Speaker 1: Despite it being past midnight, you can still see through
Speaker 1: the dense forest. The moonlit sky, combined with the urban
Speaker 1: light pollution, make traversing the messy woods easier than you thought.
Speaker 1: You relieve that you don't have to use your head lamp,
Speaker 1: which could have drawn unwanted attention. The company of a
Speaker 1: few of your queer friends makes the walk through the
Speaker 1: confusing woods less intimidating. Dressed in gray and camo, you
Speaker 1: make your way through overgrown trails and hop over a
Speaker 1: small creek. Save for the occasional train, all you can
Speaker 1: hear is the croaking of frogs and chirping of cicadas, crickets,
Speaker 1: and grasshoppers. The night air you breathe through your mask
Speaker 1: is noticeably cleaner than the air from downtown that you
Speaker 1: spent months riding in during not even counting the tear
Speaker 1: gas in the air. As you and your pals slowly
Speaker 1: trek through the forest, your feet squished into the grassy ground,
Speaker 1: you avoid the area's caked in clay and stick to
Speaker 1: the cover of trees, brush and the soft wetland. After
Speaker 1: a short walk and with only a few wrong turns,
Speaker 1: you reach an artificial break in the embrace of the forest.
Speaker 1: You look at your masked up friends, and for a
Speaker 1: brief moment during the moonlight night, you can't quite tell
Speaker 1: who's who. Which is a good thing. You suppose everyone
Speaker 1: exchanges glances, but no one says anything. Everyone already knows
Speaker 1: what to do. As you approach the barren mound of dirt,
Speaker 1: you get angry, a jarring crack in the beauty and
Speaker 1: mysterious allure of the forest. You're no longer in the woods.
Speaker 1: You're at the site of destruction, a clear cut that
Speaker 1: seeks to expand its radius. Without the tree coverage, you
Speaker 1: can see the harsh blue light of l eds in
Speaker 1: the distance. There, among the mounds of dirt and fallen
Speaker 1: trees are several unguarded machines of destruction. With no cell
Speaker 1: phones in sight. You and your friends get to live
Speaker 1: in the moment. Your agenda becomes the sound of shattering
Speaker 1: glass in the cold night. Hammers meet windows and serrated
Speaker 1: knives cut the inner tubing of bulldozers and excavators. The
Speaker 1: undoing of the mechanical monsters that have violated the forest
Speaker 1: has begun. No tool of the evil doers goes unharmed.
Speaker 1: Rattling cans of spray paint, leave antagonistic and proclamatory messages
Speaker 1: with rebellious hiss for those who intend to continue destroying
Speaker 1: the forest. Defend the forest, no cops city, no Hollywood dystopia.
Speaker 1: In little time, the light pollution, moonlight, and distant LEDs
Speaker 1: are accompanied by a bright orange blaze emanating from the machines,
Speaker 1: lighting up the area around the sad mound of dirt.
Speaker 1: A splash of gasoline acts as the extension of the
Speaker 1: blood that fuels the burning fire in your hearts that
Speaker 1: became a light with the rage felt at the sight
Speaker 1: of the decimated woods. By the time the fire department
Speaker 1: took notice, you've already disappeared into the night, like a specter,
Speaker 1: fading like the curling black smoke that drifted into the
Speaker 1: midnight sky. As you exit the forest, you go about
Speaker 1: as if what happened tonight never did. You never tell
Speaker 1: a soul, You never talk about it with your masked
Speaker 1: up queer friends, since they were never there either. Details
Speaker 1: fade in your memory like a dream, but deep down
Speaker 1: you still remember the feeling, the peak moment of true freedom.
Speaker 1: When the fire engulfed the machines, it was upon broken,
Speaker 1: uneasable machines that the fires were extinguished, laying incinerated, the
Speaker 1: excavators and bulldozers who are rendered immobile worthless. Piles of trash.
Speaker 1: Fires are only temporary and can be undone. But the
Speaker 1: connection between those who live in a forest, who breathes air,
Speaker 1: and who drink its water filtered through its wetlands is
Speaker 1: not so easily broken. Any further attempts that destroying the
Speaker 1: forest we met with a similar response. The forest was
Speaker 1: here long before us, and we'll be here long after.
Speaker 1: You and your friends, among many other anonymous strangers will
Speaker 1: see to that welcome. Took it up in here a
Speaker 1: podcast about things falling apart and how we can put
Speaker 1: them back together, And today we'll be spending that entire spectrum.
Speaker 1: I'm Garrison Davison. The story I just read isn't merely
Speaker 1: a fictional one. It was inspired by over a year's
Speaker 1: worth of communicators and report backs coming out of the
Speaker 1: Defend the Forest movement in Atlanta, Georgia. So excuse the
Speaker 1: pretentious poetry of anarchists and speak. In early one, it
Speaker 1: was real to the public that mainly four entities, namely
Speaker 1: the City of Atlanta, the Atlanta Police Foundation, de Cab
Speaker 1: County and Black Hall Studios had dual plans to devastate
Speaker 1: two complementary sections of the South Atlanta Forest. The City
Speaker 1: of Atlanta and Police Foundation plans are to turn the
Speaker 1: area of the forest, known as the Old Atlanta Prison Farm,
Speaker 1: into the largest police training facility in the country, complete
Speaker 1: with a mock city, helipad and bomb range. Meanwhile, Entrenchment
Speaker 1: Creek of a public forest land will be traded by
Speaker 1: De Cab County to Black Hall Movie Studios to clear
Speaker 1: cut the land on which they plan to build America's
Speaker 1: largest sound stage. This project lies at a horrific intersection
Speaker 1: of police militarization, gentrification, copaganda, and exasperating the local effects
Speaker 1: of worsening climate change by clear cutting hundreds of acres
Speaker 1: of forest. In the last year, activists, ghosts like saboteurs,
Speaker 1: and open source researchers have vultraals together into an anonymous
Speaker 1: and diverse movement that's brought the plan to destroy the
Speaker 1: forest out of the shadows of secretive, backdoor corporate deals
Speaker 1: and into the public spotlight, forming the Defend the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Forest movement that's consistently been able to get ahead of
Speaker 1: police and media by breaking news about the force to
Speaker 1: strug action plans and setting the terms of engagement and
Speaker 1: what's deemed as acceptable direct action, all well being able
Speaker 1: to foster relationship with the woods that they are defending.
Speaker 1: I've been really interested in this project since I heard
Speaker 1: about it last summer. Along with the intersection of police
Speaker 1: militarization and climate change. On the flip side, there's this
Speaker 1: unique intersection of urban city protest and classic forest echo defense.
Speaker 1: The mix of tactics have produced a movement unlike anything
Speaker 1: really seen before here in the States. Not to get
Speaker 1: ahead of myself, but ever since last fall when the
Speaker 1: Atlanta City Council approved the plan to build the largest
Speaker 1: police training facility in the country, dubbed cops City by
Speaker 1: activists due to the plans to build a mini version
Speaker 1: of Atlanta within the facility to practice urban combat. But
Speaker 1: I figured that I would eventually find myself inside the forest.
Speaker 1: So this last April, when an opportunity presented itself to
Speaker 1: travel to Atlanta, stay in the woods and talk with
Speaker 1: some forest defenders, I could not pass it up. I
Speaker 1: packed a tent, sleeping bag, and some microfilms and made
Speaker 1: my way to Georgia. The first thing I noticed upon
Speaker 1: arriving in Atlanta is that when they say Atlanta is
Speaker 1: a city in a forest, they really do mean it.
Speaker 1: The amount of continuous tree coverage throughout the city was astonishing,
Speaker 1: and that's coming from someone who lives in Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, the city of Atlanta actually has
Speaker 1: the highest amount of tree canopy of any city in
Speaker 1: the United States. On top of the citywide tree coverage,
Speaker 1: there is the South River Forest, which makes up the
Speaker 1: largest continuous section of woods and serves as Atlanta's first
Speaker 1: line of defense in the face of rapidly accelerating climate change.
Speaker 1: The forest in southeast Atlanta is said to function as
Speaker 1: the lungs of the city. The canopy offers shade and
Speaker 1: traps carbon, with some of the more heavily forted areas
Speaker 1: acting as wetlands that filter rain water and prevent flooding
Speaker 1: by collecting runoff. It's marsh is one of the last
Speaker 1: breeding grounds for a lot of amphibians in the region,
Speaker 1: as well as an important migration site or wading birds,
Speaker 1: and serves as a home to a lot of local wildlife.
Speaker 1: Nearly five acres of this forest is under threat by
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Police Foundation and Black Hall Studios. If plans
Speaker 1: succeed to develop this precious strip of forest into the
Speaker 1: massive police compound and adjacent movie sound stage, the entire
Speaker 1: metropolitan area will face much harsher effects of climate change,
Speaker 1: including worsening floods, higher temperatures, and less clean, tree filtered air,
Speaker 1: not to mention the increased police militarization and gentrification. Speaking
Speaker 1: of the second thing I noticed once I arrived in
Speaker 1: Atlanta is how much gentrification is currently underway. The amount
Speaker 1: of hideous five of our one apartments that are being
Speaker 1: built was impossible to overlook. And as we'll see, the
Speaker 1: way police feed off gentrification, which feeds off the corporate
Speaker 1: and movie making sides of Atlanta, is not merely a coincidence.
Speaker 1: Last fall, I interviewed Jamal from the Atlanta chapter of
Speaker 1: the Community Movement Builders, a black blood collective of community
Speaker 1: residents and activists serving poor, working class black communities. They
Speaker 1: focus on responding to encroaching gentrification, displacement, and over policing.
Speaker 1: Here's what Jamal had to say on the intersection of
Speaker 1: issues owing around the cops city and defend the forest project.
