On the Ground at Defend the Atlanta Forest: Part One

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Despite it being past midnight, you can still see through
the dense forest. The moonlit sky, combined with the urban
light pollution, make traversing the messy woods easier than you thought.
You relieve that you don't have to use your head lamp,
which could have drawn unwanted attention. The company of a
few of your queer friends makes the walk through the

(00:26):
confusing woods less intimidating. Dressed in gray and camo, you
make your way through overgrown trails and hop over a
small creek. Save for the occasional train, all you can
hear is the croaking of frogs and chirping of cicadas, crickets,
and grasshoppers. The night air you breathe through your mask
is noticeably cleaner than the air from downtown that you

(00:49):
spent months riding in during not even counting the tear
gas in the air. As you and your pals slowly
trek through the forest, your feet squished into the grassy ground,
you avoid the area's caked in clay and stick to
the cover of trees, brush and the soft wetland. After
a short walk and with only a few wrong turns,

(01:11):
you reach an artificial break in the embrace of the forest.
You look at your masked up friends, and for a
brief moment during the moonlight night, you can't quite tell
who's who. Which is a good thing. You suppose everyone
exchanges glances, but no one says anything. Everyone already knows
what to do. As you approach the barren mound of dirt,

(01:33):
you get angry, a jarring crack in the beauty and
mysterious allure of the forest. You're no longer in the woods.
You're at the site of destruction, a clear cut that
seeks to expand its radius. Without the tree coverage, you
can see the harsh blue light of l eds in
the distance. There, among the mounds of dirt and fallen

(01:56):
trees are several unguarded machines of destruction. With no cell
phones in sight. You and your friends get to live
in the moment. Your agenda becomes the sound of shattering
glass in the cold night. Hammers meet windows and serrated
knives cut the inner tubing of bulldozers and excavators. The

(02:16):
undoing of the mechanical monsters that have violated the forest
has begun. No tool of the evil doers goes unharmed.
Rattling cans of spray paint, leave antagonistic and proclamatory messages
with rebellious hiss for those who intend to continue destroying
the forest. Defend the forest, no cops city, no Hollywood dystopia.

(02:39):
In little time, the light pollution, moonlight, and distant LEDs
are accompanied by a bright orange blaze emanating from the machines,
lighting up the area around the sad mound of dirt.
A splash of gasoline acts as the extension of the
blood that fuels the burning fire in your hearts that
became a light with the rage felt at the sight

(03:00):
of the decimated woods. By the time the fire department
took notice, you've already disappeared into the night, like a specter,
fading like the curling black smoke that drifted into the
midnight sky. As you exit the forest, you go about
as if what happened tonight never did. You never tell
a soul, You never talk about it with your masked

(03:22):
up queer friends, since they were never there either. Details
fade in your memory like a dream, but deep down
you still remember the feeling, the peak moment of true freedom.
When the fire engulfed the machines, it was upon broken,
uneasable machines that the fires were extinguished, laying incinerated, the

(03:43):
excavators and bulldozers who are rendered immobile worthless. Piles of trash.
Fires are only temporary and can be undone. But the
connection between those who live in a forest, who breathes air,
and who drink its water filtered through its wetlands is
not so easily broken. Any further attempts that destroying the
forest we met with a similar response. The forest was

(04:05):
here long before us, and we'll be here long after.
You and your friends, among many other anonymous strangers will
see to that welcome. Took it up in here a
podcast about things falling apart and how we can put
them back together, And today we'll be spending that entire spectrum.
I'm Garrison Davison. The story I just read isn't merely

(04:26):
a fictional one. It was inspired by over a year's
worth of communicators and report backs coming out of the
Defend the Forest movement in Atlanta, Georgia. So excuse the
pretentious poetry of anarchists and speak. In early one, it
was real to the public that mainly four entities, namely
the City of Atlanta, the Atlanta Police Foundation, de Cab

(04:48):
County and Black Hall Studios had dual plans to devastate
two complementary sections of the South Atlanta Forest. The City
of Atlanta and Police Foundation plans are to turn the
area of the forest, known as the Old Atlanta Prison Farm,
into the largest police training facility in the country, complete
with a mock city, helipad and bomb range. Meanwhile, Entrenchment

(05:11):
Creek of a public forest land will be traded by
De Cab County to Black Hall Movie Studios to clear
cut the land on which they plan to build America's
largest sound stage. This project lies at a horrific intersection
of police militarization, gentrification, copaganda, and exasperating the local effects
of worsening climate change by clear cutting hundreds of acres

(05:34):
of forest. In the last year, activists, ghosts like saboteurs,
and open source researchers have vultraals together into an anonymous
and diverse movement that's brought the plan to destroy the
forest out of the shadows of secretive, backdoor corporate deals
and into the public spotlight, forming the Defend the Atlanta

(05:54):
Forest movement that's consistently been able to get ahead of
police and media by breaking news about the force to
strug action plans and setting the terms of engagement and
what's deemed as acceptable direct action, all well being able
to foster relationship with the woods that they are defending.
I've been really interested in this project since I heard
about it last summer. Along with the intersection of police

(06:16):
militarization and climate change. On the flip side, there's this
unique intersection of urban city protest and classic forest echo defense.
The mix of tactics have produced a movement unlike anything
really seen before here in the States. Not to get
ahead of myself, but ever since last fall when the
Atlanta City Council approved the plan to build the largest
police training facility in the country, dubbed cops City by

(06:39):
activists due to the plans to build a mini version
of Atlanta within the facility to practice urban combat. But
I figured that I would eventually find myself inside the forest.
So this last April, when an opportunity presented itself to
travel to Atlanta, stay in the woods and talk with
some forest defenders, I could not pass it up. I

(06:59):
packed a tent, sleeping bag, and some microfilms and made
my way to Georgia. The first thing I noticed upon
arriving in Atlanta is that when they say Atlanta is
a city in a forest, they really do mean it.
The amount of continuous tree coverage throughout the city was astonishing,
and that's coming from someone who lives in Portland, Oregon.
As it turns out, the city of Atlanta actually has

(07:21):
the highest amount of tree canopy of any city in
the United States. On top of the citywide tree coverage,
there is the South River Forest, which makes up the
largest continuous section of woods and serves as Atlanta's first
line of defense in the face of rapidly accelerating climate change.
The forest in southeast Atlanta is said to function as

(07:41):
the lungs of the city. The canopy offers shade and
traps carbon, with some of the more heavily forted areas
acting as wetlands that filter rain water and prevent flooding
by collecting runoff. It's marsh is one of the last
breeding grounds for a lot of amphibians in the region,
as well as an important migration site or wading birds,
and serves as a home to a lot of local wildlife.

(08:05):
Nearly five acres of this forest is under threat by
the Atlanta Police Foundation and Black Hall Studios. If plans
succeed to develop this precious strip of forest into the
massive police compound and adjacent movie sound stage, the entire
metropolitan area will face much harsher effects of climate change,
including worsening floods, higher temperatures, and less clean, tree filtered air,

(08:28):
not to mention the increased police militarization and gentrification. Speaking
of the second thing I noticed once I arrived in
Atlanta is how much gentrification is currently underway. The amount
of hideous five of our one apartments that are being
built was impossible to overlook. And as we'll see, the
way police feed off gentrification, which feeds off the corporate

(08:49):
and movie making sides of Atlanta, is not merely a coincidence.
Last fall, I interviewed Jamal from the Atlanta chapter of
the Community Movement Builders, a black blood collective of community
residents and activists serving poor, working class black communities. They
focus on responding to encroaching gentrification, displacement, and over policing.
Here's what Jamal had to say on the intersection of

(09:11):
issues owing around the cops city and defend the forest project.
Just to piggyback off of that, I think it's extremely
important for us to recognize the connections between all these things. Right, this,
like Cops City is a perfect blend of UM environmental
justice issues, uh just flat out racism, police brutality, and

(09:33):
also gentrification. Right, it's not a it's not a mistake
that they're building this Cops City right at this moment
when UM Atlanta is also becoming the for the first
time and I don't know how many decades, um Non
no longer a majority black city because neighborhoods like Pittsburger
were located out of and all across Southwest and West
Atlanta have becoming more like the black people have been

