hammock like that with another defendant, with
another defendant, and like, so you know that it is
it is fundamentally a risky place to be, but people
think the potential cost is worth it, Like they will
they continue to be here because they know this is
a winnable fight and they know that it is worth
it to defend these woods. Early Tuesday morning, a few

(01:51:12):
stop Coop City banner drops happened throughout the city. Two
people were detained by police during one of these banner drops,
but were later released with a traffic citation after being
interrogated separately and extensively photographed by law enforcement officials only
identified as quote Georgia Police and Homeland Security unquote. Tuesday

(01:51:33):
was the start of a series of non violent direct
actions that were being launched around downtown and midtown. Tuesday morning,
I followed a small group that went to the headquarters
of Norfolk Southern, one of the Atlanta Police Foundation's financial
contributors and noted enemy of Ohio.

Speaker 2 (01:51:51):
They entered the lobby and it's a very small group,
but like I think half of it was.

Speaker 1 (01:51:56):
It was like five people and another five like press people.

Speaker 8 (01:52:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:52:00):
So they enter and they read aloud a letter to
Alan Shaw, the CEO of Norfolk Southern, calling forward investment
from of Norfolk Southern from copsody, and immediately they are
met with uh a security guard screaming like go you
get out of the hobby. You're you're being criminally trust
you're being trespassed. You have to leave. One of the

(01:52:21):
other security guards runs around with cell phone camera and
like shoves it in everybody's faces, reaching rather rudely over
you to get my face, and.

Speaker 1 (01:52:31):
They got very close to me entering the Norfolk Southern building.

Speaker 23 (01:52:39):
Please this letter.

Speaker 33 (01:52:49):
Explaining a horrible role in the city, can you please?

Speaker 2 (01:53:03):
And so the whole thing lasts like less than five minutes,
maybe ride about five minutes when they finished reading the letter,
Like all they asked was that the letter go to
the CEO.

Speaker 8 (01:53:12):
YEP.

Speaker 1 (01:53:13):
While people were inside the headquarters, security called ns Police,
which is the Norfolk Southern Police, who are legally allowed
to arrest people.

Speaker 20 (01:53:28):
Anyone you can see.

Speaker 5 (01:53:32):
For your building.

Speaker 2 (01:53:33):
But nobody was arrested at that non violent direct action.
The whole thing was over pretty quickly, and you know,
as we were walking out, we saw like the the
a force of Norfolk Southern Police like swarm kind of
the exterior of the campus and like keep an eye
out on things.

Speaker 1 (01:53:48):
And then we moved over to Woodriff Park, which was
the meeting place for these non violent direct actions that
happened about every every day at noon starting on starting
on Tuesday. It's Tuesday, March seventh, around noon, there's about
fifty or so people gathered in Woodriff Park who are
heading out and marching to go stop by two of

(01:54:09):
the Atlanta Police Foundation corporate funders.

Speaker 2 (01:54:12):
We roll up and I think at that point they
were like twenty ish protesters.

Speaker 14 (01:54:16):
It was.

Speaker 2 (01:54:17):
It started off very small. There was no police, like
no real visible police presence. They were like maybe a
cruiser or two like kind of around and actually start
to gather and kind of talk about like what their
plan is for the day, which was just to march
around to three different sites. They wanted the EIGHTE and
T Building, the Georgia Pacific Building, and GSU Georgia State University.

Speaker 1 (01:54:44):
They are they are now leaving Woodriff Park. They got
to Georgia Pacific, one of the cop City financial backers.
Without much incident and without much in terms of visible
police presence, people called on Mayor Dickens, who is the
chair of the board of directors for Georgie Pacific, to
cancel the Atlanta Police Foundation lease of the land that
copp City is slated to be built on.

Speaker 32 (01:55:06):
Mayor Diggis, we want you to cancel this leak. We
know that you have the authority to do so.

Speaker 1 (01:55:12):
They finished up that Georgia Pacific, they set up a
little vigil for Torti Guita.

Speaker 2 (01:55:17):
And from Georgia Pacific they began their trek to the
AT and T building.

Speaker 1 (01:55:21):
They left a little vigil for Torti Ghita in front
of the Georgia Pacific Center and the group of like
more than fifty people are continuing to march north. Police
eight to ten police officers are directly behind them, and
the whole bunch of police cars are blocking Peachtree along

(01:55:42):
the path to AT and T. Was the APF's headquarters
just across the street, and as the crowd approached this intersection,
the amount of police ballooned massively in the block around
the Atlantic Police Foundation headquarters. There's got to be about
thirty to forty officers station and walking off the entrance
to the APF, and also just like following the crowd

(01:56:04):
around as they're as they're marching through the sidewalks. There's
definitely over god, there's I think around seventy five officers
deployed in this area right now.

Speaker 10 (01:56:15):
The number keeps growing.

Speaker 1 (01:56:17):
As we start walking down different sidewalks and different streets,
you just see more officers that are already stationed.

Speaker 2 (01:56:24):
There are fifty activists and what certainly over one hundreds
some were probably between one hundred, one hundred and twenty
police officers started marching not like behind, not in front,
but directly beside the march, sort of pinning the march
to the wall and like essentially kettling the march.

Speaker 1 (01:56:42):
There was police station in front, there was police station behind,
and police stationed on the side. It was surrounding the
surrounding like these fifty people who were simply walking on
the sidewalk stumbling upon a new group of officers.

Speaker 10 (01:56:55):
Got to be about one hundred officers in this area
right now.

Speaker 1 (01:56:58):
At one point, a police vehicle was just parked on
the sidewalk, completely blocking it. During this entire time, police
were blocking all of the traffic in these intersections and roads.

Speaker 2 (01:57:09):
Driving wrong way up a one way like just you know,
doing police things.

Speaker 1 (01:57:14):
Yeah, a Doorida State University canine unit. This blocking off
the entire sidewalk next to a Fulton County Sheriff's vehicle.
They're trying to make it impossible for people to actually
move on the sidewalk.

Speaker 10 (01:57:27):
But for the most part, if.

Speaker 1 (01:57:28):
People have been able to move around the police and
keep their movement going instead of just stalling in one
spot or like trying to physically confront what is now
like hundreds and hundreds of law enforcement officers from Fulton
County Sheriffs and Atlanta Police Department and even like Georgia
State University Police.

Speaker 10 (01:57:47):
So the group is split up in.

Speaker 1 (01:57:48):
Between two streets right now because people are trying to
follow the follow the crossing signals because otherwise police are
going to tackle and violently assault people. No one was arrested,
People marched to their perspective locations.

Speaker 2 (01:58:00):
People very pointedly kept to laws. There was a couple
of times when like the crosswalk changed and the group
kind of had to split. They would stay and wait
until the crosswalk went back to walk, and then crossover
and join it's.

Speaker 1 (01:58:13):
So funny that the cops are so insistent if you
stepped on the street, you're going to get arrested, and
make sure people stay on the side of walks.

Speaker 10 (01:58:20):
But the result of that.

Speaker 1 (01:58:21):
Is that all the cops are standing in the street
and they're blocking off like miles of traffic downtown Right now,
people just arrived at the fifty one Peachtree Center Avenue
AT and T Building in downtown Atlanta. Police were already
stationed in front of the AT and T building, so
there wasn't much to do. After a brief speech talking
about AT and T's contributions to the Police Foundation and

(01:58:43):
Cop City, the crowd moved on. Now people are turning
west in the opposite direction from the AT and T headquarters,
heading back into the Woodruff Park area where this march began.
Police with long guns here. Finally, the crowd stopped at
Georgia State University and talked about GSU's connections to the

(01:59:05):
Atlanta Police Foundation. What is of note for this action,
and really all of the actions that happened the next
few days, is not what the protesters did. It's the
police's disproportionate response to just fifty people walking on the sidewalk,
chanting and giving short speeches outside of businesses tied to APF.

Speaker 2 (01:59:24):
With a small line of officers in front of GSU.
They gave their last round of speeches and sort of
dispersed for the day before.

Speaker 32 (01:59:32):
We wrap today and gave these clouds something else to
go do.

Speaker 10 (01:59:36):
We will be out here.

Speaker 6 (01:59:37):
We won't be out here for the rest.

Speaker 42 (01:59:39):
Of the week, for the rest of the hunt, for
the rest of that year.

Speaker 20 (01:59:47):
We won't fight.

Speaker 10 (01:59:48):
That's here we wait.

Speaker 1 (01:59:55):
Some of the police are now grouping up and opening
up the sidewalk so people can actually It seems officers
were in fact instructed to make arrests during this action,
but for some reason did not follow through on those orders.
According to scanner audio from Atlanta Police Department's SWAT team.

Speaker 8 (02:00:14):
That's about of them.

Speaker 5 (02:00:17):
The problem is they've been telling them to make a risk,
but also is not taking a risk.

Speaker 8 (02:00:21):
I guess they weren't supposed to. I don't know.

Speaker 10 (02:00:24):
But un lit with that, we'll just hold what we
got at fawn as leaders.

Speaker 1 (02:00:30):
Extensive police activity continued later that night. At around five
thirty to six pm, police started staging around the forest
in a way that usually indicates that a raid is forthcoming.
Word spread around the recovering encampment that police could be
preparing for a raid.

Speaker 2 (02:00:50):
So the initial reports were like that there were fifty
police officers staged at Key Road and ready to go,
and then the Decab County Swat starts to roll up
at the fire station, and I would say a fair
amount of like panic starts to set it at camp.

Speaker 1 (02:01:08):
Multiple multiple police copters are are getting flown overhead, multiple
different SWAT teams are being brought in. At least like
three or four different agencies are stationing officers around the woods.
I believe it's estimated that at least one hundred and
twenty police officers were being staged in the area directly
surrounding the forest and in the area by the power

(02:01:31):
line cut on Key Road.

Speaker 2 (02:01:32):
And it should be said that you know, up until
this point, the police have never brought in that many
resources to any protest action that I'm aware of, and
not come in and engaged. So I was with a
group offsite who like immediately began to fear, like you know,
for they wouldn't be able to get back to their
camp size, they wouldn't be able to get their gear,

(02:01:53):
They wouldn't be able to get their medication, and that,
from what I understand, was the general vibe around. But
nothing happened.

Speaker 1 (02:02:00):
Nothing seemed to happen, and then at around seven police
started to almost like express confusion on what was going on,
and then everyone else expressed confusion for why the police
were confused. And we think we've kind of put together
what may have happened. So Clark, what is suspected of

(02:02:23):
going down here?

Speaker 2 (02:02:24):
So the one thing that police don't understand and probably
will never understand, is humor. Now, they become the butt
of the joke often, but they don't understand comedy. So
at seven o'clock that evening was scheduled Comedy in the Forest.
And from what we've gathered, the police thought that the
Comedy in the Forest event was going to be a

(02:02:45):
cover for another Sunday night like action.

Speaker 1 (02:02:48):
So this event was scheduled on the public Defend the
Atlanta Forest calendar that anyone can look at online is
this Comedy in the Woods event for people to tell
jokes around a campfire. And I guess they thought it
was like it was like this event that was like
a red herring so that people could then go do

(02:03:10):
violent militancy in around the woods. So when seven o'clock
came and went, like police were expecting people to like
arrive at the woods or something, and that just didn't happen,
because it turns out a few minutes before seven o'clock,
this comedy event was canceled for like unrelated reasons. The
organizer had had things come up, So this event just
didn't happen. But there still was comedy in the woods.

(02:03:34):
It just was that the police wasted probably over one
hundred thousand dollars mobilizing over one hundred officers. I mean, obviously,
I think some people in the woods were you know,
had some frustration that that that you know, they experienced
this fear of this possibly incoming rate that then resulted
in there being nothing. I think it's always important to

(02:03:56):
when people are relaying information, they relay information that is
no without like unadue speculation. So like it is a
fact to say that there's over one hundred cops stationing
by the woods, and they've never had that many cops
there before without doing some sort of raid or some
sort of some sort of like activity in the forest.

Speaker 2 (02:04:15):
And part of what I've heard go on since then
was you know, some very generative conversations about how they're
going to take into account like this, this new paradigm
that developed that night, And I think that again speaks
to sort of just how the movement continues to develop
and grow and like you know, handle new new challenges
and shifts.

Speaker 1 (02:04:35):
So with the forest camp is still intact, the week
of action continued on as planned, with another downtown nonviolent
direct action that next morning.

Speaker 2 (02:04:45):
So Wednesday and noon is a lot smaller of direct
action than the day before.

Speaker 1 (02:04:51):
It starts with like a dozen people. It slowly grows
to like a few dozen, but yeah, it started extremely,
extremely small. So this was one difference from Tuesday is
that when we arrived, police already had a visible presence
in downtown, stationed around Woodriff Park. So a group of
people just launched from Woodriff Park, they kind of split
off in different different little sub subgroups. Lots of people

(02:05:14):
are just stationed outside of Marta Stops handing out flyers,
and that is what people are doing right now. Police
seem relatively confused and are trying to like mobilize the
different areas where they feel like something might happen. But
it's just people handing out flyers.

Speaker 2 (02:05:32):
And they decided to split into groups and engage in
like just some typical outreach activity that you would see,
you know, from any group, like just passing out flyers
and pamphlets and attempting, from what I saw, to have
like one on one conversations with anyone who wanted to.

Speaker 1 (02:05:45):
So, this this group that it broke off into these
smaller subgroups. The group that we kind of accompanied stationed
themselves around some Marta stops around I believe it was
like the it was the Peachtree Lata station prep. Yeah,
so they stationed at the like the three different exits
or entrances for that, just just handing out flyers, handing
out leaflets, trying to talk to anybody who walks by.

(02:06:07):
Another group of people standing outside of a public transit
spot handing out flyers, probably like I don't know, four
or five other small, small groups doing similar things throughout downtown,
which means police have a lot more places to be
as opposed to just following one big group.

Speaker 2 (02:06:24):
The group that we followed had its own police presence
follow it, and then when they split into three more groups,
each group had its own police presence follow it, and
police stuck to the protesters the entire time. And of course,
like there's white transport vans that are full of cops
kind of driving by.

Speaker 1 (02:06:42):
Thin white van full of police officers just showed up
across the street. Army green tan SWAT vehicle just parked
a block away from the Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters. There
was an Atlanta SWAT vehicle parked outside of the Hooters.

Speaker 2 (02:06:57):
Totally normal response, totally normals. And so the leafleting goes
on for you know, like forty five minutes, and then
all of the groups start to gather together conveniently with
the group that like we had embedded with.

Speaker 1 (02:07:11):
All right, there's actually a pretty decent number of people
gathered here for the flywering event today. You know, normal
police responds to people handing out flyers. Just fifty officers
in the SWAT team. But yeah, there's probably at this point,
like two or three dozen people that have kind of
all converged together. It started off very small, people were
very very spread out. They splintered off into little smaller groups,

(02:07:35):
but now they've all kind of coalesced together back again.
So all the little subgroups kind of meet up on
Andrew Jung and peach tree right next to the Hooters
and the hard Rock Cafe.

Speaker 2 (02:07:46):
This area is like the business district, so in the
middle of the day, it's like really busy. It's a
fairly like good spot to pass out leaflets.

Speaker 1 (02:07:55):
So they are passing out these leaflets. Pedestrians are still
able to like walk through the side walks. It's pretty
it's pretty chill. And then APD approaches the crowd, like
the APD has already been around this area. There's there's
this vehicle across the street watching people hand out flyers.
But then Lieutenant Neil Welch approaches the crowd and gives

(02:08:17):
them a dispersal order.

Speaker 3 (02:08:19):
Okay, can I read it this first order?

Speaker 17 (02:08:23):
All right?

Speaker 43 (02:08:23):
So I'm Lieutenant Neil Welch, a police officer, City of Atlanta.
I hereby declare that, being on this sidewalk, you are
obstructing or repeating the normal and reasonable movement a pedestrian
traffic and violation of Atlanta City ordinates. Okay, and the
name of the people is Saya, Georgia. I hereby command
that all present in the sidewalk, all present here in

(02:08:46):
the sidewalk immediately exit the street or the roadway or sidewalk.
If you do not do so, you may be detained
or arrested. Should you fail to exit the sidewalk in
accordace with this lawful command, you shall be in violation
of Section one five zero two six six substructing pedestrian traffic,

(02:09:07):
which prehibits standing are being on any street, roadway, or
sidewalk in a manner to obstructor impede the normal or
reasonable pedestrian traffic.

Speaker 10 (02:09:17):
Cops threatened arrest and detainment.

Speaker 1 (02:09:20):
They claimed that people were blocking the sidewalk, which they
absolutely were not. I was walking freely, as was all
of like downtown pedestrian traffic. They were not blocking anything.
This is this is pretty silly, utterly, utterly ridiculous response
to people handing out flyers. So they were told they

(02:09:40):
cannot be on the sidewalk. Obviously they can't be on
the street. Where are you allowed to protest if not
the sidewalk or the street. Seemed like very like flimsy
legal footing. But obviously they police can arrest anyone they
want to at any time for any reason. So people
decided to move. They cross over the street, they walk
like a block north, they cross the street again, and

(02:10:01):
they they move onto this part of the sidewalk that
is like really large, like a massive, massive open open
section that.

