May 4, 2023 • 46 mins
A thousand people march to the Weelaunee forest to kick off the Defend the Atlanta Forest Week of Action, later that night Zach Fox headlines a DIY music festival in the woods.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's a warm spring afternoon in Atlanta, Georgia. You and
some of your friends are dancing in the sunlight at
a music festival in South Atlanta. It's day two of
the South River Music Festival. Last night, you stayed up
till three am, alternating between moshing in the pit and
laying down on a blanket looking up at the night sky,
trying to see stars through the light pollution. After you
(00:27):
had your fill of DM you called it a night
and hastily set up a tent in the forest near
the edge of the festival. You tried to sleep as
long as you could, but soon enough the hustle and
bustle around the forest beckoned you out of your tent.
As you mosed on over back to the music festival,
immediately something new caught your eye, a large, multi colored
inflatable bouncy castle sitting right in the middle of the
(00:50):
field with a big stopcop City banner hung along the side.
After you fully woke up, you grabbed a free breakfast
burrito and took a walk through the winding forest. Now
that you've finished your breakfast, you're back at the far
end of the open field in front of the stage,
where there's been live music playing for the past few hours.
(01:12):
You and some friends briefly try a stint in the
bouncy castle, but quickly return to the festival stage as
you tire out much faster than you expected. As the
sun is barely starting to set around six pm, suddenly
you notice the faint scream of police sirens piercing through
the music being blasted from on stage. You stand up
(01:33):
as the sirens get louder and closer, until a burst
of police cars zoom past the music festival at high speed.
A short sigh of relief is followed by confusion where
else would a whole bunch of police cars be going,
But as nothing seems to come of it, everyone starts
to relax and begin enjoying music once again with the
(01:56):
apparent absence of police. There's a if you brief moments
of peace at the festival as things continue as scheduled,
except you can't help but notice the police helicopter is
flying across the forest toward the festival. As you take
note of the chopper, you receive a signal message from
a friend quote cops have entered the parking lot with
(02:18):
AR fifteen's. You lift up your mask and start running
across the field to the parking lot at Willawnee People's Park.
But before you even make it halfway across, you notice
up ahead a few dozen police officers sprinting into the
open field from the festival side entrance. As the sun
(02:39):
is setting, a group of cops run past the bouncy
house and start chasing down seemingly random concert goers and
loan stragglers. One officer points his rifle at the bouncy
house as another turns off the generator. You group up
with other people from the festival in hopes of working
together to incentivize police to leave the area. As you
(03:01):
get closer, the cops start getting more aggressive. Just up ahead,
a bit further into the woods, close to where you
set up your tent, you hear some loud bangs and
see a flash of bright light. First, you assume it's
just fireworks being used to hold off the cops, until
you start coughing and see the faint plume of tear
(03:21):
gas seeping in from the forest. You're forced to fall
back to the festival and regroup with people by the
stage where music is still being played. As you're running back,
you can see dozens of people in zip ti cuffs,
many still pinned to the ground, still coughing from the gas.
You make your way back to where you are washing
the previous night. The crowd of festivalgoers tightens up as
(03:45):
riot vans and a bear cat pull into the field
next to the deflated bouncy castle. Police swat teams surround
the South River Music Festival and creep towards the stage,
threatening to charge hundreds of people with domestic terrorism. Hanging
on the backdrop of the stage is a massive banner
that reads, quote in the eyes of the state, all
(04:07):
who resist white supremacy, colonialism, environmental racism, gentrification, and police
militarization are domestic terrorists unquote. That was the evening of Sunday,
March fifth, twenty twenty three. This is it could happen here.
I'm Garrison Davis. I arrived in Atlanta a few days
(04:30):
prior in preparation for the March Week of Action to
defend the Atlanta Forest and stop cop City. This is
part one of a four part series covering this week
of action, featuring interviews, reportbacks, and analysis from both participants
and observers like myself. This four part series will be
a follow up of sorts to the four stop Coop
(04:50):
City episodes we put together last January following the death
of forest defender Tortigita at the hands of the Georgia
State Patrol, as well as building off my previous year
of work covering the movement to defend the Atlanta Forest.
But in case you're new or need a refresher, For
over two years now, activists and community members have been
(05:11):
in a fight to save the Wallani Forest from being
turned into a massive ninety million dollar police training facility
stretching across one hundred and seventy acres, with plans to
include a mock city for urban combat training to quell
civil descent. The cop City project is being led by
the Atlanta Police Foundation, one of the most powerful police
(05:32):
lobbying groups in the country. Following seventeen hours of public comment,
seventy percent of which was against the facility, the Atlanta
City Council voted to approve the project's lease in September
of twenty twenty one, despite months of protests and community organizing.
Later that fall, people started occupying and camping out in
the Wallani Forest to maintain a physical presence in the woods.
(05:55):
In hopes of preventing or delaying construction. Infrastructure to support
long time ter encampments grew over the next year, with
forest defenders erecting treehouses, road blockades, and making the forest
a place that people could actually live in with outdoor kitchens,
community gardens, and places to sleep, whether that be up
in a tree or in a tent. For a while
(06:16):
it seemed to be working. Throughout twenty twenty two, construction
continued to stall. Almost every time cops and workers came
in to start cutting trees, they were met with resistance.
Construction equipment left around the forest was routinely sabotaged, and
last year a tertiary targeting campaign resulted in the general
contractor for a cop City Reeves Young construction, to drop
(06:38):
out of the project. Police enacted multiple raids on the
forest in twenty twenty two, trying to flush out any
forest defenders camping out in the woods and tear down
encampment infrastructure, but the occupation was generally able to bounce
back pretty quick. As the movement to stop cop City
was seemingly winning, police intensified their repression as a series
(07:00):
of raids in December of last year decimated much of
the infrastructure that was built up over the course of
that year and left six people with domestic terrorism charges.
But things got worse just a month later. In January
of twenty twenty three, multiple police agencies engaged in a
mass raid of the Wallani Forest, destroying all remaining campsites.
(07:21):
About an hour into the January eighteenth raid, the Georgia
State Patrol swat team killed a twenty six year old
forest defender, Manuel Tehran, also known by their forest name Tortigita.
Decab County's autopsy found at least fifty seven gunshot wounds
from multiple officers. We'll talk more about the results from
various autopsies in a later episode, but just a few
(07:43):
weeks ago, tort would have turned twenty seven. The other
side of the Defend the Forest movement is focused on
a smaller section of the Wallani Forest just east of
Entrenchment Creek. Initially in hopes of expanding his movie studios,
The now former own of Blackhall Studios, Ryan Millsap, has
been trying to gain control of forty acres of public
(08:05):
parkland through a shady landswap deal with Decap County that's
currently subject to legal disputes. The slate of land in
question contains the popular meeting spot in the forest known
as the Living Room, which acts as a sort of
central hub, as well as what's referred to as Wilawni
People's Park, where the Park gazebe used to be before
Ryan Millsap demolished it, later ripping out all of the
(08:28):
grass and sidewalks in a once again legally questionable move.
In January, Wilani People's Park also became home to the
vigil site for Tortigita all at Let Matt from the
Atlantic Community Press Collective explain the other happenings in the
woods since January.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
They got their land disturbance permit in late January, and
the first phase of the land disturbance permit only allows
for soil erosion control work, So to this point, essentially
what they've done is they've cut some paths into the
forest into the proposed site, and then around the exterior
(09:08):
of the site they've clear cut a line in order
to install silt fencing, so there isn't a large amount
of infrastructure. They're not allowed to do a large amount
of disturbance right now. They're in like the pre construction
phase right now. So they started in February and they
did a lot of work very quickly. They installed a
(09:29):
privacy fence, so you can't really see what's going on,
so our general understanding of it, like comes from drone footage.
It actually slowed down a couple weeks later, and from
what I understand, they began to pull some construction equipment out,
probably not wanting to leave, you know, a target for
shall we say, any sort of spicy activities.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
But not all of their construction equipment was removed, as
everyone would soon find out. The deadly January raid left
the community in mourning and unsure of how the fight
(10:12):
to stop Copp City would evolve. With the use of
lethal force and the loss of a friend, the Forest
Defender's semi permanent occupation of the Wallani Forest ended after
that raid, but the fight was far from over. About
a month after the January raid, local Atlantans put out
a call for supporters across the country to converge in
(10:34):
Atlanta in early March for a mass gathering known as
a Week of Action. There have been four previous Weeks
of Action, but this one, more than any other, would
be crucial in reifying what the next stage of the
movement would be I started off this episode with the
Sunday night police raid on the South River Music Festival, because,
(10:55):
for better or worse, what happened on that evening set
the proverbial stage for what the majority of this Week
of Action would look like and how its effects would
ripple out in the coming months. But before we get
to the rest of the week, we first have to
go back to the official start of this Week of
Action to explain how we got here in the first place.