(09:55):
being displaced from the from our communities, right. UM. So
a perfect example is that with my gganization Community Movement Builders,
we UH purchased We've been we've been doing work in
the Pittsburgh neighborhood for a while, but we purchased a
community house in the neighborhood about six years ago. Right
at that point, we purchased the house for fifty thousand dollars. Right. UM,

(10:15):
Pittsburgh has been historically uh poorn working class community. It
was uh it was founded as a black community, which
is different from a lot of other other neighbors in Atlanta.
Was founded as a black community from uh freed Africans
UM who were trying to escape some of the more
rural areas of the South and found work in Haven
in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Atlanta. And it's been a

(10:38):
poor and working class black community ever since. But now UM,
because of the gentrification has been going on. How a
house just sold maybe about a month and a half
ago for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, So the
person's house at fifty thousand dollars six years ago. A
house just sold UM just a few blocks away from
that house for seven fifty thousand dollars. Now, it's not

(10:59):
every house to sell in for that amount, but that
just shows you the rate of gentrification that's happening. And
then and we know that cops are on this necessary
part of being able to defer to displace people from
gentrifying communities. They play an integral role within gentrification. Yeah,
I'm just wondering, does any of you have anything like
even like anecdotal experience with like basically Marvel and men

(11:20):
tons of other industries like invading Atlanta. How is that
like affected specifically, Like you already talked about how how
you know, increased the increase in the film industry and
other things. Has you know, has made more gentrification, But
like how has that even affected just like like other
types of stuff including like policing, Like has has this
type of like growth um affected people or people you

(11:40):
know in in other ways? Yeah? Absolutely so I think
a lot of this kind of got I won't say
it got started, but a lot of it went even
uh you know, escalated when Tyler Perry Studio opened up
in East Point, UM and a lot of people you
know were praising It's like, oh look at this uh
you know, it's a black man. And I was able
to move down and be able to start this thing

(12:02):
within Hollywood. But no, it's all that is one of
the things that also spurred the gentrification in East Point,
which is you might not be familiar with Atlanta, but
East Point is like literally right next to Atlanta, So
it's a lot of it's it's really close proximity, and
so that also spurs over to the gentrification here in
the city as well. Um property values have gone up

(12:22):
since that point even more. UM even my tax bill
has gone up a thousand dollars a year per a
year UM for the past like three years, right, UM,
So it's yeah, it's it's definitely. We definitely see the
effects and you know, and just talking to you know,
we do, we do do a lot of work around gentrification. UM.

(12:43):
And I think this is in tandem with you know,
because we have COVID nineteen out here now, with the
Vision moratorium which has now been you know denied um
with by the Supreme Court. Um. But even when there
wasn't a Vision moratorium, there were still people that were
getting evicted from their homes. And and I think all
of this in tandem when Atlanta specifically has already been
going through a gentrification crisis and um with COVID nineteen

(13:08):
where people have been losing jobs left and right, or
not been able to go to their jobs that they've had,
um and look and having us salaries cut. People have
been hurting, and the response from the city has not
to been that has not been to provide more resources
to people. It's been too fund cops city to be
able to get more peace out. Who are the ones
that execute then actual evictions themselves? And I think it

(13:30):
all it all it all is connected in that in
that type of way. I arrived in Atlanta a few
days before the Muscogee Summit, a weekend event where the
original indigenous people from the area of the South River,
or for the native name of the said land, the
Ulannie Forest, traveled back to their ancestral homeland to discuss
indigenous environmental philosophy, what land back and rematreation means in

(13:52):
theory and practice. Several Indigenous authors were present and led workshops,
including Indigenous feminist, scholar and community planner lower Are Joe
from the University of Oklahoma, author of Spiral to the Stars,
Muskogee Tools of Futurity, and Dr Daniel Wildcat of the
Haskell Indian Nations University, who wrote the book Read Alert,
Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge. In the less academic portions,

(14:16):
there were forest walks, community meals, and singing of old
Muscogee songs, including ones that are performed two centuries ago
during the Trail of Tears. Muskogee Creek. Attendees also gathered
around a sacred fire to perform a stomp dance, recreating
rhythms heard and sensed in the forest long ago to
rekindle the relationship with the Earth and connect back to

(14:37):
the ancestral presences. This was the second ancestral migration the
Muskogee Creek Title members have done since being forcibly removed
two centuries ago and displaced to Oklahoma. The first one
took place just this last November, and both times the
particular section of land they gathered on in Transparant Creek
Park is one of the areas under threat of being

(14:57):
ecologically destroyed and clear cut. Over the course of a
few days during my week long stay, I sat down
in the woods to record with two groups of forest defenders,
one group sitting around a campfire at night next to
a high security child prison, and the other group during
the sunny bird chirping day outside the Black Hole Studios
movie plot. So if you hear campfires or bird sounds

(15:21):
in the background, just embrace our forest punk aesthetic. Up front,
I think it's really important to first talk about the
history of the land that is under threat because on
top of issues regarding gentrification and the plans of this
police training facility. As a response to the George Flayne
uprising and the false manufactured crime wave media narrative intended

(15:41):
to rejusify American policing in the wake of the uprising,
that the fact that the Atlanta Police Foundation shows this
plot of land in particular is particularly gross. The history
of this small section of land in the South River
Watershed is deeply scarred and desperately needs time to heal.
There are centuries of oppression and state violence tied to
this particular spot of land, and now we're seeing that

(16:03):
trying to be continued with this Cops City plan. Local
tribes were expelled for millions of acres in the southwest
region of what is now known as the United States
during the early decades of the eighteen hundreds. Forced removal
and displacement of the Muskogee Creek people began in the
region in eighteen twenty one through a series of treaties
which then eventually led to a quote melee of removal.

(16:27):
More on that from one of the force defenders I
spoke to, and I'll note we'll be using a mix
of voice distortion and voice actors combined with other audio
distortion to help protect the identities of the forced defenders
that I spoke to against possible state repression. So enjoy
our our our cool voice distorted audio. Yeah, I think

(16:48):
it's important because a lot of our comrades relatives repressed
lands in the early eighteen hundreds. They a lot of
them did not go quietly in the night. I think
that's important to remember because I feel like a lot
of people are just like the Trail of twos or

(17:09):
like they were pushed out, but they're they fought against
being pushed out, and then when a lot of them
are pushed out or killed off, then it was used
to incur sory and house mostly black people. So we're
taking it back. That is most of the people that
I have seen involved. It is a diverse group of people.
It's not just like white anarchists in the woods. That

(17:30):
is a misconception. There's all kinds of folks, which really
I think is interesting and makes this trouble unique and important.
But there is also a lot of like white anarchists
that are using their privilege to help take the land
back for our comrades that want to see it back,
and it feels things feel like they're in a good way. Um,
there's good relations that are existing between like the anarchists

(17:52):
and Indigenous Alliance down here, where like obviously no one
person speaks or represents any one group, but the alliances
that we have are very informed of the variety of
activities that have happened down here, including the persons of machinery,
and we were positively told to quote unquote keep on going.