Speaker 2 (02:10:08):
Right in front of the mall. So it's it's it's
it's meant to like have a bunch of people passed
by it.

Speaker 1 (02:10:13):
So people continue to hand out flyers.

Speaker 10 (02:10:15):
While this is happening.

Speaker 2 (02:10:17):
Uh, there's another group who comes in to the side
of Petree Center Mall and enters the mall to find
Mayor Andre Dickens. There are a couple of boards in
Atlanta that stipulate the mayor is like the head of
the board, and this is one of them, and it
meets in Peatree Center Mall as one does.

Speaker 1 (02:10:37):
So the mayor is having a meeting in the mall.

Speaker 2 (02:10:40):
Office space is you know, sort of above the mall,
and this group of.

Speaker 1 (02:10:43):
People from the Muscogie Nation enter and try to meet
up with the mayor to hand off a letter.

Speaker 44 (02:10:50):
Objection to objection, we have a letter being delivered from
the Creek Nation on behalf of Muscogee Creek Spiritual Leadership, and.

Speaker 31 (02:11:01):
I came all the way on the trial of tears
to deliver this letter to you folks. We want you
to know that the contemporary Muscogee people are now making
their journey back to our homelands, and hereby give notice
to Mayor Andrew Dickens, the Atlanta City Council, the Atlanta
Police Department, the Atlanta Police Foundation, the Dakob County Sheriff's Office,

(02:11:27):
and so called copp City that you must immediately vacate
Muscogee homelands and cease violence and policing of Indigenous and
Black people and Muscogee lands. We lived as stewards and
in relationship to this land for more than thirteen thousand
years until the illegitimate State of Georgia negotiated with the

(02:11:48):
Tyrant Andrew Jackson for the militarized for the militarized force
removal of Muscoge and Cherokee relatives to Indian territories. Mayor Dickens,
can I give this letter to you? He got one, Mayor,

(02:12:10):
we want to talk to you about our homelands.

Speaker 13 (02:12:12):
A Muskogee Cree people.

Speaker 2 (02:12:14):
Three indigenous an activists along with Kamal Franklin arrive and
they find the mayor. They enter the board meeting and
they begin to read this letter from the Muscoge Nation aloud.
And in the letter it essentially says that Atlanta is
being evicted out of the Wui Laanni forest and the
most Scogi people are going to return and reclaim their

(02:12:35):
ancestral land. Mayor Dickens, in true mayor fashion, bolts away
from this, running through an exit door, which is then
like blocked by a guard, which I think that has
its own like set of legal issues, essentially just ignoring
them over his shoulder. He calls out, I've got a
copy of the letter and hides just completely. Trying to

(02:12:59):
escape is not a good look for him.

Speaker 1 (02:13:03):
The Atlanta Police Department APEX Swatch team was called to
the mall, and right as the activists were able to exit,
the special police units rushed into the building, finding no one.
By now, the police repression during this week of action
far exceeded police activity during any of the prior weeks
of action, and this trend would continue as the week

(02:13:26):
entered its last few days. The next episode will wrap
up our coverage for the week, as well as contain
a bit more analysis of the police repression and the
fallout of Sunday's direct action. But then there will be
a fifth bonus episode that gives an overview of what's
happened in the Malani Forest in the intervening two months.
See you on the other side, Welcome back to it

(02:13:53):
could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. This is episode four
of my mini series and detailing the March twenty twenty
three week of action to stop cop City in Atlanta, Georgia.
This episode, we'll be hearing from a lot of new
people as we close out the day to day coverage
of this week of action. One of the last big

(02:14:16):
organized rallies was on Thursday night and it was put
on by community movement builders and other black led groups
from Atlanta.

Speaker 2 (02:14:24):
The big event Thursday night was a six o'clock rally
that met at the Martin Luther King National Historic Site.

Speaker 1 (02:14:31):
There was police stationed at King Center before anyone got there,
we saw like dozens and dozens of police cars going by.

Speaker 2 (02:14:38):
All around the site are various quick response forces and
riot cops just ready.

Speaker 35 (02:14:46):
To move in.

Speaker 1 (02:14:47):
Large police response in the area already, as has been
expected for the past few days. Multiple Sandy Springs police
buses were driving by. There was multiple unmarked white vans
full of officers. The areas crawling with police cars and
now there's a small detail of officers across the street
from the people gathering here in the park.

Speaker 2 (02:15:09):
We are currently surrounded on every side by groups of
police officers in riodegear. The crowd started off like actually
fairly decently sized, maybe like fifty people, and then continued
as well as the speeches progressed to I would say
like two hundred two hundred fifty, maybe even a little
bit more. They were passing out signs, so like anyone

(02:15:30):
who came, like they had a sign ready for you.
Andre Dickins is a sellout of course, as a very
popular one. There were stop Coop City like banners that
people could like hold atl of verse twelve, like, you know,
just a bunch of like really clever sort of protest
slogans and things that people can get behind. The makeup
of the crowd was definitely leaned like far less like

(02:15:51):
white anarchists than certainly the accusations of this movement, I think,
more representative of the movement as a whole, Like it
was a mix of a bunch of different people. I
would say, like it probably accurately reflected Atlanta demographics.

Speaker 1 (02:16:06):
Defend the forest signs and banners and being handed out
throughout the crowd. Other people are passing around the Jail
Support number and Jill Support contact information.

Speaker 10 (02:16:15):
People are starting to get ready.

Speaker 2 (02:16:16):
So it meets it at six o'clock and for about
an hour and a half we listened to a series
of speeches as the crowd begins to swell.

Speaker 32 (02:16:25):
So we are here in solidarity together today to make
it clear to the mayor that he's not gonna keep
lying on our names. They'll literally be building the mock
city of Atlanta practice how to repress life.

Speaker 17 (02:16:38):
They kill.

Speaker 13 (02:16:41):
We find it.

Speaker 20 (02:16:42):
Ridiculous, we find it disgusting.

Speaker 32 (02:16:44):
We find it embarrassing that a mayor Andre Tickets would
fix this, not to say that black people what if
we killed by.

Speaker 33 (02:16:51):
The woolie that black people walk clock city.

Speaker 42 (02:16:54):
Yeah, the mayor must have for guy in that our
ancestors will literally fighting abolition since they were brutally brought
to this country. They were fighting for freedom, fighting the
original police right, the slave patrols that captured black bodies
to take them back to their white masters.

Speaker 20 (02:17:15):
He's talking to the same.

Speaker 42 (02:17:16):
Black people whose elders were fighting here in the same
streets in the sixties.

Speaker 32 (02:17:21):
And the seventies to stop police occupation of our communities.

Speaker 20 (02:17:24):
That's right.

Speaker 32 (02:17:26):
Resistance to police, resistance to state violence is literally in
our blood as black people.

Speaker 28 (02:17:32):
It is in our DNA.

Speaker 32 (02:17:34):
They're lying on our name because they want money from
the same white corporations that are funding Cop City, Home Depot,
Chick fil A, Coca Cola, Norfolk, Southern.

Speaker 28 (02:17:46):
At and t.

Speaker 32 (02:17:49):
COT enterprises who own say ajac and this is a
fight that we will win, that we are committed to winning.
And so when we talk about winning, it's important to
say what do we mean when we say that we'll win.

Speaker 36 (02:18:02):
We mean no Cop City anywhere.

Speaker 32 (02:18:07):
Now in South Atlanta, not into cab not in North Atlanta, nowhere.
When we say that we will win, we are meaning
that this fight does not stop with Cop City. This
is a fight for the liberation of all oppressed people
here and abroad.

Speaker 20 (02:18:23):
That's right.

Speaker 32 (02:18:24):
And now, client's disgusting that the mayor and that these
corporations will talk about outside agitators. Okay, the reason that
there are people coming from all over the world to
support this fight is because this is a fight that affects.

Speaker 12 (02:18:38):
All of us.

Speaker 20 (02:18:38):
That's right.

Speaker 32 (02:18:39):
The Atlanta Police Foundation admitted that percent of the cops
being trained at that facility will not be in Georgia.

Speaker 22 (02:18:47):
So when people came from.

Speaker 32 (02:18:48):
Tennessee, from New York, from California, it's because they know
that their local police might learn how to kill them better.

Speaker 20 (02:18:57):
Here, that's right.

Speaker 32 (02:18:59):
And when people come from abroad, they know that currently
the Atlanta Police Department trains with the Israeli police. So
the same techniques being used to brutalize black people are
being used to practice genocide on the Palestinian people. And
the same tactics being used to practice genofide on the
Palestinian people are being used to brutilize black people right here.

(02:19:21):
So when people came from all over the world to
say stop Coup City, they're not outside agitators. They're standing
in solidarity with us, because this is the fight.

Speaker 1 (02:19:29):
All as the rain picked up, Tortihita's mother, Belquise Taran
spoke next on the.

Speaker 45 (02:19:39):
Cards the friend that I called them, I called them
to come here to support us on the people from
different religions come here and help us.

Speaker 20 (02:19:51):
This is a matter of the earth. You're talking a.

Speaker 45 (02:19:57):
Mountain's saying, right need.

Speaker 46 (02:20:02):
Our love, The earth needs our attention, and we are
we have conscience.

Speaker 45 (02:20:10):
We know that this is not right. Don't go by
yourself when we go to activities, stay together, don't go
outside by yourself.

Speaker 46 (02:20:22):
Don't We need to.

Speaker 45 (02:20:24):
Make understand that this is the right thing to do.
We we are the correct people. We are right because
we are driving by love, by carry and concern, and.

Speaker 20 (02:20:42):
We love all of I love you and I know
that you love me.

Speaker 1 (02:20:50):
A speaker from Black Votes Matter addressed to the crowd next,
starting off by talking about the importance of mass action.

Speaker 22 (02:20:58):
I just want to explain something because sometimes people get confused,
they get it twisted.

Speaker 7 (02:21:01):
They say, oh, y'all, look like vote.

Speaker 29 (02:21:02):
It's better all y'all do is talk about voting.

Speaker 22 (02:21:05):
Be clear, we understand that the way that we get
to liberation is not going to come.

Speaker 7 (02:21:09):
Just through a vote.

Speaker 22 (02:21:11):
That's never been how it's worked for our people in
this country. Sister Harry didn't get a chance to vote
for liberations. She didn't get a chance to vote to
take our people off the plantation right. So we are
very clear that what we have got to be. In fact,
we just celebrated, commemorated the anniversary of Selma and the
marks of Montgomery. But be clear, the people of Selma
didn't vote for a Voting Rights Act. They had to

(02:21:34):
fight for it, they had to march for it. In
some cases, they bled for it, they had to resist
for it, they had to take to the streets for it.
It's a that tradition that we are out here today.

Speaker 18 (02:21:45):
So yes, hot it.

Speaker 10 (02:21:46):
I believe.

Speaker 22 (02:21:48):
I believe in the power of the vote, but I
also believe in the power of mass action.

Speaker 1 (02:21:53):
He then talked about the intersection of Copcity and efforts
to further restrict the democratic process in Georgia.

Speaker 22 (02:22:00):
The same corporations that are that are funding cop City
are the same ones that are funding the bonus questions,
the same ones we've did our whole campaign a couple
of years ago in Georgia, says that bonus prison bill.
And we called out Home Depot and Coca Cola and
tell them many of the other corporations that give money

(02:22:22):
to the people, that are that are taken away our.

Speaker 46 (02:22:25):
Rights to vote.

Speaker 22 (02:22:25):
And then if you don't have a government that reflects
the people, then what you need. You need a police
force to enforce the fact that you don't have a
government that reflects the people. And so our message from
Mary Dickets, our message for the City Council is that
If you don't respond to the people, you want to
lose those chile you want to lose your job.

Speaker 46 (02:22:49):
Because we've got that power.

Speaker 22 (02:22:51):
We've got the power to make that happen.

Speaker 1 (02:22:54):
Students from the Atlanta University Center consortium of four black
colleges in Atlanta, where some of the last people to
give speeches before the march.

Speaker 47 (02:23:03):
We have attempted to reform our police force, add de
el escalation training, add civil rights history training, and give
more money to our police, but we continue to see
black bodies across social media platforms, television, and other media
platforms being displayed being murdered. The victims have received no justice.
And when we say no justice, what do we say?

Speaker 11 (02:23:24):
No justice, no justice, no justice.

Speaker 42 (02:23:31):
The building of the Atlanta Public Training Center is an
insult and an act of the utmost disrespect from our
city leaders.

Speaker 46 (02:23:39):
We have a duty to fight for the change that
we seek.

Speaker 32 (02:23:42):
As an active member of this community, I refuse to sit.

Speaker 28 (02:23:46):
By and be idle and just let things happen.

Speaker 48 (02:23:49):
This city has been my home ever since I was born.

Speaker 4 (02:23:54):
I have been to.

Speaker 46 (02:23:54):
Various events here.

Speaker 48 (02:23:55):
I have seen the sights and have lived through some
of the most important events here in this City. This
is my home. This is your home, This is our home.
This is the home of Black excellence. This is the
home of doctor Martin Luther King Junior. This is the
home of John Lewis. This is the home of Joseph

(02:24:17):
Evelyn and Joseph E.

Speaker 46 (02:24:19):
Lowy. This is the home of civil rights. This is
the home of CT.

Speaker 5 (02:24:24):
Gibon.

Speaker 13 (02:24:25):
This is the home of great blackness itself.

Speaker 22 (02:24:28):
This is the home of every single black person here
in America. This city, this house, this place of Black
excellence says no to Cop City.

Speaker 49 (02:24:43):
My Afro pessimist friends and revolutionaries both agree we are
at war. The police in the city have said as
much loudly with their words and their actions. It feels
obvious to me that we need warriors weapons, and I
know that fact may give some of us trepidation, but
I want to assure you that we need so much

(02:25:05):
more than soldiers to win this fight. Whatever it is
that you do, whatever skill you bring, I just ask
that you make it a weapon. If we are ever
going to experience democracy, we need your tools to be
repurposed in this fight against Cop City. If you're a
writer like me, child that Patty better look like a

(02:25:26):
threat to cop city. If you do mutual aid, caring
for community ain't gonna get any easier. Please show us
the way.

Speaker 4 (02:25:39):
If you're an artist, where my artist at.

Speaker 8 (02:25:43):
You got a lot of them out here.

Speaker 49 (02:25:45):
Let every painting reveal the truth, including the joy and
freedom that abolition calls us to. Let us make songs
that inspire revolution. If you're a healer, get ready, we
need you.

Speaker 5 (02:26:02):
Much will be lost in this struggle.

Speaker 8 (02:26:05):
Let us not forget.

Speaker 49 (02:26:07):
If you're a teacher, well, we got a lot to
learn about this war we're fighting and how police practice
urban warfare. If you're a lawyer, guide us when they
say that any fighter.

Speaker 4 (02:26:18):
Is a criminal.

Speaker 49 (02:26:19):
If you're a digital organizer, to keep your finger on
the pulse and tell our stories far and wide. And
if you're a community organizer, we need to tend to
our relationships, not just use them. We need real solidarity
which goes beyond unity. We need pluralism, making space for

(02:26:40):
many strategies to coexist, and ultimately we need to practice democracy.
If we plan to build one cop city, is the
police in the establishment preparing for domestic war right here
in the city of Atlanta. Any further training of the
police is training against our existence. That shit cannot be built.

Speaker 29 (02:27:06):
It will.

Speaker 49 (02:27:09):
We all must fight for the democracy we've never seen before.

Speaker 4 (02:27:13):
What are you willing to do?

Speaker 35 (02:27:15):
Thank you?

Speaker 1 (02:27:19):
So, after about an hour of speeches, people are now
finally getting ready to move.

Speaker 10 (02:27:23):
They announced on the.

Speaker 1 (02:27:24):
Loudspeaker where we are going. We are marching to the
Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters on Peachtree, the same location that
had the front windows broken on the protest following the
killing of Tortighita that Saturday. So people leave, they stick
onto the sidewalk because there's cops staring at them, and
cops that definitely had had had indicated that if if

(02:27:47):
people step on to the street, they would be arrested.
The length of the march is stretching for about two
or three city blocks, just because you know, trying to
cram three hundred people onto a sidewalk.

Speaker 10 (02:28:03):
Makes sense stretch out really long.

Speaker 1 (02:28:06):
But the cops have been pretty pretty adamant that if
anyone steps onto the street, they're going to get arrested.
That is a banner being carried across that says what
you water grows fund our future, Stop cop city, defend
the forest. People with the stop cop City signs in

(02:28:26):
the Coca Cola font signs that read Atlanta versus cop City,
no cop city on stolen Land. The Thursday march definitely
had the most amount of signs out of all of
the individual marches or actions that I went to, both
small handheld signs and also signs with really tall handles

(02:28:48):
to hold up above the crowd. All right, people are
being led into the street now after walking, after walking
on the hidewalk for a decent while, people have now
taken to the streets along the path of the march.
The projector was set up projecting like stop stop coop

(02:29:09):
city slogans onto the side of a building, almost like
really really good graphic design.