To kick off the Week of Action, a rally was
(11:17):
planned for the morning of Saturday, March fourth, at Gresham
Park in southeast Atlanta. By the time I arrived around
eleven am, hundreds of people were already in the park.
Music was blaring from loudspeakers. Some kids and a few
brave adults were running around throwing multi colored powdered paint
at each other. It was a pretty festive time. Soon enough,
(11:41):
it was time for things to begin. Matthew Johnson, the
interim executive director of Beloved Commune, formerly kicked off the
week aday.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Let's get started, all right. I just want to make
sure that everybody is in the right place. I came
here to.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
Stop cop city. What did you all come here to do?
Speaker 5 (12:12):
What did we come to do?
Speaker 4 (12:16):
What are we come to do?
Speaker 6 (12:19):
What did we come here to do?
Speaker 4 (12:23):
All right, I'm glad that everybody found the right address.
Thank you everybody for joining us.
Speaker 7 (12:33):
It's about two years ago.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
In what was formerly known as Entrenchment Creek Park now
known as Wolani People's Park, where a ragtag bunch of
individuals gathered under a gazebo. That gazebo was illegally destroyed
by Ryan Millsap and his henchmen in an attempt to
(13:07):
break this movement, in an attempt to bury this movement.
Yet every single time that they have tried to bury us,
they have forgotten that we were seeds. Every time that
they thought that they backed us into a corner with
(13:29):
their repression, we had more of you show up and
support this movement, and we thank you so much. They
have set every hurdle in the way of every day
at Lantern's to intimidate them and stop them from supporting
(13:50):
this movement, and we still show up. We appreciate every
single person that has come here to support us in
spite of the terror that the state has tried to
instill in us. We must be very careful and understand
(14:13):
the gravity of the situation that we are in, especially
after we've lost a friend. Okay, thank you for standing
with us. And now there are many things that we
do not agree on. But what did we all come
here to do? So let's remember what got us this
(14:39):
far was a diversity of tactics, and now it's time
for us to double down.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
The crowd gathered was a pretty diverse mix of people
from a variety of backgrounds, beliefs, and preferred tactics on it.
This is Saturday morning. Everyone felt pretty united, whether you
were a kid running around with paint all over your
body or an anarchist addressed head to toe and camo.
Next up, somebody read a statement from the Muscogee elder
Miko Chabbon.
Speaker 8 (15:12):
Colonel, I'm here to read a statement from my Miko
U Miko Shabbon. Yeah, my name is Marty. I'm Muscogee
on my father's side. On my mother's side, I'm Atham
both Acmel and Thana, and my dad's also Filipino. Miko
asked me to read this statement one dotio mart At
(15:36):
this time, I would like to express my gratitude to
all who have conversed onto these ancestral territories of Muscogean
ancestors and modern spiritual inhabitants of the earth that we
now stand on today. We represent a vast society of
peoples whose presence in the colonized named states of Georgia, Alabama,
(15:57):
and Florida have existed for over thirteen thousand years. We
represent a way of life that strove to minimize the
harm that humans can do to the earth, to other species,
and to each other. Today, we continue this movement that
begun many years ago, and we honor those who have
taken footsteps to protect this forest and our relative who
(16:21):
gave the greatest of sacrifices, just as ancestors existed on
these very grounds and carried of faith and confidence in
what our ancient ones passed on to us. May the
hope of peaceful existence for all be achieved for many
more centuries to come. This existence can only occur when
(16:41):
we realize the sacredness of the Wilani Forest, that all
that is natural on this earth, Mother. This type of
existence can only occur when we realize that we all
belong to this earth, and she does not belong to us.
This type of holy existence can only occur when we
realize that no cop city can ever exist because more
(17:03):
weapons only create more violence.
Speaker 7 (17:05):
Woo.
Speaker 8 (17:11):
With these efforts that begin today, perhaps reason will prevail
and we could create a future where all people have
the right to exist. Today, may our dreams for this
forest and the surrounding community come true. For those who
can hear, let them hear.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
The next speaker was from Community Movement Builders, a local
black collectives that focuses on combating and gentrification in police violence.
Speaker 9 (17:36):
I may be a little bit selfish, and my reason
for being here I want to be free.
Speaker 8 (17:45):
I want my.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Children to be free.
Speaker 8 (17:47):
I want my mother to be free.
Speaker 6 (17:49):
I want my father, my brothers and sisters to be free.
And I don't want to have to live a life
in ten years when my babies, my nieces and my
nephews come to me and ask, come, I see, where
were you? What were you doing when they destroyed our
clean water, destroyed our clean air?
Speaker 4 (18:07):
What happened? Why were you not around?
Speaker 6 (18:10):
What were you doing when I when my babies trow
me ten years and they say, comasie, what were you
doing when this country turned into a fascist dystopia?
Speaker 7 (18:17):
What were you doing, Where were you where you're around?
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I can't sit here that shit back and.
Speaker 9 (18:21):
Saying I just sat home.
Speaker 6 (18:23):
And watched this whole well burn to hell.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
I don't believe in the power.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I don't believe in the.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
Power of being periless. I believe in the power of
the people.
Speaker 9 (18:42):
So I say to everyone today that during this week
of action, I don't know where you will be, I
don't know what you will be doing, but we standing
behind you, and we staying with you.
Speaker 6 (18:53):
And we want to show the city of Atlanta. We
wanna show Mary Dickens that he is not fit to
rule and he is not ruling shit.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
I want to show now said the ninety million dollars.
Speaker 6 (19:06):
If exok to build this warfare training facility will not
cross our communities wheo. So we also want to show
the city of that letter that again we are ready
to stop really surviving to start living.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Finally, our last person, Reverend le O'Shea, is a Baptist
minister part of the Stop Coppa City Clergy Coalition, which
we'll talk a bit more about in the next episode.
Speaker 10 (19:38):
And I believe my faith compels me and convicts me
that in this moment, the work that has been done.
And the work that is to come to defend this,
our beloved family, this, our siblings, the earth is a
holy and righteous work. It is a holy and righteous
(20:05):
work that is grounded in a faithful rage, a rage
which has been boiling in the human family's blood for
centuries and meets us care at this moment and asks us,
what will you do to defend those who have no defense?
(20:27):
What will you do to protect those who have no shelter?
Speaker 4 (20:31):
What will you.
Speaker 10 (20:32):
Do when the time comes to decide on whose sides
you are on? Will you stand for oppression or will
you stand for the liberation of all people? My friends,
(20:55):
I come with some good news if that's okay. And
the good news is that God stands on the side
of the oppress. God stands on the side of the
forest defenders. God stands on the side of the most marginalized.
(21:16):
And let us make no mistake that in our protests
and in our rage, we also have to cry out
and lament. We cannot be silent as do du Gita's
blood cries out from the ground. We must honor a
(21:37):
life that did not have to be lost. It did
not have to be this way.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
Do not listen to anyone who tells.
Speaker 10 (21:47):
You that there is not a better way. There is
always a better way. Do I come with my faith
and the conviction that in this work, in this moment,
a prophetic imagination, a creative vision is needed for the
(22:07):
world that we want to see. I'm not here to
wait for the Kingdom of God. I want the Kingdom
of God right now, right now.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
After the speeches were finished, it was announced that the crowd,
now nearing a thousand strong, would gather up together and
march to Ailani People's Park to retake the forest. As
everyone was getting ready to leave, you could see the
care and solidarity people had for each other on full display.