(18:13):
So that feels empowering and it feels beautiful, and it
feels important to note that some of the comrades that
have ancestral tires to this area, it's such a dark
history and they're still here. Is something that they're mentioning,
and they're excited. The people that were close to obviously

(18:36):
we are close to all of them. They're excited that
people are choosing to use their privilege to help make
sure these facilities don't get built. Continuing with the scarred
history of this land, Shortly after the lands at the
South River Forest were stolen from Muskegee Creek people, plots
were distributed to white settlers in the fourth Georgia Land
Lottery of one, which made available landloads of two undred

(19:00):
in two point five acres. Many of these white settlers
established slave plantations on which cotton and other crops were
produced through slave labor. Through archival records, we know of
at least twelve plantations that were on this land that
existed from the eighteen forties up until eighteen sixty five,
and then in the early nineteen hundreds, the very same

(19:22):
land started being used as a prison farm, now known
as the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. The Old Atlanta Prison
Farm was originally bought in nineteen seventeen to incarceraate prisoners
of war, but this plan was abandoned within two years
and the land was converted into a prison farm where
inmates including a moonshiners, public drinkers, and just loiterers and

(19:42):
really anybody, were sent to and forced to perform unpaid
agricultural labor. This shift from plantations to prison farm marks
the rebranding of slavery into for profit prison labor. This
labor included washing cows and arsenic laden water, which led
to the early deaths of countless prison nurse. The facility
ran up until in which it was shut down, and

(20:06):
then two child prison facilities were put on the adjacent land,
and the Atlanta Police Department already currently uses sections of
this hollow ground as a firing range. Tear gas canisters
and bullet casings from police are frequently found throughout the forest.
From where on that here's some other parts that might
sit down with the forest offenders. And then I guess

(20:27):
like fast forwarding a little bit from this land where
indigenous people lived to the prison farm, um, and then
how this has like a long incarstral history and history
of being tied to policing. Uh well with the child
prison that's still here, the prison farm, and then now
trying to build this militarized training facility, just like continuing

(20:50):
on this legacy of state violence, which is like another
massive aspect in terms of like they're trying to take
this very like land that needs to heal from the
centuries of violence and just tear it all down and
build more of that. Um. I know, there's like there's
the firing range that we've been hearing shots from. Uh

(21:13):
there's it's like just this never ending thing. It just
like just keeps happening. It's a pretty weird, surreal experience.
Makes me feel like we're all like an endangered species
living in like the last part of the forest and
fucking South Atlanta. I remember when I was explaining to
one of my relatives, are like I was reading the
internet about the Family Atlanta forest and not sure quite

(21:35):
what's all going on, but sounds like you're living in
how you're between two different chapters and sons of high
security was the less security, a large massive power line
cut and old Prettiston farm and two sides of the
road at least three different police firing rangers and always
water treatment plane at the doubles as a firing range
and super training facility for the police. Another interesting facet

(22:01):
is this particular piece of land where they're trying to
build Top City is like a really important turning point
in history of slavery in the US, and like this
is where a lot of things went from like shadow
slavery um and transitioned into what we now have as

(22:26):
prison slavery. And as we're sitting here on what was
literally a prison farm, even people in pretile detention were
here and used for unpaid labor, even people who had
not been convicted of any time. And so it's kind

(22:48):
of like it's like like very like visible like stain
on the like history of of like what you is
racist policing, but it's harder to cover up and harder
to like pink flash um and so like even as

(23:09):
there is like a place where children are locked in
cages over they have not yards from me. So too,
is this a place where people were brought for being
used as slaves and like died and were buried in

(23:31):
unmarked graves. Yeah. Can I talk a little bit more
about that. This was the transition. This is like the
intermediitary the intermediate transition between child slavery and mind day
prison slavery. UM. And it was like especially horrific, Like
there is two lakes on the property, but where at

(23:55):
one point said to be filled with arsenic um where
they are slaves were not only watching cattle um with
the arsenic to remove them like bugs, but also in
those in those lakes and like suffering horrible diseases and
like dying from this. The reason they present, I'm actually

(24:19):
that closed down was because of the amount of people
going in and out of the reason why this city
pushed to close it downwards because of the amount of
UM people being sent to the hospital week after weekend,
day after day, like efficient like actually overloading the medical
system in the area. UM. That's like publicly recorded information. UM.

(24:40):
They closed down like the eighties or nineteen nineties UM,
and like during the Civil War, escaped prisoners from here
would be are sorry, escaped slaves are from here would
be like going across battle lines and feeding information to

(25:03):
the Union side in order to like serve their informs
of liberation. I mean we like this land also exists
right next to a major or like major road that
serves as a car serral center. Um. It has both
like the Metro uh Metro reentry facility, the Metro Youth

(25:26):
Detention center, and like a couple of other buildings um uh.
And like it's not just like the eighty lands of
a plan to clear cut here, it's also the like
three hundred that they plan to continue with the car
serl legacy of terror and horror um from going from

(25:49):
like chattel slavery and indigenous displacement to um the intermit
intermediary UM poor that the prison farm was to this
new legacy of like cover up of it all and
then and it Yeah. I think the continuation of this

(26:17):
land being used by the state, by police, by um
all these like oppressive groups to further their causes a
really interesting aspect of des and for going to prison
farm and then police trying to now turn into a
militarized police training facility. UM. Yeah. Yeah, so first I think, UM,

(26:38):
you know this misscowy Land and it's during the scurvy summer.
It's cool. You know, the scurvy people have been or
displaced for the most part and there trying to participate
in this migration back. And so they're on the land
right now and it's been very special to have them
here and to be able to express all audity and

(27:00):
like work together with them has been really amazing and
learned a lot and it's yeah, it's cool to understand
that and hear what you're saying. That interaction of like
UM settler colonialism displacing people UM, like early slavery, prison slavery,

(27:21):
and this this specific land has always been UM a
place that I feel like has been almost like the
vanguard of how like policing has and like such a
settler colonialism, UM has experimented with how to reproduce itself
in sustainable ways, UM with like just in general domestication

(27:44):
of humans and the domestication animals. And that's like what
APD is trying to do on this land. And it's
a direct reaction to the George Floyd uprising which caused
a crisis, and policing is it actually bit back with
serious power, and so they're trying to figure out and
experiment with ways of reproducing policing for the future in

(28:06):
the exact same way that when slavery took a serious
all they said, how can we recuperate and how can
we reproduce this in a way that sustainable. And that's
why we have a modern prison system that lives on
to this day. And that's why they're realizing, as as
we're gaining and we're threatening it, oh, we have to

(28:27):
do something, and this LAMB has always been a site
for doing that. It's they're an keep trying. Atlanta is
a heavily corporate city. It's been dubbed the Silicon Valley

(28:48):
of the South by people who surely must be insufferable
to be around, but it is true that Atlanta and
Georgia's economic policies have attached a swath of corporations to
either start to grow, oh or migrate to the city.
It's home to Coca Cola, Delta Airlines, Ups, Home Depot,
Chick fil A, and multiple media conglomerates, as well as

(29:10):
having headquarters for like Google and other tech companies as well.
The city serves as a massive transportation hub. In fact,
Atlanta the city started off as a train hub, and
now it boasts the world's busiest airport. Recent tax credits
for the film industry have made Atlanta and Georgia the
new hot place to shoot high budget Hollywood movies. There's

(29:31):
a whole effort to make the city effectively the new Hollywood,
but like all economic growth, this comes with some heavy consequences,
most often affecting those at the bottom. Atlanta is also
the most surveilled city in the United States and the
city with the most wealth and equality. All the corporations
and film industry stuff moving to Atlanta has indeed created jobs,

(29:55):
but many of those jobs go to workers from out
of state. On average, less than one third of new
film industry jobs have gone to people who were already
living in Atlanta. The result of this out of state
economic migration boosts cost of housing, cost of living at
Bush's lower and middle class residents of Atlanta out of
their neighborhoods, disproportionately pushing out to black people. And this

(30:16):
is all while the increasing corporization and gentrification is actually
pitched as quote unquote providing opportunities to the city's black population.
Which is certainly something because the state of Georgia has
the fourth largest incarceration rate in the entire world if
you put a U S states on the same level
as like every single other country. The other top three

(30:39):
states or countries with the highest incarceration rates are Louisiana, Mississippi,
and Oklahoma. So yeah, but Georgia's number four. Those in
Atlanta's top income bracket make nearly twenty times those who
are at the bottom. And if you map the wealth
disparity onto the layout of the city, it's a one
to one match for the cities old segregation lines. The

(31:02):
entire city runs on these like Reaganite neoliberal policies, but
under this mask of woke identity politics. And who enforces
that wealth and equality and gentrification. That's right, police, which
leads us to the origin of this plan for so
called cops City. I'm gonna quote a crime Thing article
that came out last month called The City in the

(31:24):
Forest Reinventing Resistance for an age of climate crisis and
police militarization, which I recommend you guys read. I'll I'll
have it in the habit in the source notes. But yeah,
here's the quote from crime think quote. The government of
Atlanta has developed a few tentative solutions to the dilemmas
they face. To follow through on their commitments to their backers,
city politicians need to continue sacrificing public assets on the