Speaker 2 (02:29:14):
Visuals is definitely a strength of the movement.

Speaker 1 (02:29:17):
There's this police riot helmet that has a tree growing
underneath it and breaking apart of the helmet. It says,
trees give life, police take it. We got a police
riot line set up a few blocks ahead of the
people marching on the street right next to the building
with these with the stop cop City stuff projected onto
the side. Rather than let the police do an escalatory

(02:29:39):
show of violence, people opted to move back onto the
sidewalk to continue the march uninhibited. People seem to be
moving closer back onto the sidewalk as they're staring down
this riot line, and police are now heading back inside.
They're white rent to bush little vans that they've been
staging their riot cops out of, and they're driving off.

(02:30:02):
People are now in downtown Atlanta outside of the Georgia
Pacific Center.

Speaker 10 (02:30:08):
We have like twelve regular police.

Speaker 1 (02:30:12):
Cars, the two white vans full of riot cops and
lots of them cops the stage in places I cannot
currently see. All right, We're marching north along Peachtree Street,
heading heading to the Atlantic Police Foundation got the two
the two bus Max rent of buses full of riot

(02:30:35):
cops right right beside the march. Cops really out of
it about not letting anybody march in the street. It's
funny because a few days ago they wouldn't let people
stand on the sidewalk either. Most of the cops that
are surrounding the march right now are still in their vehicles,
at least from this current vantage point. As opposed to

(02:30:55):
the non violent direct act of march, I was opposed
to the non violent direct action marches and actions that
have happened launching out of woodword Park the past week
in which the police just tailed and surrounded the march
on foot, I think this march is just slightly I
think this march is just slightly too big to use
that tactic, so they're surrounding them with vehicles instead. As

(02:31:19):
the march arrived at the Atlanta Police Foundation, the hundreds
of protesters crammed onto the sidewalk were greeted by armed
APD officers. Riot police are standing in front of the
boarded up Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters at one nine to
one Peach Tree. There is a large, large crowd in
front of these relatively small amount of officers standing in

(02:31:42):
front of the board and up doors a few dozen cops,
some armed with AR fifteen's, A lot of cops stationed
outside the APF headquarters and even more stationed inside APF headquarters.
Police blocked off traffic in the on this section of
Peachtree Street, the sandwiching everybody in. They could have mass

(02:32:02):
arrested as I'm sure they wanted to.

Speaker 2 (02:32:05):
Yeah, the police were ready to mass rest the entire time.

Speaker 10 (02:32:10):
This is this is kind of a wild sighte.

Speaker 1 (02:32:11):
We have hundreds of people staring down about three dozen
officers from the Atlanta Police Department on their fifteen's, obviously
all of their handguns from hundreds of hundred, hundreds of
people holding signs staring down the police. You can you
can feel the kind of you can feel the temperature.

Speaker 10 (02:32:30):
Rising a little bit here. The cops look very nervous
as one.

Speaker 1 (02:32:34):
Hundreds of people who are chanting at them, and I'm
not very happy are facing them down. They're so they're
so close together, we're they're just sandwiched in. This is
such a tense situation right now. No one in the
crowd has any visible weapons of any kind. Of course,
they're holding big signs. Cops have some zipcuffs ready, cops

(02:32:55):
have all of their all their guns ready. I was
able to see inside the building via a small slit
in the plywood. There were tons of riot cops inside
with shields, and all the cops on the inside of
the building had gas masks strapped to their leg. At
least one riot cop on the other side of the
door was wearing a unique armored suit, not like the

(02:33:18):
regular police suits with riot armor like on the outside,
this armored padding was built into the clothing. He had
these massive bulky leg pants with armor on the insides
of them and like a massive riot helmet. He was
one of those cops who doesn't need a riot shield
because his body is the riot shield. It was very weird,

(02:33:39):
But for those first few minutes, it was a very
high stress situation in front of the APF building. It
felt like neither the crowd nor the police knew exactly
what was about to go down as a few hundred
angry protesters were pushed up against a line of armed police.
But as time went on, you got the impression that
this crowd was probably not going to initiate conflict with

(02:34:02):
the police, and I feel like some of the moods
maybe kind of died down. Cops are trying to kind
of move around the crowd a bit. There's there's cops
being stationed to the north, to the south, to behind
the crowd on the other side of the street. We
this could go so many ways right now, This could
end in so many different scenarios. But people have not

(02:34:25):
initiating anything other than standing on the sidewalk and.

Speaker 10 (02:34:28):
Chanting and given speeches.

Speaker 1 (02:34:30):
If you look, there's a small section of the FF
building where there's still a tiny, tiny, tiny sliver of
glass by one of the doors, and you can see
lots of lots of cops stationed inside with riot shields.
But I do not believe this crowd is gonna be
busting down any doors. Camu Franklin, the founder of Community
Movement Builders, was the last person to speak in front

(02:34:53):
of the Atlanta Police Foundation.

Speaker 35 (02:34:55):
No cops, it's nothing but a chry go over. Please
think our communities. We know a cop city. There's nothing
but a strategy to stop our movements.

Speaker 3 (02:35:08):
And what movements are those?

Speaker 35 (02:35:09):
The moments against police follans and terrorism in our community.
It is in twenty twenty one that they introduced this
idea to stop, to put cop city out here to
stop our movements. When people were talking about the fund
the police, abolish the police, find our turn it is
the public safety, they.

Speaker 7 (02:35:28):
Said, hell no, we.

Speaker 10 (02:35:30):
Want more police.

Speaker 35 (02:35:33):
And I put that idea out there, and the movement
was born to stop cop city. This movement is two
years old and it doesn't look like.

Speaker 4 (02:35:42):
It's going to stop.

Speaker 49 (02:35:43):
To me.

Speaker 1 (02:35:45):
By the end, you got this sense that this march
did exactly what it wanted to. There were three hundred
people standing like a foot away from two dozen cops,
starring them down, giving speeches chanting. If people wanted to
other things could have happened. This rally could have resulted
in many ways, many of them probably very ugly and
carrying a very high cost.

Speaker 35 (02:36:06):
The reason we did in march like this today was
to say to all the na saves. Black folks don't
want cop City. In people don't want cop City. White
folks don't want cop City. At Lantis don't want cop City.
Folks from outside Atlanta don't want cop City. Don't body

(02:36:28):
in the United States wants cop City because Ronestitians.

Speaker 7 (02:36:32):
Don't work Cops City.

Speaker 3 (02:36:34):
So people in Latin America.

Speaker 46 (02:36:35):
Don't want cop City.

Speaker 16 (02:36:37):
Don't were in.

Speaker 21 (02:36:38):
This world don't we.

Speaker 46 (02:36:39):
Work cop City.

Speaker 35 (02:36:42):
We wanted to make sure that we came in safety
and we leave in safety. We wanted to make sure
that we don't have any more political prisoners today. That
we wanted this to be a march about our unity
and our safety in numbers, and as we wrap up today,

(02:37:03):
that's what we want. It's not like we gotta give
them an excuse. When you are around the cop the
same way when you're around the wild animal.

Speaker 7 (02:37:11):
What do you gotta do.

Speaker 35 (02:37:13):
You gotta be cautious, you gotta be careful. You gotta
move a certain way, you gotta know which way to
go because you're looking to protect your safety. And right
now I'm looking to protect our safety. So as we
depart here today, we are departing in unit, We are
departing together. We are gonna walk back in close quarters

(02:37:38):
together where our cars work. If you're going to Martyr,
you're gonna walk close together with other people as you
go to Marta if you need a van to pick
you up, if you can't take Marta two blocks this
way by deposit. So we want you to be safe, secure,

(02:37:59):
because you want to be.

Speaker 46 (02:38:00):
Here gig the fight.

Speaker 1 (02:38:04):
There was this sense that the people there wanted to
show that if they wanted to do things, they could have,
but they knew that this was not This was not
the right time nor the right place.

Speaker 2 (02:38:16):
Restraint and and understanding of what like practice I would
say in that situation is.

Speaker 1 (02:38:21):
And I mean in the speeches that happened beforehand, there
was people from community movement builders, from Black Votes Matter,
a whole bunch of other black led groups in the city.
And similarly, like like like what happened at the Clergy event,
there was not a single whiff of condemnation of militant tactics,
of of of property, destruction of actions that people take this.

(02:38:42):
They people there who gave speeches recognized that such tactics
were a staple of the civil rights movement. Early Saturday morning,
I woke up to news that police had begun another raid.
But instead of writing the Mulani Forest the the police
were searching the ten acre property of the Lakewood Environmental

(02:39:03):
Arts Foundation or LEAF, a local nonprofit that was offering
safe haven for people during the week of Action. All right,
so the Lant police have executed a warrant on the
LEAF meet up spot in southeast Atlanta that people have
been using as a welcome center, as like a medic
station and just another spot to hang out. It was

(02:39:24):
set up after the raid Sunday night and it is
now Saturday morning. The police have executed this warrant to
search Parmasis ID everyone who's there.

Speaker 10 (02:39:35):
We got a group of people. It's being able to
leave right now.

Speaker 1 (02:39:39):
There has been a prison transport vehicle called in and
cops have like blocked off intersections around the area. No
one's allowed to get close. People are not allowed to
return to their cars. People are not allowed to return
to their private property. Since Sunday night, the land was
being used as a medic hub and provided a secondary
place to camp for those who didn't feel safe staying

(02:39:59):
in the forest. During their raid Saturday morning, police detained
at least twenty two people and refused to show anyone
the search warrant. And yeah, the group that got released
is just walking up now. Maybe like two dozen people
have been able to walk up.

Speaker 26 (02:40:16):
We just goat through their police lines and we're gonna, yeah,
huddle up and get to a safe place. We were
woken up by helicopters. There had been helicopters doing rounds
all evening and I don't even know what time. Seven something,

(02:40:39):
we heard loud speakers saying that they had a warrant
to search the property private property, and that was very disorienting.
Obviously I was in the middle of sleeping. We came
out with our hands open, our hands up. We had

(02:41:00):
more than twenty guns pointed at us. Some people have
their fingers on triggers. Certainly they were screaming at me.
And as I was waking up, we came through the line.
They said that they had a warrant to search the property.
We know that Homeland Security was one of the departments
that was arrested that was part of the arrest crew

(02:41:23):
or extraction crew or whatever. It's very traumatic. Obviously, it's freezing.
This is the coldest day this week, and so we are,
you know, worried about people's health because people are cold.
They detained us, they took identification. It was extremely violent situation,

(02:41:47):
but everyone here was really taking care of each other
and remaining calm.

Speaker 1 (02:41:51):
To address the raid, activists scheduled a press conference for
later that day after a youth rally to defend the
forest was to take place in East Village. And I
think you can hear said youths in the background, so
excuse their joyous young screams.

Speaker 36 (02:42:07):
We thought that it was important for us to not
only amplify the wonderful children's march that happened here today,
the community in East Atlanta, this community where they are
proposing to build cop City, came out this morning overwhelmingly
to say that they don't want cop City.

Speaker 13 (02:42:25):
So we had parents, we.

Speaker 36 (02:42:26):
Had children, we had other neighbors and community stakeholders who
gathered right here in Brownwood Park today in East Atlanta
to say that we are East Atlanta and cop City
is not a part of what we imagine an envision
for this community. Also this morning, unfortunately, there is a
place that was held as a commune for campers who

(02:42:48):
wanted to stand in solidarity during this week of action.
The place is called Leith l EAF. That is, the
Lakewood Environmental Arts Foundation, a nonprofit or organization that's dedicated
to combating food insecurity here within the city of Atlanta,
offered up their space to be used for people who

(02:43:08):
did not feel safe camping in the forest because of
the over aggression of police there and they wanted to
stand in solidarity with this week of action, so LEIF
offered up their space for those people to camp safely. Unfortunately,
this morning, a gang of police officers descended upon that

(02:43:29):
sacred space.

Speaker 1 (02:43:31):
During the raid, up to forty officers swarmed the property,
ransacking the infrastructure set up at the Leaf Encampment site.
Cops slashed aparts two medical supply tents, disrupting metical operations,
broke windows of a camper van parked on the site,
and ripped apart a greenhouse. Police took pictures of the
people detained at Leaf and collected their ideas, but after

(02:43:54):
being held for several hours, the police let all but
one person go free. To quote an article by Candice
Burned in Truth Out Quote, one person was arrested for
an outstanding parking ticket, demonstrating the state's desperation to snatch
up anyone associated with the Stop Copcity movement.

Speaker 50 (02:44:13):
Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Marlon Kautz.

Speaker 51 (02:44:16):
I'm an organizer with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, where civil
liberties and anti repression organization that exists to make sure
that people who participate in social movements have the right
to protest and don't suffer from repression. So the reason
I'm here is because, as we've all heard previously, there

(02:44:37):
was an incident of political repression. Early this morning, police
executed a search warrant and performed a raid against the
Lakewood Environmental Arts Foundation, which is a community space in Lakewood,
Atlanta that exists primarily to serve artists and musicians. It's
clear that it was part of a political strategy to

(02:45:00):
repress and intimidate protesters who are associated with the Stop Pop.

Speaker 50 (02:45:04):
City movement, a movement to defend the forest.

Speaker 51 (02:45:07):
This is very concerning, especially when taken in context. Of course,
it's very likely that police are going to report that
this was part of a routine investigation, a law enforcement
matter that they had every right to conduct. The other
thing that police are likely to claim is that they

(02:45:27):
made an arrest on scene, and our understanding is that
they did make an arrest due to somebody who was
there having an old traffic ticket from a long time ago.
So it's important to clarify that the arrest was because
of a traffic ticket, not because of any alleged crimes
related to the movement or any other serious criminal activity.

(02:45:51):
So it's important that we understand this raid as part
of a series of ongoing abuses of the legal process
to harass and intimidate political throw testers. They were unable
to demonstrate any criminal activity during their raid on the
Lakewood Environmental Arts Foundation, but they're continuing.

Speaker 3 (02:46:09):
To abuse.

Speaker 50 (02:46:12):
Every justification that they can.

Speaker 51 (02:46:16):
To raid spaces, to make arrests, and to hold people
in jail.

Speaker 36 (02:46:22):
So before the police come out and say we raided
this place where all of these outside aggressors were and
we picked up some violent offenders, we want you to
know that our brothers and sisters who were standing with
us in solidarity just saying hey, we want to camp here,
since we don't feel safe camping in the people's park

(02:46:43):
that's been overrun with police repression and aggression.

Speaker 13 (02:46:47):
They raided that place.

Speaker 36 (02:46:49):
They snatched people up, some people were sleeping, They took
pictures of people, They took their IDs, and they searched
and searched, found nothing else, never to warrant, and only
one person was arrested because of an outstanding parking ticking.

Speaker 1 (02:47:07):
About a week after the raid, the Guardian obtained evidence
of the search warrant. The warrant stated that there was
probable cause for believing that evidence of quote conspiracy to
commit domestic terrorism unquote could be found at the Lakewood location.
Listed in the warrant were objects officers sought, which included quote, cameras, radios,

(02:47:30):
boxes of nails, lighters, tents, camping equipment, spray paint, black clothing,
and literature related to defend the forest. These were the
materials tied to domestic terrorism. As the week progressed, there
were an increasing number of reports of police tailing people

(02:47:51):
coming and going from a march's and especially the actions downtown. Basically,
officers would follow people suspected of participating in the movement,
pull them over try to id anyone within the vehicles
and then issue some nonsense traffic citation. This continued on
Thursday after the Community Movement Builders march, as people were

(02:48:13):
heading home from the public Park, police stalked a few
individuals and pulled over multiple vehicles. A van carrying one
of the speakers was targeted, as well as two other
cars that were pulled over as they were leaving the protest.
Marlin from the Atlanta Solidarity Fund talked about the various
ways police had been using their power to intimidate activists

(02:48:35):
and suppress protest.

Speaker 51 (02:48:37):
Our organization has gotten many reports of pretext stops of
political protesters or people who are suspected of being political
protesters because of bumper stickers on their car or the
state that their license plate is ProMED. We've gotten report
people being stop and frisked simply because they're profiled as

(02:48:58):
looking like political acts the lists, and of course we've
seen dozens of protesters or suspected protesters arrested and charged
with domestic terrorism simply because they were found at a
music festival that's associated with the stock Coop City movement.
And so we can see that every step of the

(02:49:19):
way police and prosecutors are abusing the legal process to
intimidate and discourage this movement.

Speaker 2 (02:49:26):
Throughout this time, police have been watching or monitoring one
of the off site locations in the forest. They've parked
in front of this site and kept up surveillance on it.
And then leading all the way up into Friday, there
was a journalist pulled over leaving the final non violent
direct action from Woodruff Park. They were pulled over with

(02:49:48):
two other people in the car and like detained briefly,
ostensibly to you know, continue to identify and connect people.

