On the Ground at Defend the Atlanta Forest: Part Two

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome back to It could happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis
and this is part two of the two part mini
series on the Defend the Forest movement in Atlanta, Georgia.
Last month, I traveled to Atlanta to stay a week
in the woods and talk with some of the Forest Defenders.
In the previous episode, I covered the movement from its
inception to where the city council approved the Cops City

(00:26):
project near the end of last summer. I went over
a lot of historical background between the land itself and
the history there, the increasing gentrification of Atlanta, how the
movement pulled the veil off the secretive plans for Cops
City and pushed it into the public spotlight. We talked
about the early days of sabotage and the targeting of
individuals and positions of power. Basically, I did a lot

(00:49):
of a lot of talking, maybe maybe too much talking.
This episode will be more led by the discussions with
force defenders that I had during my week long excursion
to woods. We'll learn about how the movement evolved in
the wake of the city council vote up until the
current state of affairs. One thing that makes to defend
the Atlanta forest movement very different from previous eco defense

(01:13):
projects in recent memory is that it's right in the
middle of a sprawling metropolitan area. Right outside the forest
is an Amazon facility. Downtown Atlanta is just a ten
minute drive away. We'll be talking tactics a bit later
on in the episode, but just the simple nature of
doing a forest eco defense project while still inside the
city gives a lot of pretty interesting tactical opportunities. You

(01:36):
have to selectively use some of the older, more rule
eco defensive strategies while having the backing of a city
based mutual aid network. There's the option of rapid response
popular mobilization that city based protests can have but are
more challenging for EQO defense stuff that's like three hours
into the middle of nowhere. For the people camping in

(01:57):
the forest, they can easily get supplies or switch out
who's staying in the woods and who's living in the city.
The combination of forest and urban prompts and necessitates the
crucial experimentation and innovation that's been badly needed in eco
defense projects and protests for the past decade. There's a
lot of trams to go by here. It's definitally pretty morvy.

(02:17):
So it's definitely the most urban forest defense I've ever
been a party of. But it's really beautiful and unique
to see a lot of urban folks people live in
the city be able to be involved in like urban
tactics kind of mixing with you more traditional what a
how that means any more earth firsty forest tactics. It's
kind of like the rule book and a lot of
people say this, but like it's all repeated. The quote

(02:39):
unquote rule book for how to engage with the multiple
enemies in this area has been like chewed up, spit out, shadow,
and burnt over because it we're kind of doing something
that doesn't really happen a lot. Something similar I can
think of is the Sacred Oak Groove that was being
protected in Minneapolis in the nineties, and that was another

(03:04):
kind of anarchist and genous alliance the first presence. But
that's kind of one of the more urban in this
part of Turtle Island struggles I can think of this.
But I think another interesting part is like a lot
of force defense stuff is focused on like old growth,
being like we should defend it because it's old growth. Yeah,

(03:27):
this is not an old growth. This is like a messy,
dirty um confusing. I've gotten lost so many times. It's yeah,
there's tires, there's barrels, or it was built on the
prison farm. You'll find like old portions of the prison
which is incredibly funked up and haunted. Right, Like in
terms of like haunting is like there's the specter of
what used to be there. Police are trying to build

(03:48):
over it with their more like a bomb range, right,
It's like that's very much like they're just building over
the thing. Um. But it doesn't need to be old
growth to be worth defending. And that's an idea that
I think people need to understand more. Is like it
has value even if it's not like five hundred years old,
Like it has value despite not despite being one hundred

(04:10):
year old old forest, and it's because it is in
one forest. Like it has value because it is a
forest in a city, and that's something that's worth like emphasizing. Yeah,
I also think that's cool. And like people talk a
lot about like invasive plants and there's like I think
the Branford pairs in this forest are a really interesting example.
There are these trees that are like feral they used
to be part like planted here when it was a

(04:31):
um the farm plantation or whatever. And um, those trees
are fucking spiky, fine trees. They're spiking and ship well
but you know, the good news is they're awful, and
the bad news is they're awful. Like I know where
there are when I haul ass in the forest, I
usually don't get Bradford pair in my eye, but um,
but someone chasing me, well yeah, and and so it's

(04:54):
just it's cool to kind of interact with all these
things and get to choose how you want to interact
and like, yeah, is a um, you know, I think
it's interesting. It's not yeah, like a traditional forest or
like whatever forest that people would value in that way. Um,
but for me, I connect to it, I think even

(05:14):
more than that, because it's not this like held up
is this thing of like purity, like they fucking buildoz
and like a month later that ship was overgrown you
couldn't see it again. And that was all quote unquote
invasive plants like whatever funk that means, which is often
that's the whole thing. They're often racialized plants. You know.
It's it's almost like a punk forest. It's like we're

(05:35):
surrounded by enemies and that is the problem is um
they see this as a cess pool. And something I
talked to a lot of liberals about, like when they're taught,
we're talking them about defend the forest, like, oh, is
it a pristine wilderness with large old growth trees, and like,
you know what, that would be cool. The problem is
this forest needs to be allowed to return to that

(05:56):
because there's been so much abuse and part of like
whether I don't know what it insta quote, but there's
a lot of little winds and a lot of winds.
There is some big they're legally supposed to leave all
the big trees by the creek from what historical um, president,
do we trust the cops to quote unquote be accountable

(06:19):
to anyone? I don't know where we're thinking that will happen.
I've had a lot of people be like, oh, some
of these tree houses are strategic in the spots they
can't get friends. I've looked at the map and it
looks like this whole motherfucking play is Society for clear Cutting.
Exactly one month after the city Council voted to approve
the land Ley's Ordinance for cops city that defend the
force slogan was put to the test. On October, contractors

(06:44):
and land survey workers showed up around the forest and
appeared to be clearing land to take reference photos and
collect soil samples. Two dozen Force defenders emerged from the
woods and confronted the workers people hired to destroy the forest,
fled the work site and act they left. Police surveillance
tower in the area was toppled and the force defenders
were able to disperse with no arrests. Ten days later,

(07:08):
a similar turn of events took place. A group of
survey workers and construction teams were on site. Again a
small group of rapid response Force defenders who disrupted the
surveying and ground clearing at the old Atlanta Prison Farm.
Simply the mere threat of an on site protest shut
down construction for the whole day. Key access points for
machinery were blocked using available materials like piles of nearby tires,

(07:32):
preventing vehicular machinery from moving freely through the destruction site.
No construction occurred, despite the attempts of the Decab County
Police and the Atlanta Police Department, who mobilized twenty vehicles
in the vicinity of the forest in an effort to
prevent the protest or punish the participants. By the end
of the day, no one was arrested, and yet again

(07:53):
select monitoring systems and police surveillance towers were toppled and dismantled.
A statement released online from anonymous force defenders read quote,
this war will be one, one battle at a time.
Pressure must continue in a variety of ways to halt
all construction. It became clear that for the next phase

(08:13):
of the struggle to defend the force, people would have
to directly target and oppose the contracting companies hired to
decimate the woods and build the facilities. Today we know
of at least three companies that have been contracted by
the Atlanta Police Foundation to do work on the old
prison farm land. Some of the surveying work appears to
be done by Long Engineering, and two companies, Reaves Young

(08:36):
Construction and Brass Fielding Gorri, were hired to do grounds
clearing and early construction. It is not yet clear who
will be contracted to clear the land in Entrenchment Creek Park,
where Black Hole Studios hopes to expand their sound stage.
Again quoting the Crime Think article, the City in the Forest,
reinventing resistance for an age of climate crisis and police militarization. Quote.

(08:58):
The information that is known to date was hard won
by diligent activists on the ground. Shortly after the city
council voted in September, surveyors and small work crews began
entering the site near two key roads. The trucks and
uniforms revealed the names of the contractors, which once again
gave opponents of the Cops City project a chance to

(09:19):
initiate a struggle on their own terms. Had the force
defenders utilized only virtual or bureaucratic channels to collect information,
they might not have learned that Reeves Young were being
called in to do the actual destruction until it was
publicly announced much later. The ability to break news to
the public before the city government has been a consistent
advantage in trying to keep the momentum of the movement going.

(09:41):
Post the city council vote, a second Week of Action
was planned for November, albeit with some new twists. From
November tenth through, various groups organized a wide range of
cultural events, info nites, bonfires, and meetings for this week
of action. Many of these events occurred in or near
a publicly advertised encampment on the Entrenchment Creek Park side

(10:04):
of the forest. Days after the second week of action,
thirty people converged on the Reeves Young Construction headquarters in
sugar Hill, Georgia, forty miles outside of Atlanta, holding banners
and demanding that the company severed their contract with the
Atlanta Police Foundation. The group was able to walk right
into the offices, disrupting a board meeting involving company president

(10:25):
Dean Reeves and CEO Eric Young. Initially, the executives tried
to keep their cool, but in short time the businessmen
started getting more annoyed and eventually violence towards the protest.
There was a protest that like plus at the Reeves
Young office, went into the office and disrupted a board
member meeting that happened to have a lot of the

(10:48):
people who were like seers and chairman there and um,
from what I gather as a brawl. Yeah, I know.
There's reports of the the Reeves CEO guy like punching
punching protesters. There's a joke that a worker puts someone
in the guillotine, and I love the version of these

(11:10):
workers doing like wwfer Love, We'll love for more cop
fights fights with cops to just be w w E
style match. Disrupting the board of meeting was another successful

(11:38):
step in the goal of applying direct confrontational pressure to
the Atlanta Police foundations contracted construction service providers. Days later,
two more bulldozers were lit on fire read entertaining aounts
of ulic road and we got to construct vehicles fall

(12:02):
involved in the quat and simpedia my location as well.
There this equipment was located on the land swap parcel
by Black Hall Studios, the planned future location of quote
Michelle Obama Park unquote. These were the eleventh and twelve
pieces of heavy machinery to be sabotaged, and I think

(12:24):
now we're at like around twenty five, which is a
lot um. The anonymous communicate this time was short and
to the point, quote we burnt to bulldozers in the
South Atlanta forest. No cops city, no Hollywood dystopia, defend
the Atlanta Forest. On top of the more publicly advertised

(12:44):
encampment at Entrenchman Creek Park. Around the second week of action,
a small cluster force defenders set up a secondary, more
secretive encampment on a stretch of woods in the old
Atlanta prison Farm. Again quoting the crimes article quote, a
few dozen people pitched tents, erected tarps and makeshift kitchens,
hung banners, and constructed a bonafid protest camp in the woods.