(31:46):
altar of the economy in order to attract more major
investors to the region, especially the film industry and technology companies.
To maintain control in a period of rapid displacement and
rising cost of living, with chronic tension between the conservative
statement and the liberal city administration, they need to funnel
more resources towards law enforcement throughout the region. Finally, to
appease the increasingly rebellious lower classes, they to frame this

(32:10):
process of restructuring and repression in the language of black empowerment,
social justice, and progressivism. The bureaucrats are not in a
good position to handle this. Decades of tax cuts and
deregulation have created infrastructural failures and breakdowns of all kinds,
among other concerns. Atlanta lost the bid for the second
Amazon headquarters because the public transit, one of the least

(32:30):
funded in the United States, was not even operable when
the corporate scouts came to visit. At the same time.
It's precisely the low taxes and absence of regulation that
attract capital to the state of Georgia. So cultivating a
social democratic governing strategy may now be impossible without creating
a flight of wealth to other parts of the country.
It seems that the current plan is to give over
as many public contracts and resources to private developers as possible,

(32:54):
to allow them to incur the costs of social disintegration
and anger, and to use police to control the blowback,
and to use images of Martin Luther King Jr. To
preempt any meaningful resistance. Thus, the plan to transform a
wild space into a police training compound is dubbed the
Institute for Social Justice. That's right, the plan to make

(33:15):
the country's biggest militarized police training facility. They're planning to
call it the Institute for Social Justice. Ignore the bomb
range and uh urban combat mock city section. Anyway. Um,
here is Jamal again from the community movement builders. I
think one thing that's also really significant is that so

(33:38):
my city council person for his District twelve, Joyce Shepherd Um.
District twelve is where Pittsburgh is, where Summerhill is, where
several of poor and black working class neighborhoods of Atlanta
are located. There are also the areas where they're the
most gentrifying areas of the city is well and it's

(34:01):
in in in City Council District twelve. Joyce Shepherd, she
is the person who brought this proposal forward, right, she
is over the quote unquote public safety. Um even know
they are keeping ship safe quote unquote public safety. Um,
you know commission and Um, she brought this forward. And

(34:22):
she has been since she's been in office, she has
been a even uh, she's been a champion of gentrification. Right,
she's been a champion of over policing as well. UM.
And I think it's it's a tie between even our
city council or even our representation has in their interests
of being able of of gentrifying the city because that

(34:43):
gives them more tax stars. It gives them a way
to be able to say that they are decreasing their
crime rates except and all those all these different types
of things, when it's really just dep deplacing poor folks. Um.
And so I think that's an important about talking about
how this kind of was established. That's the important topic
to be able to address is that even and she's
a black woman, right, so even um, you know, even

(35:06):
how like when people when when people might you think
they might be in representing your interests, when they get
to be in these positions, we have to recognize that
they are not necessarily flo to people. In the aftermath
of the George Floyd uprising against police violence, the city
responded by striking down any police reform measures and restricting
opportunities for republic input, while increasing the police budget and

(35:29):
upping citizens surveillance. On a national level, a media manufactured
crime wave narrative has been used to rejustify American policing
in the wake of the uprising, and the City of
Atlanta is using that narrative while wrapping their increased militarization
plans in a nice, woke social justice package, i e.
A militarized police training compound being dubbed the Institute for

(35:50):
Social Justice. Heading up this effort is the Atlanta Police Foundation,
which is a nonprofit police advocacy organization that claims to
have quote united the business and philanthropic community with the
Atlanta Police Department. It's a It's backed by an array
of Atlanta area corporate donors including Delta Airlines, Upstrick fil A,

(36:10):
Cox Enterprizes, which owns the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which is
like the city's biggest newspaper, and they were formally formally
backed by Coca Cola. They Coca Cola dropped out this
last November. A leak promo video for the Institute for
Social Justice details some of the features of the Atlanta
Police Foundations quote world class training campus. With an estimated

(36:33):
cost of ninety million dollars, The space will provide a
place for recruiting training, mid career education, and practice with
new technology and equipment for police and fire department personnel.
The renderings show the campus will house a quote mock
city for real world training, a canine training center, and
forty horse stalls for police horses. Twelve acres of forest

(36:56):
land are slated to be converted into an emergency vehicle
operations course, and the whole compound will be located across
three hundred and eighty acres of the old Atlanta Prison Farm,
which is a city owned but technically outside of city limits,
located just east of the city in unincorporated Dekapp County.
The Police Foundation has proposed funding the training center through

(37:17):
a public private partnership, which will leave taxpayers to pay
an estimated thirty million dollars for this out of city
police training facility one, which is one third of the
early estimated cost. According to the land Use Ordinance, the
property will be leased to the Police Foundation by the
city for ten dollars a year for fifty years. It's

(37:39):
almost four hundred acres of forest land for ten dollars
a year. The ground lease will quote provide that the
city will be able to have input or approval on
the stages of construction along with the development of the property,
and will allow waving of certain code requirements. Such a
facility would be three times the size of the New
York Police depart Mon's training facility and four times the

(38:02):
size of the l a p D. S UH. It's
worth noting that the NYPD and l a p D
are the two largest police departments in the country, while
Atlanta is the only the nineteenth largest. Yet they'll have
a facility that's like three times the size of New York's.
According to the Mayor of Atlanta during the time of

(38:22):
the facility's announcement, the massive training complex would quote raise
morale among officers and hopefully bring more recruits to the department.
And importantly, the whole project was initially supposed to be
totally under wraps, approved through backdoor deal making. The social
justice something socialist justice I believe in the promo video specifically,

(38:47):
which is not like really even a public release. This
was like very much designed to be under the table,
pushed through as fast as possible of the public. Where
is it really supposed to know about it? The videos
that existed for only meant to be UM the sponsors,
board members founders of the Atlantic Police Foundation UM and

(39:11):
the Atlant Police Foundation, unlike most like police unions, is
a foundation made to final corporate money into the handsOn police.
The cops city side of things is just one part
of the Defend the Forest project. The other big aspect
of this is pushing back on the movie studio Black Hall,
from being able to clear cut more forced to expand

(39:32):
their sound stage. Projects shot on their current lot include
a Godzilla, King of Monsters, Venom, der Van Hansen, HBO's
Lovedcraft Country and Amazon Primes That Tomorrow War on the
East side of the forested land, the part that's referred
to as entrenchment Creek Park was bought by Hondy Booko
founder Arthur Blank in the early two thousands with a

(39:53):
plan to combine uh that section of land with three
acres at the prison Farm to create a five hundred
acre park, a project that never came to fruition uh
and now the park is currently under control of the
Cab County. On top of the heat insulation and air
filtering that the tree canopy provides, Entrenchment Creek plays a
crucial role in maintaining the South River Watershed, being a

(40:13):
partial wetland and marsh that mitigates flooding in South Atlanta.
Quoting that crime thing article again quote, the plundering of
public assets from the benefit of a movie company and
real estate mogul is described as an opportunity to create
quote good jobs for local Atlanta's, not as a criminal
expropriation of infrastructure. The clear cut that Blackall Studio has
planned to trade in exchange for a section of forest

(40:36):
is to be renamed Michelle Obama Park unquote. So yeah,
that also clearly demonstrates the type of gentrification wrapped in
this nice woke package by doing this really sketchy land
swap and then building a park on it and calling
at Michelle Obama Park. Cool stuff, guys. Blackhall Studios is

(40:56):
currently a hundred and fifty acre complex about ten minutes
south of downtown, and they seek to add over half
a million square feet of sound stage, two hundred thousands
square feet of offices UH, four hundred twenty thousand square
feet for warehousing square feet of catering space, according to
a filing made through the States Development of Regional Impact

(41:18):
Program UH. The d r I s are filed when
the projects size is large enough that it's likely to
impact the infrastructure of neighboring communities. The De Cab County
Board of Commissioners in October twenty voted to approve the
land swap deal with Blackhe Studios. As a part of
the planned expansion, the county would give approximately forty acres
mostly wooded land around the South River Forest, and then