Speaker 1: Just to piggyback off of that, I think it's extremely
Speaker 1: important for us to recognize the connections between all these things. Right, this,
Speaker 1: like Cops City is a perfect blend of UM environmental
Speaker 1: justice issues, uh just flat out racism, police brutality, and
Speaker 1: also gentrification. Right, it's not a it's not a mistake
Speaker 1: that they're building this Cops City right at this moment
Speaker 1: when UM Atlanta is also becoming the for the first
Speaker 1: time and I don't know how many decades, um Non
Speaker 1: no longer a majority black city because neighborhoods like Pittsburger
Speaker 1: were located out of and all across Southwest and West
Speaker 1: Atlanta have becoming more like the black people have been
Speaker 1: being displaced from the from our communities, right. UM. So
Speaker 1: a perfect example is that with my gganization Community Movement Builders,
Speaker 1: we UH purchased We've been we've been doing work in
Speaker 1: the Pittsburgh neighborhood for a while, but we purchased a
Speaker 1: community house in the neighborhood about six years ago. Right
Speaker 1: at that point, we purchased the house for fifty thousand dollars. Right. UM,
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh has been historically uh poorn working class community. It
Speaker 1: was uh it was founded as a black community, which
Speaker 1: is different from a lot of other other neighbors in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Was founded as a black community from uh freed Africans
Speaker 1: UM who were trying to escape some of the more
Speaker 1: rural areas of the South and found work in Haven
Speaker 1: in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Atlanta. And it's been a
Speaker 1: poor and working class black community ever since. But now UM,
Speaker 1: because of the gentrification has been going on. How a
Speaker 1: house just sold maybe about a month and a half
Speaker 1: ago for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, So the
Speaker 1: person's house at fifty thousand dollars six years ago. A
Speaker 1: house just sold UM just a few blocks away from
Speaker 1: that house for seven fifty thousand dollars. Now, it's not
Speaker 1: every house to sell in for that amount, but that
Speaker 1: just shows you the rate of gentrification that's happening. And
Speaker 1: then and we know that cops are on this necessary
Speaker 1: part of being able to defer to displace people from
Speaker 1: gentrifying communities. They play an integral role within gentrification. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering, does any of you have anything like
Speaker 1: even like anecdotal experience with like basically Marvel and men
Speaker 1: tons of other industries like invading Atlanta. How is that
Speaker 1: like affected specifically, Like you already talked about how how
Speaker 1: you know, increased the increase in the film industry and
Speaker 1: other things. Has you know, has made more gentrification, But
Speaker 1: like how has that even affected just like like other
Speaker 1: types of stuff including like policing, Like has has this
Speaker 1: type of like growth um affected people or people you
Speaker 1: know in in other ways? Yeah? Absolutely so I think
Speaker 1: a lot of this kind of got I won't say
Speaker 1: it got started, but a lot of it went even
Speaker 1: uh you know, escalated when Tyler Perry Studio opened up
Speaker 1: in East Point, UM and a lot of people you
Speaker 1: know were praising It's like, oh look at this uh
Speaker 1: you know, it's a black man. And I was able
Speaker 1: to move down and be able to start this thing
Speaker 1: within Hollywood. But no, it's all that is one of
Speaker 1: the things that also spurred the gentrification in East Point,
Speaker 1: which is you might not be familiar with Atlanta, but
Speaker 1: East Point is like literally right next to Atlanta, So
Speaker 1: it's a lot of it's it's really close proximity, and
Speaker 1: so that also spurs over to the gentrification here in
Speaker 1: the city as well. Um property values have gone up
Speaker 1: since that point even more. UM even my tax bill
Speaker 1: has gone up a thousand dollars a year per a
Speaker 1: year UM for the past like three years, right, UM,
Speaker 1: So it's yeah, it's it's definitely. We definitely see the
Speaker 1: effects and you know, and just talking to you know,
Speaker 1: we do, we do do a lot of work around gentrification. UM.
Speaker 1: And I think this is in tandem with you know,
Speaker 1: because we have COVID nineteen out here now, with the
Speaker 1: Vision moratorium which has now been you know denied um
Speaker 1: with by the Supreme Court. Um. But even when there
Speaker 1: wasn't a Vision moratorium, there were still people that were
Speaker 1: getting evicted from their homes. And and I think all
Speaker 1: of this in tandem when Atlanta specifically has already been
Speaker 1: going through a gentrification crisis and um with COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: where people have been losing jobs left and right, or
Speaker 1: not been able to go to their jobs that they've had,
Speaker 1: um and look and having us salaries cut. People have
Speaker 1: been hurting, and the response from the city has not
Speaker 1: to been that has not been to provide more resources
Speaker 1: to people. It's been too fund cops city to be
Speaker 1: able to get more peace out. Who are the ones
Speaker 1: that execute then actual evictions themselves? And I think it
Speaker 1: all it all it all is connected in that in
Speaker 1: that type of way. I arrived in Atlanta a few
Speaker 1: days before the Muscogee Summit, a weekend event where the
Speaker 1: original indigenous people from the area of the South River,
Speaker 1: or for the native name of the said land, the
Speaker 1: Ulannie Forest, traveled back to their ancestral homeland to discuss
Speaker 1: indigenous environmental philosophy, what land back and rematreation means in
Speaker 1: theory and practice. Several Indigenous authors were present and led workshops,
Speaker 1: including Indigenous feminist, scholar and community planner lower Are Joe
Speaker 1: from the University of Oklahoma, author of Spiral to the Stars,
Speaker 1: Muskogee Tools of Futurity, and Dr Daniel Wildcat of the
Speaker 1: Haskell Indian Nations University, who wrote the book Read Alert,
Speaker 1: Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge. In the less academic portions,
Speaker 1: there were forest walks, community meals, and singing of old
Speaker 1: Muscogee songs, including ones that are performed two centuries ago
Speaker 1: during the Trail of Tears. Muskogee Creek. Attendees also gathered
Speaker 1: around a sacred fire to perform a stomp dance, recreating
Speaker 1: rhythms heard and sensed in the forest long ago to
Speaker 1: rekindle the relationship with the Earth and connect back to
Speaker 1: the ancestral presences. This was the second ancestral migration the
Speaker 1: Muskogee Creek Title members have done since being forcibly removed
Speaker 1: two centuries ago and displaced to Oklahoma. The first one
Speaker 1: took place just this last November, and both times the
Speaker 1: particular section of land they gathered on in Transparant Creek
Speaker 1: Park is one of the areas under threat of being
Speaker 1: ecologically destroyed and clear cut. Over the course of a
Speaker 1: few days during my week long stay, I sat down
Speaker 1: in the woods to record with two groups of forest defenders,
Speaker 1: one group sitting around a campfire at night next to
Speaker 1: a high security child prison, and the other group during
Speaker 1: the sunny bird chirping day outside the Black Hole Studios
Speaker 1: movie plot. So if you hear campfires or bird sounds
Speaker 1: in the background, just embrace our forest punk aesthetic. Up front,
Speaker 1: I think it's really important to first talk about the
Speaker 1: history of the land that is under threat because on
Speaker 1: top of issues regarding gentrification and the plans of this
Speaker 1: police training facility. As a response to the George Flayne
Speaker 1: uprising and the false manufactured crime wave media narrative intended
Speaker 1: to rejusify American policing in the wake of the uprising,
Speaker 1: that the fact that the Atlanta Police Foundation shows this
Speaker 1: plot of land in particular is particularly gross. The history
Speaker 1: of this small section of land in the South River
Speaker 1: Watershed is deeply scarred and desperately needs time to heal.
Speaker 1: There are centuries of oppression and state violence tied to
Speaker 1: this particular spot of land, and now we're seeing that
Speaker 1: trying to be continued with this Cops City plan. Local
Speaker 1: tribes were expelled for millions of acres in the southwest
Speaker 1: region of what is now known as the United States
Speaker 1: during the early decades of the eighteen hundreds. Forced removal
Speaker 1: and displacement of the Muskogee Creek people began in the
Speaker 1: region in eighteen twenty one through a series of treaties
Speaker 1: which then eventually led to a quote melee of removal.
Speaker 1: More on that from one of the force defenders I
Speaker 1: spoke to, and I'll note we'll be using a mix
Speaker 1: of voice distortion and voice actors combined with other audio
Speaker 1: distortion to help protect the identities of the forced defenders
Speaker 1: that I spoke to against possible state repression. So enjoy
Speaker 1: our our our cool voice distorted audio. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's important because a lot of our comrades relatives repressed
Speaker 1: lands in the early eighteen hundreds. They a lot of
Speaker 1: them did not go quietly in the night. I think
Speaker 1: that's important to remember because I feel like a lot
Speaker 1: of people are just like the Trail of twos or
Speaker 1: like they were pushed out, but they're they fought against
Speaker 1: being pushed out, and then when a lot of them
Speaker 1: are pushed out or killed off, then it was used
Speaker 1: to incur sory and house mostly black people. So we're
Speaker 1: taking it back. That is most of the people that
Speaker 1: I have seen involved. It is a diverse group of people.
Speaker 1: It's not just like white anarchists in the woods. That
Speaker 1: is a misconception. There's all kinds of folks, which really
Speaker 1: I think is interesting and makes this trouble unique and important.
Speaker 1: But there is also a lot of like white anarchists
Speaker 1: that are using their privilege to help take the land
Speaker 1: back for our comrades that want to see it back,
Speaker 1: and it feels things feel like they're in a good way. Um,
Speaker 1: there's good relations that are existing between like the anarchists
Speaker 1: and Indigenous Alliance down here, where like obviously no one
Speaker 1: person speaks or represents any one group, but the alliances
Speaker 1: that we have are very informed of the variety of
Speaker 1: activities that have happened down here, including the persons of machinery,
Speaker 1: and we were positively told to quote unquote keep on going.
Speaker 1: So that feels empowering and it feels beautiful, and it
Speaker 1: feels important to note that some of the comrades that
Speaker 1: have ancestral tires to this area, it's such a dark
Speaker 1: history and they're still here. Is something that they're mentioning,
Speaker 1: and they're excited. The people that were close to obviously
Speaker 1: we are close to all of them. They're excited that
Speaker 1: people are choosing to use their privilege to help make
Speaker 1: sure these facilities don't get built. Continuing with the scarred
Speaker 1: history of this land, Shortly after the lands at the
Speaker 1: South River Forest were stolen from Muskegee Creek people, plots
Speaker 1: were distributed to white settlers in the fourth Georgia Land
Speaker 1: Lottery of one, which made available landloads of two undred
Speaker 1: in two point five acres. Many of these white settlers
Speaker 1: established slave plantations on which cotton and other crops were
Speaker 1: produced through slave labor. Through archival records, we know of
Speaker 1: at least twelve plantations that were on this land that
Speaker 1: existed from the eighteen forties up until eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: and then in the early nineteen hundreds, the very same
Speaker 1: land started being used as a prison farm, now known
Speaker 1: as the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. The Old Atlanta Prison
Speaker 1: Farm was originally bought in nineteen seventeen to incarceraate prisoners
Speaker 1: of war, but this plan was abandoned within two years
Speaker 1: and the land was converted into a prison farm where
Speaker 1: inmates including a moonshiners, public drinkers, and just loiterers and
Speaker 1: really anybody, were sent to and forced to perform unpaid
Speaker 1: agricultural labor. This shift from plantations to prison farm marks
Speaker 1: the rebranding of slavery into for profit prison labor. This
Speaker 1: labor included washing cows and arsenic laden water, which led
Speaker 1: to the early deaths of countless prison nurse. The facility
Speaker 1: ran up until in which it was shut down, and
Speaker 1: then two child prison facilities were put on the adjacent land,
Speaker 1: and the Atlanta Police Department already currently uses sections of
Speaker 1: this hollow ground as a firing range. Tear gas canisters
Speaker 1: and bullet casings from police are frequently found throughout the forest.