Speaker 1 (02:49:57):
A big part of the story for this week of
Act is the excess of the police response to quite
typical acts of quote unquote nonviolent protest, the sort that
the government and even the police loved to claim that
they actually protect. With every single action downtown this week,
virtually no laws were being broken, not even any civil disobedience.

(02:50:19):
People were handing out flyers, marching on sidewalks, giving out letters,
and the police's response was to deploy SWAT, to mobilize
hundreds of officers, to shut down multiple city blocks, to
carry ar fifteens as they tail crowds of a few
dozen people just walking on the sidewalk and yelling at
people if they accidentally miss step off the curb and

(02:50:40):
threaten violent arrest. This was the sort of extremely aggressive
response to people doing protest quote unquote the right way.

Speaker 2 (02:50:49):
We should highlight that. That is the apparent goal of
these protests was to show that even when they are
doing things the right way, this is how the state
reacts to dissent.

Speaker 1 (02:50:59):
It reacts in this militarized fashion where you like it's
it's I think a big part of what's happened in
these types of protests that have happened the past week
is demonstrating why people are campaigning to stop cop City
because the sheer amount of resources that the police already
have in the city. To to be deploying hundreds and
hundreds of officers every single day to respond to people

(02:51:22):
handing out flyers, it's like to respond to people who
are walking on the sidewalks. They have this massive amount
of resources. They're using tear gas in the woods, they're
using paper balls, they're using flash bangs, they're they're having
multiple different swat teams follow around people handing out pamphlets.
The level of police militarization in Atlanta is already at

(02:51:45):
this extremely high point, and COP City is only going
to intensify that. And that is the reason they want
to build cop City. It's for this type of urban
counterinsurgency training to quell civil unrest and to quell protests.

Speaker 36 (02:52:00):
On Thursday night, we held a very peaceful and successful
march in downtown Atlanta, starting at the King Center.

Speaker 28 (02:52:08):
We had someone who.

Speaker 36 (02:52:10):
Was stopped by the police and asked if he was
picking up protesters taking out of the vehicle, handcuffed for
no reason. They couldn't find a reason to detain him
any longer, so they had to let him go. But Atlanta,
this is why we're standing against cop City, because if
cop City is built, you can guarantee that you won't
even be able to go to the grocery store without

(02:52:32):
being harassed by the police for no reason at all.

Speaker 1 (02:52:36):
When I spoke with Matthew Johnson, he brought up a
similar point.

Speaker 18 (02:52:41):
With the resources that the police had to respond in
the way that they did.

Speaker 8 (02:52:46):
The assertion that.

Speaker 18 (02:52:46):
They need more training in a militarized facility or they
need more resources is crazy because you had them literally
out numbering protesters kettling them, and we have credible sources
that say that there were swat forces who had instructed

(02:53:08):
the officers to arrest nonviolent protesters, and there were actually
police officers that refused to take that order, which I
think is another fascinating dynamic that is worth exploring and
understanding more. But just with the resources that they had
to try to shut down protesters, harass folks, constantly, ticket

(02:53:33):
and pull over people that they saw, you know, creating
like a logistical framework for the week of action is nuts,
and they're making our point for us. On Friday, the
word came out that Tortugita had bullet holes through both
of their palms and that they were more than likely

(02:53:56):
sitting cross leg with their hands up when they were
shot by police. And now we are supposed to be
convinced that these people that lied about this killed somebody
that was absolutely no threat to them. On the same
grounds that they're trying to build this police training facility,
we're supposed to believe that this is going to make

(02:54:18):
them less violent towards people like as you're building a
militarized police training facility, and like people that try to
convince themselves that these is going to be a place
where people are also being taught de escalation tactics, while
like everything around that is militarized. It's like if you
had somebody build a water park and you're like, oh, yeah,

(02:54:41):
I'm just trying to stay dry. I don't want to
get splashed or anything like that, and it's like, oh no, no, no,
don't worries. We have a food court right in the
middle of it, and it's great, you're really just coming
there for the food court, so don't worry about it.
And then like you go there and then you get splashed.
What were you expecting? Like, that's obviously not what that

(02:55:03):
facility is for, because all the infrastructure around it is
made to be a water park or a militarized police
training facility. So don't be surprised when maybe they might
have one de escalation program and like you know where
the food court would be, and then somebody gets killed, right,
because they're actually building the infrastructure for killing.

Speaker 8 (02:55:23):
So that's where we're at.

Speaker 1 (02:55:25):
This week of action has shown a lot about how
the police are operating post the twenty twenty Uprising, how
they will respond to people exercising their First Amendment right,
and the indiscriminate way that police will respond to any
active protest. One of the main takeaways from this week
is that their response to protest is deployed against people

(02:55:47):
without target or focus. They care very little if you
are breaking a window or if you're marching on the sidewalk,
They're still gonna send the SWAT team. Police are acting
as if they are entirely in case of differentiating between
acts of descent. Toward the end of the week, I
sat down and talked with an unnamed forest defender to

(02:56:08):
get their thoughts on the week of action. For security reasons,
we did a vocal replacement.

Speaker 52 (02:56:14):
The police presence has been pretty unprecedented. I haven't seen
shit like that here since twenty twenty, not downtown at least.
I mean shit, I don't think we had seen gas
in Atlanta in a minute, and then they gassed the forest.
It'd been a while, but yeah, I mean they're punching out,
especially like Tuesday, they were putting out one hundred and
fifty two hundred cops the entirety of downtown. I mean
multi jurisdictional task forces deployed multiple different Atlanta APD SWAT

(02:56:37):
teams between like regular APD SWAT and APEX, which is
like the Drug and Gang Interdiction unit. I mean a
fucking whole drone unit, GSP, some weird unmarked cars that
I won't speculate on, helicopters, all that shit. You know,
the type of police response you would expect to see
in like a dystopian fucking police state. For some people
handing out flyers that just say this is bad for

(02:56:58):
the environment, doesn't matter how much milk toast or not,
and like I shouldn't say milk toasts like that's not
a bad thing. We need people to go hand out flyers.
We need to inform people as far as what this
is to get people involved, but like as non violent
as you can get, and still they're going to treat
you like your fucking al Qaeda, you know, and it
puts you in a weird position because then it's like, okay, cool,
if you're going to treat us the exact same for

(02:57:19):
being nonviolent, why not do crime. If the police response
to an assault on an outpost that drove the police
out and burned five things down, the police response to
fifteen people handing out flyers downtown are going to be
about the same, then why not take more militant radical action?

Speaker 1 (02:57:33):
The twenty three people arrested on Sunday, March fifth were
not arrested as anyone was torching equipment. They were not
arrested at the power line cut. It was people who
were attending a music festival. Arrests were not widely targeted
against people who police knew were engaged in property destruction.
They were targeted against anyone the cops could grab. Same

(02:57:55):
was the case at the January twenty first action, where
people were marching downtown Saturday after Tortugita was killed. The
only people arrested and subsequently charged with domestic terrorism was
anyone the police could get their hands on. Officers went
after people who were carrying banners the entire duration of
the march. It was not targeted against people who were

(02:58:17):
engaged in militant action. Among all this talk of police
repression and multiple raids, it's easy to overlook that throughout
the week people still sought opportunities for finding joy and resistance,
because most people wouldn't dedicate years of their life to

(02:58:38):
this if it was just miserable battles with police the
whole time.

Speaker 2 (02:58:43):
I think one thing that's been lost in all of this, too,
is all of the lighthearted events that have continued to
go on through the week, and like the joy of
the movement that was represented in the Bouncy Castle rip.

Speaker 1 (02:58:56):
But that joy is continuing in the woods, like people
have still continued to camp in the woods. People still
having dinner in the woods, people are still having camp fires,
people are still talking the woods. It is still a
place that people are gathering at and are enjoying each other.
This company in now are enjoying the woods, and it
is a place that the morale has never been fully crushed.

Speaker 3 (02:59:15):
The moral has never been fully crushed.

Speaker 2 (02:59:17):
And like the participatory acts of the Week of Action
are continuing like none of that has been quashed.

Speaker 1 (02:59:28):
An example of the joyful, continuous resistance during the Week
of Action can be found at the youth rally that
happened on Saturday the eleventh.

Speaker 10 (02:59:37):
All right, So I'm at the youth rally Saturday.

Speaker 1 (02:59:41):
After the warrant was served on the meetup spot in
Southeast Atlanta. There's around two hundred people marching through East
Village in Atlanta. Pretty pretty joyous group here actually, and
they're actually like on the streets.

Speaker 10 (02:59:52):
This is the first time we've had a large march
like this.

Speaker 1 (02:59:55):
Take to the streets because every action that was in
downtown or midtown Atlanta was just so heavily surveilled by
police who were not letting anyone get near the street
at all.

Speaker 10 (03:00:06):
But there's no police here.

Speaker 1 (03:00:07):
They were busy doing the search war and so this
group is actually is actually able to take to the streets.
It's like everyone everyone kind of in this area of
Atlanta is pretty pretty pro pro this little protest here.
There's like workers from the little shops and stores nodding
along Bullden County.

Speaker 2 (03:00:26):
Shares just walked by the march like on there, just
you know, off shift workout routine, wearing Fulden County gear.

Speaker 10 (03:00:33):
That's pretty funny.

Speaker 1 (03:00:34):
People dancing in the streets, Families walking with their kids
through the streets all right, walking around the park that
the youth rally started at, and the press conference about
the raid this morning just ended at there's as you
can probably hear kids playing in the park.

Speaker 10 (03:00:53):
People are handing out food.

Speaker 1 (03:00:55):
It's a massive, massive amount of food just in the
middle of the park with all these tables set up. Overall,
this is kind of one of the more joyous events
that we've had since the initial Saturday rally at Gresham Park,
just with the amount of food, the amount of kids
just running around and playing, all the information tables that
are handing out literature and giving you know, making connections

(03:01:17):
with people. Yeah, when I was down here in January,
the mood was very somber. The mood was very grim
like coming to the vigil when there was the destroyed
remains of the gazebo, the torn up parking lot, all
of the trees in there still within their like winter
state with all of the leaves gone. Everything was very
kind of barren. And the first thing I noticed on

(03:01:40):
Saturday as we were marching is like there's new life
springing in the woods. There's this invigorated sense of the
almost assurance of victory that people are carrying with them
as they take action. And I think that really does
change what the action you take is, and that does
change the types of results that people will see. Is
if they go at this with the idea that we

(03:02:02):
are going to win this.

Speaker 2 (03:02:03):
And I think that that is kind of why the
non violent direct actions have become like that have moved
to the floor. Right when you think that you're going
to lose and you have nothing to lose, you engage
in these incredibly radical actions because what else are you
going to do. And then when you have this belief
that no, we can win, we just have to find

(03:02:24):
that pathway.

Speaker 1 (03:02:25):
And that is a part of the diversity of tactics
is using both of those and almost every ecological movement
that's been successful has demonstrated that the pathway to success
is often paved with a diversity of tactics, with people
doing non violent action at noon, which will pull a
massive militarized police response as people are doing regular ass shit.

(03:02:47):
And then a part of diversity of tactics is also
people leaving a music festival to go towards a bulldozer,
and both both of those things are a diversity of tactics.
Now I stand by most of that statement. However, where
issues can arise when there is a ticking clock and
during the time spent looking for this pathway, the enemy

(03:03:08):
meanwhile is making steady progress. Issues may also arise when
a large diversity of tactics is shoved under just one roof.
I had a lot of conversations with movement participants regarding
the direct action that happened on Sunday night and how
it cast a shadow of repression over the whole week

(03:03:30):
of action to synthesize the many conversations. In general, most
people thought that what physically happened was good. The actual
actions at the North Gate were successful and justified. But
there are other things on the periphery of that action
that make it slightly more complicated.

Speaker 18 (03:03:51):
And now we can have lots of questions about tactics
and cost benefit analysis about that action, which I did
not think it would be wise, especially being so visible
for me to have to be anywhere near on that day.
We can have questions about that. But what was for
certain was that the way in which the police responded

(03:04:12):
was absurd and predictably so.

Speaker 8 (03:04:15):
Now with the destruction that I saw, etc.

Speaker 18 (03:04:18):
It cost them less than a million dollars and maybe
like two weeks actually of construction that they were.

Speaker 8 (03:04:24):
Pushed back max. These are like max numbers.

Speaker 18 (03:04:28):
Was that worth twenty three people being arrested and quaching
what could have been a larger occupation and wider participation
and wider buying in the movement. Instead, by the time
we got to Monday, the clergy was having to do
clean up rather than like cast division of what the
world could be, And so these are trade offs right

(03:04:50):
where even though we have to be very clear about
what a diversity of tactics means and also a separation
of time and space. So I mean, we can't just
look at a diversity of tactics and everybody does what
they want as if they're operating in asylo, but rather
we give space for one another to do different things

(03:05:12):
that may work, respectful of the fact that some of
our actions may affect one another.

Speaker 1 (03:05:19):
In the lead up to the Week of Action, nighttime
sabotage actions decreased around Atlanta in favor of these big
public demos during daylight. That seems to result in more
people getting arrested. And one of the results of Sunday's
action happening in such close proximity to the festival and
the encampments is that the people at the festival and

(03:05:42):
in the woods who did not consent to participating in
a high profile direct action got disproportionately hit with the
immediate repression from police. A lot of the people who
were arrested were completely unaware of the actions that took
place at the North Gate. Even if those actions were
one hundred percent justified in the end, it still creates

(03:06:04):
a dynamic with an unequal distribution of police violence. Now,
obviously the woods are an inherently dangerous place to be
and people are not responsible for actions that police choose
to take. But there are still considerations to be had
regarding the proximity of space and time when engaging in

(03:06:25):
more risky actions, and how the consequences of those actions
may affect people who did not consent to participating in
actions at other locations, especially when people are lulled into
a false sense of safety by claiming that police have
never cracked down hard in the forest during previous weeks

(03:06:45):
of action.

Speaker 52 (03:06:46):
Yeah, in terms of the actions done Sunday, in reference
to a group of people assaulting a like police position,
driving them out with force, and then burning their shit,
that was all good, and we should not denounce that
A step away from it. It only harms the movement
to back away from radical action and act like there
are definitions of good or bad protesters, because eventually the
logical conclusion of that is snitching, and that only furthers

(03:07:09):
like the GBI's motivations to tear the movement apart. What
went wrong Sunday is as a result of two things
it's one that the police used indiscriminate violence when people
beat them. They were beaten, they got angry, and they
were beaten because they got their shit rock by like fireworks.
And then they use in discriminate violence against people who
they knew were on the side of like where the

(03:07:29):
events were that weren't where all the militants were coming
back from. They didn't want to go up against those
people because they're cowards. And second, because of how big
the movement's gotten over the past two years, the strategy
of the Weeks of Action has stagnated. It's made it
so work, so compact in a singular week that when
you have all the diversity of tactics that exist within
Defend the Atlanta Forest and stop Coop City, those tactics,

(03:07:52):
with how big everything is now, they start to step
on each other's toes. They can hurt each other sometimes
because yeah, not everyone who was at the RC field
was like ready for the consequences of like a militant
radical action like that. And that doesn't mean that the
action wasn't good or justified, because the action was wildly successful.
There were no arrests made at that action. There were
a rest made when the police got angry and used

(03:08:13):
indiscriminate violence because they were pissed off and they wanted.

Speaker 1 (03:08:15):
To riot, so they retaliated at a music festival that
was happening nearby.

Speaker 52 (03:08:21):
Yes, and that's the fault of nobody but the police.
That's not the fault of the people who went and
assaulted that outpost. That's only the fault of the police,
and really the fault of a bad long term strategy
of two heavily compacting factors of you know, being just
like a weak and where making it so this movement
where people can take radical action, it feels so limited
to just inside the forest because that puts people in

(03:08:42):
harm's way, and that put people in harms way, including
the people who you know, went and did the thing
on Sunday. But no, it would be wrong as the
movement to like balk out a radical action like that.
Radical action like that is such a big part of
why this movement has been as successful as it has been.
It's a huge part of why the police did do
like a full sweep or a larger sweep or a
series of raids in the following days because they were

(03:09:05):
afraid that those three hundred to four hundred people who
hit that out posts were lying and waiting in the forest,
ready to attack them because they were afraid of militant
radical action.

Speaker 1 (03:09:13):
On Thursday, when I was in front of the APF building,
I could like hear some of the supervisors and coordinators
talking about being scared of ambushes or like being scared
of splinter groups, like being staged to attack officers. It's
it's bizarre how fearful they are. Of the types of
people who are opposing the cop city project, they're.

Speaker 52 (03:09:34):
The most afraid of the people who are willing to
go do physical violence to them, and not even physical violence,
but people who are just willing to like throw a
rock at them or like a firework. Once they realize
that they haven't paralyzed somebody with fear, once they realize
that they have not made you so afraid of taking action,
they become such cowards.