Bike scouts were checking to see if the path was clear,
(22:41):
volunteer street medics ready to help anyone in need. Water
bottles were being handed out to keep everyone hydrated, while
others autonomously coordinated rides for people unable to make The
walk looks like approximately one thousand people marching from Gresham
Park to Alani People's Park. On the bike that's up,
(23:02):
I can't even see the end of where, of where
the of where the people stop. It's a long, long
stretch of people marshing hundreds and hundreds of feet. There's
some banners in front of the march. One of them
reads disarm, defund, dismantle, no cop city. There's one of
the sun shining over a pink sky with a little
(23:26):
blue turtle and their shell is the earth. Massive like
ten person banner that reads defend the Forest. The energy
of the march remained high as people chanted to the
beat of drums. I sat down with Matt from the
Atlantic Community Press Collective towards the end of the week
to talk about what we saw throughout this week of action.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
At one point, the entire crowd, seemingly the entire crowd
was chanting if you build it, we will burn it,
which seems.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Almost like a thousand people.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yeah, and it was being chanted like, you know, looking
around the crowd, you saw everyone for the most part,
partaking in that. So that was a very interesting moment
where it felt like there was that sort of solidarity
(24:20):
amongst the varied groups that make up the Defend the
Atlanta Forest movement.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
As the march went on, the path was getting increasingly forested.
About two thirds of the way to Wallani People's Park,
after turning a bend, the crowd noticed three deer frolicking
alongside the march from further within the tree line. To
(24:46):
quote the Atlanta Community Press Collectives right up of the
march quote, the joyous mood shifted slightly as the protest
closed in on the People's Park, passing over the remains
of the bike path destroyed in December by film executive
Ryan Millsap, activists were uncertain what they were walking into
or whether the police would offer any resistance.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Activists thought that there was going to be an issue.
They were concerned about the police being in Willani People's Park.
So about halfway we saw that stack of makeshift shields
made out of plastic rain barrels.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
About two dozen of those five gatlandrum shields just mysteriously
showed up along the bike path. We are arriving at
Willanne People's Park, no cops.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
But then when we got there there was no police whatsoever.
From what the scanner people told us, there were police around,
they were just kind of monitoring from afar, but no
police ever entered the park. And it was I would
say it was a really nice high point return to the.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Forest, banners and shields moving around Willanne People's Park as
hundreds and hundreds of more people still pour in from
the bike path. As the back of the march finally arrived,
the crowd gathered up one more time to all chant
out a promise in unison.
Speaker 11 (26:12):
I will, I will.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
One of the activists I interviewed during the Week of
Action was Matthew Johnson, the person who kicked off the
rally at Gresham Park. We talked about the methodology of
starting off this Week of Action with this big inclusive
march and how that may have helped achieve the goal
of retaking the forest that first day.
Speaker 7 (26:45):
We wanted to be sure that we would be able
to reoccupy the park and what that would entail is
having a wide swath of the law, your public involved
with any efforts to enter into the park. And so
(27:08):
we had the rally Aggression Park and there was a
march planned from that part to Wallani People's Park. There
is violence that people have become accustomed to when it
is people on the political fringes. That's just where we're
(27:28):
at in the political situation in Atlanta. However, when you
have several people that you would consider more normal, liberal, progressive, etc.
Like representatives from NGO's nonprofit organizations, just normal people that
also want to see the project shut down cop City.
(27:51):
That's when you have the ability to move towards people
that want to reoccupy, having the space to do that
with the seeing tons of police repression as we have
seen in the movement.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Recent After reaching Wallaanni People's Park, many of those who
arrived from out of town for this week of action,
myself included, stopped by the shrine for Tortighita just off
(28:24):
of the tree line. People added new wildflowers and packs
of fruit snacks. You're going to walk over to the
Torti Guita vigil site looks about the same as last
time I was here. Many candles, little turtles, still a
few fruit snacks. Although the vigil shrine was the same
as last time I saw it, almost everything else about
(28:47):
being in this place was different. When I was here
last time in January, it was a dark place of grief.
The forest was barren, with all of the trees in
their bare winter state. But looking around the forest this
first sunny day, you could see new life growing all
around you. To quote the Community Press Collective again quote,
(29:07):
small campsites begin to crop up across the landscape. Some
nestled in sunnier spaces. Others tucked into thickets, providing shelter
and cooler climate for the new residence. The trees themselves
reflected this next phase. Sprigs of new growth leaves appeared
on the ends of barren branches. Small white flowers bloomed
along the periphery of the parking lot. After months of
(29:30):
desolation and death, life prevailed and spring arrives in the forest. Unquote.
I'm excited to get back into the forest because it
is so hot, and get back in the forest I did.
One of the events that happened almost daily throughout the
week was tours of the eastern side of the Wallani Forest.
(29:53):
The walks through the woods were led by Joe Perry,
a member of the South River Forest Coalition. I was
able to attend the first tour during the Week of
Action and got consent to record some of the forest walk.
Speaker 12 (30:05):
All right, hey, y'all, welcome to the living room, so
named because it's it's a very inviting and comfortable place
to relax. This is where a lot of the meetings
happened during the previous Week of action. People gather and
have different events here. Oftentimes it will be food available here, campfires, silverware.
(30:34):
So it's also just a very very comfortable place to
relax because it's in this in this pine forest and
so not really any undergrowth, and just super comfortable. It's
a really good place to have meetings and uh and
just kind of get to know each other and establish
(30:54):
some calm.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
We made our way from the living room to the
Grandmother Tree, a large oak that is estimated to be
a few hundred years old. On our way to Ryan
Millsaps proposed a site for so called Michelle Obama Park,
which is currently a forty acre mound of dirt about
thirty feet high. We walked past some old tents that
were slashed apart during the January raid. Among the destroyed
(31:18):
remains were little pink flowers growing out of the ground. Next,
we headed to Entrenchment Creek. Joe Perry explained some of
the background regarding the environmental state of the watershed and
how protecting the forest is a crucial step in the
process of helping the land heal itself.
Speaker 12 (31:36):
I got involved with a group called the South River
Forest Coalition. We are trying to help further the vision
of the South River Forest that Ryan Gravelle and the
Nature Conservancy came up with to try to interweave about
thirty five hundred acres of forest with the other businesses
(31:57):
and homes and lands around this area that are in
the watershed of the South River forest and Entrenchmont Creek,
which we will see on this tour, is the main
tributary to the South River. The South River is the
fourth most endangered river in this country. In Trenchmon Creek
is one of the most polluted creeks in this county.
(32:20):
And so that is what we're trying to protect. And
in order to protect a river and a creek and
a watershed, you have to protect the forest that's around it.
I've been exploring these woods for the last decade and
leading tours and talking to people about it, trying to
explain what's going on with a lawsuit, trying to explain
what's going on the difference between in Trenchmont Creek Park
(32:42):
and the prison farm and the acreage and all these
other things, and all that stuff. It's just like it's
just gears turning in your head because when you come
out here and enjoy this, I mean, this is really
what it's all about. This is all we have to
do to convince people that this is worth saving it.
Just bring you out here and let you appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
As masses of people converged at Wallani People's Park Saturday afternoon,
almost immediately a whole bunch of pop up infrastructure was
set up to facilitate an encampment in the woods once again,
really for the first time in any kind of large
capacity since January and even December. The December raids decimated
much of the camp infrastructure, which still had not been
(33:24):
rebuilt since then. But upon arriving from Gresham Park on Saturday,
both first time of visitors to the Wallani Forest and
seasoned forest defenders worked together to rebuild a lot of
that infrastructure to support camp life for the next week.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
One of the things that we saw on the march
in was like eight cinder blocks right at the entrance
to the living room, and then you and I went
into the living room, we saw these huge water tanks.
So later they moved those water tanks to those cinder
blocks and that has become or a watering point for everyone.
(34:00):
So like twice a day a truck comes with a
water tank on the back and then they go through
the arduous process of filling that water so that everybody
in camp can have water. And they had this system
that was seemingly self organized. And then that first day
we were sitting in the parking lot and it seemed
like every time you turn around there was like a
(34:21):
different train of people carrying supplies into the living room.
The second day, there was a woman who was shoveling
gravel from the torn up concrete on the side, and
she was filling all of the brandom holes in the
ground so that carts could go up them. And I
(34:44):
was like, you know, did somebody assign this to you?
She's like, no, I saw this. It just needed to
be done, and I did it. And that was very
much the entire vibe of those first I would say
twenty four hours was okay, what do we need to
do to get thing running?
Speaker 1 (35:01):
As encampments were being established, simultaneously, infrastructure for the South
River Music Festival was being erected in the adjacent radio
control field. Within a short amount of time, a full
stage was constructed, complete with lights and speakers, lining the
sides of the field, where various tables and booths. One
(35:22):
side featured a large variety of refreshments as well as
a medic tent, and the other side was home to
free hot food and freshly grilled burgers and hot dogs.