Speaker 1: From where on that here's some other parts that might
Speaker 1: sit down with the forest offenders. And then I guess
Speaker 1: like fast forwarding a little bit from this land where
Speaker 1: indigenous people lived to the prison farm, um, and then
Speaker 1: how this has like a long incarstral history and history
Speaker 1: of being tied to policing. Uh well with the child
Speaker 1: prison that's still here, the prison farm, and then now
Speaker 1: trying to build this militarized training facility, just like continuing
Speaker 1: on this legacy of state violence, which is like another
Speaker 1: massive aspect in terms of like they're trying to take
Speaker 1: this very like land that needs to heal from the
Speaker 1: centuries of violence and just tear it all down and
Speaker 1: build more of that. Um. I know, there's like there's
Speaker 1: the firing range that we've been hearing shots from. Uh
Speaker 1: there's it's like just this never ending thing. It just
Speaker 1: like just keeps happening. It's a pretty weird, surreal experience.
Speaker 1: Makes me feel like we're all like an endangered species
Speaker 1: living in like the last part of the forest and
Speaker 1: fucking South Atlanta. I remember when I was explaining to
Speaker 1: one of my relatives, are like I was reading the
Speaker 1: internet about the Family Atlanta forest and not sure quite
Speaker 1: what's all going on, but sounds like you're living in
Speaker 1: how you're between two different chapters and sons of high
Speaker 1: security was the less security, a large massive power line
Speaker 1: cut and old Prettiston farm and two sides of the
Speaker 1: road at least three different police firing rangers and always
Speaker 1: water treatment plane at the doubles as a firing range
Speaker 1: and super training facility for the police. Another interesting facet
Speaker 1: is this particular piece of land where they're trying to
Speaker 1: build Top City is like a really important turning point
Speaker 1: in history of slavery in the US, and like this
Speaker 1: is where a lot of things went from like shadow
Speaker 1: slavery um and transitioned into what we now have as
Speaker 1: prison slavery. And as we're sitting here on what was
Speaker 1: literally a prison farm, even people in pretile detention were
Speaker 1: here and used for unpaid labor, even people who had
Speaker 1: not been convicted of any time. And so it's kind
Speaker 1: of like it's like like very like visible like stain
Speaker 1: on the like history of of like what you is
Speaker 1: racist policing, but it's harder to cover up and harder
Speaker 1: to like pink flash um and so like even as
Speaker 1: there is like a place where children are locked in
Speaker 1: cages over they have not yards from me. So too,
Speaker 1: is this a place where people were brought for being
Speaker 1: used as slaves and like died and were buried in
Speaker 1: unmarked graves. Yeah. Can I talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about that. This was the transition. This is like the
Speaker 1: intermediitary the intermediate transition between child slavery and mind day
Speaker 1: prison slavery. UM. And it was like especially horrific, Like
Speaker 1: there is two lakes on the property, but where at
Speaker 1: one point said to be filled with arsenic um where
Speaker 1: they are slaves were not only watching cattle um with
Speaker 1: the arsenic to remove them like bugs, but also in
Speaker 1: those in those lakes and like suffering horrible diseases and
Speaker 1: like dying from this. The reason they present, I'm actually
Speaker 1: that closed down was because of the amount of people
Speaker 1: going in and out of the reason why this city
Speaker 1: pushed to close it downwards because of the amount of
Speaker 1: UM people being sent to the hospital week after weekend,
Speaker 1: day after day, like efficient like actually overloading the medical
Speaker 1: system in the area. UM. That's like publicly recorded information. UM.
Speaker 1: They closed down like the eighties or nineteen nineties UM,
Speaker 1: and like during the Civil War, escaped prisoners from here
Speaker 1: would be are sorry, escaped slaves are from here would
Speaker 1: be like going across battle lines and feeding information to
Speaker 1: the Union side in order to like serve their informs
Speaker 1: of liberation. I mean we like this land also exists
Speaker 1: right next to a major or like major road that
Speaker 1: serves as a car serral center. Um. It has both
Speaker 1: like the Metro uh Metro reentry facility, the Metro Youth
Speaker 1: Detention center, and like a couple of other buildings um uh.
Speaker 1: And like it's not just like the eighty lands of
Speaker 1: a plan to clear cut here, it's also the like
Speaker 1: three hundred that they plan to continue with the car
Speaker 1: serl legacy of terror and horror um from going from
Speaker 1: like chattel slavery and indigenous displacement to um the intermit
Speaker 1: intermediary UM poor that the prison farm was to this
Speaker 1: new legacy of like cover up of it all and
Speaker 1: then and it Yeah. I think the continuation of this
Speaker 1: land being used by the state, by police, by um
Speaker 1: all these like oppressive groups to further their causes a
Speaker 1: really interesting aspect of des and for going to prison
Speaker 1: farm and then police trying to now turn into a
Speaker 1: militarized police training facility. UM. Yeah. Yeah, so first I think, UM,
Speaker 1: you know this misscowy Land and it's during the scurvy summer.
Speaker 1: It's cool. You know, the scurvy people have been or
Speaker 1: displaced for the most part and there trying to participate
Speaker 1: in this migration back. And so they're on the land
Speaker 1: right now and it's been very special to have them
Speaker 1: here and to be able to express all audity and
Speaker 1: like work together with them has been really amazing and
Speaker 1: learned a lot and it's yeah, it's cool to understand
Speaker 1: that and hear what you're saying. That interaction of like
Speaker 1: UM settler colonialism displacing people UM, like early slavery, prison slavery,
Speaker 1: and this this specific land has always been UM a
Speaker 1: place that I feel like has been almost like the
Speaker 1: vanguard of how like policing has and like such a
Speaker 1: settler colonialism, UM has experimented with how to reproduce itself
Speaker 1: in sustainable ways, UM with like just in general domestication
Speaker 1: of humans and the domestication animals. And that's like what
Speaker 1: APD is trying to do on this land. And it's
Speaker 1: a direct reaction to the George Floyd uprising which caused
Speaker 1: a crisis, and policing is it actually bit back with
Speaker 1: serious power, and so they're trying to figure out and
Speaker 1: experiment with ways of reproducing policing for the future in
Speaker 1: the exact same way that when slavery took a serious
Speaker 1: all they said, how can we recuperate and how can
Speaker 1: we reproduce this in a way that sustainable. And that's
Speaker 1: why we have a modern prison system that lives on
Speaker 1: to this day. And that's why they're realizing, as as
Speaker 1: we're gaining and we're threatening it, oh, we have to
Speaker 1: do something, and this LAMB has always been a site
Speaker 1: for doing that. It's they're an keep trying. Atlanta is
Speaker 1: a heavily corporate city. It's been dubbed the Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: of the South by people who surely must be insufferable
Speaker 1: to be around, but it is true that Atlanta and
Speaker 1: Georgia's economic policies have attached a swath of corporations to
Speaker 1: either start to grow, oh or migrate to the city.
Speaker 1: It's home to Coca Cola, Delta Airlines, Ups, Home Depot,
Speaker 1: Chick fil A, and multiple media conglomerates, as well as
Speaker 1: having headquarters for like Google and other tech companies as well.
Speaker 1: The city serves as a massive transportation hub. In fact,
Speaker 1: Atlanta the city started off as a train hub, and
Speaker 1: now it boasts the world's busiest airport. Recent tax credits
Speaker 1: for the film industry have made Atlanta and Georgia the
Speaker 1: new hot place to shoot high budget Hollywood movies. There's
Speaker 1: a whole effort to make the city effectively the new Hollywood,
Speaker 1: but like all economic growth, this comes with some heavy consequences,
Speaker 1: most often affecting those at the bottom. Atlanta is also
Speaker 1: the most surveilled city in the United States and the
Speaker 1: city with the most wealth and equality. All the corporations
Speaker 1: and film industry stuff moving to Atlanta has indeed created jobs,
Speaker 1: but many of those jobs go to workers from out
Speaker 1: of state. On average, less than one third of new
Speaker 1: film industry jobs have gone to people who were already
Speaker 1: living in Atlanta. The result of this out of state
Speaker 1: economic migration boosts cost of housing, cost of living at
Speaker 1: Bush's lower and middle class residents of Atlanta out of
Speaker 1: their neighborhoods, disproportionately pushing out to black people. And this
Speaker 1: is all while the increasing corporization and gentrification is actually
Speaker 1: pitched as quote unquote providing opportunities to the city's black population.
Speaker 1: Which is certainly something because the state of Georgia has
Speaker 1: the fourth largest incarceration rate in the entire world if
Speaker 1: you put a U S states on the same level
Speaker 1: as like every single other country. The other top three
Speaker 1: states or countries with the highest incarceration rates are Louisiana, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: and Oklahoma. So yeah, but Georgia's number four. Those in
Speaker 1: Atlanta's top income bracket make nearly twenty times those who
Speaker 1: are at the bottom. And if you map the wealth
Speaker 1: disparity onto the layout of the city, it's a one
Speaker 1: to one match for the cities old segregation lines. The
Speaker 1: entire city runs on these like Reaganite neoliberal policies, but
Speaker 1: under this mask of woke identity politics. And who enforces
Speaker 1: that wealth and equality and gentrification. That's right, police, which
Speaker 1: leads us to the origin of this plan for so
Speaker 1: called cops City. I'm gonna quote a crime Thing article
Speaker 1: that came out last month called The City in the
Speaker 1: Forest Reinventing Resistance for an age of climate crisis and
Speaker 1: police militarization, which I recommend you guys read. I'll I'll
Speaker 1: have it in the habit in the source notes. But yeah,
Speaker 1: here's the quote from crime think quote. The government of
Speaker 1: Atlanta has developed a few tentative solutions to the dilemmas
Speaker 1: they face. To follow through on their commitments to their backers,
Speaker 1: city politicians need to continue sacrificing public assets on the
Speaker 1: altar of the economy in order to attract more major
Speaker 1: investors to the region, especially the film industry and technology companies.