Speaker 1 (03:09:52):
In the aftermath of the police killing forest defender Tortigita,
law enforcement agencies tried to claim that Tortigita shot at
the first leaving one officer injured, but recently released findings
from multiple autopsies have cast more doubt on the state's
version of events. On the afternoon of Friday, March tenth,

(03:10:13):
Towards the end of the week of action, the family
of Tortighita released the findings of an independent autopsy done
by former GBI Chief Medical Examiner, doctor Chris Sperry. The
results suggested that Tortighito was sitting cross legged with their
hands in front of their face when shot and bullet
exit wounds through the palms of both of their hands.

(03:10:35):
The family ordered autopsy also did not find any evidence
of gunshot residue from a GSR test kit. And then
a month later, De Cab County released the results of
their official autopsy, which found at least fifty seven bullet
wounds across Tortigita's body and according to this autopsy, torte

(03:10:56):
did not have any gunpowder residue on its hands. Then,
a few days later, via a public records request, the
Atlanta Community Press Collective received the gunshot residue test kit
from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's crime Lab. The document
contained the names of six Georgia State Patrol SWAT members
who shot and killed Tortigita, Bryland L. Myers, Jerry A. Parish,

(03:11:22):
Jonathan Salceda, Jonathan Mark lamb Ronaldo Kegel, and Royce Zaw,
with Zaw being the subject of a lawsuit after he
shot a protester in the face with a les lethal
round during the George Floyd protests in May of twenty twenty.
The document also included the results of the GBI's crime

(03:11:42):
lab report, claiming that they found quote the presence of
more than five particles characteristic of gunshot primer residue unquote
from a test kit, with the report also stating quote,
it should be noted that it is possible for a
victim of gunshot wounds to have gas are present on
their hands, considering that among the more than fifty seven

(03:12:06):
gunshot wounds were entrance and exit wounds on Tortighita's hands,
which could be caused for gunshot residue if the crime
lab findings are genuine. The findings do not point to
any specific interpretation of events, as it's not unusual to
find primer residue on the hands of a victim following
the path of a bullet. Plus, coupled with the ever

(03:12:26):
changing story from the GBI, on the ground chatter from
APD officers claiming that Georgia State Patrol quote fucked their
own officer Upot. As well as reports from forced defenders
from the day of the shooting, there is indication that
Georgia State Patrol most likely suffered from so called friendly fire,
with many people believing that the killing of Tortighita was

(03:12:48):
essentially an execution.

Speaker 10 (03:12:51):
Instant.

Speaker 1 (03:12:51):
Reports obtained via public records requests also revealed that GSP
fired a quote unquote, a Leslie Thual pepperball gun at
d Tortighita's tent as SWAT initially approached, once again contradicting
the claims made by GBI officials in the months since
the killing. As the week came to a close on Sunday,

(03:13:13):
March eleventh, a memorial service for Tortighita was held in
the Malani Forest, where Tort's family spread their ashes in
the forest it died to protect. I attended the Sunday
morning memorial. The sky opened up and poured down rain
in South Atlanta throughout the whole morning. Hundreds of people

(03:13:35):
gathered in Wollanne People's Park to light candles under a
canopy and hear from Towrt's family. Then, led by Tortighita's mother,
we walked through the forest to the site of the shooting,
where a banner hung that read, quote on this ground
gsp assassinated forest defender, comrade, friend, lover Tortigita unquote. Family

(03:14:00):
and friends spread Tortigita's ashes throughout the woods along the
path to quote Candice burned in truth out. In contrast
to its tumultuous start, Sunday's vigil and ceremony provided a
somber and heartfelt close to the fifth week of Action.

(03:14:20):
I met up with Matthew Johnson after the memorial to
discuss the week of Action, and we briefly touched on
the memorial in the forest.

Speaker 8 (03:14:29):
I think that.

Speaker 18 (03:14:31):
We have to hold space for very real grief. We
lost a friend, and at the same time, just two
days ago, on a Friday, what we always knew to
be true was found to clearly be true. Tortigita was murdered,
and we have to bear the burner of that pain.

(03:14:53):
And all the people in power lied and even gave
their condolences to a state trooper that seemed.

Speaker 8 (03:15:02):
As if he was shot by a state trooper.

Speaker 18 (03:15:06):
And did not say a mumbling word to even acknowledge
our friend's existence and the value of their life. And
this morning was beautiful. I had been able to meet
Bilkis Tortugita's mother previously, and she really does have a
beautiful spirit. I've really grown appreciation for that family, and

(03:15:30):
just to see just how large these gatherings were like
throughout the week, even in spite of the hoopla and
the opening weekend, it was very encouraging. But in a
lot of ways, Tortugita has become the face of this
movement because they really did light up wherever they were.

(03:15:55):
One thing that's gotten me through thinking about when you
would just see them sometimes and they would just give
you the biggest, like cheesiest smile, like out of nowhere.

Speaker 8 (03:16:06):
I just.

Speaker 18 (03:16:09):
And like that like got me through the first week
after their passing. Yeah, but I've grown a great appreciation
for that family because in so many ways, tord Ti
Gita is their hero. And just learn how consistent they

(03:16:29):
were as like such a welcoming and loving and caring
person just meant so much. I mean to know that
this wasn't something new that they had stumbled upon. They
had lived this whole life of caring and making space
for others.

Speaker 1 (03:16:45):
Some of Toward's friends have raised concerns that a side
effect of toward unwittingly becoming the face of the movement,
is that the details around their death have eclipsed some
of what they died fighting for in doing so, stripping
toward of their individuality and removing their own agency to
turn them into this perfect liberal, friendly avatar of the

(03:17:07):
movement to simply be used as a political tool and
add to a list of demands.

Speaker 52 (03:17:14):
There's a thing that's been happening more and more recently
that I've been bothered by, which is when organizations, specifically
more liberal organizations, are invoking towards name actions, they're misgendering
the hell out of them, and it's alienating a lot
of people. And I understand that Sunday's action alienated a
lot of liberal orgs. This is a problem with the
week of Action type strategy, with the diversity of tactics

(03:17:37):
all being forced under one roof. But we cannot stand
to alienate each other. And it's really frustrating and really
angering to see this really beautiful soul be flattened into
just a murder that these liberals want them to be,
stripping them of so much of their life and what
was a revolutionary life and a revolutionary death into just
martyrdom by taking away their identity and who they were
and making them nothing more than someone who was murdered

(03:18:00):
when they were someone who is living such a full
and beautiful life until the day they died. And this
movement will tear itself apart if we do not accept
the fullness of towards life, what it stood for, and
what they live for. This movement has always been built
on a lot of trans people in the woods fucking
the cops up, and if we alienate those people were fucked,
there's no winning and we can't lose. We don't have

(03:18:21):
a choice about this anymore. We have to win by
any means necessary.

Speaker 1 (03:18:25):
That will wrap up our day to day coverage of
the entire week of action, but much has happened in
the intervening two months, so in the next episode we'll
cover where the movement is now, discuss the future of
the fight to stop Cop City, and offer a more
critical retrospective on the fifth week of action. See you

(03:18:45):
on the other side, welcome back to it could happen here.
This is a bonus fifth episode following my coverage of
the Stop Coop City Week of Action in.

Speaker 10 (03:18:57):
March of twenty twenty three.

Speaker 1 (03:18:59):
This will be a more critical retrospective on the week
as a whole and offer a glimpse into what the
movement might look like in the next few months as
we are rapidly approaching summer. In the last episode, we
talked about the police repression of protests and demonstrations as
they happen, but we have yet to mention the various
methods of state repression the movement is facing.

Speaker 10 (03:19:21):
Day to day.

Speaker 1 (03:19:23):
Repression for the Week of Action started well before the
kickoff rally in Gresham Park. Emails from early February obtained
via public records requests found that the Atlanta Police Foundation
and its contractors were waiting for quote indictments to the
leaders unquote of the Stopcob City and Defend the Atlanta
Forest movement to quote the Atlantic Community Press Collective. In

(03:19:44):
a February third email to APF board members, the director
of Public Affairs, Rob Baskin, calls the Defend the Atlanta
Forest and Stop Coop City movement a quote conspiracy of
protesters against the Public Safety Training Center investigated by a
consortium of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies unquote.
Baskin promised the APF Board in an email quote that

(03:20:06):
the recent arrests, our receipt of the land and disturbance permit,
the mayor's announcement of the project will be moving forward,
and the continued investigation by law enforcement will dampen activists' efforts.
We will likely see more indictments in the coming weeks.
Back in February, Brestfield and Gory, the general contractor for
the project, planned to mobilize for land clearing around April,

(03:20:30):
but told the Atlanta Police Foundation that subcontractor bidding wouldn't
happen quote until indictments have happened unquote, And then, of course,
a few weeks later, twenty three people were charged with
domestic terrorism at a music festival. Matt from the Atlanta
Community Press Collective talked about the history of domestic terrorism

(03:20:50):
charges in the movement and how they affected bail proceedings.

Speaker 2 (03:20:54):
The domestic terrorism charges go back to the middle of December,
that's when the first of them happened, and up until
the week of action, there have been a total of
nineteen arrest or individuals who have been charged with domestic
terrorism and then of those people, anyone who did not
have either a Georgia license or could not prove like

(03:21:17):
Georgia residency, they were all initially denied bond, but everyone
who lives here they were able to get bond. Before
the bond hearing, we're kind of there are discussions that
there's no way that they're going to hold twenty three
people without bond with on such flimsy evidence.

Speaker 1 (03:21:41):
That's the most people that have been arrested and held
in one day. It really is in relation to the
movement so far.

Speaker 2 (03:21:48):
Yeah, this is the largest mass arrest of the movement,
So it's kind of inconceivable for twenty three people to
be held without bond. So we get to the bail hearing.
The first person has their mother come on. Their lawyer
brings their mother on, who swears essentially on like every

(03:22:08):
religious text ever written, that her child will immediately go
home with her and she will personally bring her child
back to every court hearing and her child will have no,
you know, further contact with the movement and all of
these things. And the judge denies the bond. So at

(03:22:30):
that point it's like, okay, there, you know, I guess
we're going to go back to the old thing. If
you can't prove residency, you're you're you're not getting out.
It was like person number five is from Athens, Georgia,
which is about an hour outside of Atlanta, and the
judge denies her bond, not because the judge thinks she's

(03:22:51):
a flight risk, but because she is a threat to
the community. And that was the moment where the understanding changed.
It was like, oh no, like nobody's getting out of me.

Speaker 1 (03:23:04):
Yes, this isn't this isn't a real this isn't a
real bond. Here at the press conference after the leaf raid,
Kamal Franklin from the Community Movement Builders spoke about it
the years of state repression against people fighting to stop
Cop City.

Speaker 39 (03:23:18):
This movement has been repressed by the states, by the
city since its very beginnings. When we first started organizing
in twenty twenty one, where we had rallies in demonstration,
we would have police break them up, throw people to
the ground, pepper spray them, and arrest them. We had

(03:23:39):
over twenty arrest in our first years of rallying and
demonstrating against Cop City.

Speaker 3 (03:23:45):
At the time, those.

Speaker 39 (03:23:46):
Folks were charged with resisting arrests, obstruction of governmental administration,
and then the police decided to step up their tactics,
and they started to form a task force, a task
force that included at the Atlanta Police so, the Cab
County Police, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Georgia State Troopers,
the Federal Bureau of Investigation at Homeland Security, where they

(03:24:10):
began to talk about bringing charges of domestic terrorism against
organizers and activists. And so now we're coming to a
point where they're raiding houses, where they're telling organizers and
activists that they can't stand on corners and legally give
out leaflets.

Speaker 2 (03:24:29):
And then the judge kept saying like, I'm not here
to hear anything on evidentiary claims and I'm not here
to engage with the domestic terrorism statute. Like both of
those were I think very valid things that defense attorneys
kept bringing up, because.

Speaker 10 (03:24:45):
Yeah, they're problematic.

Speaker 1 (03:24:47):
Yeah, one of the defense attorneys mentioned that the way
people are being charged with domestic terrorism right now doesn't
really have any legal basis in the state of Georgia
because the terrorism law works as like an enhancement for
other folonial charges, and these people aren't being charged with
anything besides domestic terrorism. There's no evidence these people committed
any actual crimes. So they're just being charged with terrorism.

(03:25:08):
This like nebulous concept. The judge said that the legal
basis of these claims will have to be decided on
another day. Similarly, they said that in regards to actual
evidence that these people charged did any crimes, she said
that she had none of this evidence in front of
her and that evidence is for another day. One of
the main reasons the judge said that defendants were denied

(03:25:31):
bond was due to quote a lack of ties to
community in Atlanta. But regarding this ties to the community aspect,
the judge had this weird double standard. There was this
one person arrested and charged who lives with their partner
in Atlanta, who also had ties to another state where
they had previously lived. So despite them having ties to

(03:25:51):
the community in Atlanta, which was one of the main
things the judge considered for this one individual, they were
still denied bond on the basis that this individual also
has ties to a different community, thus deeming them a
flight risk even though they currently live in Atlanta. One
of the reasons that the judge mentioned is based on
the arrest warrants that she was given for why these
people were a threat to the community. Is that the

(03:26:14):
state claims that they were in possession of metal shields
as they were being arrested. You know, shields the offensive
weapon that shows that you are a threat you holding
a shield. And so first of all, that's that's that's
funny on us on that on that level.

Speaker 2 (03:26:30):
When you and I were coming in on Saturday and
along with the march, we passed by a bunch of shields,
right and they were kind of placed near the end
of the path, like in anticipation that there might be
police presents. And I took pictures of the shields and
they are evidently plastic shields. There's no way of mistaking

(03:26:55):
them for anything other than plastic.

Speaker 1 (03:26:57):
The plastic five gallon shields that you see almost every
protest in every city across the country. The cops know
what these things are. That the fact that they claimed
that people were arrested carrying metal shields is so ludicrous
because there was not There was not a single metal
shield at this music festival. And there's a lot of
footage of these arrests. I don't there's I've not seen

(03:27:19):
evidence that every that any person was arrested that was
carrying a shield, let alone a metal one.

Speaker 2 (03:27:25):
There's this weird thing where so typically when you do
these these bail hearings, the the defense attorneys waive the
reading of the warrant typically because they have already gone
over that with their client, and you know, everybody's aware,
and it just kind of speeds up the process. And
it was like really notable that these attorneys weren't doing it,

(03:27:46):
and once you started to listen to them, you notice
this very repetitive nature of them. And so about halfway
through we get to a lawyer who straight up calls
out the fact that these warrants seem like they were
just copy pasted.

Speaker 1 (03:28:02):
Like every single person all the way downline. During the
first hearing, only one person was let out on bail,
and they were an NLG legal observer and lawyer at
the Southern Poverty Law Center. After the week of action,
on March twenty third, there were a second set of
bail hearings for ten of the people arrested on March
fifth at the South River Music Festival. In a rare move,

(03:28:24):
the second in command of the State of Georgia's Attorney
General's office, John Fowler, was deployed to argue against granting
bond Fowler, along with several top county prosecutors, weaved a
complex narrative of a grand conspiracy of protesters dating back
to twenty nineteen, saying that the quote unquote organization behind

(03:28:44):
Defend the Forest is responsible for quote one hundred incidents
nationwide unquote. Fowler claimed that the Force Defenders are a
well funded group with millions of dollars hiding behind five
oh one c three nonprofit organizations, and that the so
called autonomous zone at the Wendy's where Rayshard Brooks was
murdered in twenty twenty, is a part of the same organization.