Next to the food were a few tables distributing an
array of radical literature posters and stickers. What was your
favorite stuff at Music of Festa?
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Sure, well, there was an arapa table, and I'm very
food motivated, so the arapas were delicious, and we had
walked a bunch that day, so yeah, I needed sustenance.
And then there was the burger table as well, but
we I don't think. I don't know if you got
a burger, but I did not get a burger.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
I got I got one burger, but they were out
of buns. When I got a Burger's, I had a
lettuce burger. And then soon after they they they got
the buns back, and I was kind of kind of bummed.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Yeah I did not. At least you got something, uh,
but I had the rapist.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
So I mean, still hundred worth, to be fair, hundreds
of people were they've they've had five hundred people, you know,
And at one point they made announcement that like they
needed to do another food run just to go get
more more food, and like a bunch of people volunteered.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
And you know, only I think two or three went
down to Walmart to get a bunch of more burgers
and hot dogs, and it was just a really cool moment.
So I think by the end the end of the
night when I was there, they were about five hundred
people just enjoying the music and looking at the sky.
It was just an immaculate vibe. There was a little
fire pick off to the side. And yeah, you talked
about the setting up the stage. You know, I didn't
(36:47):
know what to expect walking in there is not expecting
quite that much of a production. I wasn't expecting a
light pledge stage with lights all around sort of in
this really like the the lighting worked really well for it,
backdropped the surrounding forest, nice like green and purple lighting.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Yeah, it was great.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
And then they had that green room tent back there,
and then they had a separate tent for equipment. Like
it was a very well thought out festival in the
middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
The South River Music Festival began early Saturday evening at
five point thirty, kicking off two days of local musical
artists playing shows free of charge. Before the lineup of
live music began. Someone on stage read out a small
flyer that was being passed around, detailing the reasoning for
the festival and its place within the fight to defend
(37:40):
the forest, and I got permission to share that reading.
Speaker 5 (37:44):
In the limitless possibilities of the cosmos, in the mad
flecks of events, reactions, and anomalies of the past twelve
billion years since the birth of our universe, it's a
statistical impossibility that we would be here now, But here
we are alive. Together. Such incredible circumstances have brought us here.
(38:07):
Among them the incredible and innovative resistance to defend this
place from becoming a police training compound.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
Magic mushrooms.
Speaker 5 (38:20):
Out of this resistance which brings us together the most
cunning and resilient techniques of the radical environmentalist movement with
the incredible courage and ferocity of the George Floyd Uprising.
Is not just about a small piece of land. It's
not about being fought between police and their goons on
one hand and some activists and their friends on the other.
(38:41):
We are witnessing a collision of two competing ideas of happiness,
of life, of the future. In this competition, experiments with
new types of free culture play a decisive role. This
movement cannot be reduced to what is happening in city hall,
on social media, or in meetings. For two years, we
(39:04):
have descended on these woods, finding refuge from the high
rents and predatory bookings fees of the corporate venues and bars.
We have not come here to redecorate the actions of
some activists as allies, lending our service to the drab
and loveless militancy of something we do not otherwise care about.
As the gentrification of Atlanta intensifies, more and more diy
(39:26):
venues and clubs are shutdown, and free spaces to play,
shows and dance are push further and further from the
city center. Our free time is pinched as rents increase
and traffic keeps us waiting longer and longer. That is
going to change. Music is not like other forms of
(39:47):
human culture. It is different from painting, drawing, poetry, literature,
or film art. Politics, and symbolic culture in general represent
the passions conjuring strong feelings from the shadows of reality,
pulling them from the depths of the soul or the
back of consciousness. Music, on the other hand, is perhaps
(40:07):
the only form of human creativity that contacts those feelings
without any mediations. Music is physics, music is reality. The
system we live in is at war with reality. The
system is destroying forests, rivers, mountaintops, and oceans, is destroying
our imaginations, our bodies in our world. To defend ourselves
(40:29):
from certain annihilation, it will not be sufficient to strike
the right notes at the right time. We will have
to make recourse to other means, to more direct means,
and that is why we're all here. The defend the
Atlanta Forest Revolution will be economic, political, as well as cultural.
(40:50):
We're building a new era of human history where music
will be at the steering wheel. What is needed cannot
be taught without first being discovered. We are those adventurers
plunging the depths of the cosmos for the contours and
textures of a free existence, of a life without dead time.
When it is necessary, we will defend ourselves by the
means appropriate to the task. Not with words, not with denunciations,
(41:13):
but with actions, real and concrete, actions as real as
the sound, as real as reality. I so lucky to
be here with y'all. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Across the middle of the field, hundreds of people laid
out blankets on the grass and dirt. Concertgoers alternated between
a dancing in front of the stage and relaxing and
eating food on picnic blankets. As the night approached, over
a thousand people were spread out across the RC field.
Amoshe pit had formed directly in front of the stage.
(41:47):
Musicians led stop Kopcity chants, and between sets, people spoke
on mic about the movement.
Speaker 13 (41:53):
Everybody say, stop cop City, Stop cop City.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Saturday night was headlined by local Atlanta rapper Zach Fox.
Zach told stories about how he and his friends used
to hang out in this very forest as teenagers.
Speaker 14 (42:12):
All Right, y'all, man, Hey, i'm gonna say this, Fuck
the mayor. I'm gonna say this, fuck the mayor and
fuck all this shit. And I love everybody for coming
out to support this shit. And you're really fucking when
(42:32):
I tell you me, Archie, everybody used to walk back
in these woods and drink red stripes and walk our
dogs and shoot guns and shit. So I really don't
want to see this shit happen. And I really appreciate
Allia for coming out to do this shit.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Fuck cop City chants, erupted pretty regularly throughout the night.
Speaker 14 (42:55):
And this is all I'm gonna tell the Paulies. This
is all I'm gonna tell the Paulies. Okay, hold on,
let me make sure I push the right button.
Speaker 13 (43:06):
Sing that shit. Let's go fucking run it. Fucking run it,
fucking run it, fucking run it, fucking run it, fucking
run it. FUCKO, run it, Atlanta. I love y'all so much.
Speaker 14 (43:26):
Man, Hell yeah, hey man, let me say something real quick.
Let me say something real quick before I get the
fuck on saves. Let my hummies right this shit. I
love y'all so much for supporting this ship I have.
Let me tell you. Let me tell you something. I'm
thirty two. A lot of niggas start getting old and
they lose faith in the youth. I got so much
(43:47):
faith in everybody in this motherfucking bitch. Wherever y'all going,
I'm going, I truly believe that y'all gonna save this
motherfucking world. So I'm with y'all. Fuck cop City, fuck
cops in general, fuck twelve, fuck authoritarianism, fuck capitalism, fuck
(44:08):
all that bullshit. I'm with you out today. So ill
motherfucking die. So let me. Hear y'all say this one
more time.
Speaker 13 (44:17):
Stay bu twell. Stip bobow stick bob twel stip bob twell.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Besides the domestic terrorism banner I mentioned in the opening
of this episode, another banner was hung up beside the
stage featuring turtles and butterflies, along with the Asada Shakur quote.
Love is our sword, truth is our compass. This kind
of music is about the natty to nature, filling the trees,
(44:49):
feeling the ground, filling each other. Look right up there,
look at the fucking moon two qui a communicate from
the Sonic Defense Committee quote. At this point it was
impossible to imagine a meaningful police intervention. The crowd was
made up of elderly people, university students, rappers, indigenous activists,
(45:14):
toddlers and newborns, skaters, people of all imaginable Atlanta demographics.
The night ended around three thirty am to sounds of
house techno and drum and bass without any notable incident. Unquote.
Tents were set up all over the eastern side of
the forest, with many people choosing to sleep under the
tree canopy between the living room and the music festival
(45:37):
for that first night. As the night went on, people
carefully tended small campfires, both in the festival field and
in the middle of the living room. To quote the
Press Collective, the movement was once again living in joyous
harmony with the forest it had promised to protect. Tomorrow's
episode will cover day two of the music festival, the
(45:58):
frankly unprecedented direct that took place Sunday afternoon, and a
more detailed look at the police raid that happened later
that evening. See You on the Other Side. Music Festival
audio courtesy of Unicorn Riot. It Could Happen Here as
a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
(46:19):
cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com or
check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 5 (46:27):
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
Thanks for listening.
