Week of Action to Stop Cop City: A Retrospective

A more critical look at the Week of Action and its aftermath. State repression continues as Intrenchment Creek Park is closed just days before clear cutting begins in the Weelaunee Forest. With Cop City construction scheduled for this summer, activist's search for avenues of resistance.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome back to it could happen here. This is a
bonus fifth episode following my coverage of the Stopcop City
Week of Action in March of twenty twenty three. This
will be a more critical retrospective on the week as
a whole and offer a glimpse into what the movement
might look like in the next few months as we
are rapidly approaching summer. In the last episode, we talked

(00:29):
about the police repression of protests and demonstrations as they happen,
but we have yet to mention the various methods of
state repression the movement is facing day to day. Repression
for the Week of Action started well before the kickoff
rally in Gresham Park. Emails from early February obtained via
public records requests found that the Atlanta Police Foundation and

(00:51):
its contractors were waiting for quote indictments to the leaders
unquote of the Stopcob City and defendly Atlanta Forest movement
to quote the Atlantic Community Press Collective. In a February
third email to APF board members, the director of Public Affairs,
Rob Baskin, calls the Defend the Atlanta Forest and Stop
Coop City movement a quote conspiracy of protesters against the

(01:13):
Public Safety Training Center, investigated by a consortium of federal, state,
and local law enforcement agencies. Baskin promised the APF board
in an email quote that the recent arrests our receipt
of the land and disturbance permit, the mayor's announcement of
the project will be moving forward, and the continued investigation
by law enforcement will dampen activists' efforts. We will likely

(01:36):
see more indictments in the coming weeks unquote. Back in February,
Brassfield and Gory, the general contractor for the project, planned
to mobilize for land clearing around April, but told the
Atlanta Police Foundation that subcontractor bidding wouldn't happen quote until
indictments have happened unquote, And then, of course, a few

(01:57):
weeks later, twenty three people were charged with domestic terrorism
at a music festival. Matt from the Atlanta Community Press
Collective talked about the history of domestic terrorism charges in
the movement and how they affected bail proceedings.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
The domestic terrorism charges go back to the middle of December,
that's when the first of them happened, and up until
the week of action. There have been a total of
nineteen arrest or individuals who have been charged with domestic terrorism.
And then of those people, anyone who did not have

(02:32):
either a Georgia license or could not prove like Georgia residency,
they were all initially denied bond, but everyone who lives
here they were able to get bond before the bond hearing.
We're kind of there are discussions that there's no way
that they're going to hold twenty three people without bond

(02:57):
with on such flimsy evidence.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
That's the most that have been like arrested and held
one in one day. It really is in relation to
the movement so far.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, this is the largest mass arrest of the of
the movement. So it's it's kind of inconceivable for twenty
three people to be held without bond. So we get
to the bail hearing. The first person has their mother
come on. Their lawyer brings their mother on, who swears
essentially on like every religious text ever written, that her

(03:29):
child will immediately go home with her and she will
personally bring her child back to every court hearing and
her child will have no you know, further contact with
the movement and all of these things and the judge
denies the bond. So at that point it's like, Okay,

(03:50):
they're you know, I guess we're going to go back
to the old thing. If you can't prove residency, you're
you're you're not getting out. It was like person number
five is from Athens, Georgia, which is about an hour
outside of Atlanta, and the judge denies her bond, not
because the judge thinks she's a flight risk, but because

(04:11):
she is a threat to the community. And that was
the moment where the understanding changed. It was like, oh no,
like nobody's getting out of me.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Yes, this isn't this isn't a real This isn't a
real bond.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
Here.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
At the press conference after the leaf raid, Camal Franklin
from the Community Movement Builders spoke about the years of
state repression against people fighting to stop Cop City.

Speaker 4 (04:35):
This movement has been repressed by the state, by the
city since its very beginnings. When we first started organizing
in twenty twenty one, when we had rallies and demonstration,
we would have police break them up, throw people to
the ground, pepper spray them, and arrest them. We had

(04:56):
over twenty arrest in our first years of and demonstrating
against cop City. At the time, those folks were charged
with resisting arrests obstruction of governmental administration. And then the
police decided to step up their tactics and they started
to form a task force, a task force that included

(05:18):
the Atlanta Police, the TKAP County Police, the Georgia Bureau
of Investigation, Georgia State Troopers, the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
and Homeland Security, where they began to talk about bringing
charges of domestic terrorism against organizers and activists. And so
now we're coming to a point where they're raiding houses,

(05:40):
where they're telling organizers and activists that they can't stand
on corners and legally give out leaflets.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
And then the judge kept saying like, I'm not here
to hear anything on evidentiary claims and I'm not here
to engage with the domestic terrorism statute. Like both of
those were I think valid things that defense attorneys kept
bringing up, because yeah, they're problematic.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah, one of the defense attorneys mentioned that the way
people are being charged with domestic terrorism right now doesn't
really have any legal basis in the state of Georgia
because the terrorism law works as like an enhancement for
other felonious charges, and these people aren't being charged with
anything besides domestic terrorism. There's no evidence these people committed
any actual crimes, so they're just being charged with terrorism.

(06:26):
This like nebulous concept. The judge said that the legal
basis of these claims will have to be decided on
another day. Similarly, they said that in regards to like
actual evidence that these people charged did any crimes, she
said that she had none of this evidence in front
of her and that evidence is for another day. One
of the main reasons the judge said that defendants were

(06:48):
denied bond was due to quote a lack of ties
to community in Atlanta. But regarding this ties to the
community aspect, the judge had this weird double standard. There
was this one person arrested and charged who lives with
their partner in Atlanta, who also had ties to another
state where they had previously lived. So despite them having

(07:09):
ties to the community in Atlanta, which was one of
the main things the judge considered for this one individual,
they were still denied bond on the basis that this
individual also has ties to a different community, thus deeming
them a flight risk even though they currently live in Atlanta.
One of the reasons that the judge mentioned is based
on the arrest warrants that she was given, for why
these people were a threat to the community is that

(07:32):
the state claims that they were in possession of metal
shields as they were being arrested. You know, shields, the
offensive weapon that shows that you are a threat you
holding a shield. And so, first of all, that's funny
on us on that on that level.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
When you and I were coming in on Saturday and
along with the march, we passed by a bunch of shields,
right and they were kind of placed near the end
of the path, like in anticipation that there might be
police presence. And I took pictures of the shields, and
they are evidently plastic shields. There's no way of mistaking

(08:13):
them for anything other than plastic.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
The plastic five gallon shields that you see at almost
every protest in every city across the country. The cops
know what these things are. That the fact that they
claimed that people were arrested carrying metal shields is so
ludicrous because there was not There was not a single
metal shield at this music festival, and there's a lot
of footage of these arrests. I don't there's I've not

(08:37):
seen evidence that every that any person was arrested that
was carrying a shield, let alone a metal one.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
There's this weird thing where so typically when you do
these these bale hearings, the the defense attorneys waive the
reading of the warrant, typically because they have already gone
over that with their client, and you know, everybody's aware,
and it just kind of speeds up the process. And
it was like, really notable that these attorneys weren't doing it,

(09:04):
and once you started to listen to them, you noticed
this very repetitive nature of them. And so about halfway
through we get to a lawyer who straight up calls
out the fact that these warrants seem like they were
just copy.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
Pasted, like every single person all the way downline. During
the first hearing, only one person was let out on bail,
and they were an NLG legal observer and lawyer at
the Southern Poverty Law Center. After the week of action,
on March twenty third, there were a second set of
bail hearings for ten of the people arrested on March
fifth at the South River Music Festival in a rare move.

