Speaker 1: Welcome back to It could happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis
Speaker 1: and this is part two of the two part mini
Speaker 1: series on the Defend the Forest movement in Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 1: Last month, I traveled to Atlanta to stay a week
Speaker 1: in the woods and talk with some of the Forest Defenders.
Speaker 1: In the previous episode, I covered the movement from its
Speaker 1: inception to where the city council approved the Cops City
Speaker 1: project near the end of last summer. I went over
Speaker 1: a lot of historical background between the land itself and
Speaker 1: the history there, the increasing gentrification of Atlanta, how the
Speaker 1: movement pulled the veil off the secretive plans for Cops
Speaker 1: City and pushed it into the public spotlight. We talked
Speaker 1: about the early days of sabotage and the targeting of
Speaker 1: individuals and positions of power. Basically, I did a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of talking, maybe maybe too much talking.
Speaker 1: This episode will be more led by the discussions with
Speaker 1: force defenders that I had during my week long excursion
Speaker 1: to woods. We'll learn about how the movement evolved in
Speaker 1: the wake of the city council vote up until the
Speaker 1: current state of affairs. One thing that makes to defend
Speaker 1: the Atlanta forest movement very different from previous eco defense
Speaker 1: projects in recent memory is that it's right in the
Speaker 1: middle of a sprawling metropolitan area. Right outside the forest
Speaker 1: is an Amazon facility. Downtown Atlanta is just a ten
Speaker 1: minute drive away. We'll be talking tactics a bit later
Speaker 1: on in the episode, but just the simple nature of
Speaker 1: doing a forest eco defense project while still inside the
Speaker 1: city gives a lot of pretty interesting tactical opportunities. You
Speaker 1: have to selectively use some of the older, more rule
Speaker 1: eco defensive strategies while having the backing of a city
Speaker 1: based mutual aid network. There's the option of rapid response
Speaker 1: popular mobilization that city based protests can have but are
Speaker 1: more challenging for EQO defense stuff that's like three hours
Speaker 1: into the middle of nowhere. For the people camping in
Speaker 1: the forest, they can easily get supplies or switch out
Speaker 1: who's staying in the woods and who's living in the city.
Speaker 1: The combination of forest and urban prompts and necessitates the
Speaker 1: crucial experimentation and innovation that's been badly needed in eco
Speaker 1: defense projects and protests for the past decade. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of trams to go by here. It's definitally pretty morvy.
Speaker 1: So it's definitely the most urban forest defense I've ever
Speaker 1: been a party of. But it's really beautiful and unique
Speaker 1: to see a lot of urban folks people live in
Speaker 1: the city be able to be involved in like urban
Speaker 1: tactics kind of mixing with you more traditional what a
Speaker 1: how that means any more earth firsty forest tactics. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like the rule book and a lot of
Speaker 1: people say this, but like it's all repeated. The quote
Speaker 1: unquote rule book for how to engage with the multiple
Speaker 1: enemies in this area has been like chewed up, spit out, shadow,
Speaker 1: and burnt over because it we're kind of doing something
Speaker 1: that doesn't really happen a lot. Something similar I can
Speaker 1: think of is the Sacred Oak Groove that was being
Speaker 1: protected in Minneapolis in the nineties, and that was another
Speaker 1: kind of anarchist and genous alliance the first presence. But
Speaker 1: that's kind of one of the more urban in this
Speaker 1: part of Turtle Island struggles I can think of this.
Speaker 1: But I think another interesting part is like a lot
Speaker 1: of force defense stuff is focused on like old growth,
Speaker 1: being like we should defend it because it's old growth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is not an old growth. This is like a messy,
Speaker 1: dirty um confusing. I've gotten lost so many times. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: there's tires, there's barrels, or it was built on the
Speaker 1: prison farm. You'll find like old portions of the prison
Speaker 1: which is incredibly funked up and haunted. Right, Like in
Speaker 1: terms of like haunting is like there's the specter of
Speaker 1: what used to be there. Police are trying to build
Speaker 1: over it with their more like a bomb range, right,
Speaker 1: It's like that's very much like they're just building over
Speaker 1: the thing. Um. But it doesn't need to be old
Speaker 1: growth to be worth defending. And that's an idea that
Speaker 1: I think people need to understand more. Is like it
Speaker 1: has value even if it's not like five hundred years old,
Speaker 1: Like it has value despite not despite being one hundred
Speaker 1: year old old forest, and it's because it is in
Speaker 1: one forest. Like it has value because it is a
Speaker 1: forest in a city, and that's something that's worth like emphasizing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I also think that's cool. And like people talk a
Speaker 1: lot about like invasive plants and there's like I think
Speaker 1: the Branford pairs in this forest are a really interesting example.