(41:40):
in turn, Black Studios would give the county around fifty
acres of nearby land as well. The project has faced
some legal and construction issues ever since then, and we'll
discuss the details of those shortly. Also worth noting that
Black Hall Studios was sold to a private equity firm
in l a just last year and this last February

(42:01):
announced that they purchased another one thousand and five hundred
acres in Newtown County, Georgia, which is about forty miles
east of downtown Atlanta. Uh, and they plan to shoot
productions there for an upcoming quote action oriented streaming service
dubbed black Hall Americana, which sounds horrible. Um, here's a here,

(42:24):
here's a quote from black Hole CEO Ryan millsap quote.
This is the kind of space we need to fly
in black Hawk helicopters and drive humpies at speed. We
have lakes, we have swamps and rivers and forests and
fields and hills and dales. That's the nice thing about
one thousand and five hundred acres. Yep. So look forward

(42:48):
to uh, black Hall Americana, the new hit streaming service
coming out of Georgia. UM. Destroying the forest for Black
Hall Americana. Oh boy. But yeah, if, if, if this
project succeeds, it would semit Atlanta as the new Hollywood,
along with like Tyler Perry Studios and all of the
other movie studios moving to Atlanta, and it would continue

(43:11):
the skyrocketing cost to living in Atlanta and accelerate gentrification
at a even more horrifying right. So. Um, Actually, the
Black Hall site that's a in as like being defended
as well, is also in the Lining Forest, which is
like what's been the scale named for the South Atlanta forests. UM.

(43:32):
And it's actually right across the road from where we
currently are, UM. So the and it's like, I want
to believe three or four acres by itself. UM. And
that is actually under imminent threat as well. They're waiting
on the land destruction permit to pass, and that can

(43:52):
happen anywhere any week. On what you were saying about
the gentrification issue. Um, that's something that's really noticeable to
anyone that lives in Atlanta and has for any amount
of time just looking around them, like the filming that
is just regularly happening here and all all these kind

(44:14):
of new companies popping up around it. Black Hall was
sold maybe a little over a year ago now to
a hedge fund out in California. They're getting funding for
all of these projects and the rent here in Atlanta,
I'm sure across the country, I'm not sure what the
trends are elsewhere has been skyrocketing, like you You'll see

(44:36):
homes that sold during the financial crisis for like eighty
thousand dollars two dollars selling for like half a million
dollars today. And you know, I'm not like a fucking economist,
but the way that the film industry has been exploding
and other industries like Google and Microsoft have been building
these massive, expensive new headquarters while people literally go out

(44:59):
on the street because they can no longer afford to
pay rent here, and people just get displaced. It's like
the opposite of white flight back into the suburbs, when
you know, folks are moving into the city for economic
opportunities that only very wealthy people can get. I mean,
it's it's difficult not to see Black Hall as ushering

(45:20):
in just another huge wave of gentrification. Yeah, black making
movies to support the American way of life. Yeah, Black
Hall explicitly says they're making movies to support the American
way of life. We hear gun shots from the police
firing range all the time, and we hear almost as
many gun shots from the Black Hall filming sides. Um.

(45:42):
And Yeah, it's very much about creating propaganda that makes
people think they need police. Um. And that's like a
huge part of of kind of what they're doing, a
lot of filming and all the gentrification things. Like even
just driving to the city the past few days, I've
noticed so many places that used to be wooded, uh

(46:03):
totally torn down and they're putting up these horrible quote
unquote luxury condos which are like, you know, two thousand
dollars rent from on for a tiny studio um. And
I've even seen things that were used to be secretion
ad housing turned into luxury condos. Like it's it's been
absurd driving through the city and watching so many places

(46:24):
that used to be wooded just turned like so much
like active construction sites building these exact same like these
identical apartment complexes that are the most hideous things you've
ever looked at, and completely unaffordable for any for anyone
who's not like someone who's working for a tech company.
So like the destroying a section of Atlanta called Park

(46:46):
and it was like a large green space that was
largely unmanaged in lakewod Um and creating quote affordable housing,
which is really just the legal term for they have
a certain amount of like available housing, thats like like
like taking units and like a like one unit thing

(47:07):
is affordable house, Like affordable just means market value or
like like the medium market value. Low income is things
that people that aren't like average money makers come for, right.
And I think one of the like I think it's
has kind of kind of gotten lost about the struggle
that the actual defending the Atlanta force struggles, like not
specific to just cops of your black hole is actually

(47:28):
the entire forest as a city. Um. And that like
part of the reason why it has been so focus
is because of like how pressing these currents um things
are and how like stretched thin people kind of a
who are working on this um and that like yeah,

(47:49):
chose to part as an example, there's also an area
and that's like near Grant Park and like the Zone
three old Zone three precinct and this or like this
to they were like actually in the same property area. Um,
they kept the pigs near the zoo. Um. And like
it was an entire forest land like absolutely enough at

(48:11):
every app very clear Gardner doing disgusting condos all on
the road. Um. Yeah. And it's it's a continuation again
of a distinctive political pattern in Atlanta. Back when Mayor
Jackson was elected as the mayor. He at first tried
to build like affordable not affordable, like low income housing

(48:34):
and do community projects and stuff. But the business end
of Atlanta fought back against those efforts, and that is
what saw projects like the Olympic Games, which destroyed an
entire community in Atlanta. You should look up People's Town
here in Atlanta was just in summer Hill completely raised

(48:55):
to build arenas and all of this ship. And it
feels like they can tinuation of the pattern where politicians
decide what is best for the city the Olympics, a
new police training facility or whatever business measures on the
table today, not to mention that like during the nine
day six Olympics, they're like specifically built Atlantic City Defention

(49:19):
Center for the for a place to put houseless people
who have been sweeped up the streets and like criminalize them.
And during the George Florida uprising in that was reused
to as detainment and overnight states for protesters who are
like going to get low bail justice a form of repression.

(49:40):
It is regularly used. Again like that jails regularly used
specifically against protesters and isn't used for anything else. Is
a like absolute scolar on the face of humanity, and
Keisha Lance Bottoms said during her turn she was going
to turn it into a social justice side or right,

(50:01):
it's still a jail that probably already it probably always
will be until we fucking destroy it. Uh. And like
now the Fulton County Sheriff wants to take over the
jail and use all of those beds because the jails
here are so overcrowded with bullshit charges that they are
just expanding and expanding, expanding, and there's no sign of stopping.

(50:24):
For every one time that they promise that they're going
to be closing jails, repurposing ship doing all this liberal
reform bullshit. There's a new training facility, they're selling jails
to people that are using them. More of the system
just continues to expand and expand and expand until we
fight back and destroy it. Need Black haw Yeah, police

(50:47):
need Black Hall just as much as Black hall needs
the police, you know. And these are the symbiotic relationship
between the two. Police are instrumental in gentrification, and also
police need entrification to capture poor black and brown people
and lock them in cages. And so these are two
things that that feed each other in a relationship, so

(51:09):
it's very important to do our best to attack book
is Atlanta was the Atlanta Police who have like the
point system for rest Yes Atlant Police website. Yes, Atlant
Police has actually a point system where among the highest
points is capturing a child. For capturing a child and

(51:30):
arresting them are alongside felony charges, felony warrants and other things,
um alongest point system. They use it as a rubric
to measure how well an officers during um. Yeah, yeah,
I mean in terms of like needing gentrification to continue

(51:52):
your job. Yeah, that's that's the exact same thing is,
let's have this point system so we can get races
and arrest all the people who are on the street.
And it's a mask off moment, as they say. And
I also think it's this funny thing, like I don't know, right,
they're building this fake city to train in, and I

(52:14):
wouldn't be surprised if black horns up renting it out
from time to time to shoot films. Right absolutely, But
also at the end of the day, even if they don't,
it's literally the same exact thing, Right, one is training
people to actually do it and the other is performing
it too. People think it's cool exactly. Yeah, yeah, So
I just pulled up the actually my friend just pulled

(52:35):
up there like chart which is it's a one to
five scale. It's five scale. It's five for juvenile arrests,
five points for felonies, four for distoning or charge, three
for a city, charge for for deal wise and it
goes on um and like the fact that juvenile rest
is the top one is sucking monstrous. No, I expect

(52:57):
it like that the big are the monster. Like if
it's not, it's not shocking, but it it shows the
extent of like the the horrible nous of what of
like what their job is, like, that is their job.
That's what that's what they do. That is the entire thing.