(09:41):
The second in command of the State of Georgia's Attorney
General's Office, John Fowler, was deployed to argue against granting bond. Fowler,
along with several top county prosecutors, weaved a complex narrative
of a grand conspiracy of protesters dating back to twenty nineteen,
saying that the unquote organization behind Defend the Forest is

(10:03):
responsible for quote one hundred incidents nationwide unquote. Fowler claimed
that the force defenders are a well funded group with
millions of dollars hiding behind five oh one c three
nonprofit organizations, and that the so called autonomous zone at
the Wendy's where Rayshard Brooks was murdered in twenty twenty,
is a part of the same organization. Fowler also tempted

(10:26):
to tie the use of laser pointers in the forest
to a racial justice protests in twenty twenty, as well
as a sophisticated communication network of prepaid phones, telegram channels,
proton mails, and rise up accounts. Prosecutor Lance Cross stated
that the quote unquote leader of the Defend the Atlanta
Forest movement never actually goes into the forest. Okay, so,

(10:50):
to paraphrase a friend of mine. As potentially dangerous as
claims like these are, it will never stop being funny
that the state just simply can not conceive of horizontal
organizing as like a real thing that exists and not
just a smoke screen for this shadowy cabal of protesters.
Prosecutor Lance Cross claimed that anyone at the music festival

(11:12):
is a party to the crime of the direct action
that took place around one and a half kilometers away
at the construction site, and that after the direct action,
individuals left to return to the other side of the woods,
crossing over the creek and changing out of their black block.
For the first defendant. At this hearing, Prosecutor Cross said
that there's police helicopter video of this first person changing

(11:36):
out of their black block, But when asked by the
judge if the state has any evidence that this defendant
did anything illegal, not just change clothing in a forest,
the prosecutor was unable to provide any such evidence. This
defendant received a twenty five thousand dollars bond with a
stay away from Georgia order and a no contact order
with any co defendants or anyone associated with the Defend

(11:58):
the Atlanta Forest Movement Only one other defendant was granted
bond during this hearing, a second year law student who
was arrested as they were eating food at a food truck.
At the hearing, they presented letters of support from Tibetan monks,
a former mayor, numerous academics, and Charlotte's mayor pro tem
was on the call. Bond was also set at twenty

(12:19):
five K, along with having to surrender their passport, where
an ankle monitor, and maintain no contact with co defendants
nor join any future protests. To paraphrase my friend again,
these are old Green Scare tactics back in action and
kicked into high gear. Courts are being used as a
meat cleaver to hack off and isolate people from their communities,

(12:41):
regardless of evidence. This is the type of repression that
courts were born to do. Much of the repression we're
seeing in Atlanta is a revamped version of the Green
Scare with additional tactics and knowledge the state gained from
the twenty twenty protests, including the targeting of jail support
and bail fund organizations. Another thread in this Grand Cabal

(13:03):
of Forest Defender's narrative that the state was trying to
weave was that prosecutors claimed that having an Atlanta Solidarity
Fund jail support number on your person is evidence of
criminal intent and that the Solidarity Fund is quote being
investigated as a part of this whole thing, unquote. The
majority of the eight individuals denied bond were not even

(13:25):
found to be at the site of the direct action,
and none of the eight individuals had any evidence against
them showing they committed any crime at that location, but
were still deemed a risk to the community and denied bond.
Being held against them is the fact that they had
a jail support number on their person. As former communications
director at the Southern Center of a Human Rights Hannah

(13:46):
Riiley said, it is a gross irony that a jail
support number is being framed as evidence of intent to
commit crimes, where in fact it's evidence that we live
in a horrifying police estate. A defense a turn, He
pointed out that all of the warrants had the same
bits of evidence copy pasted like this alleged possession of
a metal shield, to which the prosecution claimed this was

(14:09):
simply a typo, meaning that people were being held in
jail based on typos, and also the prosecutor responded by saying, quote,
there were thirty forty fifty shields out there, I can't
attest that he was carrying one. When referring to a
specific defendant. For one individual denied bond, prosecutors claimed that
they were an anarchist based on information provided by Customs

(14:33):
and Border Protection, and yet no evidence of criminal acts
were presented. Extra scrutiny was put on two defendants who
were foreign nationals, with prosecutors wondering how someone from out
of country could possibly know the solidarity funded jail support number.
A defense attorney tried to point out that jail support
numbers are often passed out to everyone present at protests

(14:55):
by volunteers, and in the case of the circumstances regarding
the raid of the music fest, of all panicked concertgoers
were instructed to write down the jail support number as
it became clear that police were indiscriminately grabbing people. Deputy
Attorney General Fowler argued that wearing black clothes at a
protest is akin to wearing a football uniform, indicating a

(15:18):
player was part of the team who took to the
field during the game, and even if we may not
know they carried the football we do know that they
were on the field, which I don't even want to
get into, but it is still a fact that the
majority of people were denied bond because some had black clothing,

(15:39):
mud on their shoes and ran from police. This is
what made them a quote unquote threat to our community,
and this is the evidence being used against people who
were allegedly engaged in domestic terrorism. Near the end of
the hearing, the judge claimed that everyone is presumed innocent
and that the state does have to bear the burden

(15:59):
of proof beyond a reasonable doubt at some point, but
not now. During this spell hearing, one of the claims
was that the reason why people were arrested is because
they had mud on their clothes. The night before the
festival started, there was a tornado warning in Atlanta. I've
forgotten about that, and there was rain, which makes I

(16:21):
don't know if the prosecutors know this, but when rain
mixes with dirt, it creates something called that we that
we refer to as mud. So when people are, you know,
at this music festival in a field full of dirt,
they might get mud on their clothes.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
And yeah, so if you've ever been to a music festival,
standing around for a very long period of time, really annoying.
People like to sit down, So I like, my feet
were caked in mud, and I sat down a few times.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
I'm I'm my dock partments are still caked in mud.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Not to mention the parking lot completely torn up, covered
in mud, and as I mentioned earlier, the you know
the person having like fill in mud all along the
trails with gravel, So there's mud everywhere, and it is
an inescapable fact of just being in both the forest
and the festival.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
At the time of the bail hearings, they've very clearly
had no evidence linking individuals two crimes. So the best
they could come up with was metal shields and mud,
two things that are completely nonsense. There was no metal
shields and oh wow, you have mud on your You
have mud on your clothing. This is why you're a terrorist.
During the hearing, a defense lawyer alleged that the twelve

(17:29):
people who were detained at the music festival but not
arrested and were later released at Gresham Park were all
from Atlanta, and by releasing these twelve locals, police can
claim that the people arrested were from fourteen different states.
Which is obviously part of an attempt to continue accelerating
the outside agitator narrative that they've been pushing out since
last in December.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
Of the twenty three who were charged, only two had
the Georgia licenses, the person from Athens and the legal observer.
The rest were out of state and two were out
of country. So at one point during the proceedings the
bail proceedings, one of the lawyers says that from what

(18:14):
they understand, the twelve individuals who were let go Sunday
night all had in state licenses, So it does appear
that APD released people to continue this outside agitator narrative
that they have been using for months now, since May,

(18:34):
since early summer.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
Prosecutor Cross responded to claims that detained local Atlantans were
let go by saying that the people released were interviewed,
did not have the jail support number on their arm,
and quote unquote knew little about the movement. At a
press conference, Marlin from the Solidarity Fund talked about how
repression has taken form and concerns of what other tactics

(18:58):
the state may try to employ.