(03:29:08):
Fowler also tempted to tie the use of laser pointers
in the forest to a racial justice protests in twenty twenty,
as well as a sophisticated communication network of prepaid phones,
telegram channels, proton mails, and rise up accounts. Prosecutor Lance
Cross stated that the quote unquote leader of the Defend
the Atlanta Forest movement never actually goes into the forest. Okay, So,

(03:29:33):
to paraphrase a friend of mine. As potentially dangerous as
claims like these are, it will never stop being funny
that the state just simply cannot conceive of horizontal organizing
as like a real thing that exists and not just
a smoke screen for this shadowy cabal of protesters. Prosecutor
Lance Cross claimed that anyone at the music festival is

(03:29:55):
a party to the crime of the direct action that
took place around one and a half kilometers away at
the construction site, and that after the direct action, individuals
left to return to the other side of the woods,
crossing over the creek and changing out of their black block.
For the first defendant. At this hearing, Prosecutor Cross said
that there's police helicopter video of this first person changing

(03:30:18):
out of their black block, but when asked by the
judge if the state has any evidence that this defendant
did anything illegal, not just change clothing in a forest,
the prosecutor was unable to provide any such evidence. This
defendant received a twenty five thousand dollars bond with a
stay away from Georgia order and a no contact order
with any codefendants or anyone associated with the Defend the

(03:30:40):
Atlanta Forest movement. Only one other defendant was granted bond
during this hearing, a second year law student who was
arrested as they were eating food at a food truck
At the hearing, they presented letters of support from Tibetan monks,
a former mayor, numerous academics, and Charlotte's mayor pro tem
was on the call. Bond was also set at twenty

(03:31:01):
five K, along with having to surrender their passport, where
an ankle monitor, and maintain no contact with co defendants
nor join any future protests. To paraphrase my friend again,
these are old Green Scare tactics back in action and
kicked into high gear. Courts are being used as a
meat cleaver to hack off and isolate people from their communities,

(03:31:23):
regardless of evidence. This is the type of repression that
courts were born to do. Much of the repression we're
seeing in Atlanta is a revamped version of the Green
Scare with additional tactics and knowledge the state gained from
the twenty twenty protests, including the targeting of jail support
and bail fund organizations. Another thread in this grand Cabal

(03:31:45):
of Forest Defender's narrative that the state was trying to
weave was that prosecutors claimed that having an Atlanta Solidarity
Fund jail support number on your person is evidence of
criminal intent and that the Solidarity Fund is quote being
investigated as a part of this whole thing unquote. The
majority of the eight individuals denied bond were not even

(03:32:07):
found to be at the site of the direct action,
and none of the eight individuals had any evidence against
them showing they committed any crime at that location, but
were still deemed a risk to the community and denied bond.
Being held against them is the fact that they had
a jail support number on their person. As former communications
director at the Southern Center of Human Rights Hannah Riley said,

(03:32:30):
it is a gross irony that a jail support number
is being framed as evidence of intent to commit crimes,
where in fact its evidence that we live in a
horrifying police estate. A defense attorney pointed out that all
of the warrants had the same bits of evidence copy
pasted like this alleged possession of a metal shield, to
which the prosecution claimed this was simply a typo, meaning

(03:32:53):
that people were being held in jail based on typos,
and also the prosecutor responded by saying, quote, there were
thirty forty fifty shields out there, I can't attest that
he was carrying one. When referring to a specific defendant
for one individual denied bond. Prosecutors claimed that they were
an anarchist based on information provided by Customs and Border Protection,

(03:33:16):
and yet no evidence of criminal acts were presented. Extra
scrutiny was put on two defendants who were foreign nationals,
with prosecutors wondering how someone from out of country could
possibly know the solidarity fund of jail support number. A
defense attorney try to point out that jail support numbers
are often passed out to everyone present at protests by volunteers,

(03:33:38):
and in the case of the circumstances regarding the raid
of the music festival, panicked concertgoers were instructed to write
down the jail support number as it became clear that
police were indiscriminately grabbing people. Deputy Attorney General Fowler argued
that wearing black clothes at a protest is akin to
wearing a football uniform indicating a player was part of

(03:34:02):
the team who took to the field during the game.
And even if we may not know they carried the football,
we do know that they were on the field, which
I don't even want to get into. But it is
still a fact that the majority of people were denied
bond because some had black clothing mud on their shoes

(03:34:22):
and ran from police. This is what made them a
quote unquote threat to our community, and this is the
evidence being used against people who were allegedly engaged in
domestic terrorism. Near the end of the hearing, the judge
claimed that everyone is presumed innocent and that the state
does have to bear the burden of proof beyond a
reasonable doubt at some point, but not now. During this

(03:34:46):
spell hearing, one of the claims was that the reason
why people were arrested is because they had mud on
their clothes. The night before the festival started, there was
a tornado warning in Atlanta. I forgot about that and
there was rain, which makes I don't know if the
prosecutors know this, but when rain mixes with dirt, it

(03:35:07):
creates something called that we that we refer to as mud.
So when people are, you know, at this music festival
in a field full of dirt, they might get mud
on their clothes.

Speaker 2 (03:35:16):
And yeah, so if you've ever been to a music festival,
standing around for a very long period of time really annoying,
people like to sit down. So I like, my feet
were caked in mud, and I sat down a few times.

Speaker 10 (03:35:30):
I'm I'm my docker partons are still caked in mud.

Speaker 2 (03:35:33):
Not to mention the parking lot completely torn up, covered
in mud, and as I mentioned earlier, the you know
the person having like fill in mud all along the
trails with gravel, So there's mud everywhere, and it is
an inescapable fact of just being in both the forest
and the festival.

Speaker 1 (03:35:51):
At the time of the bail hearings, they've very clearly
had no evidence linking individuals to crimes, so the best
they could come up with was metal shields and mud,
two things things that are completely nonsense. There was no
metal shields and oh wow, you have mud on your
You have mud on your clothing. This is why you're
a terrorist. During the hearing, a defense lawyer alleged that

(03:36:11):
the twelve people who were detained at the music festival
but not arrested and were later released at Gresham Park
were all from Atlanta, and by releasing these twelve locals,
police can claim that the people arrested were from fourteen
different states, which is obviously part of an attempt to
continue accelerating the outside agitator narrative that they've been pushing
out since last in December.

Speaker 2 (03:36:32):
Of the twenty three who were charged. Only two had
the Georgia licenses, the person from Athens and the legal deserver.
The rest were out of state and two were out
of country. So at one point during the proceedings the
bail proceedings, one of the lawyers says that from what

(03:36:56):
they understand, the twelve individuals who were let go Sunday
night all had in state licenses. So it does appear
that APD released people to continue this outside agitator narrative
that they have been using for months now, since May,

(03:37:16):
since early summer.

Speaker 1 (03:37:18):
Prosecutor Cross responded to claims that detained local Atlantans were
let go by saying that the people released were interviewed,
did not have the jail support number on their arm,
and quote unquote knew little about the movement. At a
press conference, Marlin from the Solidarity Fund talked about how
repression has taken form and concerns of what other tactics

(03:37:40):
the state may try to employ.

Speaker 51 (03:37:42):
No evidence has besially presented to support any of these
claims of domestic terrorism, including on the other eighteen people
who've been given this charge previously. In this movement, police
some prosecutors are not involved in a law enforcement effort
they're involved in a political campaign to suppress a political
movement which they find objectionable because as the police, they

(03:38:04):
have a vested interest in the construction of cop City.
From a civil liberties perspective, we find this very concerning.
We find it to be an abuse of power, and
we're committed to ensuring that all of the activists who
are targeted have access to the legal resources that they need,
not only to defend themselves from these bogus charges, but
also civil litigation against police who have abused their power

(03:38:25):
and violated people's rights. We are concerned about the possibility
that prosecutors may try to use RICO.

Speaker 50 (03:38:31):
Charges against organizers.

Speaker 51 (03:38:34):
Because RICO is understood as a way of suppressing organizations,
and the narrative that we've seen coming from police and
prosecutors is their belief that the broad and diverse stop
Cop City movement is in fact a criminal conspiracy whose
members conspire to commit acts of terrorism.

Speaker 50 (03:38:55):
This could not be further from the truth.

Speaker 51 (03:38:57):
This is like a clear misrepresentation of a broad movement
that encompasses all of society. But this is the narrative
that prosecutors are trying to promulgate to make it easier
to target activists.

Speaker 1 (03:39:08):
In the intervening month and a half, five more people
were led out on bond. Then, on May third, a
series of preliminary hearings took place for the last three
people being held into Cab County Jail from amongst the
twenty three individuals arrested at the music festival and charged
with domestic terrorism. Before the changes to the law in
twenty seventeen, the State of Georgia required ten or more

(03:39:29):
people to be killed for domestic terrorism charges to even
be filed. During a wave of anti protest bills, while
citing racially motivated mass shootings. To get the bill passed,
the State of Georgia removed any death threshold and essentially
replaced it with references to property damage. To quote a
write up by the Atlantic Community Press Collective Quote, the

(03:39:51):
Cab County Magistrate, Judge James Altman explained that he decided
whether to uphold the charges based on two criteria. The
first was whether prosecutors provided enough evidence to satisfy the
conditions set forth in the Georgia Domestic Terrorism Statute, namely
the threat to critical infrastructure. The second criteria prosecutors needed
to meet was identification or their ability to show that

(03:40:13):
the defendants were each a party to the alleged crimes
committed on March fifth, quote, and it's worth noting that
the threshold for probable cause is much lower than the
threshold needed to convict someone of a crime. In opening arguments,
Assistant da Lance Cross claimed that Defend the Forest activists
are well funded and quote have a pretty good propaganda

(03:40:36):
arm on social media, and that doing direct action while
chanting stop Copcity qualifies activists to be charged under the
Georgia Domestic Terrorism Statute because it's using violence to advocate
change of government policy. Judge Altman found that the first
criteria of the domestic terrorism charges were met for all

(03:40:58):
three defendants on the basis that setting fires at the
construction site in such close proximity to a power line
tower was an attack on critical infrastructure, even if the
defendants did not themselves start any fires. Georgia Bureau of
Investigation Special Agent Ryan Long testified that the entire music
festival was cover for the direct action against the construction site,

(03:41:21):
even without evidence of defendants in black bloc or proof
that they engaged in any destructive acts. Assistant DA Cross
said that everyone at the site was enabling the destruction
of the property and as such is party to the crime.
Due to the assertion that the alleged crimes were only
possible due to the large size of the crowd, one
of the state's witnesses, a sergeant of the APD, said

(03:41:44):
that he wouldn't be able to recognize anyone who was
at the site, and that he could not tell if
the defendant was even in the crowd of people at
the North Gate, let alone through rocks or set fires.
Defense argued that mere presence at a location should not
be automatic aiding and a betting, but Judge Altman said
there was sufficient evidence presented showing the acts of the

(03:42:06):
crowd and that the defendant's presence is at least sufficient
for being party to the crime, even by simply participating
at the music festival. One of the hearings was for
the indigenous person who was tased at the music festival,
who was specifically witnessed to be there during the duration
of the direct action. Under questioning from the defense, special
Agent Long said that the defendant was not visible on

(03:42:28):
the helicopter footage of the incident. After initially suggesting that
the defendant was identified by a helicopter pilot. Long rolled
that back by saying he was unsure if the chopper
was able to track the defendant and then had to
leave to go make a few calls to get a
more definitive answer, which he failed to provide, But the
judge still found that the second criteria of identification was

(03:42:51):
sufficient to find two of the defendants at least party
to the actions at the construction site. Special Agent Long
testified that there is a quot unquot to command structure
in the Stop Cop City movement and described the movement
as a pyramid scheme created by activists with different names
like stop Coop City and Defend the Forest to act
as little different subgroups to attract new subordinate members to

(03:43:14):
operate under leadership. Long asserted that activists pretend to be
ecologists one day and then anarchists the next to further
their cause, which once again we have to point out,
is on one hand, a dangerous thing to claim. On
the other hand, extremely funny social media posts were brought
up by prosecutors as evidence linking defendants to criminal acts

(03:43:38):
and a conspiracy of terrorism. During the first hearing, Special
Agent Long claimed that they knew that the defendant was
at the construction site due to street pool camera footage
and social media posts allegedly made by the defendant's friend.
In another hearing, agent Long claimed that on the defendant's

(03:43:58):
social media they were posts of stop coop City banners
and flyers, demonstrating an awareness of the nature of the
stop cop City movement. The state also cited alleged social
media posts of the defendant self describing as anti capitalist
and anti colonial as proof of criminal intent. Near the

(03:44:20):
end of the last hearing, Judge Altman said that social
media posts do not count towards probable cause. However, the
framing of social media posts by prosecutors as an indication
of guilt is still cause for alarm, and what gets
admitted as evidence during trial is still yet to be determined.
When the prosecution asked if a defendant had a jail

(03:44:41):
support number on their arm, the judge noted that, quote
the existence or non existence of an organization doesn't really
seem to me as an element of the crime unquote.
Similar to the March twenty third hearings, Prosecutor Johnson tried
to argue that the solidarity fund and jail support is
an arm of the Stop Phpy movement, to which the

(03:45:02):
judge reiterated that participation in an alleged organization is not
part of the crime of domestic terrorism. For one defendant,
the judge granted bond on the conditions of twenty five
thousand dollars bail, with the defendant having to turn over
her passport, a no contact order with other co defendants,
and no participation in discussion of stop coopsity on social media.

(03:45:24):
Bond for the other two defendants was denied. Ultimately, Judge
Altman upheld the domestic terrorism charges against all three defendants
on the low barrier of evidence sufficient for ruling probable cause.
Judge Altman said that, quote whether it gets any further
than that is not my problem, unquote, and that if

(03:45:45):
the DA wanted further charges brought against defendants, he must
use a grand jury. As the judge did not find
probable cause for arson or assault on an officer, Judge
Altman mentioned that he was concerned about alleged witnesses intimidation
by members of the Defend the Forest movement. Meanwhile, in
the adjacent Fulton County, there was also a preliminary hearing

(03:46:08):
for one of the six people arrested at the protest
in downtown Atlanta on January twenty first, the Saturday following
the killing of Tortigita. Judge Ashley Drake upheld a total
of eight charges, including one of domestic terrorism, and the
next day the defendant was released on bail. One thing
of note from this hearing is that Deputy Attorney General

(03:46:30):
John Fowler compared the Defend the Forest movement to nine
eleven by saying, quote, protesters were trying to knock out
the windows of one to nine to one Peachtree Street.
That is a dangerous situation. That's a twin towers unquote.

(03:46:52):
When talking about the various hearings, I mentioned helicopter and
street pole camera footage of the direct action on Sunday
that both prosecutors and the defense were using to support
their claims, and I think it's worth diving a bit
deeper into specifically the police helicopter footage, since I like
keeping up with the methods that police are using to

(03:47:13):
surveil and suppress protest. I'm going to start by letting
Atlanta Police Chief Darren Sheerbaum walk us through what was
able to be observed via helicopter mounted cameras. Based on
his testimony during the city council meeting that took place
less than twenty four hours after the incident.

Speaker 30 (03:47:30):
Individuals were seeing changing out of the clothes that they
were wearing at the concert and were now dressing themselves
in all black with backpacks with items fensive nature approaching.
What we saw is this group moved rather quickly to
the site for the proposed public safety trading center. They
move quickly on the group of officers that were assembled there.
These officers had been stationary at the site protecting the location.

(03:47:52):
In the first line, there are individuals with shields that
are forming The officers attempted to first to de escalate
by repositioning themselves. You repositioning themselves inside of the fenced
in area. The officers again start to reposition because they
can tell this is not a peaceful demonstration. So you
just start to see smoke occurring as fires are set,

(03:48:14):
malotov cocktails are thrown, and fireworks are discharged from our
air unit that is deployed in the area. You will
see individuals that have started to move against the officers.
They will have start throwing rocks fireworks as they are
pushing the officers in the area where we see individuals
as another group is engaging the officers with rocks, Malotov
cocktails and bottles are moving to set fire to the

(03:48:35):
various equipments in the area. While you see in the
left hand of the gentleman with the mask over his
face is a Malotov cocktail it is being there will
be accelerants in his hands that will be used also
to attack some of the construction equipment that is in
the area. These individuals are massed hide their identity. This
is playing out across the area that had been previously
been fenced in.

Speaker 29 (03:48:56):
There will be generators.

Speaker 30 (03:48:58):
That are will be destroyed, other pieces of equipment that's
being destroyed. There you see more accelerant being thrown onto
the vehicle that is being set on fire.

Speaker 29 (03:49:07):
And what you see here, ladies.

Speaker 30 (03:49:08):
And gentlemen, is as some of the individuals that had
just previously attacked the worksite returned back into the woods.
They start changing back into the clothes that they were
just wearing moments before, as they were portraying themselves to
be attendees of the event that was occurring in the music.
So it was clear today that we saw repeat of
what we've seen in the past where events that are

(03:49:30):
shown to be peaceful and to being publicized as to
be peaceful are being used by individuals as cover to
launch illegal and criminal attacks. We had a rapid response
from our partners at the Decab County Police Department, the
Sheriff of Fulton County.

Speaker 29 (03:49:46):
As well as the Georgia State Patrol.

Speaker 30 (03:49:48):
Those officers entered into the woods as individuals were attempting
to flee, hide the weapons they had just used, as
well as to change their clothing, and we begin to
make a number of arrest.

Speaker 1 (03:49:58):
I spoke with the unnamed Forest defender about the surveillance
capabilities of the state on full display during the week
of Action.

Speaker 52 (03:50:05):
I find that the thermal helicopter video fascinating for a
variety of reasons. One, it's interesting to look at the
surveillance capacity of the state. It's, to my memory, the
first time the APD has ever posted their own thermal
chopper footage. It's a very similar camera to the type
you would see on a birector on some kind of
armed unmanned aerial vehicle. What I found most interesting about
the thermals is exactly how they were using that type

(03:50:27):
of targeting software to attract people, and I think it's
worth people knowing what they were doing with it, so
we have an idea how to counter it. When you're
using a software to tract targets on an optical lens,
at least during a daytime event, thermals are easier because
it breaks the image up into just two colors white
and then like black and gray, so they can track
the body heat shapes of people in white and then
just click the thermals off, get a snapshot of the
outfit they're wearing, click the thermals back on, and track

(03:50:48):
them easier than it is to track them with just
a normal camera. This gives them a clear image of
what they're wearing before they d blocked, and then they
can go back to tracking that person, follow them to
where they're de blocking, wait for them to de block,
get another picture with the regular camera, and then arrest them.
So that meant that when people were leaving, it was
advantageous to be deep blocking under overhead cover, under thick brush,
under thick canopy, out of direct line of site with

(03:51:08):
the chopper, you know, not in the open air. It's
definitely a really hard thing to counter. The surveillance. State's
one of the things that I find the most fearful
about the police state. Not like individual beat cops. They're
guns and shit are cool or whatever, But man, those cameras,
they're really something.