(53:31):
One thing that's given the Atlanta Defend the Force movement
an edge is being able to consistently set the terms
of engagement and establish a media framework regarding the instruction
of the forest and the development of Cops City to
stay one step ahead of the enemy. Like we've mentioned,
the Cops City of project was never actually initially announced
by the city or the Police Foundation. It was brought
to light by activists digging through open source data and

(53:53):
public records in April, when activists discovered the proposal to
destroy the South of Our Forest first, news spread via
word of mouth for several weeks about a large information
sharing session at Entrenchment Creek Park, one of the areas
under threat. On May fifteenth, over two hundred people gathered
for a barbecue and info presentation night on the threat

(54:14):
of the forest and the broader campaign to defend it.
The city government had yet to announce its plans publicly,
so the activists and Force Defenders were able to craft
the public narrative first and lay the media groundwork. At
the information session. Presenters were able to accurately contextualize the
development within the cross section of racist and authoritarian backlash
against the George Floyd protests, the increasing gentrification and urban displacement,

(54:39):
and the devastating climate effects such a project will inflict
upon the region. Having activists and Force Defenders break the
news such a development denies the city and the police
the opportunity to introduce a development to the public with
a distorted narrative, assuming that they were gonna announce their
plans and make them public at all, And then, on
May seventeenth, less than forty eight hours After the info

(55:00):
sharing barbecue, seven unguarded machines at the forest destruction site,
including excavators, tractors, and other pieces of heavy machinery, were
targeted by sabotage, with smash windows and severed inner tubing
scorched by fire. The destruction equipment was left inoperable. An
anonymous statement appeared online detailing their motivations and methods of attack,

(55:22):
while tying the actions to the struggling and colonialism, authoritarianism,
and the history of this particular land as the site
of horrific abuses, of the site of displacement, child slavery,
and prison slavery. The communicate ended with quote to the developers, governments, contractors,
corporations and politicians have perpetrated the heinous deforestation. Any further

(55:44):
attempts at destroying the Atlanta force we met with similar response.
The forest was here long before us, and we'll be
here long after. We'll see to that defend the Atlanta Forest. Today,
no one has been arrested for these actions. The presence
of such a targeted direct action campaign this early on
in the movement is important for a few reasons, one

(56:07):
of which being it's meant in sabotage as a part
of this movement from the very beginning, like it was
moven into the genetic fabric from the conception, so any
debate around the validity of these tactics was virtually non
existent because they were there from the beginning. That's what
this movement is, and that's been super interesting to watch
because usually this type of sabotage or direct action happens

(56:28):
later on in these movements, you escalate to that point,
but in this case, it's been happening since the first week.
People knew that this thing is was existing. Over the
following weeks, there was meetings, posters, and flyers that spread
throughout the city. People organized public forest walks through areas
of the woods that were under threat. Even a few
candidates for city council adopted the struggle as a component

(56:50):
of their electoral campaigns. The movement's consistent ability to break
the news on the development and the destruction of the
forest has been crucial in the efforts to gain public
trust and setting the terms of engagement and the ground
rules for the conflict. The type of public discourse regarding
the forest was successfully established by anonymous activists, not by politicians,
and not by police. I think something that's been really

(57:12):
cool about this movement is that from the earliest days
of when this was going on, it was extremely radical,
Like it wasn't it wasn't three or four months after
the first initial meeting it was like a barbecue at
the park where people were lighting bulldozers on fire except
prevent construction from happening. The Atlanta Police Foundation has had

(57:33):
its offices, its office windows smashed like people are not
afraid to fight back physically, and this was occurring at
the same time as the more electoral tactics, as hell
phrase it, and I think that you know, we've seen

(57:53):
neither of these being able to successfully stop the movement.
But when it comes to being able to measure that
the police have and their allies have slowed down, the
electoral tactics have been a complete matter failure. Um and
physically harming the property of the police, end of the

(58:18):
black Hall and all of the fucking forces that would
destroy the forest. That's been shown far and away to
be a tactic that's not only acceptable in this movement,
but it's something that's seen as like one of the
go to strategies. It's we haven't had to work our
way to that. People were there from the get tho. Yeah,
it was like a day or two after the Younger

(58:40):
Knight with the very first like public facing vronment like
bulldozers were set on fire, and like Michelle Obamba Park
which is farming or enough another like recuperation tactic or
like destruction of the environment, and like on during gentrification
where that's actually Black Hall Studios old plan site for

(59:01):
their new studio and the idea of the land swap
where they take this shitty land where they destroyed forest
to replace it with an earth ground and in and
as long as they turn into a park, they're allowed
to um build and construct on public forest land um

(59:27):
which is like a bunker's idea. Yeah, yeah, no, it's
actually like a new precedent right here that has not
been done before. I think that like one of the
other things, you know, along with the fiery start kind
of kick off, is that the folks who you know,
like in my experience most like kind of big broader
campaign type things that people who are doing jail support,

(59:52):
the people who have abroad reach, the people who you
know have access to resources, et cetera. Kind of the
like backbone life sustaining things of a movement tend to
be folks who have really rigid moralizing ideas of like
what is acceptable, etcetera. And you know, people in Atlanta

(01:00:13):
have been there's a lot of credit due to folks
who have been putting in a lot of work and
are a little wiser than to have such a limited
R review. So most of the folks that control and
are not controlled. Most of the folks who like backline
and are working really hard to do the more like
reproductive things and jail support and get food and things

(01:00:34):
like that, are also people who have a really like, um,
creative and accepting view of you know, like what kind
of things are okay and really don't want this movement
to fail and aren't going to limit themselves based on
abstract ideas. And so that's something that is really special

(01:00:55):
and um, you know, one gets excluded for for doing
things are factor when talking with the force defenders. The
other thing that was really emphasized is that instead of
waiting for distant politicians to save the environment, and instead
of dedicating tons of effort into petitioning companies with moralized
gredic to make them feel bad in hopes of them
dropping into the project. You can instead have immediate material

(01:01:18):
attacks that hit them where it counts, and where it
counts is their pockets. Because you can't expect companies to
be swayed by moral decisions around harmful policing or the environment,
but you can attack their physical and social capital if
it's framed as, hey, this is something that is not
a good look, fam, and uh, this is going to
hurt your bank accounts. That is the type of general

(01:01:39):
language that these corporations do understand. I feel like this
is the most interceptional thing I've been a part of
in a long time. There's just like so many different
ways to oppose the facility, and there's so many different
people involved. And I'm really grateful for all of the comrades,
especially the anarchist comrades. We've been holding it down for
years and helped push the struggle in a certain direction. Him.

(01:02:00):
I think other people are touching on this. We want
to keep bringing it up because it's important. And other
struggles we've been a part of, like the liberals control
a lot of the money for jail support or bail
funds or food district and a lot of those mutual
aid aspects of the struggle that helped maintain an occupation
which has really turned this place up, are in the
hands of mostly anarchist folks, and that has also really

(01:02:22):
set the scene for what we're able to do and
not able to do, Like no one's getting thrown under
the bus for a leisured behavior. Like when I was
reading about this before I came down here almost exactly
a year ago, there were like machines are on fire,
and I was like, holy shit, It's like usually that's
like the way later in the struggle, and that was
like right out the gate. People whoever they are, were

(01:02:44):
attacking the machinery, and I think, to be honest with you,
that was drawing a lot of people here because people
are tired of the n v d A or non
violent direct action. It's not about like let's criticize something
to death that makes us feel bad. It's like people
are tired because they're losing a lot of comrades to
long prison sentences. They're getting three different felonies that are
like the same amount of time or more than if

(01:03:05):
you would allegedly arson something. So these are things that
are coming up for people, and people are realizing that
old tactics aren't working anymore. A lot of the comrades
that were burned into a weird shade from the Green
scare are aging out or the things that they're afraid
of are very valid. But we're living in two dire
of a time to neglect. Those tactics are a larger level,
and people are just are seeing how terrible things are,