Speaker 1: There are these trees that are like feral they used
Speaker 1: to be part like planted here when it was a
Speaker 1: um the farm plantation or whatever. And um, those trees
Speaker 1: are fucking spiky, fine trees. They're spiking and ship well
Speaker 1: but you know, the good news is they're awful, and
Speaker 1: the bad news is they're awful. Like I know where
Speaker 1: there are when I haul ass in the forest, I
Speaker 1: usually don't get Bradford pair in my eye, but um,
Speaker 1: but someone chasing me, well yeah, and and so it's
Speaker 1: just it's cool to kind of interact with all these
Speaker 1: things and get to choose how you want to interact
Speaker 1: and like, yeah, is a um, you know, I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting. It's not yeah, like a traditional forest or
Speaker 1: like whatever forest that people would value in that way. Um,
Speaker 1: but for me, I connect to it, I think even
Speaker 1: more than that, because it's not this like held up
Speaker 1: is this thing of like purity, like they fucking buildoz
Speaker 1: and like a month later that ship was overgrown you
Speaker 1: couldn't see it again. And that was all quote unquote
Speaker 1: invasive plants like whatever funk that means, which is often
Speaker 1: that's the whole thing. They're often racialized plants. You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's almost like a punk forest. It's like we're
Speaker 1: surrounded by enemies and that is the problem is um
Speaker 1: they see this as a cess pool. And something I
Speaker 1: talked to a lot of liberals about, like when they're taught,
Speaker 1: we're talking them about defend the forest, like, oh, is
Speaker 1: it a pristine wilderness with large old growth trees, and like,
Speaker 1: you know what, that would be cool. The problem is
Speaker 1: this forest needs to be allowed to return to that
Speaker 1: because there's been so much abuse and part of like
Speaker 1: whether I don't know what it insta quote, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot of little winds and a lot of winds.
Speaker 1: There is some big they're legally supposed to leave all
Speaker 1: the big trees by the creek from what historical um, president,
Speaker 1: do we trust the cops to quote unquote be accountable
Speaker 1: to anyone? I don't know where we're thinking that will happen.
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of people be like, oh, some
Speaker 1: of these tree houses are strategic in the spots they
Speaker 1: can't get friends. I've looked at the map and it
Speaker 1: looks like this whole motherfucking play is Society for clear Cutting.
Speaker 1: Exactly one month after the city Council voted to approve
Speaker 1: the land Ley's Ordinance for cops city that defend the
Speaker 1: force slogan was put to the test. On October, contractors
Speaker 1: and land survey workers showed up around the forest and
Speaker 1: appeared to be clearing land to take reference photos and
Speaker 1: collect soil samples. Two dozen Force defenders emerged from the
Speaker 1: woods and confronted the workers people hired to destroy the forest,
Speaker 1: fled the work site and act they left. Police surveillance
Speaker 1: tower in the area was toppled and the force defenders
Speaker 1: were able to disperse with no arrests. Ten days later,
Speaker 1: a similar turn of events took place. A group of
Speaker 1: survey workers and construction teams were on site. Again a
Speaker 1: small group of rapid response Force defenders who disrupted the
Speaker 1: surveying and ground clearing at the old Atlanta Prison Farm.
Speaker 1: Simply the mere threat of an on site protest shut
Speaker 1: down construction for the whole day. Key access points for
Speaker 1: machinery were blocked using available materials like piles of nearby tires,
Speaker 1: preventing vehicular machinery from moving freely through the destruction site.