Speaker 16 (03:51:21):
You know.

Speaker 52 (03:51:22):
I think the Portland Police Bureau just got a new
spy plane and new Sessna loaded up with surveillance equipment
and shit like that. All that stuff does so much
more to fuck you up than just like a riot
team does. You can throw mortars at a riot team. Sorry,
I shouldn't say mortars. Fireworks that are called mortars.

Speaker 1 (03:51:35):
My bad.

Speaker 52 (03:51:35):
Don't want to lean into the explosives narratives. Honestly, they're
fucking weird about fireworks. But you know, those surveillance capacities
are one of the hardest things to counter.

Speaker 1 (03:51:44):
One term that's already come up during our coverage of
Stop Coop City is Fuco's boomerang, And while that still
applies here, we're now also kind of getting into some
panaptocon territory, as shown by this type of surveillance capacity,
specifically at actions. And one of the biggest reasons why
the panopticon works is that people are scared of it.
It scares you away from even taking action in the

(03:52:07):
first place.

Speaker 52 (03:52:08):
And like, as soon as you overcome that paralyzing fear,
the cops become really afraid of you. That's why we
say that, like the biggest weapon that the state has
is fear, because like the cops go from these big,
fucking tough guys to like whining cowards the second you
just become not afraid. You don't even have to beat them,
you don't have to overcome the actual physical weapons. But
once you get out of that headspace, that paralyzing fear,

(03:52:29):
once you let it pass over you and through you,
they're fucking terrified. And if we're gonna win, we need
to be their worst nightmare.

Speaker 1 (03:52:36):
As state repression against the stop cop City movement continues,
the coalition against the police training facility only continues to grow.
Last month, Angela Davis returned an award proclamation given to
her by the Atlanta City Council in protest of cop City.

Speaker 46 (03:52:53):
If the attempts by the Atlanta Police to build the
largest police training grounds in the country are successful, this
will represent a major setback for the movement for radical
democratic futures, not only throughout the US, but globally as

(03:53:14):
well as a person who has participated in campaigns against
prisons and police for far longer than a half century.
I want to salute all those who are involved in
the stop cup City movement, and I want to urge

(03:53:37):
people everywhere to find ways to generate support for them.

Speaker 1 (03:53:44):
Angela Davis made it clear that she stood in solidarity
with force defenders facing repression from the police and the
city of Atlanta, and joined in calls to halt the
construction of this facility, which will only serve as a
tool to advance what she called militarized police rights and repression.

Speaker 46 (03:54:01):
Atlanta activists are on the front lines of the abolitionist movement,
at its crucial intersection with movements to save our forests,
indeed to save our planet. The attempt to build a
massive militarized police training facility is a dangerous and ominous

(03:54:29):
development that we have to oppose with all our might,
and so I want to join those who are standing
strong in defense of the forest against the construction of
this police training ground. I urge people everywhere to join

(03:54:50):
the campaign to stop up City.

Speaker 1 (03:54:55):
After Angelie Davis's announcement, the Walter Rodney Foundation released a
statement reporting Davis's decision and against the construction of Cop City.

Speaker 2 (03:55:04):
It's interesting to see their more mainline sort of center
or center left like organizations that have begun to come
on board. Even with what happened Sunday and especially the
Thursday march and rally, had it necessitated a response from
the city. So Friday morning there was actually an organization

(03:55:27):
concerned Black Clergy who had a press conference like calling
out Cop City protesters, and so you had this like
very state run. One of the city council members, Antonio Lewis,
was there like live streaming at the entire time. And
so you can tell the efficacy of a lot of
things that have happened this week by how the city
is reacting and how like it is necessitating them going

(03:55:51):
to greater and greater lengths to like try to show
that the movement is wrong.

Speaker 1 (03:55:57):
One way that the city has been working to advocate
for the further development of the Cop City project is
by launching a website of their own for the Public
Safety Training Center full of videos of the mayor and
police chief walking through South Atlanta trying to convince neighbors
that the project is a good idea. In the past
few months. The city has also been turning the official

(03:56:19):
City of Atlanta Twitter account into a hilarious copp City
propaganda outlet. About two weeks after the end of the
Week of Action, on March twenty fourth, to Cab County
CEO Michael Thurmond announced an executive order to indefinitely close
Entrenchment Creek Park, also known as Wallani People's Park, claiming
that the park was a danger to the public due

(03:56:41):
to booby traps allegedly found in the forest. At a
press conference, Thurman displayed photos of wooden boards with nails
sticking out of them allegedly found in the park. The
executive order reads that the park will quote remain closed
until further notice to protect the safety of the families,
residents and visit and their pets in the area, and

(03:57:02):
to County personnel. A few days after the announcement, to
Cab police led a joint task force in a raid
of the Willani Forest and Entrenchment Creek Park. The land
was effectively cleared of all force defenders, with one person
being arrested. During the raid, The memorial for Tortigito was
destroyed by the police and cement barricades were set up

(03:57:24):
around the entrances and exits to the park. Days later,
police and contractors began cutting trees in the Wilani Forest,
with no one around to resist the destruction. The Solidarity
Fund to put out a statement saying, quote, closing down
a public park in order to prevent protests from happening
in that space is unconstitutional. To CAB CEO Michael Thurmond,

(03:57:46):
is trying to do an end run around the First Amendment.
Dacab County Commissioner Ted Terry is pushing to reopen the
park through a resolution expected to be introduced in early May.
But it wasn't just the park's closure that made force
defense more challenging. After the mass action at the North
Gate in early March, security was greatly increased at the

(03:58:09):
construction sites in the Willani Forest, with massive spotlights illuminating
the area to daylight levels twenty four hours a day,
which made returning to the sort of night time sabotage
actions in the forest that pioneered some of the movements
militancy in its early days to be much more complicated.
During my conversations with forest defenders, there was still a

(03:58:31):
desire to see more of those small sabotage actions as
the large daytime mass actions seemed to result in more
people getting arrested near the site of militant activity.

Speaker 52 (03:58:43):
People are angry, you know, like their friend, our friend
was murdered. You can just feel however you want about this,
but like a lot of people and I guess myself included,
are just really angry. There's this kind of blinding rage
that comes with it of just like eye for an eye,
blood for blood. You know that the police killed our
friend and that they need to hurt for that one,

(03:59:03):
and they need to hurt for all the people that
they've murdered and all the things they're trying to do.
And that leads people to take actions that may not
be well thought out, but that are very well intentioned
and have tangible results that hurt the police state, but
that are actions that do bring harm to themselves or others,
because there are not you know, these like middle of
the night slash and run sabotage attacks that don't have

(03:59:24):
arrests happen that are safer. And I think we should
see a return of that tactic because the level of
police presence that we saw at all the actions this
week post Sunday, like doing shit at downtown protests. Fuck that, Like,
that's not like we're not pulling shit off there without
a mass arrest or, like everyone's getting gassed. Like it's
not a tactically advantageous or viable way of doing things.

(03:59:47):
But I think people wanted to prove to the cops
that like, no, no, no, we could open field fuck
them up. And yeah, there were consequences to that, but
people fuck them up in the open field, and that's
worth ap Plotting.

Speaker 1 (03:59:57):
The bounds of the forest is not the only location
actions take place. Just about a week after the park
closure and when some of the clearcutting began, a report
back was posted online that read quote, on the night
of Wednesday, April fifth, we set fire to three excavators
owned by Brent Scarborough Company on a site across from
the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta. Brent Scarborough is the company

(04:00:21):
and individual responsible for clearcutting the Willani Forest. Copcity will
never be built unquote. The March twenty twenty three week
of action was always going to be a kind of
turning point in showcasing what will be seen in the
struggle to defend the forest to this spring, and how
that will then lead into the summer and what forms
of resistance people will choose to take, whether that be

(04:00:43):
another singular week of action or take notes from the
Old Earth First playbook and try to do a whole
summer of action. How do you kind of see the
movement too top Cup City like changing or evolving in
the next few months. I mean, because all this is
kind of I felt like it's been kind of very
much on the heels of what happened in January. People

(04:01:04):
have tried to, like, you know, just try to find
new paths of resistance in the wake of the police
killing r How do you how do you see like
the fight continuing at this stage where like they have
some line of Germans permits, there's early construction. What are
like the avenues of resistance that people are trying to
go down.

Speaker 18 (04:01:25):
I think that we have to be very clear in
assessing what has worked installing the project and what will
work to stop the project, because those aren't necessarily the
same things. I think there are nuances in particular strategies.
There is a difference between especially in our particular context.

(04:01:49):
That's similar between the difference between gorilla warfare and urban
guerrilla warfare and I see that guerilla warfare is more
so when people have been destroying equipment, you know, at contractors,
you know, offices or wherever, or like near the forest,
et cetera, and you could just hide off into the

(04:02:11):
woods and just like disappear back into nothingness.

Speaker 8 (04:02:13):
Nobody gets touched. What we have to look at with.

Speaker 18 (04:02:20):
The actions at the music festival were it exposed a
lot of people because and this is once again because
the police acted so heavy handedly. But we also know
that the police act heavy handedly, which is why we're here.
So that gets kind of dicey because that's like kind
of like urban guerrilla warfare where you have the gorillas
just shooting paw pa pal and then like running into.

Speaker 8 (04:02:41):
Somebody's grandma's house.

Speaker 18 (04:02:43):
People do not fuck with the people that just running
grandma's house for cover, right, And that's where things get
a little bit dicey, because in many ways, a lot
of us were looking at means to open up the
movement with this week of action, and that was what
was widely in stood for a lot of people. And nevertheless,
when you just come in with the boomstick from the beginning,

(04:03:07):
that dictates the tone of the rest of the week
and then where you could, you know, for instance, operate
from a space of like moral authority. It becomes much
easier for people on the fence to justify to themselves.

Speaker 8 (04:03:21):
Well, what are the police supposed to think? Right?

Speaker 18 (04:03:24):
I mean, we have to realize that there are several
like mental resistances that have been taught to people for
them to try to discredit us. And I just I
think there's some important context. Right when Martin Luther King
Junior was doing like the nonviolent direct action, at a
certain point, they had to make a calculated decision to

(04:03:46):
include women and children in the marches because they had
assessed in America had become too desensitized to seeing black
men beaten in the streets. Right, So that was a
tactical decision to bring in more people.

Speaker 11 (04:03:59):
Right.

Speaker 18 (04:03:59):
So there are like calculations that people have to make
and assessions that they have to make based on the
information that we're.

Speaker 1 (04:04:05):
Dealing with through talking with forced defenders. I've heard a
variety of internal critiques of the Week of Action format
because it is such a concentrated time period. The week
of Action can give police a very concentrated time to
over police and over surveil and for activists. It can
open up an expenditure of energy during the week, which

(04:04:26):
then can lead to a lack of energy leading up
to what's been called the week of repression in the past.
Every time following a week of action, after people from
out of town leave, it then leads into a week
of repression where police will then do a rate of
the forest and have their sort of retaliation the week after.
There's been talk of potential changes to some of the

(04:04:48):
Week of Action format, perhaps doing something more akin to
a summer of resistance.

Speaker 52 (04:04:53):
So the week of repression is always the week that
comes after the week of Action, where the cops are like, Okay,
the bulk of your reserve, if you're out of state
supporter is gone. We're going to come fuck you up.
Now they are less of you. Now you're less ready
to deal with us. And that is like a major
strategic flaw in the weeks of action because it kind
of creates a activist tourism for people coming out of state,

(04:05:14):
and not that Atlanta doesn't appreciate their support and their solidarity,
and that so many of those out of state people
do stay long term, but it does create a situation
where like, yeah, we're having an influx of people for
a week, building infrastructure for a week, and then the
bulk of those people, a good percentage are going to
go home because yeah, like traveling long term is hard.
People have jobs, kids, whatever, you have commitments wherever you are,

(04:05:35):
and they have to go home. And then the cops
just wreck our shit and do raids, and like, unless
people want to get on board with doing some pretty
crazy shit, those raids are hard to counter. It would
behoove us to take a realistic audit of what the
weeks of action have meant and what they are actually
useful for which the strategic gains of the weeks of
action are always now going to be more metaphysical than physical.
They bring people to this space, They give them a

(04:05:56):
closeness to the forest that they would not achieve without
actually coming here. But as far as tangibly, like materially
stopping cop City, those kind of middle of the night
slash and run attacks, tertiary targeting of contractors, all that stuff,
that's how you pressure the money, and the money's where
you win.

Speaker 1 (04:06:11):
Ultimately, it's up to the autonomous actors that make up
this so called movement and how their choices will determine
how the fight to stop Cop City will grow and evolve.
As I'm writing this, just thirty minutes ago we found
out that the clearcutting at the Cop City construction site
has essentially been completed. The overhead photos are devastating. Where

(04:06:37):
there were young, growing trees just weeks ago is now
a flattened mound of red clay and dirt, as if
the ground itself was bleeding. I counted over one hundred
trees uprooted from the earth. Hundreds of people have dedicated
years of their life to defending this forest, and the
site of sizeable destruction has brought out a variety of

(04:07:00):
reaving reactions. If cop City doesn't get built in the Wallawni,
the land could be carefully reforested and healed via regenerative permaculture.
With intentional stewardship, the forest could grow to be ecologically
healthier than it was before. In some ways, the destruction
that has already taken place makes it even more vital

(04:07:20):
to try and stop the construction of cop City. No
one is advocating a defeatist approach where force defenders essentially
give up and let the police foundation build it, because
there are still numerous ways to fight against the construction
of this facility, But now is not the time to
sugarcoat the dire situation people are in, and there should

(04:07:42):
be time allowed to grieve this loss as well as
strike back against the destruction. It would be a mistake
to gaslight each other and act as if we're closer
than ever to halting the Cop City project. The fact
that it's gotten this far itself is devastating. From the beginning,
people have said that even if they do believe that
Cop City will never be built, the Atlanta Police Foundation

(04:08:05):
and police will absolutely attempt to do as much damage
as they can possibly get away with anyway, both to
force defenders and to the forest itself. The past few months,
I've been increasingly hearing the vice versa of that sentiment.
If Cop City does end up getting built, people have

(04:08:25):
pledged that the Atlanta Police Foundation will have to pay
for every inch they take. Even if there is no
longer hope to save the entire Wilani Forest, then we
must do so without hope. At least, there is always vengeance.
It is a long road ahead, and there is still
much to do. To quote my favorite anarchomonarchist, Tolkien, at

(04:08:47):
this moment, the movement will hone its focus to prevent
or at the very least disincentivize, the physical construction of
cop City.

Speaker 52 (04:08:56):
I think it'd be worth thinking of this movement as
an almost two year old movement that's outgrown the week
of action. You know, why limit ourselves to seven days?
Fuck it, do a summer, you know, do three months
of like we're doing three months of action in Atlanta.
Come to Atlanta whenever you want, and then go home
and do shit at home. There wills fargos where you live.
There are Chase banks where you live. There are Atlas
construction offices where you live. And yeah, you should come

(04:09:16):
to Atlanta and you should come see the space, and
you should be in the forest, and you should feel
like the love and community that's there. We win by
fighting on enough fronts that they can't fight us back
on all of them. The state dies by a thousand cuts,
not by all of us being in one place where
they can kettle our asses. Like, that's just not how
we're going to win. So, yeah, if we had three
months of like we're occupying the forest for three months,

(04:09:39):
come to the space whenever you feel like it.

Speaker 16 (04:09:41):
But you know.

Speaker 52 (04:09:41):
Hopefully when people go home they feel inspired to like
understand that they can do just as much hitting those
companies where they live as they can here, because the
money's all going to the same place. The CEO at
the top doesn't care if you hit their businesses in
Georgia or in fucking Illinois, or in Oregon or Washington
or whatever. The money's all the same.

Speaker 1 (04:09:58):
A phrase I've been hearing a lot lately is cop
city is everywhere to quota communicate, posted on scenes, dot no, blogs,
dot org.

Speaker 10 (04:10:06):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (04:10:07):
We will keep winning, not just here in so called Atlanta,
but we must attack all across these so called states.
The money and power that seek to kill us and
a Destroyablanni are nationwide, and so our movement must be nationwide.
A net of resistance, too vast to comprehend and too
resilient to suppress. Reality is the battlefield, but so called America,

(04:10:31):
all of it is the backdrop unquote. When chief is
sheerbamb gave testimony at city council even he mentioned the
far reaching manifestations of the fight to stop cop City.