(01:03:26):
and it seems like more people are down or just
don't care anymore. Ever since the George Floyd uprisings, they've
just seen an uptick and a lot of his behavior.
There's a campaign that launched publicly that mentions all the
subcontractors that Reaves Young, one of the construction companies on
the project, has to employ to make the Atlanta Police
Foundations project here possible, and a lot of that could
be home visits, it could be going to where they

(01:03:48):
I don't know what's to do is obviously, but I'm
just saying, long story short, everybody knows this, but you
find where they store the evil equipment, that's the best
way to stop the project. Long story short. They usually
don't listen to what we have to say, but actually
speak louder than words may. If you really want to
hurt them. You hurt them in their pockets, and if
you cost them enough money damage, they may pull out
of the project. They shut down. And even if there

(01:04:09):
is other sub contractors that they could get to run
machinery from to cut trees, whatever the funk it is
they're going to do, we want them to be afraid.
If you look at very romanticized struggles that have largely
been successful in their own ways throughout the world. I'm
just going to mention a couple because people talk about
them constantly, like the Zad in France, on a Hambach
in Germany, or No Time in Italy. A lot of
the revolts around property destruction and defending your area. Another

(01:04:32):
strong point of the Movement to Defend the Alant of
Forest is that it's not simply coalesced around a single
coherent strategy, whether that be sabotage or above ground organizing.
For over a year now, force defenders and movement participants
have employed several parallel strategies in tandem. Strategies of one
approach can fill in for the shortcomings of another. Often

(01:04:53):
these differing strategies can be mutually beneficial, as the sabotage
was happening. Opponents of Cops City also organized is to
continuous stream of educational events on the land, as well
as pressure campaigns aimed at pushing city and county officials, investors,
and contractors to drop out of the project. As summer began,
more traditional political activist organizations like ones connected to nationwide

(01:05:16):
socialist organizations, abolitionist networks, and ecological advocacy groups began doing
more direct community outrage by knocking on the doors talking
with people in the neighborhoods next to where the forest
was being slated for destruction. Forming connections and ally ships
with the local community in the vicinity of the South
River Forest is crucial, especially since that they would be

(01:05:37):
among the first of those impacted by deforestation and the
close proximity to such a militarized police hub with you know,
explosive testing and helicopter pads um plus you know, local
community outreach is useful for learning what might help mobilize
more regular folks. Other tactics and strategies emerging during early

(01:05:58):
summer included getting those involved in the planning of Cops
City to realize that they don't get to operate in
some safe politics only realm. Their political decisions have real
world consequences and real world effects for those people that
they allegedly represent, so perhaps they too should be forced

(01:06:18):
to feel real world consequences. On June six, there was
a city Council meeting which was supposed to vote on
the Police Foundation's land lease ordinance, sponsored by then Councilwoman
Joyce Shepherd. At this point back in, the meetings were
all virtual due to the COVID nineteen pandemic, so the
city council members hosted their conversations from inside their homes.

(01:06:42):
With just a little bit of work, activists and researchers
were able to locate the home address of Councilwoman Shepherd.
A group went to her home and displayed a banner
during the city council meeting. Most protesters just chanted from
the public sidewalk, and one individual approached her house, knocked
on the door and ring the doorbell before returning to
the street. It turns out Councilvan Shepherd did not like

(01:07:06):
this very much and went into a bit of a panic. So, um,
one of the movements that I have been like kind
of effective in terms of like city council or other
targets has been like whenever the first time they were
going to vote on this like um Institute for Social

(01:07:28):
actually copsity um. When they were going to vote on
copsoity Um, someone went up to Joyce Shepherd's house and
knocked on her door. They're so painful of protesters outside,
and someone just knocked on her door and she went
to her frenzy freaked out, called off the vote, left
the meeting, ran to the precincts comments section, and then

(01:07:55):
gave a long speech to like a bunch of friends
which called up, which effectively called off for another like
three months or so, just because someone visited the house
of a politician because they had names and addresses, and
like that also happened with That's Sean Reeves, CEO and

(01:08:19):
chairman of Reeves Young. There's this whole idea of politics
as existing within this political astral space. Right, it's it's
it's the same thing with like corporations. Right, everything exists
in the corporate space that's removed from people's actual lives. Right,
it's it's removed from actual personal consequences. People in positions

(01:08:41):
of power assume that their actions occur in this political
or corporate astral plane that means that consequences of the
decisions won't directly impact them, but we don't need to
play by those rules. After a friendly knock on her door,
Joyce Shepard called off the vote and left the meeting
early to call the police, who arrived after the protesters

(01:09:02):
had already dispersed. Immediately after, Joyce Shepherd held a press
conference from the newly constructed Zone three police precinct. Their
Shepherd stood surrounded by police officers and news media and
described in detail the aims of her land lease ordinance,
the nature of the cop City project, as well as
the efforts of protesters to stopp her. By doing this

(01:09:23):
short public statement, she catapulted the movement and the story
into the mainstream, out of the political backdoors that it
was existing in previously, and Atlantas any councilwoman says, protesters
came onto her private property to speak out against a
piece of legislation. Joyce Shepherd says, while she supports the
right to protest, this time it went too far. People

(01:09:43):
have a right to come out and say whether they
four or against it. I have no problem with that.
I've been doing this for years and know that people
have their right. But what they don't have a right
to do is come up on my private property, knock
on my doors, protests on my lawn, on my poet.
They don't have that right. So I'm fair tonight that

(01:10:03):
I'm still supporting the candy. I'm not scared. However, there
will be no right for people to come out my
property and protests. The next day she made another statement
which you just heard a little bit of, where she
also claimed that she would be pushing through the ordinance
no matter what the city residents that she sensibly represented
had to say, And her and her fellow city officials

(01:10:25):
took a stand against the protesters and rejected their tactics,
falsely implying that the methods like going on a sidewalk
were illegal. But by showing up outside a politician's house
and knocking on her door, just a few people were
able to achieve an early goal of the movement to
transform the cops city and black hall developments from back
to agreements into big public scandals. They got out of

(01:10:48):
the shadows and into the spotlight. As a bonus, the
vote was delayed, buying more time to develop further strategies
in defense of the forest. It was an effective demonstration
of the potential of direct confrontation with people in power,
and it led to the emergence of another strategy that's
become a big part of the genetic fabric of this movement,
pressuring decision makers directly and dissolving their notion of a

(01:11:11):
safe political or corporate astral space. During this time of
showing up at politician stores, more sabotage and direct action
were also taking place. Signs appeared in the forest warning
that trees in the area had been spiked, making it
possibly dangerous to attempt to cut down trees, with the
risk of saws being damaged and possibly injuring unlucky workers.

(01:11:33):
On June tenth, three more excavators were burned at the
Black Hole Studios the site. Neither action appeared much in
the local news media, but anonymous communications and photographs of
the incidents and damage circulated online among the radical anarchist
mill us. In late June there was the first planned

(01:11:54):
Week of action. There's been another one since then, and
there's another one upcoming from May eight through May fifteenth.
We'll talk more about the upcoming Week of action in
the next episode, but I strongly encourage people to travel
to Atlanta as soon as possible. If you can make
it for any of this upcoming Weeklung event again, that's
from May eight through May. If you can make it

(01:12:15):
fronty of that, please go to Atlanta. It will be
it will be fun, I assure you. The June Week
of Action featured guided walks through the forest by day
and by moonlight, discussion and conversations on ecology, abolitionism, colonialism,
and queerness. There was a nightly bonfires and safe open
sections of the woods at a nearby radical venue. There

(01:12:38):
was a hardcore punk show during which hundreds of concert
goers repelled the buzz kill police who are trying to
shut it down. And there was a night rave deep
into the woods where five hundred people were dancing with
glow sticks late into the night and early into the morning.
In all throughout the Week of Action, thousands of Atlanta's

(01:12:58):
got to gather under the banner defend the forest. They
were able to learn about the project and get plugged
into taking action. During the week, people under the cover
of night visited the home of black Hole Studios CEO
Ryan Millsap in the Atlanta suburb of Social Creek, UH.
They also visited his second home in Tuxedo Park and
the ups he frequents in Edgewood. According to an anonymous