(13:09):
Establishing a semi permanent presence in the forest was a
way to gather information on an ongoing basis and to
provide an immediate deterrent to developers. So I was involved
in the original occupation of the forest. There was a
group of autnomous individuals who many of whom were housing

(13:31):
and secure, and we're like, we need fucking housing, and like,
there's this struggle and we believe in it and want
to fight in it. And so we moved to the
fucking woods. And we've lived in these woods. Believe the
six the official time is six weeks that we were
in the woods. And we had a higher quality of

(13:51):
life than like many people who like lived in houses
and apartments. We had the nicest kitchen of anyone we knew. Yeah,
we had armchairs and couches and fire pits, and we
you know, we had more food than we knew what
to do with. And so we just started feeding people,

(14:13):
and like we created a social space that allowed the
movement to drow simply because we're like, oh, we need
these needs man in our lives. Don't we go do that?
And like evolved over time. A little over a month
after the more secretive encampment was established, about a dozen protesters,

(14:34):
some bearing witch hats, marched to the gate of Black
Hole Studios on Constitution Road and blocked the main entrance.
A communicate posted online read quote iconic spells for destruction
were loudly chanted at black Halls general direction as the
witch block held hands, cackled and skipped in a sunwise direction,
blocking Black Hole Studios as main entrance. Smoke torches were

(14:57):
lit approximately one our post, which block antics the Cab
County Police responded to a call made by Black Hole
Studios saying that they quote followed the protesters into the
woods and deduced an encampment they came upon must belong
to the apparent witches unquote, which is quite the sentence.

(15:19):
Shortly after, a large contingent of police raided the forest,
evicting the protest camp established there. There was at one
point group and help a demonstration outside of Black Holes
UM outside of Black Holes site near the woods, and

(15:43):
they expressed their discontent at the yeah, peaceful, entirely peaceful
protests at Black Haws Studios that was like just kind
of standing in like the front gate where employees leaving
them or um and generally doing stuff like bringing American flags,

(16:04):
holding signs like um and just like taking up space
and making the like actual interns and leaving of the
facility like less doable. And their response was for a
Black Hall to lie and so like the camp and
camp and wasn't trespassing on their property which was actually

(16:24):
in place in of like a public park, um and
orchestrated with the police to evict um. And they orchestraed
with the police to do like a pretty like intense
eviction for like what it was. Essentially we were what
amounted to a homeless camp living there, and they had

(16:48):
two helicopters circling, more police than I could count. They
were throwing our ship into dump trucks and like actively
like pursuing people through the woods. It was like an
absolutely I mean, it was like like very like visible
show of force against us. Quoting the crime Thing article

(17:11):
again quote at the urging of Black Hall the Cab
County police entered the forest on mass mobilizing police cruisers
and the parking lot officers on foot, helicopters and drones overhead,
and unmarked vehicles in the streets. The officers were likely
intimidated by the low visibility to rain. In any event,
all of the force defenders based in the encampment escaped

(17:32):
without being detained. This was the first time a concerted
effort was made by law enforcement to engage protesters in
the South River Forest. And be honest, it was a
fucking pain in the ass and it was a traumatizing
and like that is all true, but it's also even
we learned from and like we got a pretty good

(17:54):
idea of like apd s and like the Cab Counties
the capabilities, and like how they are like surveilling thing
protests and how they're surveilling camps, and like how they
figured out where we were and like what triggered them
to act against us, and like that's allowed us to
move in far more confident ways that are also far

(18:19):
more subversive. It's really interesting that you know, just like
when they make it, you know, illegal to do n
v d A whenever they attack, like that and do
these really violent raids that put people in like awful
positions and like traumatize the ship out of people. They

(18:41):
are teaching us how to fight back. They are showing
us their weaknesses, and in a really ironic way, the
next time they come in and they funk it up,
because people know what to expect, it'll be a monster
of their own making. Because like for every one step
of aggression that they take, that's two steps further we
can take towards them with everything that we learned from

(19:04):
the struggle. And obviously this forest is really beautiful and
the more time I spend here, the more I feel
connected to it and driven to like protect it. But
also a big part of it for a lot of us,
is for me, is like, um, you know, they're doing
this for their own morale, and so my goal is

(19:25):
to make sure they are unhappy. And so yeah, even
if I uh yeah, even if they win, as long
as we come back and we learn from that and
we keep pushing back, you know, it is a lay
of attrition, and um, it is about their morale. And
like it doesn't matter if they build the police facility.

(19:48):
What matters is that every single time that the police
moved to recuperate that their losses, which they just took
a big one, they are faced with just unyielding hostility.
Um And I think that, like that's something that's really important,
is that we don't expect to not take a lot
of hells. Like in the forest occupation, we understand the

(20:10):
nature of this thing. We're in a static position, completely
moving around it. But like it's a it's about making
them fight for every inch the best we can. The
encampment was just one part of a large ongoing fight.
Over the course of those six weeks, hundreds of people
were able to circulate through this camp, enjoying meals and performances,

(20:31):
making arts together, and spending time around campfires, building and
sharing a life in the woods. After the camp was
attacked and structures were destroyed by the Cab County Police,
land offenders and Atlanta residents mobilized quickly to recover camp
supplies and belongings and continued on with efforts to defend
the forest. A great thing about these types of free

(20:53):
autonomous zones is that they can directly demonstrate to people
what a free life outside the confines of in a
society can look like and what it can feel like
it's not just like we want to save the words
and we want to go back to our regular asse lives.
A lot of us are realizing that we're living in
the apocalypse and we're just gonna we want to keep
living like this. It's not just this words, it's not

(21:15):
just this police facility, and we want them to not
have any more space or platform to organize this police.
But we want a lot of us want to be free.
We want other people that like during the idea of
like whatever the funk it is, hitchhiking train happening living
in the woods, the fact that it's a fucking crime
or considered crazy to be the people living in the

(21:36):
woods is insane. And that's kind of the vibe we
got from the muscoge for Access today. They're like our
whole world, like we're here trying to reclaim our culture
because there's a lot of hope for saving the land
from like an indigenous perspective, if people would respect them.
And the whole point is the US government doesn't actually

(21:56):
want them and doesn't actually respect them, and as a ations,
I literally have prisoner of war numbers because they're hoping
by blood quantum if they kill these people off, they
can take their land back, So the whole land back
idea of fucking freaks and not anyway. We want to
save this for us, but it's not just about this
forest for kind of endangered species. We've talked about ourselves
feeling like deer Like how deer like they'll be chilling.

(22:17):
They'll be like all around being a deer and mating food,
and we're like, I was on guard, you know, to
do something else if there's an enemy around. It kind
of feels that way, like it will be chilling. Nothing's
going on. Also, there's caps. But the whole point is
if it can happen here, ha ha, did it, it
can happen somewhere else. And we help to spread the
vibe that people not like Occupy would a varriable name

(22:38):
for a movement. But it's cool that that happened at
the time that we had made sense. We all have
nobody knew any better. We know better now, that's great,
but get the vibe. We're getting this vib to like
continue this kind of stuff. And obviously there's people in
all kinds of places, a squad buildings and do all
sorts of ship. But the more territory that we occupy
and control and can help remake treat to indigenous grassroots comrades,

(23:01):
not IRA and Reorganization Act, government sanctioned Indigenous groups right
if they can't. Not everyone's air. Ally, these have to
be ally. Ships that make sense. The Muscogee commrads that
we're close to, obviously not all of them, that some romanticized,
generalized bullshit. They said the same ship that when we
talk to them, they're like even our own people betray

(23:23):
it sometimes because we're not all the same. It's some
homogeneous bullshit. And I've seen that play out poorly in
other places. And like the garity of the land back
to the neightives and like which natives like people were
all on the spectrum of conversation and be conization. And
sadly some of us are further along the lines and others.
And it's very much on the colonizer's fault for doing that.

(23:46):
But where we're at is the people, the people that
feel the call the anarchy, the people that feel the
call to the some kind of radical left orientation. They
can find it in their hearts and in their patients
to tolerate each other, need to band together to come
up with better plans because we're all we got and
it doesn't get better, it's getting worse. So hopefully this

(24:08):
can be an inspiration for people to do other ship.
I'm inspired. I'm not from anyway freaking her here, but
I've been here for a year now and i don't
want to leave because I'm tired at the same old tactics.
And I have been a part of stuff that has
been successful before and I had nothing to do with
non valid direct action and I had to do time
for it, and I know people that have done time

(24:28):
for it also. And if there's any message I can
give to the young generation is there's no future and
it's worth it. And like if your future is just
like working at nine to five and like watching the earth,
so they're like shriveling and nothingness, I would argue it's
not really a life. Might as all well might as
well be dead. So I'm happy to live. I'm hope

(24:49):
you choose to live. I think it's a really like
interesting thing that psychological aspects of this, because the first
time you do the way we're surcialized in the society
is to be obedient and fearful, and the first time
you do something illegals, the first time you do something

(25:11):
that you know is against the world, the first time
you steal some food, the first time you smash the window,
the first time you do any of that, you're scared.
But then you get away with it. You realize that
this is a thing you can do, and I think
that the state can't stop you from doing and you realize, oh,

(25:32):
I can do so much more. And once you get
over that initial fear, once you've smashed that window and
you've gotten home and you're like, oh, I didn't go
to jail for this. But when when you like get
home and you're like, I have all this food now
that I didn't have to pay for it, you start
to realize maybe I don't need to work a job.