Speaker 30 (04:10:44):
We have been seeing over the last number of months,
crimes that have been occurring in other cities focused towards
the public safety training center. So we have seen arsons
and cities outside of Atlanta. We've seen the destruction of
property outside of Atlanta, and we've seen the harassment of.

Speaker 29 (04:11:00):
Private sector employees outside of Atlanta.

Speaker 30 (04:11:02):
So that is the next is where the Federal Pure
of Investigation has been assisting in this administigation.

Speaker 1 (04:11:10):
Like I said in the second episode, the stakes of
the movement may soon exceed the bounds of the forest
and cop City, and in fact that process it may
have already begun. We are seeing stop Coop City turn
into a new mode of insurgency and resistance to modern
policing in general, not simply limited to the construction of
this one a training center, as the police are trying

(04:11:33):
to build a training center to practice quelling future civil unrest.
The site of the Malani Forest and beyond has been
a training ground for anarchists and those who fight the
ever growing police estate the past two years. It's been
a dangerous playground for experimentation and liberation. Applications for the
lessons learned in the Mulani Forest extend far past the

(04:11:57):
barriers of the woods. As a far right attack on
abortion and trans people are accelerating across this country, but
especially the South. Perhaps some of the organizing infrastructure that's
been developed can take new focus on these battlegrounds, and
even just the mere existence of the struggle against cop
City in Atlanta has been a deterrent for other cities

(04:12:18):
and states seeking to push forward similar proposals. But as
the movement possibly expands past its original scope in these
next few months, people will need to be careful that
the idyllic notion of the struggle doesn't eclipse the original
and still active goal, which is to stop cop City.
Cop city is indeed everywhere, but the current manifestation in

(04:12:40):
Atlanta is unique to Atlanta, and the corresponding struggle to
stop the physical construction of this training facility cannot be
overlooked in favor of fantasies of utopian anarchy. To steal
an idea from Matt of the Community Press Collective, one
interpretation of the phrase cop city is everywhere is the

(04:13:02):
realization that Atlanta is a cop city, and it already
has been for years without us knowing it, and if
we don't turn back the tide here, cop city will
be exported.

Speaker 18 (04:13:13):
Everywhere Atlanta once again because of the Atlanta Police Foundation
is the most surveiled city in the country because of
twenty seventeen's Operation Shield program where they put tons of
cameras all throughout the city and essentially made it a
surveillance state once again. Crime has continued to go up
during this time, and that would have significantly more to

(04:13:37):
do with the disparity of wealth and opportunities of Black
Atlantans that are born under the poverty line. Only five
percent of them are projected to ever cross that line.
At the same time, the average median income of black
households is one third that of the average median income

(04:13:59):
of white households in Atlanta, So that's about thirty five
thousand dollars to one hundred and four thousand dollars.

Speaker 8 (04:14:05):
And so.

Speaker 18 (04:14:07):
The wealth is just so disproportionately spread, and so much
of the labor intensive economy is predicated on it that
black people are pigeonholed into service economy jobs and they
have very few opportunities here. Now, that type of inequality

(04:14:31):
breeds discontent and people looking for other opportunities, and the
police are ready to catch them at every turn for
arresting the juvenile in the point system that they have
for Atlanta police department, it's five points. However, you only
receive a quarter of a point as a police officer
if you answer a service call. So police officers often

(04:14:55):
ignore service calls because that doesn't give them.

Speaker 8 (04:14:58):
The credit that they want.

Speaker 18 (04:14:59):
So, just to put that in context, you get twenty
times the credit in Atlanta's point quota system for arresting
a juvenile then going where people actually wanted police to
show up, and we're supposed to be convinced that this
system is made to keep us safe.

Speaker 8 (04:15:17):
Right.

Speaker 1 (04:15:18):
The City of Atlanta and the Police Foundation wants Copcity
to be a national training center for police to come
and practice militaristic counterinsurgency for export across the country. They
murdered someone to further this goal. All eyes must be
on Atlanta.

Speaker 36 (04:15:34):
Cop City is a symbol of police repression. Cop City
is a symbol of the oppression of the people of Atlanta.
I want you to look around and see the families
here in this part today.

Speaker 10 (04:15:48):
These are people who came because.

Speaker 13 (04:15:49):
They're concerned for their children.

Speaker 36 (04:15:51):
These are people who are concerned because they don't want
their city overrun by militarization.

Speaker 1 (04:15:58):
The level of repression the movement is face is a
sign that the state feels like this movement is a
threat and the state feels like this movement has the
possibility of actually succeeding, so in response, they're increasing repression.
And on the flip side of that, during this past
week of action, I saw a lot of affirmation that

(04:16:18):
this is going to be successful and that people believe
that they will stop Cop City. A common refrain during
the past week of action is that cop City will
never be built, and I believe that we will win.
There's been such a unique emphasis on the fact that
people believe that this fight is one hundred percent winnable
and that people do have the ability to stop cop City,

(04:16:41):
and that people who are participating truly believe that, And
I think that is an important part of why it's
gotten as far as it has.

Speaker 22 (04:16:48):
We can get everything we want for this city. We
can stop cop City. We got the power.

Speaker 46 (04:16:53):
We believe y'all.

Speaker 22 (04:17:00):
There's gonna be a lot of people tell us about
what we can't do, about what these organizers are here
can't do.

Speaker 46 (04:17:07):
Tell them what it tells about what we we we
can't do. I'm to tell you all of us out here,
we're organizers. We are in a business.

Speaker 22 (04:17:15):
I've taken that which other people say it is impossible,
we make it possible.

Speaker 3 (04:17:25):
As long as we believe I say we are.

Speaker 20 (04:17:30):
Believe, I believe that we will win.

Speaker 1 (04:17:36):
This is interesting to me because in my experience, a
lot of leftists and anarchists approach much of their practice
with the concept of them expecting to not succeed, but
they're going to do it anyway, which there is a
kind of fated beauty to that in a certain way.
And part of that is taking action even if you
don't think it will lead to a decisive victory. But

(04:17:59):
also I think fe that being in that mindset might
set you up for that outcome. If you're preparing to fail,
that means you're probably going to fail or at the
very least limit the ways that you do action. And
throughout this movement thus far, it's been interesting the degree
to which people are convinced that they are going to win.

Speaker 52 (04:18:17):
If you're being prepared to fail, you won't take the
radical action that it takes to win. Winning's hard, and
winning means doing things that are scary and uncomfortable, and
doing things that put you in danger, and doing things
that are new and unknown and different and taking new
strategies and doing new things, and we in the US
and a lot of other places, but this is US
based movements. So there's so much learned helplessness on the

(04:18:40):
left here from so many years of like we lost
it Occupy and then we lost in Ferguson and Standing Rock,
and in twenty twenty, all of these movements that put
big body blows to the state put some hits in,
but we're just followed by these waves and waves of oppression.
We've learned so much helplessness. And for the first time
in my life, I'm looking at a movement that I'm like, no, no,

(04:19:03):
we can fucking beat them. And people are stagnating, we're
blinking because of what happened on Sunday, and like, no, no, no,
what happened on Sunday prove that we can win. It
proved that we can one fight them in the open
field and beat them, that they are afraid of us,
that they will see territory if we hit them, And
it proved that they are so afraid of us that
they need to mobilize fucking ten different police departments to

(04:19:25):
come deal and then they won't even step into the
actual brush of the forest because they think we're the
fucking vietcom that proves we can win more than anything
that proves we can win. And if we do not
accept that, what is proved that we can win is
like property destruction and to a degree doing violence, we
won't win. Those fireworks helped a lot. They pushed the

(04:19:47):
cops out and like, we shouldn't balk at that, And
I guess I don't classify that as violence. The police
classify that is violence what they consider taking hits, I guess.
But yeah, we are so on the cusp of a
make or break kind of deal here, and the only
way that we win is not this internal debate we're
having about the efficacy of tactics. It's doubling down on
what we're already doing because it's working, and expanding on it.

Speaker 1 (04:20:09):
Do you believe that copsity will be actually stopped?

Speaker 8 (04:20:13):
We got to and here's what I mean by that.
This is the line. Right we have.

Speaker 18 (04:20:24):
Environmental racism, police militarization and brutality, and police and racism,
and it's all coming to a head right here in
this particular movement. We have to win because what they're
doing now is to build capacity to make sure that

(04:20:45):
we can't win, right and so why people are pushing
so hard is that, as we've seen over the past
couple of weeks, the police have plenty of like tanks
and shit and all sorts of militarized tactical gear. And
now they're trying to build another base in the blackest

(04:21:05):
part of the city and to build up more capacity
to put down any sense of rebellion or push back
against empire. We cannot allow it to happen. And I mean,
there is so much money going to kill people in
end life. And if we win right here and make

(04:21:28):
this stand right here, that changes the potentiality for how
we view how to keep one another safe and how
to reinvest in ourselves and our people throughout this country
in a huge way. I think that we are at
the precipice of not only winning cup City, but pushing

(04:21:50):
back the tide of the cult of death that this
country has become.

Speaker 1 (04:21:56):
The clear cuts in the Malaune forest at this stage
serve a threefold per one. It obviously gets them closer
to construction and the mass land grading that is scheduled
to start on May twenty third two. It's a ploy
by the APF to secure additional needed funds from Copcity investors.
And finally, it's to demoralize the people who spent years

(04:22:16):
of their life working to stop this project.

Speaker 2 (04:22:19):
Everything that police have done is essentially always a reprisal, right,
the movement does something and the police clamp down in
a reprisal to try to repress the movement.

Speaker 1 (04:22:30):
Police always escalate, but they have always been like in
response to something.

Speaker 2 (04:22:34):
And their goal, of course is to quiet and chill
free speech and end the movement. But every time this happens,
the opposite effect is what comes out of it. And
from the domestic terrorism rest in December, like really, that's
when this even larger groundswell of national support happened and

(04:22:56):
people started to take notice because this was an extreme measure.

Speaker 1 (04:22:59):
And then with the killing of Tortighita in January, that
changed so much about the movement, including people's personal connection
to this struggle, where no longer are people doing this
simply because they believe it is what's right. They are
doing this because they have to, because the state cannot
get away with this, This death cannot be in vain,

(04:23:21):
and now people believe that they have to succeed or
at the very least make this state pay for every inch,
and that may mean looking beyond the binary of a
victory and defeat. According to a construction timeline from this
past April, the Atlanta Police Foundation plans to start construction
on August twenty ninth, twenty twenty three, in order for

(04:23:43):
a quote unquote soft opening of the facility in December
of twenty twenty four. One hiccup that the APF has
run into is that it seems they have yet to
secure enough money to finish the project and have been
forced to ask their investors and the city for more
additional despite scaling back their plans for the project. As

(04:24:04):
a short clip put together by the Atlanta Community Press
Collective explains.

Speaker 53 (04:24:07):
The city Council will in fact have to vote on
whether or not to allocate thirty three million taxpayer dollars
to the construction of cop City in the very near future. Additionally,
the Atlanta Police Foundation budget documents show that current construction
plans have been scaled back from what was originally promised.
This indicates a failure by the foundation to raise the
promise sixty million.

Speaker 29 (04:24:27):
Dollars in private funds.

Speaker 53 (04:24:29):
Should the city vote down this funding package of thirty
three million. It is difficult to see a path forward
for the Atlanta Police Foundation's effort to begin construction on
Cop City anytime in the near future.

Speaker 1 (04:24:41):
The City Council has actually not yet voted to approve
the allocation of millions of dollars in city funds to
the Cop City project.

Speaker 53 (04:24:49):
Through an open records request, we were able to get
our hands on emails between the Atlanta Police Foundation and
Atlanta's Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Leachandra Berts. In this email exchange,
the Police found expressed a need for the city to
provide thirty three point five million dollars in funding for
the project. Bergs responded by mentioning the need for legislative
action to secure the funds. The emails state that the

(04:25:11):
Police Foundation wants to pass this legislation before June thirtieth
because they need the City of Atlanta's money to secure
their construction loan.

Speaker 1 (04:25:20):
It's expected that as soon as May fifteenth, a member
of the City Council will introduce legislation to allocate public
funds to the Atlanta Police Foundation to build COP City,
and a final vote could happen as soon as June fifth.
One thing that the movement to stop Cop City has
shown us is that no matter what police do, people
continue to show up despite what happens, and the movement

(04:25:43):
keeps expanding. As the unnamed forest defender told.

Speaker 52 (04:25:47):
Me, infrastructure wise, this week of Action was the biggest
infrastructure I've seen doing a week of action. I thought
that the infrastructure we put together for week one was
pretty big, but I mean it doesn't even compare. It's
not the same ballpark as what happened for Week five,
just from how the medics were set up and how
food was handled. There was a shuttle bus program, there
was a welcome table at a church at one point,

(04:26:07):
there was like twenty four to seven clinic spaces. There
was twenty four to seven ride programs, and medics on standby,
and like all these things that were ready to support everybody,
Like there was all this infrastructure set up to make
sure that people were as supported as possible and to
make it as easy as possible and lower the barrier
of entry to the movement as much as possible, more
than there has been in any other Week of action
so far. I feel like the way that we continue

(04:26:31):
that is to take lessons learned from what's happened this
week from the problems with the infrastructure, the issues that
it had, expand on it and then fucking do it
for way longer, Like we could do this for an
entire summer. I am fully of the belief that the
infrastructure I saw on display during the fifth week of action,
we could do that for a summer. I believe in
the kind of people who put it together, and I
believe in the people who did it. To do that,

(04:26:52):
we just have to kind of look at what went wrong,
what went right, and fix it. All the things that
existed in this week of action, as far as they're
being food rides, medics, and like group supplies, all these
things existed during weeks of Action one through four.

Speaker 13 (04:27:04):
It's just grown.

Speaker 52 (04:27:05):
It's gotten more logistically intense. There are more and more
people filling those roles. There's more and more stuff coming in.
Like the amount of supplies that we just got sent
in or people brought with them from out of state
has just so vastly expanded since the first week of action.
It's just gotten more i don't know, like not professional,
but more polished. It's become a much more polished setup system.
As time went on from the first camp that we

(04:27:26):
had during the first Week of Action to now you know,
almost two years later. And that's a huge part of
why I think we've outgrown the Week of Action. We
have these types of thought processes and logistics to do
this for a summer or for a month, We just
need people and resources. We need more people to be willing,
because I don't want people to get tired.

Speaker 1 (04:27:45):
Just last month, another Week of Action was called for
June twenty fourth to July first, directly leading into what's
being called the Wollawni Summer, with locals in Atlanta calling
on supporters and forced defenders everywhere to come to Atlanta
for the week and stay for the summer. With Entrenchment
Creek Park still closed and they're being ongoing efforts to

(04:28:08):
have it be reopened. What the week and following summer
will look like is it still very unknown.

Speaker 52 (04:28:15):
We always are going to need more people. People are
our most important resource.

Speaker 10 (04:28:18):
Always.

Speaker 52 (04:28:19):
The way that we limit burnout is by having more
and more people so that the burden falls less and
less heavy on small groups of people, and so that
people can take breaks. And that's another problem I have
with like the Week of Action as a strategy is
you're just going non fucking stop.

Speaker 13 (04:28:34):
For a week.

Speaker 52 (04:28:34):
If you had three months, you're like, ah, I'm going
to chill for a couple of weeks. I'll be back,
you know, because I have all this time, and it
frees up people from out of state to come in,
have times to work it out in their schedule more.

Speaker 1 (04:28:46):
There will be more information put out in the coming weeks.
You can keep up to date by following stop Coop
City on Instagram, Defend atl Forest on Twitter, or by
checking out stopcopcitysolidarity dot org. Ideally with a VPM and
tour slash a Brave browser.

Speaker 52 (04:29:02):
If you were at the music festival and you're just
a normal person, you weren't involved with the movement before this,
and you were at the music festival and you kind
of saw why we're fighting for this. You saw that
space and then you saw the type of violence that
the police were willing to output to do it. Let
that move you to get involved further. You don't have
to join an organization, you know, I don't want to
speak for other people. I'm a hard anarchist. Fuck organizations

(04:29:22):
to a large degree, but have an affinity group, get
your friends together. If you guys want to be helping
out with the food. People, help out with the food.

Speaker 8 (04:29:29):
People.

Speaker 52 (04:29:29):
You want to be medics, go join a medic collective
like find what everything calls to you and just go
and do it. Because we need people and there's no
barrier of entry to join the movement. There's no test
you have to take. You just have to show up.

Speaker 1 (04:29:41):
I will end this Week of Action retrospective with a
promise from a forest defenders. See you on the other side.

Speaker 10 (04:29:50):
We well Barn.

Speaker 46 (04:29:53):
We well Burn, we well.

Speaker 1 (04:29:57):
Burn Music Festival. Audio courtesy of Unicorn Riot.

Speaker 10 (04:30:10):
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 31 (04:30:13):
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 10 (04:30:27):
Thanks for listening.