(01:13:22):
online statement, quote, flyers were distributed to all his neighbors mailboxes,
as well as plastered on his front gate and the
streets that he frequents. The flyers let fellow concerned community
members know about the harm he is responsible for, and
I seally provided the address to his one hundred acre
farms so that grievances could be addressed there. The flyers
placed all throughout his neighborhood and investment properties were also

(01:13:43):
distributed in hopes that it would quote inspire others to
research and take the fight to those directly responsible for
the destruction of the forest. Two days later, on the
final day of the week of action, around fifty protesters
marched to the headquarters of the Atlanta Police found Dation,
quoting crime Thing again quote. As the crowd emerged from

(01:14:04):
the Five Points Metro station, a small contention of officers
attempted to arrest somebody. The crowd engaged hand to hand
fighting with police and successfully repelled them. Advancing past the security,
they marched straight to the Atlantic Police Foundation's office and
smashed the glass doors and windows before overturning tables in
the Towers lobby. According to police, on Friday, around four pm,

(01:14:24):
multiple protesters stopped the flow of traffic on Peachtree Street
and Andrew Young International Boulevard. Photos taken by a local
freelance photographer showing a group called Defend Atlanta Forests shattering
glass doors and also holding signs that say our woods,
not Hollywood's. CBS forty six reached out to the group

(01:14:44):
but have yet to hear back. Atlanta police believe the
protesting ignited over the building of the new public Safety
training center. When officers arrived, protesters quickly fled the scene,
but the damage still remains. At this time, we know
no arrest have been made and the investigation continues. In Atlanta.
On barbawllyans CBS News momentum was growing throughout the summer.

(01:15:09):
Police and corporate press have failed in crafting a counter
media strategy. Meanwhile, to defend the Forest project brought together
police and prison abolitionist organizations, environmental justice and preservation organizations,
civil and human rights nonprofits, and even neighborhood associations near
the proposed site, including the East Atlanta Community Association, the
Grant Park Neighborhood Association, South Atlantin's for Neighborhood Development, and

(01:15:33):
the Kirkwood Neighbors Organization, each of which passed resolutions opposing
the proposal. Grassroots organizations that mobilized against the proposal included
Defend Atlanta Police Department, Refusal Communities, the Atlanta Sunrise Movement,
Community Movement Builders, the South River Forest Coalition, A World
Without Police, and the Autonomous Organizers. Working under the banner

(01:15:55):
of Defend the Forest, organizers spread informational flyers and online fix,
conducted interviews, knocked on doors, and organized phone in campaigns
during subsequent city council meetings that were still held on
Zoom because of coronavirus related restrictions. Through in August and September,
the Stop Cops City Coalition and others worked to introduce

(01:16:16):
tension and clog up the city council process. Digging cues
from the protest outside the home of Joyce Shepherd, which
resulted in the vote being delayed for over two months.
Protesters gathered outside the homes of possible yes voters on
the nights that the vote was related to take place,
causing further delays in the entire process. Got pushed back
from August into September, so again, another another delay. Briefly,

(01:16:40):
it seemed like there was a possibility that the cold
Stop Cops City campaign might be victorious before the end
of summer. Votes on the groundle sordidens were repeatedly delayed
because of these objections and demonstrations at the homes of
Atlanta Chief Operations Officer John Keene and City council Woman
Madaline Archibond. Eventually, September seventh was set as the final

(01:17:01):
vote day. Seventeen hours of pre recorded comments from over
one thousand Atlanta residents delayed the discussion. Due to the
sheer number of public comments, the volt got pushed back
another day as Sydney Council members spent most of Tuesday
and Wednesday listening to the playback. After months of organizing,
community outreach and public education efforts from these top Cops

(01:17:22):
City organizers, proximately, the Collars fiercely opposed the proposal, explaining
in great detail why they're quote unquote representatives should vote
it down. The minority of callers who supported the Cops
City project either self identified as residents of the disproportionately
white and wealthy Buckhead and Northeast Atlanta area or we're

(01:17:43):
just like actual cops. Uh. At least thirty officers called
in to say that they support the instruction of the
forest to end the building of Cops City, Big big shocker,
the cops what Cops City? Pro Cops City collars invoked
the false crime wave narrative propagated after the George Floyd
uprising and used the language of so called white flight

(01:18:04):
by threatening to leave the city if something wasn't done
to stop the growing crime wave. And yet, when the
seventeen hours of public comments ended and the council's discussion began,
council members largely failed to acknowledge the hours of public
comment that they had just spent two days listening to,
much less acknowledged the far ranging movement that produced such

(01:18:27):
overwhelming public discontent. Quoting crime think again quote as those
who study revolutionary movements now, the police perform an essential
function in class society, without which many other hierarchies and
explotitive relations could not exist for very long. This is
not simply an economic or civic issue that can be
worked around with some clever ideas in a bit of

(01:18:48):
pressure unquote. Despite the efforts of organizers, which culminated in
seventeen hours of primarily oppositional public comment. The ordinance was
passed on September eight, while the police arrested protesters outside
the home of Councilwoman Madaline Archibond about an hour before
the final vote took place. During the council's final session

(01:19:08):
on September eight, the City Council voted by a margin
of ten to four for the creation of the ninety
million dollar facility, handing over almost four acres of for
US to the Atlanta Police Foundation. Obviously, many folks were
pretty disappointed and kind of demoralized about this. UH. Some
turned their frustrated energy into the upcoming local elections, hoping

(01:19:29):
that the city government may be stacked with abolitionists or
progressive candidates that might strike down the project. Mayor Bottoms
did not end up running for re election, and the
former mayor of Mayor Read lost to the now current
Mayor Andre dickens Um. I do think it's really funny
that the old mayor of Atlanta was Mayor Bottoms and
the new and the new Mayor is Mayor dickens Um. Anyway, UH,

(01:19:53):
City council Woman Joyce Sheppard, who introduced the cop City plan,
also lost her campaign for re election. But since the
elections November, nothing has actually changed regarding the black Hole
and Cops City developments, or nothing has changed on the
electoral front. There's there's no indication of electoral strategies being impactful,
and thankfully not everyone focus their efforts on electoral reform.

(01:20:16):
I'll leave you today with this sentiment that I kept
hearing during my stay in the forest. When you criminalize
non violent direct action, the end goes away. On the
final day of the vote, people went and protested outside
a city council member's house, and eleven of them got arrested,
despite the fact that they were already dispersing and following orders.
During the Top Line three movement, people were receiving felony

(01:20:38):
theft charges for using lock boxes to attach themselves onto
construction equipment um which of recent hasn't even really been
an effective strategy resulting in any material winds. But if
they're going to arrest you for standing outside of a
politician's house and give you charges, you may as well
consider doing something a bit more spicy. If you're gonna
get felonies for basic non violent direct action like locking

(01:20:59):
yourself onto machine, you may as well light that machinery
on fire. When non violent direct action results in fel
any charges, if they're going to criminalize standing outside of
a politicians house and holding a sign, then going into
the forest and doing monkey wrenching suddenly becomes a very
similar consequence level, and the action that can be done
in secret turns out to be actually a bit easier

(01:21:20):
to get away with. The funny thing is is that
this is the state's fault, not anyone else's fault. When
state repression against public non destructive tactics increases, then what
happens is the less public and more fiery tactics, which
in this movement we're already present, we'll just end up
becoming more and more prominent and even more integral to

(01:21:40):
keep the movement going. In the next episode, we'll hear
about how the more radical folks continue to defend the
forest after the vote, and you'll hear a lot more
from the force defenders that I interviewed. And finally, if
you can please head to Atlanta if you're able to,
for the upcoming week of action from A eight through.
More boots on the round are crucial as the large

(01:22:01):
scale destruction of the forest is becoming more and more imminent.
You can go to Defend the Atlanta Forest dot com
and scenes dot no blogs dot org for more information.
See you on the other side. It Could Happen Here
is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone Media

(01:22:23):
dot com, or check us out on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks
for listening.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}On the Ground at Defend the Atlanta Forest: Part One