It's a warm spring afternoon in Atlanta, Georgia. You and
some of your friends are dancing in the sunlight at
a music festival in South Atlanta. It's day two of
the South River Music Festival. Last night, you stayed up
till three am, alternating between moshing in the pit and
laying down on a blanket looking up at the night sky,
trying to see stars through the light pollution. After you
(00:27):
had your fill of DM you called it a night
and hastily set up a tent in the forest near
the edge of the festival. You tried to sleep as
long as you could, but soon enough the hustle and
bustle around the forest beckoned you out of your tent.
As you mosed on over back to the music festival,
immediately something new caught your eye, a large, multi colored
inflatable bouncy castle sitting right in the middle of the
(00:50):
field with a big stopcop City banner hung along the side.
After you fully woke up, you grabbed a free breakfast
burrito and took a walk through the winding forest. Now
that you've finished your breakfast, you're back at the far
end of the open field in front of the stage,
where there's been live music playing for the past few hours.
(01:12):
You and some friends briefly try a stint in the
bouncy castle, but quickly return to the festival stage as
you tire out much faster than you expected. As the
sun is barely starting to set around six pm, suddenly
you notice the faint scream of police sirens piercing through
the music being blasted from on stage. You stand up
(01:33):
as the sirens get louder and closer, until a burst
of police cars zoom past the music festival at high speed.
A short sigh of relief is followed by confusion where
else would a whole bunch of police cars be going,
But as nothing seems to come of it, everyone starts
to relax and begin enjoying music once again with the
(01:56):
apparent absence of police. There's a if you brief moments
of peace at the festival as things continue as scheduled,
except you can't help but notice the police helicopter is
flying across the forest toward the festival. As you take
note of the chopper, you receive a signal message from
a friend quote cops have entered the parking lot with
(02:18):
AR fifteen's. You lift up your mask and start running
across the field to the parking lot at Willawnee People's Park.
But before you even make it halfway across, you notice
up ahead a few dozen police officers sprinting into the
open field from the festival side entrance. As the sun
(02:39):
is setting, a group of cops run past the bouncy
house and start chasing down seemingly random concert goers and
loan stragglers. One officer points his rifle at the bouncy
house as another turns off the generator. You group up
with other people from the festival in hopes of working
together to incentivize police to leave the area. As you
(03:01):
get closer, the cops start getting more aggressive. Just up ahead,
a bit further into the woods, close to where you
set up your tent, you hear some loud bangs and
see a flash of bright light. First, you assume it's
just fireworks being used to hold off the cops, until
you start coughing and see the faint plume of tear
(03:21):
gas seeping in from the forest. You're forced to fall
back to the festival and regroup with people by the
stage where music is still being played. As you're running back,
you can see dozens of people in zip ti cuffs,
many still pinned to the ground, still coughing from the gas.
You make your way back to where you are washing
the previous night. The crowd of festivalgoers tightens up as
(03:45):
riot vans and a bear cat pull into the field
next to the deflated bouncy castle. Police swat teams surround
the South River Music Festival and creep towards the stage,
threatening to charge hundreds of people with domestic terrorism. Hanging
on the backdrop of the stage is a massive banner
that reads, quote in the eyes of the state, all
(04:07):
who resist white supremacy, colonialism, environmental racism, gentrification, and police
militarization are domestic terrorists unquote. That was the evening of Sunday,
March fifth, twenty twenty three. This is it could happen here.
I'm Garrison Davis. I arrived in Atlanta a few days
(04:30):
prior in preparation for the March Week of Action to
defend the Atlanta Forest and stop cop City. This is
part one of a four part series covering this week
of action, featuring interviews, reportbacks, and analysis from both participants
and observers like myself. This four part series will be
a follow up of sorts to the four stop Coop
(04:50):
City episodes we put together last January following the death
of forest defender Tortigita at the hands of the Georgia
State Patrol, as well as building off my previous year
of work covering the movement to defend the Atlanta Forest.
But in case you're new or need a refresher, For
over two years now, activists and community members have been
(05:11):
in a fight to save the Wallani Forest from being
turned into a massive ninety million dollar police training facility
stretching across one hundred and seventy acres, with plans to
include a mock city for urban combat training to quell
civil descent. The cop City project is being led by
the Atlanta Police Foundation, one of the most powerful police
(05:32):
lobbying groups in the country. Following seventeen hours of public comment,
seventy percent of which was against the facility, the Atlanta
City Council voted to approve the project's lease in September
of twenty twenty one, despite months of protests and community organizing.
Later that fall, people started occupying and camping out in
the Wallani Forest to maintain a physical presence in the woods.
(05:55):
In hopes of preventing or delaying construction. Infrastructure to support
long time ter encampments grew over the next year, with
forest defenders erecting treehouses, road blockades, and making the forest
a place that people could actually live in with outdoor kitchens,
community gardens, and places to sleep, whether that be up
in a tree or in a tent. For a while
(06:16):
it seemed to be working. Throughout twenty twenty two, construction
continued to stall. Almost every time cops and workers came
in to start cutting trees, they were met with resistance.
Construction equipment left around the forest was routinely sabotaged, and
last year a tertiary targeting campaign resulted in the general
contractor for a cop City Reeves Young construction, to drop
(06:38):
out of the project. Police enacted multiple raids on the
forest in twenty twenty two, trying to flush out any
forest defenders camping out in the woods and tear down
encampment infrastructure, but the occupation was generally able to bounce
back pretty quick. As the movement to stop cop City
was seemingly winning, police intensified their repression as a series
(07:00):
of raids in December of last year decimated much of
the infrastructure that was built up over the course of
that year and left six people with domestic terrorism charges.
But things got worse just a month later. In January
of twenty twenty three, multiple police agencies engaged in a
mass raid of the Wallani Forest, destroying all remaining campsites.
(07:21):
About an hour into the January eighteenth raid, the Georgia
State Patrol swat team killed a twenty six year old
forest defender, Manuel Tehran, also known by their forest name Tortigita.
Decab County's autopsy found at least fifty seven gunshot wounds
from multiple officers. We'll talk more about the results from
various autopsies in a later episode, but just a few
(07:43):
weeks ago, tort would have turned twenty seven. The other
side of the Defend the Forest movement is focused on
a smaller section of the Wallani Forest just east of
Entrenchment Creek. Initially in hopes of expanding his movie studios,
The now former own of Blackhall Studios, Ryan Millsap, has
been trying to gain control of forty acres of public
(08:05):
parkland through a shady landswap deal with Decap County that's
currently subject to legal disputes. The slate of land in
question contains the popular meeting spot in the forest known
as the Living Room, which acts as a sort of
central hub, as well as what's referred to as Wilawni
People's Park, where the Park gazebe used to be before
Ryan Millsap demolished it, later ripping out all of the
(08:28):
grass and sidewalks in a once again legally questionable move.
In January, Wilani People's Park also became home to the
vigil site for Tortigita all at Let Matt from the
Atlantic Community Press Collective explain the other happenings in the
woods since January.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
They got their land disturbance permit in late January, and
the first phase of the land disturbance permit only allows
for soil erosion control work, So to this point, essentially
what they've done is they've cut some paths into the
forest into the proposed site, and then around the exterior
(09:08):
of the site they've clear cut a line in order
to install silt fencing, so there isn't a large amount
of infrastructure. They're not allowed to do a large amount
of disturbance right now. They're in like the pre construction
phase right now. So they started in February and they
did a lot of work very quickly. They installed a
(09:29):
privacy fence, so you can't really see what's going on,
so our general understanding of it, like comes from drone footage.
It actually slowed down a couple weeks later, and from
what I understand, they began to pull some construction equipment out,
probably not wanting to leave, you know, a target for
shall we say, any sort of spicy activities.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
But not all of their construction equipment was removed, as
everyone would soon find out. The deadly January raid left
the community in mourning and unsure of how the fight
(10:12):
to stop Copp City would evolve. With the use of
lethal force and the loss of a friend, the Forest
Defender's semi permanent occupation of the Wallani Forest ended after
that raid, but the fight was far from over. About
a month after the January raid, local Atlantans put out
a call for supporters across the country to converge in
(10:34):
Atlanta in early March for a mass gathering known as
a Week of Action. There have been four previous Weeks
of Action, but this one, more than any other, would
be crucial in reifying what the next stage of the
movement would be I started off this episode with the
Sunday night police raid on the South River Music Festival, because,
(10:55):
for better or worse, what happened on that evening set
the proverbial stage for what the majority of this Week
of Action would look like and how its effects would
ripple out in the coming months. But before we get
to the rest of the week, we first have to
go back to the official start of this Week of
Action to explain how we got here in the first place.