Speaker 1: To maintain control in a period of rapid displacement and
Speaker 1: rising cost of living, with chronic tension between the conservative
Speaker 1: statement and the liberal city administration, they need to funnel
Speaker 1: more resources towards law enforcement throughout the region. Finally, to
Speaker 1: appease the increasingly rebellious lower classes, they to frame this
Speaker 1: process of restructuring and repression in the language of black empowerment,
Speaker 1: social justice, and progressivism. The bureaucrats are not in a
Speaker 1: good position to handle this. Decades of tax cuts and
Speaker 1: deregulation have created infrastructural failures and breakdowns of all kinds,
Speaker 1: among other concerns. Atlanta lost the bid for the second
Speaker 1: Amazon headquarters because the public transit, one of the least
Speaker 1: funded in the United States, was not even operable when
Speaker 1: the corporate scouts came to visit. At the same time.
Speaker 1: It's precisely the low taxes and absence of regulation that
Speaker 1: attract capital to the state of Georgia. So cultivating a
Speaker 1: social democratic governing strategy may now be impossible without creating
Speaker 1: a flight of wealth to other parts of the country.
Speaker 1: It seems that the current plan is to give over
Speaker 1: as many public contracts and resources to private developers as possible,
Speaker 1: to allow them to incur the costs of social disintegration
Speaker 1: and anger, and to use police to control the blowback,
Speaker 1: and to use images of Martin Luther King Jr. To
Speaker 1: preempt any meaningful resistance. Thus, the plan to transform a
Speaker 1: wild space into a police training compound is dubbed the
Speaker 1: Institute for Social Justice. That's right, the plan to make
Speaker 1: the country's biggest militarized police training facility. They're planning to
Speaker 1: call it the Institute for Social Justice. Ignore the bomb
Speaker 1: range and uh urban combat mock city section. Anyway. Um,
Speaker 1: here is Jamal again from the community movement builders. I
Speaker 1: think one thing that's also really significant is that so
Speaker 1: my city council person for his District twelve, Joyce Shepherd Um.
Speaker 1: District twelve is where Pittsburgh is, where Summerhill is, where
Speaker 1: several of poor and black working class neighborhoods of Atlanta
Speaker 1: are located. There are also the areas where they're the
Speaker 1: most gentrifying areas of the city is well and it's
Speaker 1: in in in City Council District twelve. Joyce Shepherd, she
Speaker 1: is the person who brought this proposal forward, right, she
Speaker 1: is over the quote unquote public safety. Um even know
Speaker 1: they are keeping ship safe quote unquote public safety. Um,
Speaker 1: you know commission and Um, she brought this forward. And
Speaker 1: she has been since she's been in office, she has
Speaker 1: been a even uh, she's been a champion of gentrification. Right,
Speaker 1: she's been a champion of over policing as well. UM.
Speaker 1: And I think it's it's a tie between even our
Speaker 1: city council or even our representation has in their interests
Speaker 1: of being able of of gentrifying the city because that
Speaker 1: gives them more tax stars. It gives them a way
Speaker 1: to be able to say that they are decreasing their
Speaker 1: crime rates except and all those all these different types
Speaker 1: of things, when it's really just dep deplacing poor folks. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's an important about talking about
Speaker 1: how this kind of was established. That's the important topic
Speaker 1: to be able to address is that even and she's
Speaker 1: a black woman, right, so even um, you know, even
Speaker 1: how like when people when when people might you think
Speaker 1: they might be in representing your interests, when they get
Speaker 1: to be in these positions, we have to recognize that
Speaker 1: they are not necessarily flo to people. In the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the George Floyd uprising against police violence, the city
Speaker 1: responded by striking down any police reform measures and restricting
Speaker 1: opportunities for republic input, while increasing the police budget and
Speaker 1: upping citizens surveillance. On a national level, a media manufactured
Speaker 1: crime wave narrative has been used to rejustify American policing
Speaker 1: in the wake of the uprising, and the City of
Speaker 1: Atlanta is using that narrative while wrapping their increased militarization
Speaker 1: plans in a nice, woke social justice package, i e.
Speaker 1: A militarized police training compound being dubbed the Institute for
Speaker 1: Social Justice. Heading up this effort is the Atlanta Police Foundation,
Speaker 1: which is a nonprofit police advocacy organization that claims to
Speaker 1: have quote united the business and philanthropic community with the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Police Department. It's a It's backed by an array
Speaker 1: of Atlanta area corporate donors including Delta Airlines, Upstrick fil A,
Speaker 1: Cox Enterprizes, which owns the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which is
Speaker 1: like the city's biggest newspaper, and they were formally formally
Speaker 1: backed by Coca Cola. They Coca Cola dropped out this
Speaker 1: last November. A leak promo video for the Institute for
Speaker 1: Social Justice details some of the features of the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Police Foundations quote world class training campus. With an estimated
Speaker 1: cost of ninety million dollars, The space will provide a
Speaker 1: place for recruiting training, mid career education, and practice with
Speaker 1: new technology and equipment for police and fire department personnel.
Speaker 1: The renderings show the campus will house a quote mock
Speaker 1: city for real world training, a canine training center, and
Speaker 1: forty horse stalls for police horses. Twelve acres of forest
Speaker 1: land are slated to be converted into an emergency vehicle
Speaker 1: operations course, and the whole compound will be located across
Speaker 1: three hundred and eighty acres of the old Atlanta Prison Farm,
Speaker 1: which is a city owned but technically outside of city limits,
Speaker 1: located just east of the city in unincorporated Dekapp County.
Speaker 1: The Police Foundation has proposed funding the training center through
Speaker 1: a public private partnership, which will leave taxpayers to pay
Speaker 1: an estimated thirty million dollars for this out of city
Speaker 1: police training facility one, which is one third of the
Speaker 1: early estimated cost. According to the land Use Ordinance, the
Speaker 1: property will be leased to the Police Foundation by the
Speaker 1: city for ten dollars a year for fifty years. It's
Speaker 1: almost four hundred acres of forest land for ten dollars
Speaker 1: a year. The ground lease will quote provide that the
Speaker 1: city will be able to have input or approval on
Speaker 1: the stages of construction along with the development of the property,
Speaker 1: and will allow waving of certain code requirements. Such a
Speaker 1: facility would be three times the size of the New
Speaker 1: York Police depart Mon's training facility and four times the
Speaker 1: size of the l a p D. S UH. It's
Speaker 1: worth noting that the NYPD and l a p D
Speaker 1: are the two largest police departments in the country, while
Speaker 1: Atlanta is the only the nineteenth largest. Yet they'll have
Speaker 1: a facility that's like three times the size of New York's.
Speaker 1: According to the Mayor of Atlanta during the time of
Speaker 1: the facility's announcement, the massive training complex would quote raise
Speaker 1: morale among officers and hopefully bring more recruits to the department.
Speaker 1: And importantly, the whole project was initially supposed to be
Speaker 1: totally under wraps, approved through backdoor deal making. The social
Speaker 1: justice something socialist justice I believe in the promo video specifically,
Speaker 1: which is not like really even a public release. This
Speaker 1: was like very much designed to be under the table,
Speaker 1: pushed through as fast as possible of the public. Where
Speaker 1: is it really supposed to know about it? The videos
Speaker 1: that existed for only meant to be UM the sponsors,
Speaker 1: board members founders of the Atlantic Police Foundation UM and
Speaker 1: the Atlant Police Foundation, unlike most like police unions, is
Speaker 1: a foundation made to final corporate money into the handsOn police.
Speaker 1: The cops city side of things is just one part
Speaker 1: of the Defend the Forest project. The other big aspect
Speaker 1: of this is pushing back on the movie studio Black Hall,
Speaker 1: from being able to clear cut more forced to expand
Speaker 1: their sound stage. Projects shot on their current lot include
Speaker 1: a Godzilla, King of Monsters, Venom, der Van Hansen, HBO's
Speaker 1: Lovedcraft Country and Amazon Primes That Tomorrow War on the
Speaker 1: East side of the forested land, the part that's referred
Speaker 1: to as entrenchment Creek Park was bought by Hondy Booko
Speaker 1: founder Arthur Blank in the early two thousands with a
Speaker 1: plan to combine uh that section of land with three
Speaker 1: acres at the prison Farm to create a five hundred
Speaker 1: acre park, a project that never came to fruition uh
Speaker 1: and now the park is currently under control of the
Speaker 1: Cab County. On top of the heat insulation and air
Speaker 1: filtering that the tree canopy provides, Entrenchment Creek plays a
Speaker 1: crucial role in maintaining the South River Watershed, being a
Speaker 1: partial wetland and marsh that mitigates flooding in South Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Quoting that crime thing article again quote, the plundering of
Speaker 1: public assets from the benefit of a movie company and
Speaker 1: real estate mogul is described as an opportunity to create
Speaker 1: quote good jobs for local Atlanta's, not as a criminal
Speaker 1: expropriation of infrastructure. The clear cut that Blackall Studio has
Speaker 1: planned to trade in exchange for a section of forest
Speaker 1: is to be renamed Michelle Obama Park unquote. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that also clearly demonstrates the type of gentrification wrapped in
Speaker 1: this nice woke package by doing this really sketchy land
Speaker 1: swap and then building a park on it and calling
Speaker 1: at Michelle Obama Park. Cool stuff, guys. Blackhall Studios is
Speaker 1: currently a hundred and fifty acre complex about ten minutes
Speaker 1: south of downtown, and they seek to add over half
Speaker 1: a million square feet of sound stage, two hundred thousands
Speaker 1: square feet of offices UH, four hundred twenty thousand square
Speaker 1: feet for warehousing square feet of catering space, according to
Speaker 1: a filing made through the States Development of Regional Impact
Speaker 1: Program UH. The d r I s are filed when
Speaker 1: the projects size is large enough that it's likely to
Speaker 1: impact the infrastructure of neighboring communities. The De Cab County
Speaker 1: Board of Commissioners in October twenty voted to approve the
Speaker 1: land swap deal with Blackhe Studios. As a part of
Speaker 1: the planned expansion, the county would give approximately forty acres
Speaker 1: mostly wooded land around the South River Forest, and then
Speaker 1: in turn, Black Studios would give the county around fifty
Speaker 1: acres of nearby land as well. The project has faced
Speaker 1: some legal and construction issues ever since then, and we'll
Speaker 1: discuss the details of those shortly. Also worth noting that
Speaker 1: Black Hall Studios was sold to a private equity firm
Speaker 1: in l a just last year and this last February
Speaker 1: announced that they purchased another one thousand and five hundred
Speaker 1: acres in Newtown County, Georgia, which is about forty miles
Speaker 1: east of downtown Atlanta. Uh, and they plan to shoot
Speaker 1: productions there for an upcoming quote action oriented streaming service
Speaker 1: dubbed black Hall Americana, which sounds horrible. Um, here's a here,
Speaker 1: here's a quote from black Hole CEO Ryan millsap quote.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of space we need to fly
Speaker 1: in black Hawk helicopters and drive humpies at speed. We
Speaker 1: have lakes, we have swamps and rivers and forests and
Speaker 1: fields and hills and dales. That's the nice thing about
Speaker 1: one thousand and five hundred acres. Yep. So look forward
Speaker 1: to uh, black Hall Americana, the new hit streaming service
Speaker 1: coming out of Georgia. UM. Destroying the forest for Black
Speaker 1: Hall Americana. Oh boy. But yeah, if, if, if this
Speaker 1: project succeeds, it would semit Atlanta as the new Hollywood,
Speaker 1: along with like Tyler Perry Studios and all of the
Speaker 1: other movie studios moving to Atlanta, and it would continue
Speaker 1: the skyrocketing cost to living in Atlanta and accelerate gentrification
Speaker 1: at a even more horrifying right. So. Um, Actually, the
Speaker 1: Black Hall site that's a in as like being defended
Speaker 1: as well, is also in the Lining Forest, which is
Speaker 1: like what's been the scale named for the South Atlanta forests. UM.