Speaker 5 (19:00):
No evidences were presented to support any of these claims
of domestic terrorism, including on the other eighteen people who've
been given this charge previously. In this movement, police and
prosecutors are not involved in a law enforcement effort. They're
involved in a political campaign to suppress a political movement,
which they find objectionable because as the police, they have

(19:21):
a vested interest in the construction of Copcity. From a
civil liberties perspective, we find this very concerning. We find
it to be an abuse of power, and we're committed
to ensuring that all of the activists who are targeted
have access to the legal resources that they need, not
only to defend themselves from these bogus charges, but also
to pursue civil litigation against police who have abused their

(19:42):
power and violated people's rights. We are concerned about the
possibility that prosecutors may try to use RICO charges against
organizers because RICO is understood as a way of suppressing organizations,
and the narrative that we've seen coming from police and
prosecutors is their belief that the broad and diverse Stock

(20:05):
Top City movement is in fact a criminal conspiracy whose
members conspire to commit acts of terrorism. This could not
be further from the truth. This is like a clear
misrepresentation of a broad movement that encompasses all of society.
But this is the narrative that prosecutors are trying to
promulgate to make it easier to target activists.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
In the intervening month and a half, five more people
were led out on bond. Then on May third, a
series of preliminary hearings took place for the last three
people being held into Cab County Jail from amongst the
twenty three individuals arrested at the music festival and charged
with domestic terrorism. Before the changes to the law in
twenty seventeen, the State of Georgia required ten or more

(20:47):
people to be killed for domestic terrorism charges to even
be filed. During a wave of anti protest bills, while
citing racially motivated mass shootings. To get the bill passed,
the State of Georgia removed any death threshold and essentially
replaced it with references to property damage. To quote a
write up by the Atlantic Community Press Collective Quote, Decab

(21:09):
County Magistrate Judge James Altman explained that he decided whether
to uphold the charges based on two criteria. The first
was whether prosecutors provided enough evidence to satisfy the conditions
set forth in the Georgia Domestic Terrorism Statute, namely the
threat to critical infrastructure. The second criteria prosecutors needed to
meet was identification, or their ability to show that the

(21:31):
defendants were each a party to the alleged crimes committed
on March fifth, unquote, and it's worth noting that the
threshold for probable cause is much lower than the threshold
needed to convict someone of a crime. In opening arguments,
Assistant da Lance Cross claimed that to defend the forest,
activists are well funded and quote have a pretty good

(21:53):
propaganda arm on social media unquote, and that doing direct
action while chanting stop Coop City qualifies activists to be
charged under the Georgia Domestic Terrorism Statute because it's using
violence to advocate change of government policy. Judge Altman found
that the first criteria of the domestic terrorism charges were

(22:14):
met for all three defendants on the basis that setting
fires at the construction site in such close proximity to
a power line tower was an attack on critical infrastructure,
even if the defendants did not themselves start any fires.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Ryan Long testified that
the entire music festival was cover for the direct action

(22:37):
against the construction site, even without evidence of defendants in
black bloc or proof that they engaged in any destructive acts.
Assistant da Cross said that everyone at the site was
enabling the destruction of the property and as such is
party to the crime. Due to the assertion that the
alleged crimes were only possible due to the large size

(22:57):
of the crowd, one of the state's witnesses, Sergeant of
the APD, said that he wouldn't be able to recognize
anyone who was at the site, and that he could
not tell if the defendant was even in the crowd
of people at the North Gate, let alone through rocks
or set fires. Defense argued that mere presence at a
location should not be automatic aiding and a betting, but

(23:20):
Judge Altman said there was a sufficient evidence presented showing
the acts of the crowd and that the defendant's presence
is at least sufficient for being party to the crime
even by simply participating at the music festival. One of
the hearings was for the Indigenous person who was tased
at the music festival, who was specifically witnessed to be
there during the duration of the direct action. Under questioning

(23:42):
from the defense, special Agent Long said that the defendant
was not visible on the helicopter footage of the incident.
After initially suggesting that the defendant was identified by a
helicopter pilot, Long rolled that back by saying he was
unsure if the chopper was able to track the defendant
and then had to leave to go make a few
calls to get a more definitive answer, which he failed

(24:02):
to provide, But the judge still found that the second
criteria of identification was sufficient to find two of the
defendants at least party to the actions at the construction site.
Special Agent Long testified that there is a quote unquote
command structure in the Stop Coop City movement and described
the movement as a pyramid scheme created by activists with

(24:24):
different names like stop Coop City and Defend the Forest
to act as little different subgroups to attract new subordinate
members to operate under leadership. Long asserted that activists pretend
to be ecologists one day and then anarchists the next
to further their cause, which, once again we have to
point out, is on one hand, a dangerous thing to claim.

(24:47):
On the other hand, extremely funny social media posts were
brought up by prosecutors as evidence linking defendants to criminal
acts and a conspiracy of terrorism. During the first hearing,
special Agent Long claimed that they knew that the defendant
was at the construction site due to street pool camera
footage and social media posts allegedly made by the defendant's friend.

(25:12):
In another hearing, agent Long claimed that on the defendant's
social media there were posts of stop Coop City banners
and flyers, demonstrating an awareness of the nature of the
stop cop City movement. The state also cited alleged social
media posts of the defendant self describing as anti capitalist

(25:33):
and anti colonial as proof of criminal intent. Near the
end of the last hearing, Judge Altman said that social
media posts do not count towards probable cause. However, the
framing of social media posts by prosecutors as an indication
of guilt is still cause for alarm, and what gets
admitted as evidence during trial is still yet to be determined.

(25:56):
When the prosecution asked if a defendant had a jail
support number on their arm, the judge noted that quote
the existence or non existence of an organization doesn't really
seem to me as an element of the crime unquote.
Similar to the March twenty third hearings. Prosecutor Johnson tried
to argue that the solidarity fund and jail support is

(26:16):
an arm of the stop Cop City movement, to which
the judge reiterated that participation in an alleged organization is
not part of the crime of domestic terrorism. For one defendant,
the judge granted bond on the conditions of twenty five
thousand dollars bail, with the defendant having to turn over
her passport, a no contact order with other co defendants,

(26:37):
and no participation in discussion of stop coopsity on social media.
Bond for the other two defendants was denied. Ultimately, Judge
Altman upheld the domestic terrorism charges against all three defendants
on the low barrier of evidence sufficient for ruling probable cause.
Judge Altman said that quote whether it gets any further

(26:59):
than that is not my problem, unquote, and that if
the DA wanted further charges brought against defendants, he must
use a grand jury. As the judge did not find
a probable cause for arson or assault on an officer.
Judge Altman mentioned that he was concerned about alleged witness
intimidation by members of the Defend the Forest movement. Meanwhile,

(27:22):
in the adjacent Fulton County, there was also a preliminary
hearing for one of the six people arrested at the
protest in downtown Atlanta on January twenty first, the Saturday
following the killing of Tortighita. Judge Ashley Drake upheld a
total of eight charges, including one of domestic terrorism, and
the next day the defendant was released on bail. One

(27:44):
thing of note from this hearing is that Deputy Attorney
General John Fowler compared the Defend the Forest movement to
nine eleven by saying, quote, protesters were trying to knock
out the windows of one to nine to one Peachtree Street.
That is a dangerous situation. That's a twin Towers ut.