Speaker 1: No construction occurred, despite the attempts of the Decab County
Speaker 1: Police and the Atlanta Police Department, who mobilized twenty vehicles
Speaker 1: in the vicinity of the forest in an effort to
Speaker 1: prevent the protest or punish the participants. By the end
Speaker 1: of the day, no one was arrested, and yet again
Speaker 1: select monitoring systems and police surveillance towers were toppled and dismantled.
Speaker 1: A statement released online from anonymous force defenders read quote,
Speaker 1: this war will be one, one battle at a time.
Speaker 1: Pressure must continue in a variety of ways to halt
Speaker 1: all construction. It became clear that for the next phase
Speaker 1: of the struggle to defend the force, people would have
Speaker 1: to directly target and oppose the contracting companies hired to
Speaker 1: decimate the woods and build the facilities. Today we know
Speaker 1: of at least three companies that have been contracted by
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Police Foundation to do work on the old
Speaker 1: prison farm land. Some of the surveying work appears to
Speaker 1: be done by Long Engineering, and two companies, Reaves Young
Speaker 1: Construction and Brass Fielding Gorri, were hired to do grounds
Speaker 1: clearing and early construction. It is not yet clear who
Speaker 1: will be contracted to clear the land in Entrenchment Creek Park,
Speaker 1: where Black Hole Studios hopes to expand their sound stage.
Speaker 1: Again quoting the Crime Think article, the City in the Forest,
Speaker 1: reinventing resistance for an age of climate crisis and police militarization. Quote.
Speaker 1: The information that is known to date was hard won
Speaker 1: by diligent activists on the ground. Shortly after the city
Speaker 1: council voted in September, surveyors and small work crews began
Speaker 1: entering the site near two key roads. The trucks and
Speaker 1: uniforms revealed the names of the contractors, which once again
Speaker 1: gave opponents of the Cops City project a chance to
Speaker 1: initiate a struggle on their own terms. Had the force
Speaker 1: defenders utilized only virtual or bureaucratic channels to collect information,
Speaker 1: they might not have learned that Reeves Young were being
Speaker 1: called in to do the actual destruction until it was
Speaker 1: publicly announced much later. The ability to break news to
Speaker 1: the public before the city government has been a consistent
Speaker 1: advantage in trying to keep the momentum of the movement going.
Speaker 1: Post the city council vote, a second Week of Action
Speaker 1: was planned for November, albeit with some new twists. From
Speaker 1: November tenth through, various groups organized a wide range of
Speaker 1: cultural events, info nites, bonfires, and meetings for this week
Speaker 1: of action. Many of these events occurred in or near
Speaker 1: a publicly advertised encampment on the Entrenchment Creek Park side
Speaker 1: of the forest. Days after the second week of action,
Speaker 1: thirty people converged on the Reeves Young Construction headquarters in
Speaker 1: sugar Hill, Georgia, forty miles outside of Atlanta, holding banners
Speaker 1: and demanding that the company severed their contract with the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Police Foundation. The group was able to walk right
Speaker 1: into the offices, disrupting a board meeting involving company president
Speaker 1: Dean Reeves and CEO Eric Young. Initially, the executives tried
Speaker 1: to keep their cool, but in short time the businessmen
Speaker 1: started getting more annoyed and eventually violence towards the protest.
Speaker 1: There was a protest that like plus at the Reeves
Speaker 1: Young office, went into the office and disrupted a board
Speaker 1: member meeting that happened to have a lot of the
Speaker 1: people who were like seers and chairman there and um,
Speaker 1: from what I gather as a brawl. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: There's reports of the the Reeves CEO guy like punching
Speaker 1: punching protesters. There's a joke that a worker puts someone
Speaker 1: in the guillotine, and I love the version of these
Speaker 1: workers doing like wwfer Love, We'll love for more cop
Speaker 1: fights fights with cops to just be w w E
Speaker 1: style match. Disrupting the board of meeting was another successful
Speaker 1: step in the goal of applying direct confrontational pressure to
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Police foundations contracted construction service providers. Days later,
Speaker 1: two more bulldozers were lit on fire read entertaining aounts
Speaker 1: of ulic road and we got to construct vehicles fall
Speaker 1: involved in the quat and simpedia my location as well.