To kick off the Week of Action, a rally was
(11:17):
planned for the morning of Saturday, March fourth, at Gresham
Park in southeast Atlanta. By the time I arrived around
eleven am, hundreds of people were already in the park.
Music was blaring from loudspeakers. Some kids and a few
brave adults were running around throwing multi colored powdered paint
at each other. It was a pretty festive time. Soon enough,
(11:41):
it was time for things to begin. Matthew Johnson, the
interim executive director of Beloved Commune, formerly kicked off the
week aday.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Let's get started, all right. I just want to make
sure that everybody is in the right place. I came
here to.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
Stop cop city. What did you all come here to do?
Speaker 5 (12:12):
What did we come to do?
Speaker 4 (12:16):
What are we come to do?
Speaker 6 (12:19):
What did we come here to do?
Speaker 4 (12:23):
All right, I'm glad that everybody found the right address.
Thank you everybody for joining us.
Speaker 7 (12:33):
It's about two years ago.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
In what was formerly known as Entrenchment Creek Park now
known as Wolani People's Park, where a ragtag bunch of
individuals gathered under a gazebo. That gazebo was illegally destroyed
by Ryan Millsap and his henchmen in an attempt to
(13:07):
break this movement, in an attempt to bury this movement.
Yet every single time that they have tried to bury us,
they have forgotten that we were seeds. Every time that
they thought that they backed us into a corner with
(13:29):
their repression, we had more of you show up and
support this movement, and we thank you so much. They
have set every hurdle in the way of every day
at Lantern's to intimidate them and stop them from supporting
(13:50):
this movement, and we still show up. We appreciate every
single person that has come here to support us in
spite of the terror that the state has tried to
instill in us. We must be very careful and understand
(14:13):
the gravity of the situation that we are in, especially
after we've lost a friend. Okay, thank you for standing
with us. And now there are many things that we
do not agree on. But what did we all come
here to do? So let's remember what got us this
(14:39):
far was a diversity of tactics, and now it's time
for us to double down.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
The crowd gathered was a pretty diverse mix of people
from a variety of backgrounds, beliefs, and preferred tactics on it.
This is Saturday morning. Everyone felt pretty united, whether you
were a kid running around with paint all over your
body or an anarchist addressed head to toe and camo.
Next up, somebody read a statement from the Muscogee elder
Miko Chabbon.
Speaker 8 (15:12):
Colonel, I'm here to read a statement from my Miko
U Miko Shabbon. Yeah, my name is Marty. I'm Muscogee
on my father's side. On my mother's side, I'm Atham
both Acmel and Thana, and my dad's also Filipino. Miko
asked me to read this statement one dotio mart At
(15:36):
this time, I would like to express my gratitude to
all who have conversed onto these ancestral territories of Muscogean
ancestors and modern spiritual inhabitants of the earth that we
now stand on today. We represent a vast society of
peoples whose presence in the colonized named states of Georgia, Alabama,
(15:57):
and Florida have existed for over thirteen thousand years. We
represent a way of life that strove to minimize the
harm that humans can do to the earth, to other species,
and to each other. Today, we continue this movement that
begun many years ago, and we honor those who have
taken footsteps to protect this forest and our relative who
(16:21):
gave the greatest of sacrifices, just as ancestors existed on
these very grounds and carried of faith and confidence in
what our ancient ones passed on to us. May the
hope of peaceful existence for all be achieved for many
more centuries to come. This existence can only occur when
(16:41):
we realize the sacredness of the Wilani Forest, that all
that is natural on this earth, Mother. This type of
existence can only occur when we realize that we all
belong to this earth, and she does not belong to us.
This type of holy existence can only occur when we
realize that no cop city can ever exist because more
(17:03):
weapons only create more violence.
Speaker 7 (17:05):
Woo.
Speaker 8 (17:11):
With these efforts that begin today, perhaps reason will prevail
and we could create a future where all people have
the right to exist. Today, may our dreams for this
forest and the surrounding community come true. For those who
can hear, let them hear.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
The next speaker was from Community Movement Builders, a local
black collectives that focuses on combating and gentrification in police violence.
Speaker 9 (17:36):
I may be a little bit selfish, and my reason
for being here I want to be free.
Speaker 8 (17:45):
I want my.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Children to be free.
Speaker 8 (17:47):
I want my mother to be free.
Speaker 6 (17:49):
I want my father, my brothers and sisters to be free.
And I don't want to have to live a life
in ten years when my babies, my nieces and my
nephews come to me and ask, come, I see, where
were you? What were you doing when they destroyed our
clean water, destroyed our clean air?
Speaker 4 (18:07):
What happened? Why were you not around?
Speaker 6 (18:10):
What were you doing when I when my babies trow
me ten years and they say, comasie, what were you
doing when this country turned into a fascist dystopia?
Speaker 7 (18:17):
What were you doing, Where were you where you're around?
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I can't sit here that shit back and.
Speaker 9 (18:21):
Saying I just sat home.
Speaker 6 (18:23):
And watched this whole well burn to hell.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
I don't believe in the power.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I don't believe in the.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
Power of being periless. I believe in the power of
the people.
Speaker 9 (18:42):
So I say to everyone today that during this week
of action, I don't know where you will be, I
don't know what you will be doing, but we standing
behind you, and we staying with you.
Speaker 6 (18:53):
And we want to show the city of Atlanta. We
wanna show Mary Dickens that he is not fit to
rule and he is not ruling shit.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
I want to show now said the ninety million dollars.
Speaker 6 (19:06):
If exok to build this warfare training facility will not
cross our communities wheo. So we also want to show
the city of that letter that again we are ready
to stop really surviving to start living.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Finally, our last person, Reverend le O'Shea, is a Baptist
minister part of the Stop Coppa City Clergy Coalition, which
we'll talk a bit more about in the next episode.
Speaker 10 (19:38):
And I believe my faith compels me and convicts me
that in this moment, the work that has been done.
And the work that is to come to defend this,
our beloved family, this, our siblings, the earth is a
holy and righteous work. It is a holy and righteous
(20:05):
work that is grounded in a faithful rage, a rage
which has been boiling in the human family's blood for
centuries and meets us care at this moment and asks us,
what will you do to defend those who have no defense?
(20:27):
What will you do to protect those who have no shelter?
Speaker 4 (20:31):
What will you.
Speaker 10 (20:32):
Do when the time comes to decide on whose sides
you are on? Will you stand for oppression or will
you stand for the liberation of all people? My friends,
(20:55):
I come with some good news if that's okay. And
the good news is that God stands on the side
of the oppress. God stands on the side of the
forest defenders. God stands on the side of the most marginalized.
(21:16):
And let us make no mistake that in our protests
and in our rage, we also have to cry out
and lament. We cannot be silent as do du Gita's
blood cries out from the ground. We must honor a
(21:37):
life that did not have to be lost. It did
not have to be this way.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
Do not listen to anyone who tells.
Speaker 10 (21:47):
You that there is not a better way. There is
always a better way. Do I come with my faith
and the conviction that in this work, in this moment,
a prophetic imagination, a creative vision is needed for the
(22:07):
world that we want to see. I'm not here to
wait for the Kingdom of God. I want the Kingdom
of God right now, right now.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
After the speeches were finished, it was announced that the crowd,
now nearing a thousand strong, would gather up together and
march to Ailani People's Park to retake the forest. As
everyone was getting ready to leave, you could see the
care and solidarity people had for each other on full display.