(28:14):
When talking about the various hearings, I mentioned helicopter and
street pole camera footage of the direct action on Sunday
that both prosecutors and the defense were using to support
their claims, and I think it's worth diving a bit
deeper into specifically the police helicopter footage, since I like
keeping up with the methods that police are using to

(28:35):
surveil and suppress protest. I'm going to start by letting
Atlanta Police Chief Darren Sheerbaum walk us through what was
able to be observed via helicopter mounted cameras based on
his testimony during the city council meeting that took place
less than twenty four hours after the incident.

Speaker 6 (28:52):
Individuals were seeing changing out of the clothes that they
were wearing at the concert and were now dressing themselves
in all black with backpacks with items fenceive nature approaching.
What we saw is this group moved rather quickly to
the site for the proposed public Safety Trading center. They
move quickly on the group of officers that were assembled there.
These officers had been stationary at the site protecting the location.

(29:15):
In the first line, there are individuals with shields that
are forming.

Speaker 7 (29:18):
The officers attempted to.

Speaker 6 (29:19):
First to de escalate by repositioning themselves, thank you, repositioning
themselves inside of the fenced in area. The officers again
start to reposition because they can tell this is not
a peaceful demonstration. So you just start to see smoke
occurring as fires are set, molotov cocktails are thrown, and
fireworks are discharged from our air unit that is deployed

(29:41):
in the area. You will see individuals that have started
to move against the officers. They will have start throwing
rocks fireworks as they are pushing the officers in the
area where we see individuals as another group is engaging
the officers with rocks, Malotov cocktails and bottles are moving
to set fire to the various equipments in the area.
While you see in the left hand of the gentleman

(30:01):
with the mask over his face as a Maltov cocktail,
there will be accelerants in his hands that will be
used also to attack some of the construction equipment that
is in the area. These individuals are massed to hide
their identity. This is playing out across the area that
had been previously been fenced in.

Speaker 7 (30:19):
There will be generators.

Speaker 6 (30:20):
That are will be destroyed, other pieces of equipment that's
being destroyed. There you see more accelerant being thrown onto
the vehicle that is being.

Speaker 7 (30:28):
Set on fire. And what you see here, ladies and.

Speaker 6 (30:31):
Gentlemen, is as some of the individuals that had just
previously attacked the work site returned back into the woods.
They start changing back into the clothes that they were
just wearing moments before, as they were portraying themselves to
be attendees of the event that was occurring in the music.
So there was clear today that we saw repeat of
what we've seen in the past, where events that are

(30:52):
shown to be peaceful and being publicized as to be
peaceful are being used by individuals as cover to launch
illegal and criminal attacks. We had a rapid response from
our partners at the decap County Police Department, the Sheriff
of Fulton County.

Speaker 7 (31:08):
As well as the Georgia State Patrol.

Speaker 6 (31:10):
Those officers entered into the woods as individuals were attempting
to flee hide the weapons they had just used, as
well as to change their clothing, and we began to
make a number of arrest I.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
Spoke with the unnamed force defender about the surveillance capabilities
of the state on full display during the week of Action.

Speaker 8 (31:28):
I find that the thermal helicopter video fascinating for a
variety of reasons. One, it's interesting to look at the
surveillance capacity of the state. It's to my memory, the
first time the APD has ever posted their own thermal
chopper footage. It's a very similar camera to the type
you would see on a director on some kind of armed,
unmanned aerial vehicle. What I found most interesting about the
thermals is exactly how they were using that type of

(31:49):
targeting software to attract people, and I think it's worth
people knowing what they were doing with it, so we
have an idea how to counter it. When you're using
a software to tract targets on optical lens, at least
during a daytime event, thermals are easier because it breaks
the image up into just two colors, white and then
like black and gray, so they can track the body
heat shapes of people in white and then just click
the thermals off, get a snapshof the outfit they're wearing,
click the thermals back on, and track them easier than

(32:11):
it is to track them with just a normal camera.
This gives them a clear image of what they're wearing
before they de blocked, and then they can go back
to tracking that person, follow them to where they're dep blocking,
wait for them to deplock itet another picture with the
regular camera, and then arrest them. So that meant that
when people were leaving, it was advantageous to be deplocking
under overhead cover, under thick brush, under thick canopy, out
of direct line of site with the chopper, you know,

(32:31):
not in the open air. It's definitely a really hard
thing to counter. The surveillance State's one of the things
that I find the most fearful about the police state.
Not like individual beat cops. They're guns and shit are
cool or whatever, but man, those cameras they're really something.

Speaker 3 (32:44):
You know.

Speaker 8 (32:44):
I think the Portland Police Bureau just got a new
spy plane and new Cessna loaded up with surveillance equipment
and shit like that. All that stuff does so much
more to fuck you up than just like a riot
team does. You can throw mortars at a riot team.
Sorry I shouldn't say moordars fireworks that are called mortars,
my bad. Don't want to lean into the explosives narratives. Honestly,
they're fucking weird about fireworks. But you know, those surveillance
capacities are one of the hardest things to counter.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
One term that's already come up during our coverage of
Stop Coop City is fuco's boomerang. And while that still
applies here, we're now also kind of getting into some
panaptocon territory as shown by this type of surveillance capacity,
specifically at actions. And one of the biggest reasons why
the panopticon works is that people are scared of it.
It scares you away from even taking action in the

(33:29):
first place.

Speaker 8 (33:30):
And like, as soon as you overcome that paralyzing fear,
the cops become really afraid of you. That's why we
say that, like the biggest weapon that the state has
is fear, because like the cops go from these big,
fucking tough guys to like whining cowards. The second you
just become not afraid, you don't even have to beat them,
you don't have to overcome the actual physical weapons. But
once you get out of that headspace, that paralyzing fear,

(33:51):
once you let it pass over you and through you,
they're fucking terrified. And if we're gonna win, we need
to be their worst nightmare.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
As state repression against the stop Cop City movement continues,
the coalition against the police training facility only continues to grow.
Last month, Angela Davis returned an award proclamation given to
her by the Atlanta City Council in protest of cop City.

Speaker 9 (34:15):
If the attempts by the Atlanta Police to build the
largest police training grounds in the country are successful, this
will represent a major setback for the movement for radical
democratic futures, not only throughout the US, but globally as well.

(34:38):
As a person who has participated in campaigns against prisons
and police for far longer than a half century, I
want to salute all those who are involved in the
stop Cop City movement, and I want to urge people

(35:01):
everywhere to find ways to generate support for them.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
Angela Davis made it clear that she stood in solidarity
with force defenders facing repression from the police and the
city of Atlanta, and joined in calls to halt the
construction of this facility, which will only serve as a
tool to advance what she called militarized police racism and repression.