(25:54):
Maybe I don't need to work nine to five or
you know, five to midnight every day to get a
job and pay for You realize, wait, maybe I can
just steal the food. Yeah. I've been wanting to talk
about that for a while. For I want to make

(26:15):
another Hyper Objects episode UM and talk about the anarchist
properties of client bottles UM and I described this type
of freedom is like it's like how a client bottle
works or like a fourth dimensional object. It's like you
need in order for there's like this extra degree or
extra dimension of movement that we usually don't think it's possible,
but it is actually there if you know how to

(26:36):
interact with it. UM And Yeah, it's like we're domesticated
in so many ways to view here's what's possible, here's
what's impossible. I have to exist within this framework UM
and only doing these things which are seen as correct.
And there's actually more degrees of freedom than that. We
just don't often like acknowledge them. But you can totally
phase through things and you can totally find that extra

(26:58):
degree of freedom, and once you do, that's a super
interesting feeling. UM. As opposed to like waiting for gay
luxury space communism, you can instead do like fourth dimensional
like hyper anarchism, which gives you so much more freedom
right now instead of just waiting for the communism that
will never come and the relationship you build. The relationships

(27:20):
you build that are based on a trust that is,
I trust you to have my back, I trust you
to work with me and do this thing is so
much deeper than the trust of I guess I trust
my coworker, but like I really trust them not to
sttion my boss. Like the trust that comes from a

(27:42):
relationship where you're like, yeah, let's like we need food,
that's going to steal it together. That kind of trust
is not something that can be recuperated. And that kind
of like relationship where it's like our relationship is built
on the fundamental we will do it we have to
to survive. It creates an intimacy that you can't find

(28:05):
anywhere else, and a criminal INTERNNA say, you might say, um, yeah,
and that that was the point as somebody else think, yeah, yeah,
just to double down't know too, Like I think it's um,
it's cool too because uh, when you also come through

(28:31):
a space like this, Like you can live like that
on your on your own or with your friends, but
then there's something wild when you come to this space. Um,
and then all of a sudden, it's like when you
start attacking something that a lot of other people want
to see attacked, All of a sudden, all you have
to do is attack that thing and foods there, yeah,

(28:51):
and like you know like that and and like yeah,
I'm like you have all these resources and you can
focus on that and so like it's like yes, I'm
like it's like a joke to some degree, but like
if you want to be a lifestyle and because like
if you want to actually be an anarchist right now
and do anarchist ship, you can come to Atlanta and

(29:14):
do and like it's not easy. It's fucking scary, it's sketchy,
it's hard, there's freaky as bugs, but like, yeah, you
don't have to wait, and like, yeah, it I think
that that's something that like, for me, is really magic.
Is that like actually the more you attack and the

(29:35):
more you like position yourself to be antagonistic towards the world,
the more of it's like fourth dimensional like winn shoot,
don't you know, like which imediately understand like starts to
kind of like self actualize. And yeah, I think it's cool.
And like it freaks me out to think that there's
not people who are probably probably pretty cool like waiting

(29:57):
for some opportunity like waiting, just teachers waiting, and we
don't have that much time. Yeah, you can live anarchy now.
You don't need to wait for the collapse TM because
turns out that party it's already happening and that already happened.
We're just waiting in the liminal space until the climate
change catches up with the admissions are already there. We're
already living in it. We just don't realize it yet,

(30:18):
or some of us are in denial of it yet.
But the collapses like now, we it's already the thing.
We don't need to wait for the one big collapse,
because that's a myth. But you can live anarchy and
do stuff. You don't need to wait for the next
communist president who's going to run and fail. There's no
coming social there's no coming collapse. There's nothing to wait

(30:41):
for to keep on waiting madness aside. I think a
really interesting aspect of this movement about like we are
attacking a popular target, and how in attacking the popular
target we've built this thing is we are ye, We're

(31:02):
not just here and attacking this thing that doesn't exist
in isolation. We're here and we've built a movement and
we've built u We've through attack, we've built a built
this like popular idea that like actually, you know, like

(31:28):
if you want something to not be there, instead of
like talk to a politician, you can send it on
vote harder, vote harder, just just just just one more vote,
I swear I'm different. Sorry, Now I like to talk

(32:00):
more about tactics. Since the City Council about on the
ground tactics have gained a much more integral role and
grown past the basic sabotage and house visits, although both
of those still are crucial aspects in keeping the movement going.
Different ways of preventing physical construction, surveying of land and
destruction of the forest made up most of the on

(32:20):
the ground direct action efforts inside the forest. I think
a really interesting aspect of the way that the struggle
has happened here is that because it's so decentralized, there
are people and no one really knows who, there are
people who will just to show up and like, you know,

(32:44):
it's like there were people who are like getting the
crops called on them in the woods and ships, and
then like a bunch of anonymous people have showed up
and like toppled all the camera powers and people stopped
getting the crops called on them in the woods for
really a long time. And like that kind of decentralized thing,

(33:06):
especially where it's like, you know, regardless of even like
if the people in the Woods were like, you know,
like into doing ship. It's like, it's really useful when
people who have more skills and people have more knowledge

(33:26):
and more ability to do things and more ability to
take risks. It's really awesome when those kinds of people
can come and make things safe for a larger massive people.
And I feel like that is like a strategy and
like the interactionary space that can be truly like expanded
on where people who know their ship can make things

(33:47):
safe for large groups of people. To generalize revolt, yeah,
I regret like a lot of hard a struggle and
struggle has been framed from the very beginning as it
like there was no call to action do x y Z.
There was a bunch of people pursuing their own individual

(34:08):
desires and what they saw as a forward facing like
a reprojection of their own ideas into the future and
made that happen. And it was underneath this framework where
there was no limit, there were no boundaries um, and
there was no idea of like us all having to
be on the same page about that. Yeah, you don't

(34:28):
need to like attend a march to be to do
effective things. In fact, it turns out doing things that
are not attending a march can often be way more
materially effective, and to double down on that, like, um,
so many times there's just like a script other people follow,
this is how we do it. And then there's there's
like this action that's applied to everything that people don't

(34:51):
like and holy ship, that's a crazy book. That was
a wild fire u um, things like that. But yeah,
but there's these like things that applied to everything, and
this struggle very much has no script, which is really exciting.
And but but what's even cooler about that is that

(35:14):
it's not it's awesome not reinventing the wheel. And so
there's people who are taking from you know, like kind
of like classic insurrectionary anarchists like approaches. There's people looking
at ego defense stuff from all over the world thinking
about um, there's people looking at some successful like non

(35:35):
violent direct action. There's people looking at alf struggles and
like how like those campaigns, target campaigns, secondary targeting, how
things like that worth The contracting and subcontracting companies hired
by the Atlanta Police Foundation made up the new targets
of the pressure campaigns and direct confrontation methods that threatened

(35:55):
physical and Social Capital bringing back the house visits mentioned
in the previous episode. In late December, banners that read
Reeves Young out of the Atlanta Forest were hung in
the backyard of the private residence of Dean Reeves in Suani, Georgia.
Dean Raeves serves as the chairman of Reeves Young Construction
and was among the board members present at the November action,

(36:18):
and he personally allegedly shoved and assaulted protesters inside the brawl.
After the backyard banners were hung, an anonymous online statement
read quote, we hope this action gives but a miniscule
dose of what the creatures in the South Atlanta forest
you want to bulldoz might feel unsafe in the place

(36:40):
they call home. A month later, on January, Reeves Young
Construction and representatives of the Atlanta Police Foundation entered the
forest with a bulldozer. They started knocking down trees to
complete more surveying work and determine the construction supplies needed
for a laying of building foundation force. Destruction was halted

(37:01):
when approximately a dozen protesters approached the workers in Atlanta
Police Foundation representative Alan Williams and demanded that they leave.
Workers were safely escorted out of the woods, and the
bulldozer was left at the scene and was subsequently taken
out of commission. In my interviews with some force defenders,
I believe one of them referred to this as the

(37:23):
bulldozer tripping and falling, so that's fun. The day after
autonomous groups of people finished construction of multiple well built
treehouses up in the canopy near the site of the
previous day's confrontation, people climbed up into treehouses and announced
their intention to remain there in order to delay further construction,

(37:43):
ripping off the old tree sit and bipod tactics. From
October twenty one to this point in the struggle, just
like mid January, work was consistently able to be stopped
by small, dedicated groups of people without resorting to force.
Throughout the next week, attempts at land surveying in the
area of the old Atlanta Prison Farm continued, but now

(38:06):
with workers being accompanied by the Atlanta Police Foundation, Atlanta
Police officers, and a cab County police. With the backing
of cops, workers were able to accomplish more of their tasks,
including tree felling and soil boring per Crime Thing quote.
In some instances, only handful of activists were on the
scene behind makeshift barricades. Reinforcements cannot arrive rapidly enough to

(38:30):
assist those on the ground. Unquote Reportedly, undercover cops surrounded
the forest, intimidating those who would park nearby. As such,
some outside support did show up, but not in mass. Meanwhile,
in the forest, it was a game of cat mouse
between the workers, forest offenders, and cops. Police went so

(38:52):
far as to start chasing people on forest trails while
writing on a t V. S. Barricades and the tactical
remove of land survey markers did slow down work on
some days, but ultimately efforts were unsuccessful in halting the
destruction process entirely. This week of land destruction and caton
mouse culminated on January. Around sixty people, the largest crowd

(39:17):
in months, gathered to march into the south of a
forest and on to the old Atlanta Prison farm to
directly confront construction workers who were boring holes in the
ground doing soil sample collection. The cab County police attacked
the protesters, tackling multiple people and arresting four, the first
arrests inside the forest. Within the context of the movement

(39:38):
quoting crime thing again quote. Police attacked the march, tackling
several people. The other demonstrators did not mount a proportional
response to this aggression, despite outnumbering the police. Perhaps some
of the tactics popular during the rebellion, such as the
mass use of umbrellas or makeshift shields, could have equipped
the participants to feel more capable of decisive action. Allen

(40:01):
Williams of the Atlanta Police Foundation was filling protesters, looking
a little anxious as he did so. A statement on
the Defend the Forest scenes dot no blogs dot org
site concluded their report back with this sentiment quote, at
this point, we are in need of two main things.
More people to help support tree sets and defend the

(40:21):
force from destruction, and legal attempts to delay construction. Yeah. Always,
you want more people to be on the ground in
the woods, in the city. Cass wed cass like the
cast like um. You want to wear out the enemy
and a lot of different ways, and the enemy has

(40:41):
a lot of different people. Of the enemies. Enemies are
subcontractors and enemy as a police enemies. George a power
powers quote unquote the power that divides both in Trenchman
Creek and said, there's a lot of different people. So
if there's a lot of and we also have a
lot of different people involve in a lot of different ways,
people living in the worlds, people living in town, so