Bike scouts were checking to see if the path was clear,
(22:41):
volunteer street medics ready to help anyone in need. Water
bottles were being handed out to keep everyone hydrated, while
others autonomously coordinated rides for people unable to make The
walk looks like approximately one thousand people marching from Gresham
Park to Alani People's Park. On the bike that's up,
(23:02):
I can't even see the end of where, of where
the of where the people stop. It's a long, long
stretch of people marshing hundreds and hundreds of feet. There's
some banners in front of the march. One of them
reads disarm, defund, dismantle, no cop city. There's one of
the sun shining over a pink sky with a little
(23:26):
blue turtle and their shell is the earth. Massive like
ten person banner that reads defend the Forest. The energy
of the march remained high as people chanted to the
beat of drums. I sat down with Matt from the
Atlantic Community Press Collective towards the end of the week
to talk about what we saw throughout this week of action.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
At one point, the entire crowd, seemingly the entire crowd
was chanting if you build it, we will burn it,
which seems.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Almost like a thousand people.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yeah, and it was being chanted like, you know, looking
around the crowd, you saw everyone for the most part,
partaking in that. So that was a very interesting moment
where it felt like there was that sort of solidarity
(24:20):
amongst the varied groups that make up the Defend the
Atlanta Forest movement.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
As the march went on, the path was getting increasingly forested.
About two thirds of the way to Wallani People's Park,
after turning a bend, the crowd noticed three deer frolicking
alongside the march from further within the tree line. To
(24:46):
quote the Atlanta Community Press Collectives right up of the
march quote, the joyous mood shifted slightly as the protest
closed in on the People's Park, passing over the remains
of the bike path destroyed in December by film executive
Ryan Millsap, activists were uncertain what they were walking into
or whether the police would offer any resistance.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Activists thought that there was going to be an issue.
They were concerned about the police being in Willani People's Park.
So about halfway we saw that stack of makeshift shields
made out of plastic rain barrels.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
About two dozen of those five gatlandrum shields just mysteriously
showed up along the bike path. We are arriving at
Willanne People's Park, no cops.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
But then when we got there there was no police whatsoever.
From what the scanner people told us, there were police around,
they were just kind of monitoring from afar, but no
police ever entered the park. And it was I would
say it was a really nice high point return to the.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Forest, banners and shields moving around Willanne People's Park as
hundreds and hundreds of more people still pour in from
the bike path. As the back of the march finally arrived,
the crowd gathered up one more time to all chant
out a promise in unison.
Speaker 11 (26:12):
I will, I will.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
One of the activists I interviewed during the Week of
Action was Matthew Johnson, the person who kicked off the
rally at Gresham Park. We talked about the methodology of
starting off this Week of Action with this big inclusive
march and how that may have helped achieve the goal
of retaking the forest that first day.
Speaker 7 (26:45):
We wanted to be sure that we would be able
to reoccupy the park and what that would entail is
having a wide swath of the law, your public involved
with any efforts to enter into the park. And so
(27:08):
we had the rally Aggression Park and there was a
march planned from that part to Wallani People's Park. There
is violence that people have become accustomed to when it
is people on the political fringes. That's just where we're
(27:28):
at in the political situation in Atlanta. However, when you
have several people that you would consider more normal, liberal, progressive, etc.
Like representatives from NGO's nonprofit organizations, just normal people that
also want to see the project shut down cop City.
(27:51):
That's when you have the ability to move towards people
that want to reoccupy, having the space to do that
with the seeing tons of police repression as we have
seen in the movement.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Recent After reaching Wallaanni People's Park, many of those who
arrived from out of town for this week of action,
myself included, stopped by the shrine for Tortighita just off
(28:24):
of the tree line. People added new wildflowers and packs
of fruit snacks. You're going to walk over to the
Torti Guita vigil site looks about the same as last
time I was here. Many candles, little turtles, still a
few fruit snacks. Although the vigil shrine was the same
as last time I saw it, almost everything else about
(28:47):
being in this place was different. When I was here
last time in January, it was a dark place of grief.
The forest was barren, with all of the trees in
their bare winter state. But looking around the forest this
first sunny day, you could see new life growing all
around you. To quote the Community Press Collective again quote,
(29:07):
small campsites begin to crop up across the landscape. Some
nestled in sunnier spaces. Others tucked into thickets, providing shelter
and cooler climate for the new residence. The trees themselves
reflected this next phase. Sprigs of new growth leaves appeared
on the ends of barren branches. Small white flowers bloomed
along the periphery of the parking lot. After months of
(29:30):
desolation and death, life prevailed and spring arrives in the forest. Unquote.
I'm excited to get back into the forest because it
is so hot, and get back in the forest I did.
One of the events that happened almost daily throughout the
week was tours of the eastern side of the Wallani Forest.
(29:53):
The walks through the woods were led by Joe Perry,
a member of the South River Forest Coalition. I was
able to attend the first tour during the Week of
Action and got consent to record some of the forest walk.
Speaker 12 (30:05):
All right, hey, y'all, welcome to the living room, so
named because it's it's a very inviting and comfortable place
to relax. This is where a lot of the meetings
happened during the previous Week of action. People gather and
have different events here. Oftentimes it will be food available here, campfires, silverware.
(30:34):
So it's also just a very very comfortable place to
relax because it's in this in this pine forest and
so not really any undergrowth, and just super comfortable. It's
a really good place to have meetings and uh and
just kind of get to know each other and establish
(30:54):
some calm.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
We made our way from the living room to the
Grandmother Tree, a large oak that is estimated to be
a few hundred years old. On our way to Ryan
Millsaps proposed a site for so called Michelle Obama Park,
which is currently a forty acre mound of dirt about
thirty feet high. We walked past some old tents that
were slashed apart during the January raid. Among the destroyed
(31:18):
remains were little pink flowers growing out of the ground. Next,
we headed to Entrenchment Creek. Joe Perry explained some of
the background regarding the environmental state of the watershed and
how protecting the forest is a crucial step in the
process of helping the land heal itself.
Speaker 12 (31:36):
I got involved with a group called the South River
Forest Coalition. We are trying to help further the vision
of the South River Forest that Ryan Gravelle and the
Nature Conservancy came up with to try to interweave about
thirty five hundred acres of forest with the other businesses
(31:57):
and homes and lands around this area that are in
the watershed of the South River forest and Entrenchmont Creek,
which we will see on this tour, is the main
tributary to the South River. The South River is the
fourth most endangered river in this country. In Trenchmon Creek
is one of the most polluted creeks in this county.
(32:20):
And so that is what we're trying to protect. And
in order to protect a river and a creek and
a watershed, you have to protect the forest that's around it.
I've been exploring these woods for the last decade and
leading tours and talking to people about it, trying to
explain what's going on with a lawsuit, trying to explain
what's going on the difference between in Trenchmont Creek Park
(32:42):
and the prison farm and the acreage and all these
other things, and all that stuff. It's just like it's
just gears turning in your head because when you come
out here and enjoy this, I mean, this is really
what it's all about. This is all we have to
do to convince people that this is worth saving it.
Just bring you out here and let you appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
As masses of people converged at Wallani People's Park Saturday afternoon,
almost immediately a whole bunch of pop up infrastructure was
set up to facilitate an encampment in the woods once again,
really for the first time in any kind of large
capacity since January and even December. The December raids decimated
much of the camp infrastructure, which still had not been
(33:24):
rebuilt since then. But upon arriving from Gresham Park on Saturday,
both first time of visitors to the Wallani Forest and
seasoned forest defenders worked together to rebuild a lot of
that infrastructure to support camp life for the next week.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
One of the things that we saw on the march
in was like eight cinder blocks right at the entrance
to the living room, and then you and I went
into the living room, we saw these huge water tanks.
So later they moved those water tanks to those cinder
blocks and that has become or a watering point for everyone.
(34:00):
So like twice a day a truck comes with a
water tank on the back and then they go through
the arduous process of filling that water so that everybody
in camp can have water. And they had this system
that was seemingly self organized. And then that first day
we were sitting in the parking lot and it seemed
like every time you turn around there was like a
(34:21):
different train of people carrying supplies into the living room.
The second day, there was a woman who was shoveling
gravel from the torn up concrete on the side, and
she was filling all of the brandom holes in the
ground so that carts could go up them. And I
(34:44):
was like, you know, did somebody assign this to you?
She's like, no, I saw this. It just needed to
be done, and I did it. And that was very
much the entire vibe of those first I would say
twenty four hours was okay, what do we need to
do to get thing running?
Speaker 1 (35:01):
As encampments were being established, simultaneously, infrastructure for the South
River Music Festival was being erected in the adjacent radio
control field. Within a short amount of time, a full
stage was constructed, complete with lights and speakers, lining the
sides of the field, where various tables and booths. One
(35:22):
side featured a large variety of refreshments as well as
a medic tent, and the other side was home to
free hot food and freshly grilled burgers and hot dogs.