Speaker 9 (35:24):
Atlanta activists are on the front lines of the abolitionist movement,
at its crucial intersection with movements to save our forests,
indeed to save our planet. The attempt to build a
massive militarized police training facility is a dangerous and ominous

(35:51):
development that we have to oppose with all our might,
and so I want to join those are standing strong
in defense of the forest, against the construction of this
police training ground. I urge people everywhere to join the

(36:12):
campaign to stop Cop City.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
After Angeliae Davis's announcement, the Walter Rodney Foundation released a
statement supporting Davis's decision and against the construction of Cop City.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
It's interesting to see their more mainline sort of center
or center left like organizations that have begun to come
on board. Even with what happened Sunday and especially the
Thursday march and rally, had it necessitated a response from
the city. So Friday morning there was actually an organization

(36:49):
concerned Black Clergy who had a press conference like calling
out Cop City protesters, and so you had this like
very state run. One of the city council members, Antonio Lewis,
was there like live streaming at the entire time. And
so you can tell the efficacy of a lot of
things that have happened this week by how the city
is reacting and how like it is necessitating them going

(37:13):
to greater and greater lengths to try to show that
the movement is wrong.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
One way that the city has been working to advocate
for the further development of the Cop City project is
by launching a website of their own for the Public
Safety Training Center, full of videos of the mayor and
police chief walking through South Atlanta trying to convince neighbors
that the project is a good idea. In the past
few months, the city has also been turning the official

(37:42):
City of Atlanta Twitter account into a hilarious copp City
propaganda outlet. About two weeks after the end of the
Week of Action, on March twenty fourth, to Cab County
CEO Michael Thurmond announced an executive order to indefinitely close
Entrenchment Creek Park, also known as Walanti People's Part, claiming
that the park was a danger to the public due

(38:03):
to booby traps allegedly found in the forest. At a
press conference, Thurman displayed photos of wooden boards with nails
sticking out of them allegedly found in the park. The
executive order reads that the park will quote remain closed
until further notice to protect the safety of the families, residents,
and visitors and their pets in the area, and to

(38:24):
county personnel. A few days after the announcement, to Cab
police led a joint task force in a raid of
the Willani Forest and Entrenchment Creek Park. The land was
effectively cleared of all forest defenders, with one person being
arrested during the raid. The memorial for Tortugito was destroyed
by the police, and cement barricades were set up around

(38:47):
the entrances and exits to the park. Days later, police
and contractors began cutting trees in the Willani Forest, with
no one around to resist the destruction. The Solidarity Fund
put out a statement saying, quote, closing down a public
park in order to prevent protests from happening in that
space is unconstitutional. TOCAB CEO Michael Thurmond is trying to

(39:09):
do an end run around the First Amendment unquote. Dacab
County Commissioner Ted Terry is pushing to reopen the park
through a resolution expected to be introduced in early May.
But it wasn't just the park's closure that made force
defense more challenging. After the mass action at the North
Gate in early March, security was greatly increased at the

(39:31):
construction sites in the Wullani Forest, with massive spotlights illuminating
the area to daylight levels twenty four hours a day,
which made returning to the sort of night time sabotage
actions in the forest that pioneered some of the movements.
Militancy in its early days to be much more complicated.
During my conversations with force defenders, there was still a

(39:53):
desire to see more of those small sabotage actions as
the large daytime mass actions seem to result in more
people getting arrested near the site of militant activity.

Speaker 8 (40:05):
People are angry, you know, like their friend, our friend
was murdered. You can just feel however you want about this,
but like a lot of people, and I guess myself included,
are just really angry. There's this like kind of blinding
rage that comes with it of just like eye for
an eye, blood for blood. You know that the police
killed our friend and that they need to hurt for

(40:25):
that one, and they need to hurt for all the
people that they've murdered and all the things they're trying
to do. And that leads people to take actions that
may not be well thought out, but that are very
well intentioned and have tangible results that hurt the police state,
but that are actions that do bring harm to themselves
or others, because there are not you know, these like
middle of the night slash and run sabotage attacks that

(40:46):
don't have arrests happen, that are safer, and I think
we should see a return of that tactic because the
level of police presence that we saw at all the
actions this week post Sunday, like doing shit at downtown protests.
Fuck that, Like, that's not like we're not pulling shit
off there without a mass arrest or like everyone's getting gassed.
Like it's not a tactically advantageous or viable way of

(41:08):
doing things. But I think people wanted to prove to
the cops that like, no, no, no, we could open
field fuck them up. And yeah, there were consequences to that,
but people fuck them up in the open field, and
that's worth a Plotting.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
The bounds of the forest is not the only location
actions take place. Just about a week after the park
closure and when some of the clearcutting began, a report
back was posted online that read quote, on the night
of Wednesday, April fifth, we set fire to three excavators
owned by Brent Scarborough Company on a site across from
the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta. Brent Scarborough is the company

(41:43):
and individual responsible for clearcutting the Willani Forest. Cop City
will never be built unquote. The March twenty twenty three
Week of Action was always going to be a kind
of turning point in showcasing what will be seen in
the struggle to defend the forest to this spring, and
how that will then lead into the summer, and what
forms of resistance people will choose to take, whether that

(42:05):
be another singular week of action or taken notes from
the Old Earth First playbook and try to do a
whole summer of action. How do you kind of see
the movement to stop papacity like changing or evolving in
the next few months. I mean, because all this is
kind of felt like it's been kind of very much
on the heels of what happened in January. People have

(42:26):
tried to, like, you know, just try to find new
paths of resistance in the wake of the police killing.
How how do you see like the fight continuing at
this stage where like they have some land of Terman's permits,
there's early construction. What are like the avenues of resistance
that people are trying to go down.

Speaker 3 (42:47):
I think that we have to be very clear in
assessing what has worked installing the project and what will
work to stop the project, because those aren't necessarily the
same thing. I think there were nuances in particular strategies.
There is a difference between, especially in our particular context.

(43:11):
That's similar between the difference between guerrilla warfare and urban
guerrilla warfare. And I say that guerilla warfare is more
so when people have been destroying equipment, you know, at contractors,
you know, offices or wherever, or like near the forest,
et cetera, and you could just hide off into the

(43:33):
woods and just like disappear back into nothingness. Nobody gets touched.
What we have to look at with the actions at
the music festival were it exposed a lot of people.
And this is once again because the police acted so
heavy handedly. But we also know that the police act

(43:54):
heavy handedly, which is why we're here. So that gets
kind of dicey because that's like kind of like urban
guerilla war fair where you have the gorillas just shooting
pow pa pal and then like running into somebody's grandma's house.
People do not fuck with the people that just running
grandma's house for cover, right, And that's where things get
a little bit dicey, because in many ways a lot

(44:16):
of us were looking at means to open up the
movement with this week of action, and that was what
was widely understood for a lot of people. And nevertheless,
when you just come in with the boomstick from the beginning,
that dictates the tone of the rest of the week.
And then where you could, you know, for instance, operate
from a space of like moral authority, It becomes much

(44:40):
easier for people on the fence to justify to themselves, well,
what are the police supposed to think? Right? I mean,
we have to realize that there are several like mental
resistances that have been taught to people for them to
try to discredit us. And I just I think there's
some important context. Right when Martin Luther King Junior was

(45:02):
doing like the nonviolent direct action, at a certain point,
they had to make a calculated decision to include women
and children in the marches because they had assisted in
America had become too desensitized to seeing black men beaten
in the streets, right, So that was a tactical decision
two bring in more people. Right. So there are like

(45:22):
calculations that people have to make and assessions that they
have to make based on the information that we're dealing with.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
Through talking with forced defenders, I've heard a variety of
internal critiques of the week of Action format because it
is such a concentrated time period. The week of Action
can give police a very concentrated time to over police
and over surveil, and for activists it can open up
an expenditure of energy during the week, which then can

(45:49):
lead to a lack of energy leading up to what's
been called the week of repression in the past. Every
time following a week of action, after people from out
of town leave, it then leads into a week of
repression where police will then do a rate of the
forest and have their sort of retaliation the week after.
There's been talk of potential changes to some of the

(46:10):
Week of Action format, perhaps doing something more akin to
a summer of resistance.