(41:04):
people already know anything that it's already happening. We should
be visiting the offices, we should be visiting at home,
at the goddamn church, we should be visiting there. In
the forest, there should be there should be no peace.
And I believe that's how we can win, because we
need to make it unpopular and savory and hopefully next
to impossible for them to make these choices, because even

(41:26):
this as a small part of the forest, they're just
going to continue on the next thing. I want to
briefly go into some details about a method of protests
that combines pressure to both physical and social capital in
hopes of resulting material changes from businesses, corporations, or people
in power. It features many of the actual tactics we've
in fact already discussed. Will refer to it as the

(41:49):
Shack method. For reasons that will be shortly explained. House visits,
targeted vandalism, phone calls, and hanging banners and backyards all
have a place in this method adology, it's a focused
drive to dissolve that safe political or corporate astral space
that I talked about in the last episode. The cred

(42:10):
of the article contains a really good summary of the
Shack method. So instead of just like regurgitating their explainer,
I'm gonna I'm just gonna narrate certain sections of it
because that will make my job easier and I'm I'm
a hacking of fraud blah blah blah blah blah quote.
The goal is to hold those responsible for these projects
personally liable for their decisions and the decisions of the

(42:32):
companies they own. Because the entire system of rules and
norms we live under dictates that exploiters, warlords, math murderers,
and those that destroy ecosystems must not face pressure at
home as a consequence of the decisions that they make
at work. This strategy is bound to be controversial. It
rejects the entire logic of limited liability that forms the

(42:52):
basis of corporate rule in our society. At the beginning
of the twenty first century, animal rights activists in the
UK and the US set out to take down the
biggest animal testing corporation on the planet Huntington's Life Sciences.
The campaign to stop Huntington's Life Sciences was called Stop
Huntington's Animal Cruelty or SHACK. It formally disbanded, and it's

(43:16):
best known for its period of ambitious international participation in
the early two thousands. The methodology of this movement, which
encompassed direct actions, symbolic protests, cultural events, sabotage, pranks, and more,
included many features that have been since used in a
wide range of campaigns. The overall strategy of SHACK involved

(43:37):
mobilizing a few hundred people to maximize their effectiveness against
a major enterprise by focusing only on their ability to
function economically. The SHACK model is centered around tertiary targeting
I isolating service providers from third party contracts in order
to limit their ability to provide services to the client,

(43:57):
which is the actual target. Okay, now I'm just gonna
pause here because if that sounds confusing, let me let
me briefly provide an example. So the actual target here
would be the Atlanta Police Foundation, since they're the ones
with plans to build a cops city. The Police Foundation
has contracted a few companies of Brassfield and Gory for

(44:19):
one and Reeves Young, So these companies are the service provider.
The shack model attempts to isolate the service provider, so
Reeves Young from all of their third party clients and contracts,
which will in the end go back to hurt the
actual target, which is the Atlanta Police Foundation back to
crime think the service provider. So in this case Heves

(44:41):
Young Uh. The service provider depends on many third parties.
Third parties provide the service provider with insurance, materials, equipment, security, catering, cleaning, mail, service, data, maintenance,
and more. All of those third parties can be pressured
to drop the service provider. Furthermore, the service provider is

(45:01):
likely a company with more than one client, and those
other clients can also be pressured to drop the provider.
Any company or contractor that is able to move their
money away from the service provider because they have other
economic opportunities can be pressured to do so. Essentially, this
strategy does not directly challenge the bottom line of any

(45:22):
of the third party companies. It only isolates and demoralizes
the service provider and therefore the end target. Today, it
still remains unclear who is the service provider for the
Black Hall Studios development, although that information will come out
sooner than later. In considering the limits of the shack
strategy in actions outside of the forest, it might be

(45:43):
more difficult for activists to maintain a sense of urgency.
Targeting individuals at their offices and homes will chiefly bring
out those who are excited about such confrontational methods, rather
than those who prefer to maintain welcoming spaces of encounter,
to build treehouses, to or to clean campsites, to cook
for others, to cultivate the kind of collective imagining that

(46:05):
is needed to transform society. Also, if people fail to
do proper research or mapping, activists could waste their time
targeting minor institutions and companies that are unwilling or unable
to drop their contracts. They could spend months facing down
insignificant companies with many possible replacement subcontractors. Oh sorry, that

(46:27):
was a lot. That was a big info dump, but
I think it is useful information. So the goal isn't
to sway companies with moralizing arguments, but to frame their
association with militarized policing or ecological destruction as a bad
look that could hurt their reputation and ability to secure
future clients. Combined with economic consentives inflicted on the service

(46:50):
provider like access sabotage, the resulting targeted campaign attacking physical
and social capital can lead to pressure on third parties
to influence the decision of the service provider on whether
or not to stay on the project. Methodologies can put
to the test through practice and be judged by the outcome.
The proposal to employ the shock strategy to defend the

(47:11):
Forest is just built on the simple hypothesis that if
Reeves Young is forced to drop the contract with Atlanta
Police Foundation, the Atlanta Police Foundation investors will then lose
the confidence that's required to find an adequate replacement and
the project could stumble or fail. The same goes for
the Black Hall project. If activists defeat Reeves Young by
means of direct action and self organization, even if the

(47:34):
project of finds a new contractor, sophistication and confidence in
the movement will have developed in the process will likely
help it evolve once again. Also that people have figured
out because like for the first to after the first
to arsons, you could literally just walk up to during
daylight up to the area of Michelle Opa Park and

(47:58):
touch take pictures of like uh have sex around, like
make out with the construction equipment I've been burned, and
you could see the stickers of where they had rented
these like construction equipment, UM destruction equipment, and like after
the first one it changed, there was no longer rented

(48:20):
from the same company, and after the second one it
changed again. And there is reason to believe that with
every arson or attack that they are changing construction equipment
companies because rental companies tend to not like it whenever
their equipment is destroyed to cost them a lot of money,
and oftentimes they cannot afford hundreds of thousands of dollars

(48:44):
going down the drain be to support a pot project
that is highly unpopular. And the other thing what we're
talking about with the modified like a police and modifying
itself as it's interesting because where at this point where
policing is highly unpopular, and so it's kind of padging
its bets and it's doing two things. First, it's calling
itself like the Social Peace and Justice cute Bunny Rabbits

(49:08):
Center for your racist if you don't like us or whatever.
And then it's also just like mask off, doubling down
buying mad guns like like yet just becoming increasingly more militarized,
increasingly more violent and like moving mask off like an
occupying force. So there's this split where there's no and

(49:30):
people are well aware of this. There's there's no like
public chance of convincing um a lot of companies that
this is wrong. Right, there's it's it's it's well, it's
very divided. So the people who are committed are very committed.
There are fucking enemies and where their enemies and that's it.

(49:53):
But then there's other people who are doing this for
economic reasons and kind of understand that policing is not cute, right,
and then it's at least unpopular, going out of fashion
to some degree, and can make money in other ways.
So yeah, it's this interesting thing where like being able
to like fight battles for public opinion maybe doesn't super work,

(50:18):
and all you have to do is um kind of
trying to cut away the people who are supporting people
who are ideologically committed to our destruction, and we are,
you know, field reciprocal. If you look at the photos
of what was happening with Michelle Obama park, the land

(50:38):
swap site they were trying to build on. You can
tell that heavy yellow equipment. LLC of Marietta, Georgia stopped
providing them equipment after like the first or the second
time that their machines got lit on fire. And now
it's alf A l I f of I don't know
where Georgia. So you know, these are photos that you

(50:59):
can see, like you can look at these communities and
just tell like like if there's a photo attached, like
there is a traceable like trend of companies are dropping
the funk out because they, for whatever reason, just cannot
take the heat. On June twelve, while fully in the

(51:20):
throes of nationwide revolt against police after the murder of
George Floyd, two Atlanta police officers killed Ray Schard Brooks,
a black man who had been sleeping in his car
in the parking lot of a Wendy's. Not long after,
the restaurant was burnt to the ground by determined crowds.
In the time period between June to the end of
the year, more than two hundred Atlanta police officers left

(51:43):
their jobs, including the a chief of police, local sheriff's deputies,
state patrolmen, and transit cops also resigned during the year
of the uprising at a higher than average rate, as
the entire system of policing and capitalism faced a crisis
of legitimacy. Corporations, business owners, landlords, business associations, and international

(52:04):
real estate companies demand a public pacification and a reassurance
of a future with stable consumerism. Profit incentive and police
need each other in a symbia like relationship. I'll do
one of my last crime thing quotes here. Quote. Forces
in local and federal government, business associations, police departments, and

(52:26):
our militias have continuously worked to make sure a popular
uprising does not reoccur. A large part of the institutional
reaction to the popular uprising has focused on managing public perception.
Industrial interests and private investment companies have conducted influence campaigns
using local news outlets which are owned by Sinclair Broadcasting

(52:48):
Group of a right wing news organization between Sinclair, Next Star,
Gray Tega, and Tribune. This coordinated reframing of events has
damaged the way many sectors of the television viewing public
perceive the revolt and its consequences. In the wake of
the uprising, a false narrative circulated to the effect that police,

(53:12):
while demoralized and underfunded, cannot control the crime waves currently
sweeping the country. This orchestrated narrative has shaped the imaginations
of suburban whites, small business owners, and many urban progressives.
The crime wave framework implied that police departments around the
country had in fact been defunded or had their powers curtailed,

(53:32):
and were consequently unable to assure social peace or free enterprise.
In reality, the vast majority of police departments received an
annual increase in their budgets as they normally do. If anything,
they accrued more power following the events of So it's
no coincidence that the Atlanta Police Foundation and the Atlanta
Police Department are pushing to build a militarized urban warfare

(53:56):
training center in the wake of the uprisings by le
virging that crime wave narrative and the fears of future
social unrest, they want to have the tools to bring
down the inevitable upcoming revolts for racial, environmental and economic justice,
and now more than ever, including reproductive justice. Cops cities

(54:17):
leading the charge is a part of a new effort
to adapt American policing strategies to our new era of
societal decay and the ever crumbling that will define this
century as we face the escalating consequences of industrialization and
climate change. I think another really important thing to look