Next to the food were a few tables distributing an
array of radical literature posters and stickers. What was your
favorite stuff at Music of Festa?
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Sure, well, there was an arapa table, and I'm very
food motivated, so the arapas were delicious, and we had
walked a bunch that day, so yeah, I needed sustenance.
And then there was the burger table as well, but
we I don't think. I don't know if you got
a burger, but I did not get a burger.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
I got I got one burger, but they were out
of buns. When I got a Burger's, I had a
lettuce burger. And then soon after they they they got
the buns back, and I was kind of kind of bummed.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Yeah I did not. At least you got something, uh,
but I had the rapist.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
So I mean, still hundred worth, to be fair, hundreds
of people were they've they've had five hundred people, you know,
And at one point they made announcement that like they
needed to do another food run just to go get
more more food, and like a bunch of people volunteered.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
And you know, only I think two or three went
down to Walmart to get a bunch of more burgers
and hot dogs, and it was just a really cool moment.
So I think by the end the end of the
night when I was there, they were about five hundred
people just enjoying the music and looking at the sky.
It was just an immaculate vibe. There was a little
fire pick off to the side. And yeah, you talked
about the setting up the stage. You know, I didn't
(36:47):
know what to expect walking in there is not expecting
quite that much of a production. I wasn't expecting a
light pledge stage with lights all around sort of in
this really like the the lighting worked really well for it,
backdropped the surrounding forest, nice like green and purple lighting.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Yeah, it was great.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
And then they had that green room tent back there,
and then they had a separate tent for equipment. Like
it was a very well thought out festival in the
middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
The South River Music Festival began early Saturday evening at
five point thirty, kicking off two days of local musical
artists playing shows free of charge. Before the lineup of
live music began. Someone on stage read out a small
flyer that was being passed around, detailing the reasoning for
the festival and its place within the fight to defend
(37:40):
the forest, and I got permission to share that reading.
Speaker 5 (37:44):
In the limitless possibilities of the cosmos, in the mad
flecks of events, reactions, and anomalies of the past twelve
billion years since the birth of our universe, it's a
statistical impossibility that we would be here now, But here
we are alive. Together. Such incredible circumstances have brought us here.
(38:07):
Among them the incredible and innovative resistance to defend this
place from becoming a police training compound.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
Magic mushrooms.
Speaker 5 (38:20):
Out of this resistance which brings us together the most
cunning and resilient techniques of the radical environmentalist movement with
the incredible courage and ferocity of the George Floyd Uprising.
Is not just about a small piece of land. It's
not about being fought between police and their goons on
one hand and some activists and their friends on the other.
(38:41):
We are witnessing a collision of two competing ideas of happiness,
of life, of the future. In this competition, experiments with
new types of free culture play a decisive role. This
movement cannot be reduced to what is happening in city hall,
on social media, or in meetings. For two years, we
(39:04):
have descended on these woods, finding refuge from the high
rents and predatory bookings fees of the corporate venues and bars.
We have not come here to redecorate the actions of
some activists as allies, lending our service to the drab
and loveless militancy of something we do not otherwise care about.
As the gentrification of Atlanta intensifies, more and more diy
(39:26):
venues and clubs are shutdown, and free spaces to play,
shows and dance are push further and further from the
city center. Our free time is pinched as rents increase
and traffic keeps us waiting longer and longer. That is
going to change. Music is not like other forms of
(39:47):
human culture. It is different from painting, drawing, poetry, literature,
or film art. Politics, and symbolic culture in general represent
the passions conjuring strong feelings from the shadows of reality,
pulling them from the depths of the soul or the
back of consciousness. Music, on the other hand, is perhaps
(40:07):
the only form of human creativity that contacts those feelings
without any mediations. Music is physics, music is reality. The
system we live in is at war with reality. The
system is destroying forests, rivers, mountaintops, and oceans, is destroying
our imaginations, our bodies in our world. To defend ourselves
(40:29):
from certain annihilation, it will not be sufficient to strike
the right notes at the right time. We will have
to make recourse to other means, to more direct means,
and that is why we're all here. The defend the
Atlanta Forest Revolution will be economic, political, as well as cultural.
(40:50):
We're building a new era of human history where music
will be at the steering wheel. What is needed cannot
be taught without first being discovered. We are those adventurers
plunging the depths of the cosmos for the contours and
textures of a free existence, of a life without dead time.
When it is necessary, we will defend ourselves by the
means appropriate to the task. Not with words, not with denunciations,
(41:13):
but with actions, real and concrete, actions as real as
the sound, as real as reality. I so lucky to
be here with y'all. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Across the middle of the field, hundreds of people laid
out blankets on the grass and dirt. Concertgoers alternated between
a dancing in front of the stage and relaxing and
eating food on picnic blankets. As the night approached, over
a thousand people were spread out across the RC field.
Amoshe pit had formed directly in front of the stage.
(41:47):
Musicians led stop Kopcity chants, and between sets, people spoke
on mic about the movement.
Speaker 13 (41:53):
Everybody say, stop cop City, Stop cop City.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Saturday night was headlined by local Atlanta rapper Zach Fox.
Zach told stories about how he and his friends used
to hang out in this very forest as teenagers.
Speaker 14 (42:12):
All Right, y'all, man, Hey, i'm gonna say this, Fuck
the mayor. I'm gonna say this, fuck the mayor and
fuck all this shit. And I love everybody for coming
out to support this shit. And you're really fucking when
(42:32):
I tell you me, Archie, everybody used to walk back
in these woods and drink red stripes and walk our
dogs and shoot guns and shit. So I really don't
want to see this shit happen. And I really appreciate
Allia for coming out to do this shit.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Fuck cop City chants, erupted pretty regularly throughout the night.
Speaker 14 (42:55):
And this is all I'm gonna tell the Paulies. This
is all I'm gonna tell the Paulies. Okay, hold on,
let me make sure I push the right button.
Speaker 13 (43:06):
Sing that shit. Let's go fucking run it. Fucking run it,
fucking run it, fucking run it, fucking run it, fucking
run it. FUCKO, run it, Atlanta. I love y'all so much.
Speaker 14 (43:26):
Man, Hell yeah, hey man, let me say something real quick.
Let me say something real quick before I get the
fuck on saves. Let my hummies right this shit. I
love y'all so much for supporting this ship I have.
Let me tell you. Let me tell you something. I'm
thirty two. A lot of niggas start getting old and
they lose faith in the youth. I got so much
(43:47):
faith in everybody in this motherfucking bitch. Wherever y'all going,
I'm going, I truly believe that y'all gonna save this
motherfucking world. So I'm with y'all. Fuck cop City, fuck
cops in general, fuck twelve, fuck authoritarianism, fuck capitalism, fuck
(44:08):
all that bullshit. I'm with you out today. So ill
motherfucking die. So let me. Hear y'all say this one
more time.
Speaker 13 (44:17):
Stay bu twell. Stip bobow stick bob twel stip bob twell.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Besides the domestic terrorism banner I mentioned in the opening
of this episode, another banner was hung up beside the
stage featuring turtles and butterflies, along with the Asada Shakur quote.
Love is our sword, truth is our compass. This kind
of music is about the natty to nature, filling the trees,
(44:49):
feeling the ground, filling each other. Look right up there,
look at the fucking moon two qui a communicate from
the Sonic Defense Committee quote. At this point it was
impossible to imagine a meaningful police intervention. The crowd was
made up of elderly people, university students, rappers, indigenous activists,
(45:14):
toddlers and newborns, skaters, people of all imaginable Atlanta demographics.
The night ended around three thirty am to sounds of
house techno and drum and bass without any notable incident. Unquote.
Tents were set up all over the eastern side of
the forest, with many people choosing to sleep under the
tree canopy between the living room and the music festival
(45:37):
for that first night. As the night went on, people
carefully tended small campfires, both in the festival field and
in the middle of the living room. To quote the
Press Collective, the movement was once again living in joyous
harmony with the forest it had promised to protect. Tomorrow's
episode will cover day two of the music festival, the
(45:58):
frankly unprecedented direct that took place Sunday afternoon, and a
more detailed look at the police raid that happened later
that evening. See You on the Other Side. Music Festival
audio courtesy of Unicorn Riot. It Could Happen Here as
a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
(46:19):
cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com or
check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 5 (46:27):
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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