Speaker 8 (46:16):
So the week of repression is always the week that
comes after the week of action, where the cops are like, Okay,
the bulk of your reserves, you're out of state supporter
is gone. We're going to come fuck you up.

Speaker 3 (46:24):
Now.

Speaker 8 (46:24):
They're less of you. Now you're less ready to deal
with us. And that is like a major strategic flaw
in the weeks of action because it kind of creates
an activist tourism for people coming out of state, and
not that Atlanta doesn't appreciate their support and their solidarity,
and that so many of those out of state people
do stay long term, but it does create a situation
where like, yeah, we're having an influx of people for

(46:47):
a week building infrastructure for a week, and then the
bulk of those people, a good percentage, are going to
go home because yeah, like traveling long term is hard.
People have jobs, kids, whatever, you have commitments wherever you are,
and they have to go home. And then the cops
just reckers and do raids, and like, unless people want
to get on board with doing some pretty crazy shit,
those raids are hard to counter. It would behoove us
to take a realistic audit of what the weeks of

(47:08):
Action have meant and what they are actually useful for
which the strategic gains of the weeks of Action are
always now going to be more metaphysical than physical. They
bring people to this space, They give them a closeness
to the forest that they would not achieve without actually
coming here. But as far as tangibly, like materially stopping
Cop City, those kind of middle of the night slash
and run attacks, tertiary targeting of contractors, all that stuff.

(47:30):
That's how you pressure the money, and the money is
where you win.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
Ultimately, it's up to the autonomous actors that make up
this is so called movement and how their choices will
determine how the fight to stop cop City will grow
and evolve. As I'm writing this, just thirty minutes ago

(47:54):
we found out that the clear cutting at the Cop
City construction site has essentially been completed. The overhead photos
are devastating. Where there were young, growing trees just weeks
ago is now a flattened mound of red clay and dirt,
as if the ground itself was bleeding. I counted over
one hundred trees uprooted from the earth. Hundreds of people

(48:18):
have dedicated years of their life to defending this forest,
and the sight of sizeable destruction has brought out a
variety of grieving reactions. If cop City doesn't get built
in the Wallawni, the land could be carefully reforested and
healed via regenerative permaculture. With intentional stewardship, the forest could

(48:39):
grow to be ecologically healthier than it was before. In
some ways, the destruction that has already taken place makes
it even more vital to try and stop the construction
of cop City. No one is advocating a defeatist approach
where force defenders essentially give up and let the Police
Foundation build it, because there are still new ways to

(49:01):
fight against the construction of this facility. But now is
not the time to sugarcoat the dire situation people are in,
and there should be time allowed to grieve this loss
as well as strike back against the destruction. It would
be a mistake to gaslight each other and act as
if we're closer than ever to halting the Cop City project.

(49:21):
The fact that it's gotten this far itself is devastating.
From the beginning. People have said that even if they
do believe that cop City will never be built, the
Atlanta Police Foundation and police will absolutely attempt to do
as much damage as they can possibly get away with anyway,
both to force defenders and to the forest itself. The

(49:43):
past few months, I've been increasingly hearing the vice versa
of that sentiment. If Copcity does end up getting built,
people have pledged that the Atlanta Police Foundation will have
to pay for every inch they take, even if there
is no longer hope to save the entire or Wilani Forest.
Then we must do so without hope. At least there

(50:04):
is always vengeance. It is a long road ahead, and
there is still much to do. To quote my favorite
anarchomonarchist Tolkien, at this moment, the movement will hone its
focus to prevent or at the very least disincentivize, the
physical construction of Copcity.

Speaker 8 (50:23):
I think it'd be worth thinking of this movement as
an almost two year old movement that's outgrown the week
of action. You know, why limit ourselves to seven days?

Speaker 3 (50:30):
Fuck it?

Speaker 8 (50:31):
Do a summer, you know, do three months of like
we're doing three months of action in Atlanta. Come to
Atlanta whenever you want, and then go home and do
shit at home. There Wills fargos where you live. There
are Chase banks where you live. There are Atlas construction offices.

Speaker 9 (50:42):
Where you live.

Speaker 8 (50:42):
And yeah, you should come to Atlanta and you should
come see the space, and you should be in the forest,
and you should feel like the love and community that's there.
We win by fighting on enough fronts that they can't
fight us back on all of them. The state dies
by a thousand cuts, not by all of us being
in one place where they can kettle our asses, like
that's that's not how we're gonna win. So yeah, if
we had three months of like we're occupying the forest

(51:04):
for three months, come to the space whenever you feel
like it. But you know, hopefully when people go home,
they feel inspired to understand that they can do just
as much hitting those companies where they live as they
can here, because the money's all going to the same place.
The CEO at the top doesn't care if you hit
their businesses in Georgia or in fucking Illinois, or in
Oregon or Washington or whatever. The money's all the same.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
A phrase I've been hearing a lot lately is copp
City is everywhere. To quote a communicate posted on scenes
no Blocks dot Org quote, we will keep winning, not
just here in so called Atlanta, but we must attack
all across these so called states. The money and power
that seek to kill us and a destroyab LAUNI are nationwide,

(51:46):
and so our movement must be nationwide. A net of resistance,
too vast to comprehend and too resilient to suppress reality
is the battlefield. But so called America, all of it
is the backdrop. When Chief Sheerbaum gave testimony, at City
Council even he mentioned the far reaching manifestations of the

(52:09):
fight to stop cop City.

Speaker 6 (52:11):
We have been seeing over the last number of months
crimes that have been occurring in other cities focused toward
the public safety training center. So we have seen arsons
and cities outside of Atlanta. We've seen the destruction of
property outside of Atlanta, and we've seen the harassment of
private sector employees outside of Atlanta. So that is the
next is where the federal peer of investigation has been

(52:33):
assisting in this administigation.

Speaker 1 (52:37):
Like I said in the second episode, the stakes of
the movement may soon exceed the balunds of the forest
and a cop city, And in fact that process and
may have already begun. We are seeing stop cop City
turn into a new mode of insurgency and resistance to
modern policing in general, not simply limited to the construction
of this one training center, as the police are trying

(53:00):
to build a training center to practice quelling future civil unrest.
The site of the Mulani Forest and beyond has been
a training ground for anarchists and those who fight the
ever growing police state the past two years. It's been
a dangerous playground for experimentation and liberation. Applications for the
lessons learned in the Mulani Forest extend far past the

(53:24):
barriers of the woods. As far right attacks on abortion
and trans people are accelerating across this country, but especially
the South, perhaps some of the organizing infrastructure that's been
developed can take new focus on these battlegrounds, and even
just the mere existence of the struggle against Copp City
in Atlanta has been a deterrent for other cities and

(53:45):
states seeking to push forward similar proposals. But as the
movement possibly expands past its original scope in these next
few months, people will need to be careful that the
idyllic notion of the struggle doesn't eclipse the original and
still active goal, which is to stop cop City. Cop
City is indeed everywhere, but the current manifestation in Atlanta

(54:08):
is unique to Atlanta, and the corresponding struggle to stop
the physical construction of this training facility cannot be overlooked
in favor of fantasies of utopian anarchy. To steal an
idea from Matt of the Community Press Collective, one interpretation
of the phrase cop City is everywhere is the realization

(54:30):
that Atlanta is cop City, and it already has been
for years without us knowing it. And if we don't
turn back the tide here, cop City will be exported everywhere.