(54:37):
at this is like when you look at the Greg
Floyd uprising in the crisis of private policing and they
realize that, oh, holy sh it, people are so angry
about this that they will pose a threat to the
sovereg the state, which is the first time that has
happened in an extremely long time. When that finally happened

(55:00):
the state, the morale of police departments around the country
was broken. Cops everywhere, We're like, it was a demoralizing thing.
And when you think about cops as an occupying force,
as an occupying military force, it thinking about the fact

(55:21):
that we broke their morale is really important. And then
thinking about this place as they intend to build a
training facility to increase morale, which is a classic military
tactic of create cool and interesting ways to train your
soldiers to do a murder. Is like, that is a

(55:45):
classic military tactic. And when you think begin to think
about this as social or when you begin to think
about this as not just a struggle against cops city
that like as a struggle for like disabling and destroying
the police. When you think about this as a material

(56:07):
struggle against the occupying forces that are the police, this
becomes like way more contextual. In fact, I feel like
that is the best way to contextualize this movement. So
one interesting thing is that after Ray Schard Brooks is
murdered and the UM two cops involved were UM, they

(56:31):
substitquently charged UM what was it, six hundred props went
on second hundreds of hundreds UM, and their morale is broken.
A land police has always been understaffed for like as
long as I've known, UM and not understaffed by any
media propaganda spend standard there standards. But like every single

(56:54):
day they're facing backlogs in every zone where they cannot
answer calls. And that's a good thing. This is a
war patriction where their current training facilities have broken. Tottchney
pipes have have have undeniably miserable conditions. Their cars are out,

(57:17):
their cars are like continually on their last legs, and
we that's that is a path through abolition is making
it so it is so undesirable to be a cop
in this city or any city that no one would
dare do it. It is crucial that police are not
the only ones that seek to evolve their tactics for

(57:37):
a new era and moving beyond the kind of non
violent action that's become so common during protests during the
Trump era and the post Green Scare, and even like
post occupy, there is this looking for a new form
of anarchist or radical resistance. Really emphasized the learning things
here is that this struggle took all the different rulebooks,

(58:01):
tore them up, set them on fire, and use the
ashes for their shutter. Like everyone here is learning things.
People who have been who have been doing things along
fucking time are here and learning new things. We're we're
not just like tearing up and like destroying the rule books.

(58:21):
We're like we're like largest were weird. Yeah, yeah, like
put them like it, like tore all of them up
and make collogious out of them, and like is trying
to create this like weird paper mache mesh of a

(58:43):
experimental path into the future, And and like we wouldn't
when we say we are experimenting with new forms of revolt,
new new tactics, new strategies, We truly mean, there aren't
existing model to do what we're doing. We are writing
the book as we could do it, and yeah, we

(59:06):
sunk up sometimes, but we've also got some really cool
ship happening. Ship that hasn't happened in twenty years is happening,
and ship that hasn't happened ever is happening here. And
I think that's like a really it's a really important
thing to touch on. Is that, like much of the yeah,

(59:31):
much of the like eco defense ship that's happened in
North America that for quite a while has like not done,
you know, or at least not released, communicates about like
ship that happens here seemingly every couple of weeks. Now,

(59:51):
like the ship here is crazy and wild under dreams
is also scary and hard and traumatizing, and it's beautiful
and terrifying and like, yeah, that sounds great, you should come. Yeah,

(01:00:13):
this is a such a way from us actually evolving
out of a I look at this as like a
huge step in what land offense looks like after we
have after we have faced green Scare repression, and now
we are moving past the post green Scare repression movements

(01:00:35):
and figuring out how to move forward and regardless of
it for this like uh lands and are really repressive
like bootstounded throats like situation. I don't think anyone should
ever stop experimenting. I don't think people should go back
to the old ways. I don't think that we should
be resigned to not experiment. I think that everyone, like

(01:00:57):
we are in a situation where there is nor future.
They're like the collapses now, We're probably not going to
avoid one point five degrees warming. Our police are only
further mails rising. And the like reality of resistance is
that we that we guess what we need experimentation. Yeah,

(01:01:19):
if there was a winning strategy that was proven to
be effective, then it would have it would have been
effective in therapy, we would have a winning strategy. There's
a popular name in the forest, which is the are
your name instead of are you? Are you experiencing the
joy of attacks on UM? And I think that is

(01:01:41):
an important line the same way Cops City is a
part of the new evolution of American policing. Defend the
Atlanta Forest can be seen as kind of trailblazing for
future movements, a look at how they might develop post
the George Floyd protests for my last final I think
quote quote. This campaign represents a crucial effort to chart

(01:02:05):
new paths forward in the wake of the George Floyd rebellion,
linking the defense of the land that sustains us with
the struggle against police. The movement opposed these developments, mobilizing
around the watchwords defend the Forest and stop Coops City,
have passed through several phases of experimentation, using a wide
array of tactics and strategies to keep pace with the

(01:02:25):
current course of events. It represents an important effort to
revitalize eco defense and police abolition strategies in the wake
of the George Floyd rebellion. So, considering the possible wide
ranging impacts of both the evolution of policing and the
evolution of resistance tactics that defend the Atlanta Force movement
is extremely relevant to all people who want to improve

(01:02:48):
the world, whether or not they live in Atlanta. Atlanta
as a testing ground for new surveillance and like in
like experimenting with new forms of struggle. Here in Atlanta,
there are things that not only are we in many

(01:03:12):
ways on the front lines of experimenting with new tactics,
and integrating new strategies and how they work. That we're
also on the front lines of like different kinds of
both like like in person and digital forms of oppression
that don't have to be worried about other places, and

(01:03:33):
like it also provides approving ground for ways to struggle
specifically against those forms of surveillance and understanding the different
ways that sometimes the most effective thing in protecting yourself
from repression isn't some super high tech ship. It's a

(01:03:57):
ski mask of paragloves and not bringing your phone, and
like people don't seem to like think about that that
I don't need to go to that part. But yet,
so speaking of surveillance, we actually have like not we
I don't claim that, UM. The police here and the
state here has like the video Video re Integration System,

(01:04:18):
which I believe is like one of our re integration
video integration center where they take where businesses and homeowners
are like rain cameras can call into here their video
surveillance equipment to be plugged into a network UM that
can be monitored and pulled up at any time by
the police UM in a downtown location and they and

(01:04:44):
that is like one of the largest surveillance network systems
in the world, I believe, um and it was actually
leading the charge in like new forms of surveillance, and
other cities are looking at this as a model of
how to how to better survey all their own cities,
which obviously makes lend police defindation trying to create their

(01:05:05):
own little mini city a very interesting prospect in terms
of like establishing new you know, this means this is
mentioned before, which was like establishing new ideas and how
to take policing forward into thirties after we've had these
wave of social justice like uprising and uprisings for Black
liss Matter, um with you know. I mean not many
places actually got defunded, but the propaganda has to be different,

(01:05:28):
and like the way the police optics work definitely could
need to be changed from their perspective, or they're trying
to have them be changed. One of the strongest things
I feel like came out of this movement really pass
ahead was our ability to don't have the game on,
like the narrative and then never being able to recuperate
that narrative is their plan was this answertude for sexual justice.

(01:05:50):
There is a new way of training police to quote
be better or like not murder people as much and
like more refined. Um, And I don't want more refined
like police that like murder quote the right people or
be the right people or cage the right people. That's

(01:06:13):
not my desire I went into policing. Yeah, I think
that there's a lot of projects happening in the forest,
and you know, I also just want to emphasize, like
I'm not from Atlanta, but I feel like it's really
important for me to be here. You know. I think
a lot of people who felt inspired by the George
Fluid uprising, like, um, this is an attempt to recuperate.

(01:06:35):
Like I've said this a million times, it's a time
for the police to recuperate from that, and I'm trying
to finish what we started. I also think that we
need to understand that this isn't just about Atlanta. Like
one of the buildings that they're trying to build, and
like one of the points of this training facility is
that it is like a hub in the same way
Atlanta with a with a movie theater, the same way
they're trying to make Atlanta this hub. Right, It's there's

(01:06:57):
an infrastructure for being a hub from shipping and stuff
like that. And so now they're trying to make it
this this economic habit on my white collar way. And
so they're trying to make it a hub for police
in Atlanta, but also to train police to do fucked
ship and to mutate like nationally. And I know that
the police from the you know, whatever city I live
in are probably going to come here and go back

(01:07:20):
and funk that up. So I'm trying to make sure
that they can't come here, and that you know, police
are demoralized in every city and they're having trouble on
every city. And this isn't just about the ap D.
If you live pretty much anywhere on the East Coast,
there's a high chance that your police are going to
come here and then go back to your house and
fuck you up. So come here and make sure they can't.

(01:07:42):
And the other thing I want to say is like, um, yeah,
they want to make this a training facility for police.
Right now, it is a training facility for anarchists. If
you come here, I promise you you will leave with
more courage and with more skills and knowing a lot
of fun people who are really fucking down all over

(01:08:03):
the country. Um, and I think it's worth it. I
wanted to jump in and say, like, this is about you. Um.
An hour or two hours south of here is the
School of the America's you might have heard of it.
It's here in Georgia. It's where a lot of awful
fucking dictators and their henchmen learned how to do really

(01:08:26):
awful ship a bunch of war crimes. And here in
the city of Atlanta, a local school, the largest, the
largest university in the state, Georgia State University, hears something
called the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange or GILLY, which
is where they and the i DF get together to
train local police forces here in Atlanta and around the country.