Speaker 1: And it's actually right across the road from where we
Speaker 1: currently are, UM. So the and it's like, I want
Speaker 1: to believe three or four acres by itself. UM. And
Speaker 1: that is actually under imminent threat as well. They're waiting
Speaker 1: on the land destruction permit to pass, and that can
Speaker 1: happen anywhere any week. On what you were saying about
Speaker 1: the gentrification issue. Um, that's something that's really noticeable to
Speaker 1: anyone that lives in Atlanta and has for any amount
Speaker 1: of time just looking around them, like the filming that
Speaker 1: is just regularly happening here and all all these kind
Speaker 1: of new companies popping up around it. Black Hall was
Speaker 1: sold maybe a little over a year ago now to
Speaker 1: a hedge fund out in California. They're getting funding for
Speaker 1: all of these projects and the rent here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: I'm sure across the country, I'm not sure what the
Speaker 1: trends are elsewhere has been skyrocketing, like you You'll see
Speaker 1: homes that sold during the financial crisis for like eighty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars two dollars selling for like half a million
Speaker 1: dollars today. And you know, I'm not like a fucking economist,
Speaker 1: but the way that the film industry has been exploding
Speaker 1: and other industries like Google and Microsoft have been building
Speaker 1: these massive, expensive new headquarters while people literally go out
Speaker 1: on the street because they can no longer afford to
Speaker 1: pay rent here, and people just get displaced. It's like
Speaker 1: the opposite of white flight back into the suburbs, when
Speaker 1: you know, folks are moving into the city for economic
Speaker 1: opportunities that only very wealthy people can get. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's difficult not to see Black Hall as ushering
Speaker 1: in just another huge wave of gentrification. Yeah, black making
Speaker 1: movies to support the American way of life. Yeah, Black
Speaker 1: Hall explicitly says they're making movies to support the American
Speaker 1: way of life. We hear gun shots from the police
Speaker 1: firing range all the time, and we hear almost as
Speaker 1: many gun shots from the Black Hall filming sides. Um.
Speaker 1: And Yeah, it's very much about creating propaganda that makes
Speaker 1: people think they need police. Um. And that's like a
Speaker 1: huge part of of kind of what they're doing, a
Speaker 1: lot of filming and all the gentrification things. Like even
Speaker 1: just driving to the city the past few days, I've
Speaker 1: noticed so many places that used to be wooded, uh
Speaker 1: totally torn down and they're putting up these horrible quote
Speaker 1: unquote luxury condos which are like, you know, two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars rent from on for a tiny studio um. And
Speaker 1: I've even seen things that were used to be secretion
Speaker 1: ad housing turned into luxury condos. Like it's it's been
Speaker 1: absurd driving through the city and watching so many places
Speaker 1: that used to be wooded just turned like so much
Speaker 1: like active construction sites building these exact same like these
Speaker 1: identical apartment complexes that are the most hideous things you've
Speaker 1: ever looked at, and completely unaffordable for any for anyone
Speaker 1: who's not like someone who's working for a tech company.
Speaker 1: So like the destroying a section of Atlanta called Park
Speaker 1: and it was like a large green space that was
Speaker 1: largely unmanaged in lakewod Um and creating quote affordable housing,
Speaker 1: which is really just the legal term for they have
Speaker 1: a certain amount of like available housing, thats like like
Speaker 1: like taking units and like a like one unit thing
Speaker 1: is affordable house, Like affordable just means market value or
Speaker 1: like like the medium market value. Low income is things
Speaker 1: that people that aren't like average money makers come for, right.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the like I think it's
Speaker 1: has kind of kind of gotten lost about the struggle
Speaker 1: that the actual defending the Atlanta force struggles, like not
Speaker 1: specific to just cops of your black hole is actually
Speaker 1: the entire forest as a city. Um. And that like
Speaker 1: part of the reason why it has been so focus
Speaker 1: is because of like how pressing these currents um things
Speaker 1: are and how like stretched thin people kind of a
Speaker 1: who are working on this um and that like yeah,
Speaker 1: chose to part as an example, there's also an area
Speaker 1: and that's like near Grant Park and like the Zone
Speaker 1: three old Zone three precinct and this or like this
Speaker 1: to they were like actually in the same property area. Um,
Speaker 1: they kept the pigs near the zoo. Um. And like
Speaker 1: it was an entire forest land like absolutely enough at
Speaker 1: every app very clear Gardner doing disgusting condos all on
Speaker 1: the road. Um. Yeah. And it's it's a continuation again
Speaker 1: of a distinctive political pattern in Atlanta. Back when Mayor
Speaker 1: Jackson was elected as the mayor. He at first tried
Speaker 1: to build like affordable not affordable, like low income housing
Speaker 1: and do community projects and stuff. But the business end
Speaker 1: of Atlanta fought back against those efforts, and that is
Speaker 1: what saw projects like the Olympic Games, which destroyed an
Speaker 1: entire community in Atlanta. You should look up People's Town
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta was just in summer Hill completely raised
Speaker 1: to build arenas and all of this ship. And it
Speaker 1: feels like they can tinuation of the pattern where politicians
Speaker 1: decide what is best for the city the Olympics, a
Speaker 1: new police training facility or whatever business measures on the
Speaker 1: table today, not to mention that like during the nine
Speaker 1: day six Olympics, they're like specifically built Atlantic City Defention
Speaker 1: Center for the for a place to put houseless people
Speaker 1: who have been sweeped up the streets and like criminalize them.
Speaker 1: And during the George Florida uprising in that was reused
Speaker 1: to as detainment and overnight states for protesters who are
Speaker 1: like going to get low bail justice a form of repression.
Speaker 1: It is regularly used. Again like that jails regularly used
Speaker 1: specifically against protesters and isn't used for anything else. Is
Speaker 1: a like absolute scolar on the face of humanity, and
Speaker 1: Keisha Lance Bottoms said during her turn she was going
Speaker 1: to turn it into a social justice side or right,
Speaker 1: it's still a jail that probably already it probably always
Speaker 1: will be until we fucking destroy it. Uh. And like
Speaker 1: now the Fulton County Sheriff wants to take over the
Speaker 1: jail and use all of those beds because the jails
Speaker 1: here are so overcrowded with bullshit charges that they are
Speaker 1: just expanding and expanding, expanding, and there's no sign of stopping.
Speaker 1: For every one time that they promise that they're going
Speaker 1: to be closing jails, repurposing ship doing all this liberal
Speaker 1: reform bullshit. There's a new training facility, they're selling jails
Speaker 1: to people that are using them. More of the system
Speaker 1: just continues to expand and expand and expand until we
Speaker 1: fight back and destroy it. Need Black haw Yeah, police
Speaker 1: need Black Hall just as much as Black hall needs
Speaker 1: the police, you know. And these are the symbiotic relationship
Speaker 1: between the two. Police are instrumental in gentrification, and also
Speaker 1: police need entrification to capture poor black and brown people
Speaker 1: and lock them in cages. And so these are two
Speaker 1: things that that feed each other in a relationship, so
Speaker 1: it's very important to do our best to attack book
Speaker 1: is Atlanta was the Atlanta Police who have like the
Speaker 1: point system for rest Yes Atlant Police website. Yes, Atlant
Speaker 1: Police has actually a point system where among the highest
Speaker 1: points is capturing a child. For capturing a child and
Speaker 1: arresting them are alongside felony charges, felony warrants and other things,
Speaker 1: um alongest point system. They use it as a rubric
Speaker 1: to measure how well an officers during um. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean in terms of like needing gentrification to continue
Speaker 1: your job. Yeah, that's that's the exact same thing is,
Speaker 1: let's have this point system so we can get races
Speaker 1: and arrest all the people who are on the street.
Speaker 1: And it's a mask off moment, as they say. And
Speaker 1: I also think it's this funny thing, like I don't know, right,
Speaker 1: they're building this fake city to train in, and I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised if black horns up renting it out
Speaker 1: from time to time to shoot films. Right absolutely, But
Speaker 1: also at the end of the day, even if they don't,
Speaker 1: it's literally the same exact thing, Right, one is training
Speaker 1: people to actually do it and the other is performing
Speaker 1: it too. People think it's cool exactly. Yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 1: I just pulled up the actually my friend just pulled
Speaker 1: up there like chart which is it's a one to
Speaker 1: five scale. It's five scale. It's five for juvenile arrests,
Speaker 1: five points for felonies, four for distoning or charge, three
Speaker 1: for a city, charge for for deal wise and it
Speaker 1: goes on um and like the fact that juvenile rest
Speaker 1: is the top one is sucking monstrous. No, I expect
Speaker 1: it like that the big are the monster. Like if
Speaker 1: it's not, it's not shocking, but it it shows the
Speaker 1: extent of like the the horrible nous of what of
Speaker 1: like what their job is, like, that is their job.