Speaker 3 (54:42):
Atlanta, once again, because of the Atlanta Police Foundation, is
the most surveiled city in the country. Because of twenty
seventeen's Operation Shield program where they put tons of cameras
all throughout the city and essentially made it a surveillance state.
Once again, crime has continued to go up English time,
and that would have significantly more to do with the

(55:04):
disparity of wealth than opportunities of black at lanterns that
are born under the poverty line. Only five percent of
them are projected to ever cross that line. At the
same time, the average median income of black households is
one third that of the average median income of white

(55:27):
households in Atlanta, So that's about thirty five thousand dollars
to one hundred and four thousand dollars. And so the
wealth is just so disproportionately spread, and so much of
the labor intensive economy is predicated on it that black
people are pigeonholed into service economy jobs and they have

(55:50):
very few opportunities here. Now that type of inequality breeds
discontent and people looking for other opportunities, and the police
are ready to catch them at every turn for arresting
the juvenile. In the point system that they have for

(56:11):
Atlanta Police Department, it's five points. However, you only receive
a quarter of a point as a police officer if
you answer a service call. So police officers often ignore
service calls because that doesn't give them the credit that
they want. So just to put that in context, you
get twenty times the credit in Atlanta's point quota system

(56:32):
for arresting a juvenile then going where people actually wanted
police to show up. And we're supposed to be convinced
that this system is made to keep us safe. Right.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
The City of Atlanta and the Police Foundation wants Copcity
to be a national training center for police to come
and practice militaristic counterinsurgency for export across the country. They
murdered someone to further this goal. All eyes must be
on Atlanta.

Speaker 10 (57:01):
Cop City is a symbol of police repression. Cop City
is a symbol of the oppression of the people of Atlanta.
I want you to look around and see the families
here in this part today.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
These are people who came because.

Speaker 10 (57:16):
They're concerned for their children. These are people who are
concerned because they don't want their city overrun by militarization.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
The level of repression the movement is facing is a
sign that this state feels like this movement is a
threat and the state feels like this movement has the
possibility of actually succeeding, So in response, they're increasing repression.
And on the flip side of that, during this past
week of action, I saw a lot of affirmation that

(57:45):
this is going to be successful and that people believe
that they will stop Cop City. A common refrain during
the past week of action is that cop City will
never be built, and I believe that we will win.
There's been such a unique emphasis on the fact that
people believe that this fight is one winnable and that
people do have the ability to stop cop City, and

(58:08):
the people who are participating truly believe that, and I
think that is an important part of why it's gotten
as far as it has.

Speaker 9 (58:15):
But we can get everything we want for this city.
We can stop cod City.

Speaker 6 (58:19):
We've got the power, but we just got to.

Speaker 9 (58:21):
Believe, y'all. We have to believe with all power.

Speaker 6 (58:25):
The last thing on this, there's gonna be a lot
of people telling us about what we can't do, about what.

Speaker 9 (58:32):
These organizers are here can't do.

Speaker 3 (58:34):
Tell me what it tell us about.

Speaker 9 (58:35):
What we what we can't do.

Speaker 6 (58:37):
I'm gonna tell you all of a sudden, here we're organizers.

Speaker 9 (58:41):
We are in a business of taking that which all
the people say it is impossible if we make it possible,
as long.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
As we believe. I just need to say, We'll see her.

Speaker 9 (58:56):
Say I believe, I believe we will win.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
This is interesting to me because in my experience, a
lot of leftists and anarchists approach much of their praxis
with the concept of them expecting to not succeed, but
they're going to do it anyway, which there is a
kind of fated beauty to that in a certain way.
And part of that is taking action even if you
don't think it will lead to a decisive victory. But

(59:26):
also I feel that being in that mindset might set
you up for that outcome. If you're preparing to fail,
that means you're probably going to fail or at the
very least limit the ways that you do action. And
throughout this movement thus far, it's been interesting the degree
to which people are convinced that they are going to win.

Speaker 8 (59:44):
If you're being prepared to fail, you won't take the
radical action that it takes to win. Winning's hard, and
winning means doing things that are scary and uncomfortable and
doing things that put you in danger, and doing things
that are new and unknown and different, and taking new
strategies and do new things. And we in the US
and a lot of other places, but this is US
based movements. So there's so much learned helplessness on the

(01:00:07):
left here from so many years of like we lost
it Occupy and then we lost in Ferguson and Standing Rock,
and in twenty twenty, all of these movements that put
big body blows to the state put some hits in,
but we're just followed by these waves and waves of oppression.
We've learned so much helplessness. And for the first time
in my life, I'm looking at a movement that I'm like, no, no,

(01:00:30):
we can fucking beat them. And people are stagnating, We're
blinking because of what happened on Sunday, and like, no, no, no,
what happened on Sunday prove that we can win. It
proved that we can one fight them in the open
field and beat them, that they are afraid of us,
that they will see territory if we hit them, and
it proved that they are so afraid of us that
they need to mobilize fucking ten different police departments to

(01:00:52):
come deal. And then they won't even step into the
actual brush of the forest because they think we're the
fucking Vietcong. That proves we can more than anything that
proves we can win. And if we do not accept that,
what is proved that we can win is like property
destruction and to a degree doing violence, we won't win.
Those fireworks helped a lot. They pushed the cops out,

(01:01:14):
and like, we shouldn't balk at that, And I guess
I don't classify that as violence. The police classify that
is violence what they consider taking hits, I guess. But yeah,
we are so on the cusp of a make or
break kind of deal here, and the only way that
we win is not this internal debate we're having about
the efficacy of tactics. It's doubling down on what we
are already doing because it's working, and expanding on it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
Do you believe that cop City will be actually stopped?

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
We got to And here's what I mean by that.
This is the line. Right we have environmental racism, police
militarization and brutality and police and racism, and it's all
come to a head right here in this particular movement.

(01:02:04):
We have to win because what they're doing now is
to build capacity to make sure that we can't win,
right And so why people are pushing so hard is that,
as we've seen over the past couple of weeks, the
police have plenty of tanks and shit and all sorts

(01:02:25):
of militarized and tactical gear, and now they're trying to
build another base and the blackest part of the city
and to build up more capacity to put down any
sense of rebellion or pushback against empire. We cannot allow
it to happen. And I mean, there is so much

(01:02:47):
money going to kill people in end life. And if
we win right here and make this stand right here,
that changes the potentiality for how we view how to
keep one another safe and how to reinvest in ourselves
and our people throughout this country in a huge way.

(01:03:11):
I think that we are at the precipice of not
only winning Cup City, but pushing back the tide of
the cult of death that this country has become.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
The clearcuts in the Malani Forest at this stage serve
a threefold purpose. One, it obviously gets them closer to
construction and the mass land grading that is scheduled to
start on May twenty third two, It's a ployee by
the APF to secure additional needed funds from cop City investors.
And finally, it's to demoralize the people who spent years

(01:03:43):
of their life working to stop this project.