(01:08:49):
And if you don't think that Cops City is going
to play a huge role in your police department learning
from the i d F how to beat you up,
you have another thing. You should come here to Atlanta.
What's going on? Because this is about everyone here, like
it's about the whole country. They're coming to Atlanta to

(01:09:10):
learn how to brutalize people, and it's going to take
all of us to stop it. A funny thing about
this project is that there's these sort of dual intersections
and dual microcosms. On one side, there is the intersection
of policing, gentrification, racism, ecological destruction, and climate change. And
on the other side there's the intersection between the tactics

(01:09:32):
of urban city protest and rule eco defense. But there's
also this dual microcosm. On the side of the state,
they're trying to construct this police facility with a mock
city to train in microcosm for protest suppression and practice
urban combat against people who live in American cities. And
on the people's side, there's this microcosm not only for

(01:09:55):
how resistance movements can evolve post but more importantly for
the people in up in the struggle, a microcosm for
how you can live a life free of the oppressive
societal mechanisms that we claim to oppose. I think another
really interesting thing about this being like such an ungovernable
space is that because it's ungeferable, because it's impossible to control,

(01:10:19):
it allows us to create these new ways of relating
to be traveled there that can't happen to other places.
Like where else are like people in their everyday lives
just gonna be able to walk around as gender funded
as they want, and like just it's fine, like you
know if they're if a clear basher comes into these

(01:10:41):
fucking woods, like it's gonna be a bad time because
literally everyone here is queer, like we don't. That's the
thing is like when we exist in these spaces in
this ungovernable way, we like are like eating many versions
of Yeah, this thing I want to talk to, something

(01:11:04):
I wanted to talk about in terms of like the
microcos of macrocosm idea of after uprising looking for new
paths forward, the depending on a forest thing can be
viewed as this microcost, like this micro causum of how
we can approach different struggles going into going into twentyties
and stuff um, because yeah, like it is like this

(01:11:26):
small version of what we want. There's also the whole
idea of like what I've seen here in the forest
more closely resembles like an actual temporary autonomous zone than
like the chads ever did in terms of like people
actually like actually living free, actually living like not relying
on like city water, like not like not living in
like the in a downtown metro area. It's like it's

(01:11:49):
an actual free space where people can be queer and
be all of the things and climb trees and talk
with the deer and like that's people are actually allowed
to do that, Like there's there's not all of the
stigma that even I think, like Chazz had like so
many problems, right, like extremely extremely hashtag problematic in terms

(01:12:11):
of how that resulted. Um, And yeah, this is such
a microcosm of like like an autonomous area where people
are able to do those things. I also kind of
want to talk about like the like idea, our ideas
of safety and security don't reside and like the ideas
of say a safety or security for us, it doesn't

(01:12:33):
really resides in our trust in ourselves and each other.
It resides and like we actually keep each other safe.
We have each other's backs, we will fight for each other,
and any threat to any one of us is like
taken seriously. We have this like intimacy, criminal intimacy like

(01:12:55):
allows us to build more check nuan relationships with high
highs and low lows than anything ever could. And like
the deafening that society puts on us, this like chemically
induced regulated median of gray and terrible is that's not

(01:13:19):
what we live. Yes, some days here it sucks to
wake up and everything you ownly wet and you gotta
go ship in a hole that it's fled. But also
some days things here are fucking awesome, and I get
to wake up to the birds calling and go like,
have a party with my friends. I don't like exist

(01:13:41):
here in a way it is like comprehensible or legible
to like a wider like society. I don't exist in
a way that people look at this and be like, ah,
that's what you need. But I have never been happier
than when I've been in the woods with people I
trust and care about and don't have my back. People

(01:14:06):
people don't have to worry about working to pay their
water bill because you can go just get the things
you need from places you don't have to pay for it,
And like, you don't have to worry about all of
these things, all of these societal pressures. There's not this
constant threat of oh I lose my job. Oh all
those things, all those things, all these mental constructs that

(01:14:28):
control us aren't there anymore. Because we've built a world
it doesn't it doesn't rely on that in the slightest
And I think that's like a really powerful thing that like,
we've already met our own needs and so we can
fight back in these beautiful and fiery ways. Pun intended

(01:14:54):
that like allow us to just experience things that like
I've been stolen from us generations. Yeah, I was gonna say,
we're not safe, but we're free. And I think that
anyone who makes that decision as an active decision to
not be safe but to be free, I may not like,
but by definition I'll ride for them, because I can't say.

(01:15:28):
We're now nearing the end of the episode, but before
I finish, I need to go back to talking about
tactics for a bit and end with some actual good news.
From January to present time of recording, there's been an
increase in solidarity attacks in cities across the country, some
targeting Reeves Young and Long engineering equipment. In other states,

(01:15:49):
a third party service providers of contracted construction companies or
locations and offices of corporate sponsors of the Atlanta Police Foundation.
This past March, X machines owned by Reeves Young, including
two large excavators and a bulldozer, were destroyed in Flowery Branch, Georgia.
The online communicate reads quote, so long as you continue

(01:16:11):
to contract with the Atlanta Police Foundation for the destruction
of the South Atlanta forest and the construction of a
Cops City in its place. Know that your equipment is
not safe, your offices are not safe, Your homes are
not safe. Unless your company chooses to pull out of
the Atlanta Police Foundation's Cops City project of its own volition,
we will undermine your profits so severely that you'll have

(01:16:34):
no choice but to drop the contract unquote. Subsequent solidarity
attacks have happened in Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis,
and Highland, Michigan, to name a few. Many of these
attacks were targeted at Atlas Technical consultants, who own many
smaller companies such as Long Engineering, which has done work

(01:16:55):
with Reeves Young and brass Field and Gorri for the
Cops City project. The vein of shack style methods. This
past April, on the ninth website called stop Reeves Young
dot Com launched onto the interwebs. The site listed some
of the various third party clients and subcontractors under Reeves

(01:17:15):
Young Construction and ways to contact them to voice concern
about their relation to the deforestation and this urban warfare
construction project. As well as including the names and addresses
of executives within Reeves Young and some of their affiliates.
On the day I was set to leave Atlanta and
say goodbye to the forest for the time being, activists

(01:17:36):
got word that Reeves Young Construction might be dropping out
of the project. This would obviously be a big, big
win and an indication of the possible effectiveness of the
shack method combined with sabotage and the forest encampment tactics.
At a stakeholders meeting for the copsity of project the
next day, it was publicly confirmed that Reeves Young will

(01:17:59):
not get tinue work on the new police training center.
In the public statement addressing Reeves Young's lack of future involvement,
the Atlanta Police Foundation tried to frame the situation as
Reeves Young simply have quote finished their role in the project.
This is a laughable deception, as Reeves Young is one
of Atlanta's major construction firms and has even built massive

(01:18:22):
quote unquote public safety facilities in the past. They do
not merely do preliminary sub contracting survey work. They work
on projects from start to finish, taking lead contracting roles.
It was speculated that Reeves Young itself may have been
the main subcontractor hired to do complete construction of Cops
City by brass Field and Gory, who have more established

(01:18:43):
ties to the Atlanta Police Foundation. Quoting from the Stop
for Reeves Young website quote, the Atlanta Police Foundation would
have us believe that Reeves Young was contracted to do
nothing more than hire a bulldozer and walk alongside long
engineering work crews as they planted a few surveying stakes
and did some soil testing. Police and their corporate backers

(01:19:05):
don't want to let it be known that a focused
group of activists have delivered a devastating blow to the
Cops City construction, while the Atlanta Police Foundation tries to
say face, we are celebrating a major victory pressuring a
main contractor out of the project. We are pleased that
the movement has built up so much momentum and that
the Cops City development continues to face setbacks because of

(01:19:28):
the intelligent actions of regular people. However, the struggle continues.
Brass Field and Gory, another large general contractor, remains with
the project. A Georgia Open records request from April confirmed
via Paper Trail that the Atlanta Police Foundation has been
working on the Cop City project with brass Field and Gory,
another major general contractor in the Southeast region of the

(01:19:50):
United States. Brass Field and Gory is an LLC and
a multibillion dollar general contractor, ranked as a top contractor
in the Southeast by Engineer News Record. Based on recent
Atlanta Police Foundation emails required through public records, we can
now assume that brass Field and Gory act as the
sole contractor for Cops City. Quoting again from the Stop

(01:20:13):
Reeves Young website quote, brass Field and Gory are dependent
on subcontractors to complete their projects. Now they must hire
a new entire set of subcontractors in order to build
a Cops City. We believe it is in their best
interests for brass Field and Gory to follow the lead
of Reeves Young and drop Atlanta Police Foundation as a client,

(01:20:33):
rather than remaining complicit in the destruction of the forest.
It is up to all of us to make that
clear to them. We can pressure brass Field and Gory
out of Cops City by complicating their ability to do business.
This does not have to be limited to the Cops
City project. Their various construction projects and third party service
providers are numerous. If brass Field and Gore begin to

(01:20:55):
feel like they must choose between all of their contracts
and their Cops City con tract, we are confident that
they will choose the former, but we working to convince
the subcontractors, consulting firms, surveyors, architects, etcetera around the country
that brass Field and Gory are not a good business investment.
We can make it easier for the construction company to
do the right thing and dump the Atlanta Police Foundation

(01:21:17):
for good. This has been an incredible period of momentum
and research, but nothing is over yet. Now that we
have made a decisive victory, it is important to remain
more focused than ever. In the coming weeks and months,
we will need to continue pressuring all of the contractors
associated with the project to create economic consentives for them
to simply move their time and resources to other endeavors.