Speaker 1: That's what that's what they do. That is the entire thing.
Speaker 1: One thing that's given the Atlanta Defend the Force movement
Speaker 1: an edge is being able to consistently set the terms
Speaker 1: of engagement and establish a media framework regarding the instruction
Speaker 1: of the forest and the development of Cops City to
Speaker 1: stay one step ahead of the enemy. Like we've mentioned,
Speaker 1: the Cops City of project was never actually initially announced
Speaker 1: by the city or the Police Foundation. It was brought
Speaker 1: to light by activists digging through open source data and
Speaker 1: public records in April, when activists discovered the proposal to
Speaker 1: destroy the South of Our Forest first, news spread via
Speaker 1: word of mouth for several weeks about a large information
Speaker 1: sharing session at Entrenchment Creek Park, one of the areas
Speaker 1: under threat. On May fifteenth, over two hundred people gathered
Speaker 1: for a barbecue and info presentation night on the threat
Speaker 1: of the forest and the broader campaign to defend it.
Speaker 1: The city government had yet to announce its plans publicly,
Speaker 1: so the activists and Force Defenders were able to craft
Speaker 1: the public narrative first and lay the media groundwork. At
Speaker 1: the information session. Presenters were able to accurately contextualize the
Speaker 1: development within the cross section of racist and authoritarian backlash
Speaker 1: against the George Floyd protests, the increasing gentrification and urban displacement,
Speaker 1: and the devastating climate effects such a project will inflict
Speaker 1: upon the region. Having activists and Force Defenders break the
Speaker 1: news such a development denies the city and the police
Speaker 1: the opportunity to introduce a development to the public with
Speaker 1: a distorted narrative, assuming that they were gonna announce their
Speaker 1: plans and make them public at all, And then, on
Speaker 1: May seventeenth, less than forty eight hours After the info
Speaker 1: sharing barbecue, seven unguarded machines at the forest destruction site,
Speaker 1: including excavators, tractors, and other pieces of heavy machinery, were
Speaker 1: targeted by sabotage, with smash windows and severed inner tubing
Speaker 1: scorched by fire. The destruction equipment was left inoperable. An
Speaker 1: anonymous statement appeared online detailing their motivations and methods of attack,
Speaker 1: while tying the actions to the struggling and colonialism, authoritarianism,
Speaker 1: and the history of this particular land as the site
Speaker 1: of horrific abuses, of the site of displacement, child slavery,
Speaker 1: and prison slavery. The communicate ended with quote to the developers, governments, contractors,
Speaker 1: corporations and politicians have perpetrated the heinous deforestation. Any further
Speaker 1: attempts at destroying the Atlanta force we met with similar response.
Speaker 1: The forest was here long before us, and we'll be
Speaker 1: here long after. We'll see to that defend the Atlanta Forest. Today,
Speaker 1: no one has been arrested for these actions. The presence
Speaker 1: of such a targeted direct action campaign this early on
Speaker 1: in the movement is important for a few reasons, one
Speaker 1: of which being it's meant in sabotage as a part
Speaker 1: of this movement from the very beginning, like it was
Speaker 1: moven into the genetic fabric from the conception, so any
Speaker 1: debate around the validity of these tactics was virtually non
Speaker 1: existent because they were there from the beginning. That's what
Speaker 1: this movement is, and that's been super interesting to watch
Speaker 1: because usually this type of sabotage or direct action happens
Speaker 1: later on in these movements, you escalate to that point,
Speaker 1: but in this case, it's been happening since the first week.
Speaker 1: People knew that this thing is was existing. Over the
Speaker 1: following weeks, there was meetings, posters, and flyers that spread
Speaker 1: throughout the city. People organized public forest walks through areas
Speaker 1: of the woods that were under threat. Even a few
Speaker 1: candidates for city council adopted the struggle as a component
Speaker 1: of their electoral campaigns. The movement's consistent ability to break
Speaker 1: the news on the development and the destruction of the
Speaker 1: forest has been crucial in the efforts to gain public
Speaker 1: trust and setting the terms of engagement and the ground
Speaker 1: rules for the conflict. The type of public discourse regarding
Speaker 1: the forest was successfully established by anonymous activists, not by politicians,
Speaker 1: and not by police. I think something that's been really
Speaker 1: cool about this movement is that from the earliest days
Speaker 1: of when this was going on, it was extremely radical,
Speaker 1: Like it wasn't it wasn't three or four months after
Speaker 1: the first initial meeting it was like a barbecue at
Speaker 1: the park where people were lighting bulldozers on fire except
Speaker 1: prevent construction from happening. The Atlanta Police Foundation has had
Speaker 1: its offices, its office windows smashed like people are not
Speaker 1: afraid to fight back physically, and this was occurring at
Speaker 1: the same time as the more electoral tactics, as hell
Speaker 1: phrase it, and I think that you know, we've seen
Speaker 1: neither of these being able to successfully stop the movement.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to being able to measure that
Speaker 1: the police have and their allies have slowed down, the
Speaker 1: electoral tactics have been a complete matter failure. Um and
Speaker 1: physically harming the property of the police, end of the
Speaker 1: black Hall and all of the fucking forces that would
Speaker 1: destroy the forest. That's been shown far and away to
Speaker 1: be a tactic that's not only acceptable in this movement,
Speaker 1: but it's something that's seen as like one of the
Speaker 1: go to strategies. It's we haven't had to work our
Speaker 1: way to that. People were there from the get tho. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like a day or two after the Younger
Speaker 1: Knight with the very first like public facing vronment like
Speaker 1: bulldozers were set on fire, and like Michelle Obamba Park
Speaker 1: which is farming or enough another like recuperation tactic or
Speaker 1: like destruction of the environment, and like on during gentrification
Speaker 1: where that's actually Black Hall Studios old plan site for
Speaker 1: their new studio and the idea of the land swap
Speaker 1: where they take this shitty land where they destroyed forest
Speaker 1: to replace it with an earth ground and in and
Speaker 1: as long as they turn into a park, they're allowed
Speaker 1: to um build and construct on public forest land um
Speaker 1: which is like a bunker's idea. Yeah, yeah, no, it's
Speaker 1: actually like a new precedent right here that has not
Speaker 1: been done before. I think that like one of the
Speaker 1: other things, you know, along with the fiery start kind
Speaker 1: of kick off, is that the folks who you know,
Speaker 1: like in my experience most like kind of big broader
Speaker 1: campaign type things that people who are doing jail support,
Speaker 1: the people who have abroad reach, the people who you
Speaker 1: know have access to resources, et cetera. Kind of the
Speaker 1: like backbone life sustaining things of a movement tend to
Speaker 1: be folks who have really rigid moralizing ideas of like
Speaker 1: what is acceptable, etcetera. And you know, people in Atlanta
Speaker 1: have been there's a lot of credit due to folks
Speaker 1: who have been putting in a lot of work and
Speaker 1: are a little wiser than to have such a limited
Speaker 1: R review. So most of the folks that control and
Speaker 1: are not controlled. Most of the folks who like backline
Speaker 1: and are working really hard to do the more like
Speaker 1: reproductive things and jail support and get food and things
Speaker 1: like that, are also people who have a really like, um,
Speaker 1: creative and accepting view of you know, like what kind
Speaker 1: of things are okay and really don't want this movement
Speaker 1: to fail and aren't going to limit themselves based on
Speaker 1: abstract ideas. And so that's something that is really special
Speaker 1: and um, you know, one gets excluded for for doing
Speaker 1: things are factor when talking with the force defenders. The
Speaker 1: other thing that was really emphasized is that instead of
Speaker 1: waiting for distant politicians to save the environment, and instead
Speaker 1: of dedicating tons of effort into petitioning companies with moralized
Speaker 1: gredic to make them feel bad in hopes of them
Speaker 1: dropping into the project. You can instead have immediate material
Speaker 1: attacks that hit them where it counts, and where it
Speaker 1: counts is their pockets. Because you can't expect companies to
Speaker 1: be swayed by moral decisions around harmful policing or the environment,
Speaker 1: but you can attack their physical and social capital if
Speaker 1: it's framed as, hey, this is something that is not
Speaker 1: a good look, fam, and uh, this is going to
Speaker 1: hurt your bank accounts. That is the type of general
Speaker 1: language that these corporations do understand. I feel like this
Speaker 1: is the most interceptional thing I've been a part of
Speaker 1: in a long time. There's just like so many different
Speaker 1: ways to oppose the facility, and there's so many different
Speaker 1: people involved. And I'm really grateful for all of the comrades,
Speaker 1: especially the anarchist comrades. We've been holding it down for
Speaker 1: years and helped push the struggle in a certain direction. Him.
Speaker 1: I think other people are touching on this. We want
Speaker 1: to keep bringing it up because it's important. And other
Speaker 1: struggles we've been a part of, like the liberals control
Speaker 1: a lot of the money for jail support or bail
Speaker 1: funds or food district and a lot of those mutual
Speaker 1: aid aspects of the struggle that helped maintain an occupation
Speaker 1: which has really turned this place up, are in the
Speaker 1: hands of mostly anarchist folks, and that has also really
Speaker 1: set the scene for what we're able to do and
Speaker 1: not able to do, Like no one's getting thrown under
Speaker 1: the bus for a leisured behavior. Like when I was
Speaker 1: reading about this before I came down here almost exactly
Speaker 1: a year ago, there were like machines are on fire,
Speaker 1: and I was like, holy shit, It's like usually that's
Speaker 1: like the way later in the struggle, and that was
Speaker 1: like right out the gate. People whoever they are, were
Speaker 1: attacking the machinery, and I think, to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: that was drawing a lot of people here because people
Speaker 1: are tired of the n v d A or non
Speaker 1: violent direct action. It's not about like let's criticize something
Speaker 1: to death that makes us feel bad. It's like people
Speaker 1: are tired because they're losing a lot of comrades to
Speaker 1: long prison sentences. They're getting three different felonies that are
Speaker 1: like the same amount of time or more than if
Speaker 1: you would allegedly arson something. So these are things that
Speaker 1: are coming up for people, and people are realizing that
Speaker 1: old tactics aren't working anymore. A lot of the comrades
Speaker 1: that were burned into a weird shade from the Green
Speaker 1: scare are aging out or the things that they're afraid
Speaker 1: of are very valid. But we're living in two dire
Speaker 1: of a time to neglect. Those tactics are a larger level,
Speaker 1: and people are just are seeing how terrible things are,
Speaker 1: and it seems like more people are down or just
Speaker 1: don't care anymore. Ever since the George Floyd uprisings, they've
Speaker 1: just seen an uptick and a lot of his behavior.