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
Everything that police have done is essentially always a reprisal, right,
the movement does something and the police clamp down in
a reprisal to try to repress the movement.

Speaker 1 (01:03:57):
Police always escalate, but they have always been like in
response to something.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
And their goal, of course is to quiet and chill
free speech and end the movement. But every time this happens,
the opposite effect is what comes out of it. And
from the domestic terrorism rest in December, like really that's
when this even larger groundswell of national support happened and

(01:04:23):
people started to take notice because this was an extreme measure.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
And then with the killing of Tortigita in January that
changed so much about the movement, including people's personal connection
to this struggle, where no longer are people doing this
simply because they believe it is what's right. They are
doing this because they have to, because the state cannot
get away with this, This death cannot be in vain,

(01:04:48):
and now people believe that they have to succeed or
at the very least make the state pay for every inch,
and that may mean looking beyond the binary of a
victory and defeat. According to a construction timeline from this
past April, the Atlanta Police Foundation plans to start construction
on August twenty ninth, twenty twenty three, in order for

(01:05:10):
a quote unquote soft opening of the facility in December
of twenty twenty four. One hiccup that the APF has
run into is that it seems they have yet to
secure enough money to finish the project and have been
forced to ask their investors and the city for more
additional money despite scaling back their plans for the project.
As a short clip put together by the Atlanta Community

(01:05:33):
Press Collective explains.

Speaker 11 (01:05:34):
The city Council will in fact have to vote on
whether or not to allocate thirty three million taxpayer dollars
to the construction of Cop City in the very near future. Additionally,
the Atlanta Police Foundation budget documents show that current construction
plans have been scaled back from what was originally promised.
This indicates a failure by the Foundation to raise the
promise sixty million dollars in private funds. Should the city

(01:05:56):
vote down this funding package of thirty three million, it
is difficult to see a path forward for the Atlanta
Police Foundation's effort to begin construction on cop City anytime
in the near future.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
The City Council has actually not yet voted to approve
the allocation of millions of dollars in city funds to
the cop City project.

Speaker 11 (01:06:16):
Through an open records request, we were able to get
our hands on emails between the Atlanta Police Foundation and
Atlanta's Deputy Chief Operating Officer le Chandra Berks. In this
email exchange, the Police Foundation expressed a need for the
city to provide thirty three point five million dollars in
funding for the project. Berks responded by mentioning the need
for legislative action to secure the funds. The emails state

(01:06:38):
that the Police Foundation wants to pass this legislation before
June thirtieth because they need the City of Atlanta's money
to secure their construction loan.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
It's expected that as soon as May fifteenth, a member
of the City Council will introduce legislation to allocate public
funds to the Atlanta Police Foundation to build cop City,
and a final vote could happen as soon as June five.
One thing that the movement to stop coop City has
shown us is that no matter what police do, people
continue to show up despite what happens, and the movement

(01:07:10):
keeps expanding. As the unnamed of Forest Defender told.

Speaker 8 (01:07:14):
Me, infrastructure wise, this Week of Action was the biggest
infrastructure I've seen doing a Week of Action. I thought
that the infrastructure we put together for Week one was
pretty big, but I mean it doesn't even compare. It's
not the same ballpark as what happened for Week five.
Just from how the medics were set up and how
food was handled. There was a shuttle bus program, there
was a welcome table at a church at one point,

(01:07:34):
there was like twenty four to seven clinic spaces, there
was twenty four to seven ride programs, and medics on standby,
and like all these things that were ready to support everybody.
Like there was all this infrastructure set up to make
sure that people were as supported as possible and to
make it as easy as possible and lower the barrier
of entry to the movement as much as possible, more
than there has been in any other week of action
so far. I feel like the way that we continue

(01:07:58):
that is to take lessons, learn from what happened this week,
from the problems with the infrastructure, the issues that it had,
expand on it, and then fucking do it for way longer,
like we could do this for an entire summer. I
am fully of the belief that the infrastructure I saw
on display during the fifth week of Action, we could
do that for a summer. I believe in the kind
of people who put it together, and I believe in
the people who did it. To do that, we just

(01:08:19):
have to kind of look at what went wrong, what
went right, and fix it. All the things that existed
in this week of action, as far as they're being
food rides, medics and like group supplies, all these things
existed during weeks of Action one through four. It's just grown.
It's gotten more logistically intense. There are more and more
people filling those roles. There's more and more stuff coming in,
like the amount of supplies that we just got sent

(01:08:40):
in or people brought with them from out of state
has just so vastly expanded since the first Week of Action.
It's just gotten more i don't know, like not professional,
but more polished. It's become a much more polished setup
system as time went on, from the first camp that
we had during the first Week of Action to now,
you know, almost two years later. And that's a huge
part of why I think we've outgrown the Week of Action.

(01:09:01):
We have these types of thought processes and logistics to
do this for a summer for a month, We just
need people and resources. We need more people to be willing,
because I don't want people to get tired.

Speaker 1 (01:09:11):
Just last month, another Week of Action was called for
June twenty fourth to July first, directly leading into what's
being called the Wollawnie Summer, with locals in Atlanta calling
on supporters and forced defenders everywhere to come to Atlanta
for the week and stay for the summer. With Entrenchment
Creek Park still closed and there being ongoing efforts to

(01:09:35):
have it be reopened, what the week and following summer
will look like is it still very unknown.

Speaker 8 (01:09:41):
We always are going to need more people. People are
a most important resource always. The way that we limit
burnout is by having more and more people so that
the burden falls less and less heavy on small groups
of people, and so that people can take breaks. And
that's another problem I have with like the Week of
Action as a strategy, is you're just go going non
fucking stop for a week. If you had three months,

(01:10:02):
You're like, ah, I'm gonna chill for a couple of weeks.
I'll be back, you know, because I have all this time,
and it frees up people from out of state to
come in, have times to work it out in their
schedule more.

Speaker 1 (01:10:13):
There will be more information put out in the coming weeks.
You can keep up to date by following stop coop
City on Instagram, Defend atl Forest on Twitter, or by
checking out stopcopsitysolidarity dot org, ideally with a VPN and
tour slash Brave browser.

Speaker 8 (01:10:29):
If you were at the music festival and you're just
a normal person, you weren't involved with the movement before this,
and you were at the music festival and you kind
of saw why we're fighting for this. You saw that space,
and then you saw the type of violence that the
police were willing to output to do it. Let that
move you to get involved further. You don't have to
join an organization.

Speaker 4 (01:10:45):
You know.

Speaker 8 (01:10:46):
I don't want to speak for other people. I'm a
hard anarchist. Fuck organizations to a large degree. But like,
have an affinity group. Get your friends together. If you
guys want to be helping out with the food people,
help out with the food. People you want to be medics,
go join a medic collective. Like find what everything calls
to you and just go and do it. Because we
need people and there's no barrier of entry to join
the movement. There's no test you have to take. You

(01:11:06):
just have to show up.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
I will end this Week of Action retrospective with a
promise from the Forest Defenders. See you on the other side.

Speaker 3 (01:11:17):
Well well, build it well.

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):
Music festival audio courtesy of Unicorn Riot. It Could Happen
Here as a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 5 (01:11:39):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 1 (01:11:48):
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here.

Speaker 3 (01:11:50):
Updated monthly at coolzonemedia, dot com, slash sources, Thanks for listening.