(01:21:41):
The Stop Reeves Young website will continue to serve as
an educational hub for this ongoing campaign. End quote. On
top of confirming that Reeves Young was dropping out of
the project, a few other interesting pieces of information came
out at the recent stakeholders meeting held on April. Allegedly,
there will be a bid for the next contractors or

(01:22:03):
subcontractors UH in the coming weeks and that will be
publicly announced. It was also announced during the meeting that
the cops city planners will keep construction timelines secret and
may surround the construction site and future facility with an
unwanted fence. In response to the quote law breaking protesters,

(01:22:24):
Atlanta Assistant Police Chief and Site Security Chief Darren sheer
Bomb said quote, we are working with decav County to
address any criminal acts related to trespassing and vandalism unquote.
He also stated that police were also concerned with protesters
targeting those who work on the project at other locations.
Here's an interesting note from our force defender pals on

(01:22:45):
how the Atlanta Police Department function and are allowed to
operate while inside the old Atlanta Prison Farm and Entrenchment
Creek Park. This is something that's true police departments in Channel.
But as soon as a cop is you know, out
of like streets and things like that, that cop is

(01:23:06):
uncomfortable and like cops here are carrying twenty pounds of
gear on them at all times. And not only are
they carrying that much gear, but they spend most all
day sit running around and sitting in a car, and
like you know, that cop not only doesn't want to

(01:23:29):
chase you through the woods, but they also probably aren't
capable of it. And aside from the obvious, like you know,
their infrastructure issues, them being away from their cars, not
being on the streets having all of their gear. We're
also not in the City of Atlanta in this forest.
We're an unincorporated the Cab County, which means Atlanta Police

(01:23:50):
Department doesn't have legal jurisdiction as police here. They only
have legal jurisdiction as agents of the City of Atlanta
because the City of Atlanta owns this property which is
outside of the city. So at any time when they're
conducting and arrest they have to have the Cab County
Police Department officers present with them. There. There can be

(01:24:11):
an Atlanta Police Department and has been major like one
of their huge like high ranks, who has no legal
authority here except to represent the city. And that relationship
is kind of like tenuous at best. They hate each pals.
They hate each other, and you know, so if you're
if you're headed in the town, like bear in minds

(01:24:34):
that is a huge place to drive a wedge because
they fucking hate each other. Yeah, I know there's like
um and there is like one thing one time where
like Atlant Police officers were inside the forest um with
like a specific goal in mind in the Cab County
Police cruisers. Not only good, the Cab police not want
to gather the cruisers and go into the forest because

(01:24:56):
they have they didn't care, they didn't want to do this.
So the Atlant Police, uh, We're screaming into their radio saying,
get this person. They're walking out of the forest, get
this person. They're walking out of the forest, and it
would just be like fib er ten minutes before the
Cab police like preserves to just roll down the road

(01:25:18):
and like you know, they're like people who like ran
into the woods and like ran from the age Cat police.
Like we're like, I'm not going in this world these words.
And I'm also not calling to let the Atlant Police
to let them know that this person just ran from
me into the woods, because then they'll have to actually
go in after them. Also, during the April stakeholder meeting,

(01:25:42):
Security Chief shear Bomb announced that the FBI and the
Georgia Bureau of Investigation agreed to an assistance request in
mid April from Atlanta Police Chief Rodney Bryant, and we'll
be assigned to the site. While attempting to work with
neighborhood watch groups, he noted that quote, we look word
to working with those agencies to ensure that this is
a safe project that is occurring here and addressing any

(01:26:05):
criminal acts that may be occurring on site to try
to stop the project from proceeding unquote. The co chair
of the Stakeholder Advisory Committee, Sharon Williams, invoked the term
eco terrorism as relating to the forced defense, marking the
first time that word has been used by the government
officials to refer to this batch of protests. She also

(01:26:28):
thanked the cop City planners for quote transparency in explaining
why they cannot be transparent on the construction timeline. Emails
between the Atlanta Police Foundation and the City of Atlanta,
obtained via public records requests do give a possible look
into the future of the development. In a January two email,

(01:26:48):
Police Foundation representative Allen Williams said that we quote plan
on enabling work possibly in the Mayo and June time frame.
Our project will last until the last order, and our
contractors are currently working on an overall site logistics and
safety plan unquote, although at the time their contractors still

(01:27:10):
included Reeves Young, so there's no telling how accurate that
timeline is now. Other emails detailed plans for Homeland Security
to obtain ring camera subscriptions to monitor quote criminal activity
at the new Academy footprint unquote. In general, when involved
in any level of protest, no matter of the alleged legality,

(01:27:31):
security culture considerations should always be among people's top priorities,
especially with more eyes being directed to the defend the
Atlanta Forced project. Each person should be responsible for themselves
and might I think that that type of action you're
interested in taking should severely inform the type of personal
security precautions that you're taking. Um. I think that's that's

(01:27:57):
been a recurring theme as the movement builds. There are
folks that come in to not having heard the term
security culture up set or whatever you want to call it,
and so that can be really jarring for folks that
are just first trying to get involved, but people pick
it up surprisingly quick once you have built as a

(01:28:19):
community like norms and customs around is this a phone's on,
our phones off meeting. Are we talking about this on signal?
Is the call for this action going out on social media?
Are we just sharing this amongst friends where that hadn't
really been a thing and where frankly, a lot of
people face significant repression here in Atlanta during the uprisings

(01:28:43):
because of security culture decisions that were made. I think
that a security culture is being built here that where
it didn't really exist before, or at least wasn't widespread before,
is going to survive long past this movement. I think

(01:29:04):
like one of the biggest aspects of these things is
like the social aspects of it, and like like the
generalizing of the norm of if someone answers you vaguely
and seems uninterested in to meet, in continuing the conversation,
just understanding that they have your best interests in heart

(01:29:27):
when they don't want you to know, and like, quite frankly,
you just can't accidentally share information you don't have. And
so like, you know, when we sit here in these
woods and people say, you know, like you say, like,
so you know you're where have you been? Blah blah blah,

(01:29:49):
and I'm just like, oh, you know, hey, our places
or something like that, I just don't ask questions, and
I understand that I don't just not only do I
not need to, but I probably don't want to know.
And like, you know, when it comes to like more
like material technical things, those are important, but like the

(01:30:13):
social aspects of security culture are so so much more
important than the technical aspects. It's like I don't know
as everybody talks about security culture as like take your
phone out of the room, but like you know, if

(01:30:35):
you take the phone out of the room and talk
about doing crazy ship with complete strangers, you don't you
know and have a reason to trust them, And like
coming here to Atlanta, like if you want to do
crazy ship, don't you know if you want to do

(01:30:56):
if you're coming to Atlanta, let me reef is that
you're If you're coming to Atlanta and you want to
do crazy ship, like you to think about like how
to do that in a safe way or as safely
as possible. You know, don't don't come to us and
be like, hey, I haven't met you before, but like

(01:31:21):
do you want to go do some federal felonies? Because no,
I don't and I don't want to know that you're
doing that either like we have do you want to
do crazy ship? That's cool, just like I don't want
to know you did it. And like if you're like
coming here with the intention of creating, like with the

(01:31:45):
intention of like doing ship because it's like cool and fun.
If you're coming here with the intention of, like I
want to gain social capital because I did crazy things,
like maybe you rethink that like if you if you
want and find your closest friends, plan a road trip,

(01:32:10):
and don't help anyone. In a recent interview, Atlanta Police
Foundation President and CEO Dave Wilkinson estimates that defend the
forest quote unquote group members have done hundreds of thousands
of dollars of damage to utility equipment and has brought
up plans to add defense around the entirety of the
site as construction begins, saying, and anyone on the site

(01:32:32):
will be arrested and as we move forward, the enforcement
will become stricter and stricter unquote. Also stated in an
interview is that quote. The Police Foundation also hopes to
build separate museums on site dedicated to police officers and
the labor prison that was once located there. So that's

(01:32:53):
that's what the kids call maskoff moment of building a
dedicated museum two cops and labor prison a k A.
Slave labor prison. Anyway, the first phase of the project
had the initial ninety million price take attached, with taxpayers
being forced to pay thirty million dollars of that, and

(01:33:13):
it's still unclear what the final cost of the facility
is slated to be, or what the estimated operating costs are,
or really how many phases of construction they really plan
on doing. The past few weeks, the site of Cops
in the Woods has become a more and more common occurrence,
whether to do scouting or just apparently detonating explosives for

(01:33:35):
funzies at their current makeshift shooting range, like they did
a few days ago. One morning when I was there,
I woke up to people yelling Cops in the Woods, which,
by the way, is a very effective substitute for caffeine
in terms of making you very awake and alert quite
early in the morning. Um. And then while running through
the forest, I saw a beautiful deer and a hopping rabbit.

(01:33:56):
So nice clash of of feelings and sensations there. In
terms of closing sentiments based on conversations and observations I
had from my brief time in the woods. It's this
play to your strengths, don't play by the enemy's rules,
utilize the intersection of urban city based tactics and resources

(01:34:19):
while taking inspiration from classic forest based eco defense. Attacking
from the cover of the woods and ensuring that the
terrain is as unwelcoming as possible to vehicular machinery can
help by time for rapid response popular mobilization from people
living in the city. If and when that time comes,

(01:34:41):
I'll be careful coming down a key road. They throwing
bottles at the police, and the bottles a smoke ball,
so be careful. They in the woods um throwing at
the police cars and stuff like. Appreciate it. Yeah, And
despite the defensive nature of the ending the forest, there

(01:35:01):
still is a large amount of making sure that as
often as possible you can do the prep work to
set the terms of engagement so that they're fighting on
your terms. You're not always complying to theirs, which is
can be useful for defensive stuff. Obviously, the whole aspect
of defending a forest like this that you I think

(01:35:25):
the defenders can have this almost like spectral quality of
like cops don't know where people are, what they've built,
what's in the forest, what's in the woods, and that's
like spooky, like you like you don't know who's who's
up in a treehouse, you don't know who's behind what tree,
you don't know what things are in the woods, and

(01:35:46):
that spectral quality of the forest offense is a really
interesting aspect of it that you don't see. And you
don't see that. And then like pipeline protests as much,
you don't really see that for like protests in a city,
um because the city very much as like a more
of like a cop story. Um So I really do
like that aspect of like cops are kind of scared
to go in the woods because they're spooky. They have

(01:36:10):
openly testified, like in court testimony that said that when
this forest defender was arrested, the police officer that gave
his statement to the judge was shaking, physically shaking because
he was so afraid from being yelled at, Like that
was all that had happened, is a bunch of protesters
were yelling at them and he was shaking. The police

(01:36:32):
are really dependent on their infrastructure. They are dependent on
all of that kid that they carry around. They are
not mobile. They are meant to be attached to that
squad car, and every further step they take away from that,
they are more and more uncomfortable. And when they look
around they realized they were in the middle of the
fucking woods. That's terrifying for them and that needs to

(01:36:54):
be like taking advantage of. And it is. What's that like?
They their drones in their these helicopters have problem even
with their thermal tracking of seeing through the canopy. What's
that like? And I want to say, like, it was
really funny to me that in that like it was
said that the purposes were screaming, we know where you live,

(01:37:14):
we know where you live. We're coming, We're coming, which
is the whole, the whole ghost thing, um, because I mean,
I mean in terms of in terms of thermal stuff.
I brought a thermal camera of mine here and the
woods are very hard to see through. With my thermal camera.
I cannot see more than twenty ft away. I've I've
tested it on people. It's that's the super interesting aspect.
And yeah, like it's the whole like Fern Gully, Princes,