Speaker 1: There's a campaign that launched publicly that mentions all the
Speaker 1: subcontractors that Reaves Young, one of the construction companies on
Speaker 1: the project, has to employ to make the Atlanta Police
Speaker 1: Foundations project here possible, and a lot of that could
Speaker 1: be home visits, it could be going to where they
Speaker 1: I don't know what's to do is obviously, but I'm
Speaker 1: just saying, long story short, everybody knows this, but you
Speaker 1: find where they store the evil equipment, that's the best
Speaker 1: way to stop the project. Long story short. They usually
Speaker 1: don't listen to what we have to say, but actually
Speaker 1: speak louder than words may. If you really want to
Speaker 1: hurt them. You hurt them in their pockets, and if
Speaker 1: you cost them enough money damage, they may pull out
Speaker 1: of the project. They shut down. And even if there
Speaker 1: is other sub contractors that they could get to run
Speaker 1: machinery from to cut trees, whatever the funk it is
Speaker 1: they're going to do, we want them to be afraid.
Speaker 1: If you look at very romanticized struggles that have largely
Speaker 1: been successful in their own ways throughout the world. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to mention a couple because people talk about
Speaker 1: them constantly, like the Zad in France, on a Hambach
Speaker 1: in Germany, or No Time in Italy. A lot of
Speaker 1: the revolts around property destruction and defending your area. Another
Speaker 1: strong point of the Movement to Defend the Alant of
Speaker 1: Forest is that it's not simply coalesced around a single
Speaker 1: coherent strategy, whether that be sabotage or above ground organizing.
Speaker 1: For over a year now, force defenders and movement participants
Speaker 1: have employed several parallel strategies in tandem. Strategies of one
Speaker 1: approach can fill in for the shortcomings of another. Often
Speaker 1: these differing strategies can be mutually beneficial, as the sabotage
Speaker 1: was happening. Opponents of Cops City also organized is to
Speaker 1: continuous stream of educational events on the land, as well
Speaker 1: as pressure campaigns aimed at pushing city and county officials, investors,
Speaker 1: and contractors to drop out of the project. As summer began,
Speaker 1: more traditional political activist organizations like ones connected to nationwide
Speaker 1: socialist organizations, abolitionist networks, and ecological advocacy groups began doing
Speaker 1: more direct community outrage by knocking on the doors talking
Speaker 1: with people in the neighborhoods next to where the forest
Speaker 1: was being slated for destruction. Forming connections and ally ships
Speaker 1: with the local community in the vicinity of the South
Speaker 1: River Forest is crucial, especially since that they would be
Speaker 1: among the first of those impacted by deforestation and the
Speaker 1: close proximity to such a militarized police hub with you know,
Speaker 1: explosive testing and helicopter pads um plus you know, local
Speaker 1: community outreach is useful for learning what might help mobilize
Speaker 1: more regular folks. Other tactics and strategies emerging during early
Speaker 1: summer included getting those involved in the planning of Cops
Speaker 1: City to realize that they don't get to operate in
Speaker 1: some safe politics only realm. Their political decisions have real
Speaker 1: world consequences and real world effects for those people that
Speaker 1: they allegedly represent, so perhaps they too should be forced
Speaker 1: to feel real world consequences. On June six, there was
Speaker 1: a city Council meeting which was supposed to vote on
Speaker 1: the Police Foundation's land lease ordinance, sponsored by then Councilwoman
Speaker 1: Joyce Shepherd. At this point back in, the meetings were
Speaker 1: all virtual due to the COVID nineteen pandemic, so the
Speaker 1: city council members hosted their conversations from inside their homes.
Speaker 1: With just a little bit of work, activists and researchers
Speaker 1: were able to locate the home address of Councilwoman Shepherd.
Speaker 1: A group went to her home and displayed a banner
Speaker 1: during the city council meeting. Most protesters just chanted from
Speaker 1: the public sidewalk, and one individual approached her house, knocked
Speaker 1: on the door and ring the doorbell before returning to
Speaker 1: the street. It turns out Councilvan Shepherd did not like
Speaker 1: this very much and went into a bit of a panic. So, um,
Speaker 1: one of the movements that I have been like kind
Speaker 1: of effective in terms of like city council or other
Speaker 1: targets has been like whenever the first time they were
Speaker 1: going to vote on this like um Institute for Social
Speaker 1: actually copsity um. When they were going to vote on
Speaker 1: copsoity Um, someone went up to Joyce Shepherd's house and
Speaker 1: knocked on her door. They're so painful of protesters outside,
Speaker 1: and someone just knocked on her door and she went
Speaker 1: to her frenzy freaked out, called off the vote, left
Speaker 1: the meeting, ran to the precincts comments section, and then
Speaker 1: gave a long speech to like a bunch of friends
Speaker 1: which called up, which effectively called off for another like
Speaker 1: three months or so, just because someone visited the house
Speaker 1: of a politician because they had names and addresses, and
Speaker 1: like that also happened with That's Sean Reeves, CEO and
Speaker 1: chairman of Reeves Young. There's this whole idea of politics
Speaker 1: as existing within this political astral space. Right, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's the same thing with like corporations. Right, everything exists
Speaker 1: in the corporate space that's removed from people's actual lives. Right,
Speaker 1: it's it's removed from actual personal consequences. People in positions
Speaker 1: of power assume that their actions occur in this political
Speaker 1: or corporate astral plane that means that consequences of the
Speaker 1: decisions won't directly impact them, but we don't need to
Speaker 1: play by those rules. After a friendly knock on her door,
Speaker 1: Joyce Shepard called off the vote and left the meeting
Speaker 1: early to call the police, who arrived after the protesters
Speaker 1: had already dispersed. Immediately after, Joyce Shepherd held a press
Speaker 1: conference from the newly constructed Zone three police precinct. Their
Speaker 1: Shepherd stood surrounded by police officers and news media and
Speaker 1: described in detail the aims of her land lease ordinance,
Speaker 1: the nature of the cop City project, as well as
Speaker 1: the efforts of protesters to stopp her. By doing this
Speaker 1: short public statement, she catapulted the movement and the story
Speaker 1: into the mainstream, out of the political backdoors that it
Speaker 1: was existing in previously, and Atlantas any councilwoman says, protesters
Speaker 1: came onto her private property to speak out against a
Speaker 1: piece of legislation. Joyce Shepherd says, while she supports the
Speaker 1: right to protest, this time it went too far. People
Speaker 1: have a right to come out and say whether they
Speaker 1: four or against it. I have no problem with that.
Speaker 1: I've been doing this for years and know that people
Speaker 1: have their right. But what they don't have a right
Speaker 1: to do is come up on my private property, knock
Speaker 1: on my doors, protests on my lawn, on my poet.
Speaker 1: They don't have that right. So I'm fair tonight that
Speaker 1: I'm still supporting the candy. I'm not scared. However, there
Speaker 1: will be no right for people to come out my
Speaker 1: property and protests. The next day she made another statement
Speaker 1: which you just heard a little bit of, where she
Speaker 1: also claimed that she would be pushing through the ordinance
Speaker 1: no matter what the city residents that she sensibly represented
Speaker 1: had to say, And her and her fellow city officials
Speaker 1: took a stand against the protesters and rejected their tactics,
Speaker 1: falsely implying that the methods like going on a sidewalk
Speaker 1: were illegal. But by showing up outside a politician's house
Speaker 1: and knocking on her door, just a few people were
Speaker 1: able to achieve an early goal of the movement to
Speaker 1: transform the cops city and black hall developments from back
Speaker 1: to agreements into big public scandals. They got out of
Speaker 1: the shadows and into the spotlight. As a bonus, the
Speaker 1: vote was delayed, buying more time to develop further strategies
Speaker 1: in defense of the forest. It was an effective demonstration
Speaker 1: of the potential of direct confrontation with people in power,
Speaker 1: and it led to the emergence of another strategy that's
Speaker 1: become a big part of the genetic fabric of this movement,
Speaker 1: pressuring decision makers directly and dissolving their notion of a
Speaker 1: safe political or corporate astral space. During this time of
Speaker 1: showing up at politician stores, more sabotage and direct action
Speaker 1: were also taking place. Signs appeared in the forest warning
Speaker 1: that trees in the area had been spiked, making it
Speaker 1: possibly dangerous to attempt to cut down trees, with the
Speaker 1: risk of saws being damaged and possibly injuring unlucky workers.
Speaker 1: On June tenth, three more excavators were burned at the
Speaker 1: Black Hole Studios the site. Neither action appeared much in
Speaker 1: the local news media, but anonymous communications and photographs of
Speaker 1: the incidents and damage circulated online among the radical anarchist
Speaker 1: mill us. In late June there was the first planned
Speaker 1: Week of action. There's been another one since then, and
Speaker 1: there's another one upcoming from May eight through May fifteenth.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more about the upcoming Week of action in
Speaker 1: the next episode, but I strongly encourage people to travel
Speaker 1: to Atlanta as soon as possible. If you can make
Speaker 1: it for any of this upcoming Weeklung event again, that's
Speaker 1: from May eight through May. If you can make it
Speaker 1: fronty of that, please go to Atlanta. It will be
Speaker 1: it will be fun, I assure you. The June Week
Speaker 1: of Action featured guided walks through the forest by day
Speaker 1: and by moonlight, discussion and conversations on ecology, abolitionism, colonialism,
Speaker 1: and queerness. There was a nightly bonfires and safe open
Speaker 1: sections of the woods at a nearby radical venue. There
Speaker 1: was a hardcore punk show during which hundreds of concert
Speaker 1: goers repelled the buzz kill police who are trying to
Speaker 1: shut it down. And there was a night rave deep
Speaker 1: into the woods where five hundred people were dancing with
Speaker 1: glow sticks late into the night and early into the morning.