(01:37:36):
Princess mononoke thing of like when people come out of
the woods wearing ski basks, like that's freaking Like it's
like we are you, Like you can be the thing
that goes boo in the night like that, Actually that
is you, um, and that's something that should be taken
advantage of when there's people invading the forest and trying
to destroy it. I think this is a really important

(01:37:59):
to touch on. Is that for a lot of us,
even though like may us have been like socialized to
think of the dark and the night and the woods
as this scary thing, this is where I feel the
most safe. This is if you give me a bunch

(01:38:19):
of camel and like send me off into the woods,
there's nowhere I'm going to feel more safe and more
capable both of safety and attack. When I'm out here,
I feel like I can do anything. You give me
a bunch of woods, a bunch of hills, Like, there's

(01:38:41):
so much we can do because we're not in this
position of you know, entering hostile territory to you know,
do things. This is territory that we control, and this
is territory that we are using to fight that and
we're weaponizing not just you know the cops fear, but

(01:39:04):
we're recognizing the terrain itself. We're weaponizing the trees, were
recognizing the hills, were recognizing the ruins, and we're recognizing
everything here as like literally a thing to use to
attack the state. If you give me a ridgeline, I

(01:39:26):
can hide from the cops better than any fucking you know,
high tech thermal scattering delly suit is ever gonna give me.
You know, out here, you don't need a bunch of
fancy ship to like engage in conflict with the state.
You don't need thermal cameras and all that. You can

(01:39:46):
walk into a military surplus store and buy, you know,
for fifty bucks. You can buy everything you need to
like do just about whatever you want out here. And
that's like, that's like a really important and beautiful thing.
Is It's not it's not hard to do what we're doing.

(01:40:10):
You just have to break down the mental barriers and
do it. Um. Yeah, we we do our best to
protect the trees, and the trees protected us too. It's
it's cool living here, and it's like obviously something ever
on most people probably like think about is yet how
important wild spaces are. But it's cool to really fucking

(01:40:32):
feel it. And it's like like, yeah, this this place
is super important because of how it interacts with the
ecosystem and how it filters the water and that it's
a safe haven for a lot of really beautiful animals
and plants. But also this place is important because wild
spaces are sucking uncontrollable and I want to live in
an uncontrollable way and like you need those things, and um,

(01:40:54):
it is it's really cool, like this is a wild space.
It's also for in a city, which is cool. It's
fucking weird, Like there's there's city people who come here
who are fucking weird and do weird ship and it's sick. Um,
and like it is an uncontrolled space and like sometimes

(01:41:15):
that means that there's like fucking ship chemicals that are
like fucking plants up. But also sometimes that means there's
people who like are doing things that are free and
doing things they couldn't do in the city. And um,
and it doesn't matter if I like it or not.
It makes me, Yeah, it makes me happy. They just
know that those people can act on their desires. Um.

(01:41:38):
And yeah, it's not always fucking convenient or good. And
sometimes I intend to antagonistic relationships or that because it
conflicts with my desire. But there's no mediation and there's
there's there's no one getting in between. And yeah, it's
just it's really important. And I think like the the
slogan that people say of not what is there, not

(01:41:59):
one tree, not one blade of grass, like is like
an inspirational thing, but it's also like a strategy, Like
it's like a tactical assertion that is important for us. Like, yeah,
if like this forest and these wild spaces are essential,
not just for us to physically stop the police, but
like essential to be an anarchist. Like if there are

(01:42:22):
not wild spaces, spaces that they can't put security cameras
up here because they there's no electricity and the trees
are two dens for solar panels and they get smashed anyway,
you know, like it's important to have those things. If
there's not places like that, there's not places where you
you know, like and and so that for itself is cool.

(01:42:45):
And the other thing is just living here with the
fucking animals, Like, um, it's cool. The deer. If you
want to find a get a hiding spot in the forest,
pay attention to where the fucking deer sleep. They sleep
in different places most nice. You won't suck them up
as long as don't get the exact same one day're
sleeping and they're really freaking hard to find. Something with
the coylds, like sathing with the snakes, and like it's

(01:43:07):
just very cool to get to observe and live with
all these animals. And um, you know there's an owl
such screaming five o'clock every day. It's like a nice
little marker. And that's for me. That's better than you know,
looking at my watch. It's pretty cool. This leads us
up to our present day and the upcoming week of

(01:43:29):
Action in Atlanta, Georgia, happening from Sunday May eight to
Sunday May If you are anywhere near the Atlanta area,
you have no reason to not check it out. It's
a week's worth of events spanning from early in the
morning till late into the evening every day for seven days.
You can find the calendar of events on defend the

(01:43:49):
Atlanta Forest dot com. And if you are not near Atlanta,
I would still recommend you make your way there post
taste if you are able to. Whether that's during the
Week of Action or later on down the line. More
boots on the ground is almost always a plus. Here's
the more info on the upcoming Week of Action from
May eight through May fifteen. So generally in the past,

(01:44:11):
the past few week of actions have been like really
above ground, really like giving people comfortable forest, getting people
into a forest, like the immunity events are like UM
and just like public gatherings, inform nights, skill shares, other
stuff like that. And I believe that this one, like well,
like we had a lot of those events. But I

(01:44:33):
also believe that like due to the nature of what's
going on UM, that it's much more urgent than people,
uh come and creator bring their own ideas being known
in science, their own desires, and yeah, we get action.
It's odd, it's gonna be d it's gonna be crazy,
it's gonna be add the things. I think there's gonna

(01:44:54):
be a family family were lack hug and trees kind
of ship, and I'm excited for that. And I think
there's gonna be something like the funk is going on
in the woods kind of shore is a bunch of
cops kind of ship. Obviously, we don't know what's really
going to happen. But anyone that has been reading stuff
like oh man, I want to go throw down with
the crazies, you should come and do that. And we

(01:45:14):
have some stuff to share and hopefully there'll be so
many people here that don't know how to deal with it.
The problem going here is the Atlanta Police Force. Um,
they there is a lot of them, but honestly they're
also they're stressed out and they are run um what's
it can run dry? Respect then they really they don't

(01:45:35):
know how to deal with all this wood ship from
ship that we've heard them talking about. They don't know
what to do. They're not totally prepared. I think it's
gonna be a really fun and crazy ship show and
we want you all the Condor Chip show in a
good way. And now they're like, oh, you shouldn't use
those words, but in reality, nobody actually knows what's going
to happen. We know what we're gonna do. We have

(01:45:56):
plans that people can plug into, some stuff you can
bring your kids to, and some stuf of you should
not bring kids to, and there will be more. To
be honest with, you really got to just be there
in person, because there's something you can't put everything on
Instagram and doing our best to communicate to folks what's
going on down here, but there's just some things you
gotta come two. Whatever the Week of Action, it's always

(01:46:19):
a week of action, but this is like we're helping
people get really turned up for this week of action
and maybe we all just become a roving nomadic war
machine together. That would be the dream. So you have
a thing in your hometown, is going on in your territory,
and we nomadic war machine over to your spot and
we just keep doing that. A few resources that some

(01:46:42):
of the force defenders wanted people to know about is first, obviously,
Defend the Atlanta Forest dot com, which has the Week
of Action calendar. To keep up on news regarding the movement.
You can follow them on Twitter and Instagram at Defend
the Atlanta Forest or Defend a t L Forest. There
is the Forest Justice Defense Fund at Open Collective dot

(01:47:04):
com slash Forest Hyphen Justice Hyphened Defense hyphen Fund, where
people can donate to support the work of the Broad
Coalition dedicated to saving the forest. There's of course stop
Reeves Young dot com, which has information on subcontractors and
third party service providers relating to the cops city construction.

(01:47:26):
Very useful even just for simple calling campaigns. The website
scenes dot no blogs dot org hosts other news relating
to the movement, anonymous community, case and stuff like maps
of the area and random other useful information resources for
info and guides relating to direct action. There's a website

(01:47:46):
titled Warrior Up dot no blogs dot org and people
can go there or to a warrior up dot no
blogs dot org slash guides for various interesting information. I'll say, um,
and that last one is really best viewed on tour
with via the tour browser just as a heads up.
Also probably with like a VPN. And I don't know anyway,

(01:48:08):
be careful with that last one. But all of these,
all of these sites will be linked in the show notes.
The future lies in your hands. You have more freedom
than you know if you can find the unconventional ways
of expressing it. See you on the other side. And
I'll end with a word from our forced defender friend.

(01:48:29):
There's yeah, hopefully we're gonna stop the police training facility.
I think we really are looking forward to people, hopefully
some people sticking around for the Week of Action because
we're hoping that it doesn't die down too much to

(01:48:49):
the point where smaller and to achieve them that was
here for a reko action gets attacked and stay away
exactly that if they can get happen here. I wasn't
thinking about that. This funny enough it its It could
happen where you live, and maybe we can just keep
the idea. As we share enough skills, we make ourselves.

(01:49:10):
Absolutely no one should be integral enough to the movement
that you can't go off or leave and it can't continue.
People should be reading manual, sharing skills, telling stories, having
at the moons. We're doing all this stuff to make
each other just a weird of the different things that
are possible for us to run because maybe we don't

(01:49:32):
have all the you know, the guns and the steel
and the gold. But if we have enough people like
being creative and doing some grilla ship, we can get
a lot done. And at the end of the day,
if you can do you have to be careful about
how many hats to ring. If you don't know about
the r n c AD, that's a long time ago.
Now look that up. They were wearing. They are really
great community organizers, but they were wearing too many hats.

(01:49:54):
It was the first time that Patriot Act kind of
new laws after not eleven was you lie down people,
and a lot of it didn't stick. But if you
what we really need is more faceless saboteuries because honestly,
I'm saying that's what we need. We need people to
be there's just in reality, there's not enough people willing

(01:50:15):
to do nightwork. It looks like there's an uptick in
the behavior, which is great, but be safe, be smart,
act to interact with a little and that's that's what
we need more than any saying. There's a lot of
people that um are willing to do above ground stuff.
There's a lot of people that want to be known,

(01:50:36):
and that's great, but we have enough for that. We
need something else. It Could Happen Here is a production
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources

(01:50:56):
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 Two