Speaker 1: In all throughout the Week of Action, thousands of Atlanta's
Speaker 1: got to gather under the banner defend the forest. They
Speaker 1: were able to learn about the project and get plugged
Speaker 1: into taking action. During the week, people under the cover
Speaker 1: of night visited the home of black Hole Studios CEO
Speaker 1: Ryan Millsap in the Atlanta suburb of Social Creek, UH.
Speaker 1: They also visited his second home in Tuxedo Park and
Speaker 1: the ups he frequents in Edgewood. According to an anonymous
Speaker 1: online statement, quote, flyers were distributed to all his neighbors mailboxes,
Speaker 1: as well as plastered on his front gate and the
Speaker 1: streets that he frequents. The flyers let fellow concerned community
Speaker 1: members know about the harm he is responsible for, and
Speaker 1: I seally provided the address to his one hundred acre
Speaker 1: farms so that grievances could be addressed there. The flyers
Speaker 1: placed all throughout his neighborhood and investment properties were also
Speaker 1: distributed in hopes that it would quote inspire others to
Speaker 1: research and take the fight to those directly responsible for
Speaker 1: the destruction of the forest. Two days later, on the
Speaker 1: final day of the week of action, around fifty protesters
Speaker 1: marched to the headquarters of the Atlanta Police found Dation,
Speaker 1: quoting crime Thing again quote. As the crowd emerged from
Speaker 1: the Five Points Metro station, a small contention of officers
Speaker 1: attempted to arrest somebody. The crowd engaged hand to hand
Speaker 1: fighting with police and successfully repelled them. Advancing past the security,
Speaker 1: they marched straight to the Atlantic Police Foundation's office and
Speaker 1: smashed the glass doors and windows before overturning tables in
Speaker 1: the Towers lobby. According to police, on Friday, around four pm,
Speaker 1: multiple protesters stopped the flow of traffic on Peachtree Street
Speaker 1: and Andrew Young International Boulevard. Photos taken by a local
Speaker 1: freelance photographer showing a group called Defend Atlanta Forests shattering
Speaker 1: glass doors and also holding signs that say our woods,
Speaker 1: not Hollywood's. CBS forty six reached out to the group
Speaker 1: but have yet to hear back. Atlanta police believe the
Speaker 1: protesting ignited over the building of the new public Safety
Speaker 1: training center. When officers arrived, protesters quickly fled the scene,
Speaker 1: but the damage still remains. At this time, we know
Speaker 1: no arrest have been made and the investigation continues. In Atlanta.
Speaker 1: On barbawllyans CBS News momentum was growing throughout the summer.
Speaker 1: Police and corporate press have failed in crafting a counter
Speaker 1: media strategy. Meanwhile, to defend the Forest project brought together
Speaker 1: police and prison abolitionist organizations, environmental justice and preservation organizations,
Speaker 1: civil and human rights nonprofits, and even neighborhood associations near
Speaker 1: the proposed site, including the East Atlanta Community Association, the
Speaker 1: Grant Park Neighborhood Association, South Atlantin's for Neighborhood Development, and
Speaker 1: the Kirkwood Neighbors Organization, each of which passed resolutions opposing
Speaker 1: the proposal. Grassroots organizations that mobilized against the proposal included
Speaker 1: Defend Atlanta Police Department, Refusal Communities, the Atlanta Sunrise Movement,
Speaker 1: Community Movement Builders, the South River Forest Coalition, A World
Speaker 1: Without Police, and the Autonomous Organizers. Working under the banner
Speaker 1: of Defend the Forest, organizers spread informational flyers and online fix,
Speaker 1: conducted interviews, knocked on doors, and organized phone in campaigns
Speaker 1: during subsequent city council meetings that were still held on
Speaker 1: Zoom because of coronavirus related restrictions. Through in August and September,
Speaker 1: the Stop Cops City Coalition and others worked to introduce
Speaker 1: tension and clog up the city council process. Digging cues
Speaker 1: from the protest outside the home of Joyce Shepherd, which
Speaker 1: resulted in the vote being delayed for over two months.
Speaker 1: Protesters gathered outside the homes of possible yes voters on
Speaker 1: the nights that the vote was related to take place,
Speaker 1: causing further delays in the entire process. Got pushed back
Speaker 1: from August into September, so again, another another delay. Briefly,
Speaker 1: it seemed like there was a possibility that the cold
Speaker 1: Stop Cops City campaign might be victorious before the end
Speaker 1: of summer. Votes on the groundle sordidens were repeatedly delayed
Speaker 1: because of these objections and demonstrations at the homes of
Speaker 1: Atlanta Chief Operations Officer John Keene and City council Woman
Speaker 1: Madaline Archibond. Eventually, September seventh was set as the final
Speaker 1: vote day. Seventeen hours of pre recorded comments from over
Speaker 1: one thousand Atlanta residents delayed the discussion. Due to the
Speaker 1: sheer number of public comments, the volt got pushed back
Speaker 1: another day as Sydney Council members spent most of Tuesday
Speaker 1: and Wednesday listening to the playback. After months of organizing,
Speaker 1: community outreach and public education efforts from these top Cops
Speaker 1: City organizers, proximately, the Collars fiercely opposed the proposal, explaining
Speaker 1: in great detail why they're quote unquote representatives should vote
Speaker 1: it down. The minority of callers who supported the Cops
Speaker 1: City project either self identified as residents of the disproportionately
Speaker 1: white and wealthy Buckhead and Northeast Atlanta area or we're
Speaker 1: just like actual cops. Uh. At least thirty officers called
Speaker 1: in to say that they support the instruction of the
Speaker 1: forest to end the building of Cops City, Big big shocker,
Speaker 1: the cops what Cops City? Pro Cops City collars invoked
Speaker 1: the false crime wave narrative propagated after the George Floyd
Speaker 1: uprising and used the language of so called white flight
Speaker 1: by threatening to leave the city if something wasn't done
Speaker 1: to stop the growing crime wave. And yet, when the
Speaker 1: seventeen hours of public comments ended and the council's discussion began,
Speaker 1: council members largely failed to acknowledge the hours of public
Speaker 1: comment that they had just spent two days listening to,
Speaker 1: much less acknowledged the far ranging movement that produced such
Speaker 1: overwhelming public discontent. Quoting crime think again quote as those
Speaker 1: who study revolutionary movements now, the police perform an essential
Speaker 1: function in class society, without which many other hierarchies and
Speaker 1: explotitive relations could not exist for very long. This is
Speaker 1: not simply an economic or civic issue that can be
Speaker 1: worked around with some clever ideas in a bit of
Speaker 1: pressure unquote. Despite the efforts of organizers, which culminated in
Speaker 1: seventeen hours of primarily oppositional public comment. The ordinance was
Speaker 1: passed on September eight, while the police arrested protesters outside
Speaker 1: the home of Councilwoman Madaline Archibond about an hour before
Speaker 1: the final vote took place. During the council's final session
Speaker 1: on September eight, the City Council voted by a margin
Speaker 1: of ten to four for the creation of the ninety
Speaker 1: million dollar facility, handing over almost four acres of for
Speaker 1: US to the Atlanta Police Foundation. Obviously, many folks were
Speaker 1: pretty disappointed and kind of demoralized about this. UH. Some
Speaker 1: turned their frustrated energy into the upcoming local elections, hoping
Speaker 1: that the city government may be stacked with abolitionists or
Speaker 1: progressive candidates that might strike down the project. Mayor Bottoms
Speaker 1: did not end up running for re election, and the
Speaker 1: former mayor of Mayor Read lost to the now current
Speaker 1: Mayor Andre dickens Um. I do think it's really funny
Speaker 1: that the old mayor of Atlanta was Mayor Bottoms and
Speaker 1: the new and the new Mayor is Mayor dickens Um. Anyway, UH,
Speaker 1: City council Woman Joyce Sheppard, who introduced the cop City plan,
Speaker 1: also lost her campaign for re election. But since the
Speaker 1: elections November, nothing has actually changed regarding the black Hole
Speaker 1: and Cops City developments, or nothing has changed on the
Speaker 1: electoral front. There's there's no indication of electoral strategies being impactful,
Speaker 1: and thankfully not everyone focus their efforts on electoral reform.
Speaker 1: I'll leave you today with this sentiment that I kept
Speaker 1: hearing during my stay in the forest. When you criminalize
Speaker 1: non violent direct action, the end goes away. On the
Speaker 1: final day of the vote, people went and protested outside
Speaker 1: a city council member's house, and eleven of them got arrested,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that they were already dispersing and following orders.
Speaker 1: During the Top Line three movement, people were receiving felony
Speaker 1: theft charges for using lock boxes to attach themselves onto
Speaker 1: construction equipment um which of recent hasn't even really been
Speaker 1: an effective strategy resulting in any material winds. But if
Speaker 1: they're going to arrest you for standing outside of a
Speaker 1: politician's house and give you charges, you may as well
Speaker 1: consider doing something a bit more spicy. If you're gonna
Speaker 1: get felonies for basic non violent direct action like locking
Speaker 1: yourself onto machine, you may as well light that machinery
Speaker 1: on fire. When non violent direct action results in fel
Speaker 1: any charges, if they're going to criminalize standing outside of
Speaker 1: a politicians house and holding a sign, then going into
Speaker 1: the forest and doing monkey wrenching suddenly becomes a very
Speaker 1: similar consequence level, and the action that can be done
Speaker 1: in secret turns out to be actually a bit easier
Speaker 1: to get away with. The funny thing is is that
Speaker 1: this is the state's fault, not anyone else's fault. When
Speaker 1: state repression against public non destructive tactics increases, then what
Speaker 1: happens is the less public and more fiery tactics, which
Speaker 1: in this movement we're already present, we'll just end up
Speaker 1: becoming more and more prominent and even more integral to
Speaker 1: keep the movement going. In the next episode, we'll hear
Speaker 1: about how the more radical folks continue to defend the
Speaker 1: forest after the vote, and you'll hear a lot more
Speaker 1: from the force defenders that I interviewed. And finally, if
Speaker 1: you can please head to Atlanta if you're able to,
Speaker 1: for the upcoming week of action from A eight through.
Speaker 1: More boots on the round are crucial as the large
Speaker 1: scale destruction of the forest is becoming more and more imminent.
Speaker 1: You can go to Defend the Atlanta Forest dot com
Speaker 1: and scenes dot no blogs dot org for more information.
Speaker 1: See you on the other side. It Could Happen Here
Speaker 1: is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone Media
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.