Speaker 1: There this equipment was located on the land swap parcel
Speaker 1: by Black Hall Studios, the planned future location of quote
Speaker 1: Michelle Obama Park unquote. These were the eleventh and twelve
Speaker 1: pieces of heavy machinery to be sabotaged, and I think
Speaker 1: now we're at like around twenty five, which is a
Speaker 1: lot um. The anonymous communicate this time was short and
Speaker 1: to the point, quote we burnt to bulldozers in the
Speaker 1: South Atlanta forest. No cops city, no Hollywood dystopia, defend
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Forest. On top of the more publicly advertised
Speaker 1: encampment at Entrenchman Creek Park. Around the second week of action,
Speaker 1: a small cluster force defenders set up a secondary, more
Speaker 1: secretive encampment on a stretch of woods in the old
Speaker 1: Atlanta prison Farm. Again quoting the crimes article quote, a
Speaker 1: few dozen people pitched tents, erected tarps and makeshift kitchens,
Speaker 1: hung banners, and constructed a bonafid protest camp in the woods.
Speaker 1: Establishing a semi permanent presence in the forest was a
Speaker 1: way to gather information on an ongoing basis and to
Speaker 1: provide an immediate deterrent to developers. So I was involved
Speaker 1: in the original occupation of the forest. There was a
Speaker 1: group of autnomous individuals who many of whom were housing
Speaker 1: and secure, and we're like, we need fucking housing, and like,
Speaker 1: there's this struggle and we believe in it and want
Speaker 1: to fight in it. And so we moved to the
Speaker 1: fucking woods. And we've lived in these woods. Believe the
Speaker 1: six the official time is six weeks that we were
Speaker 1: in the woods. And we had a higher quality of
Speaker 1: life than like many people who like lived in houses
Speaker 1: and apartments. We had the nicest kitchen of anyone we knew. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had armchairs and couches and fire pits, and we
Speaker 1: you know, we had more food than we knew what
Speaker 1: to do with. And so we just started feeding people,
Speaker 1: and like we created a social space that allowed the
Speaker 1: movement to drow simply because we're like, oh, we need
Speaker 1: these needs man in our lives. Don't we go do that?
Speaker 1: And like evolved over time. A little over a month
Speaker 1: after the more secretive encampment was established, about a dozen protesters,
Speaker 1: some bearing witch hats, marched to the gate of Black
Speaker 1: Hole Studios on Constitution Road and blocked the main entrance.
Speaker 1: A communicate posted online read quote iconic spells for destruction
Speaker 1: were loudly chanted at black Halls general direction as the
Speaker 1: witch block held hands, cackled and skipped in a sunwise direction,
Speaker 1: blocking Black Hole Studios as main entrance. Smoke torches were
Speaker 1: lit approximately one our post, which block antics the Cab
Speaker 1: County Police responded to a call made by Black Hole
Speaker 1: Studios saying that they quote followed the protesters into the
Speaker 1: woods and deduced an encampment they came upon must belong
Speaker 1: to the apparent witches unquote, which is quite the sentence.
Speaker 1: Shortly after, a large contingent of police raided the forest,
Speaker 1: evicting the protest camp established there. There was at one
Speaker 1: point group and help a demonstration outside of Black Holes
Speaker 1: UM outside of Black Holes site near the woods, and
Speaker 1: they expressed their discontent at the yeah, peaceful, entirely peaceful
Speaker 1: protests at Black Haws Studios that was like just kind
Speaker 1: of standing in like the front gate where employees leaving
Speaker 1: them or um and generally doing stuff like bringing American flags,
Speaker 1: holding signs like um and just like taking up space
Speaker 1: and making the like actual interns and leaving of the
Speaker 1: facility like less doable. And their response was for a
Speaker 1: Black Hall to lie and so like the camp and
Speaker 1: camp and wasn't trespassing on their property which was actually
Speaker 1: in place in of like a public park, um and
Speaker 1: orchestrated with the police to evict um. And they orchestraed
Speaker 1: with the police to do like a pretty like intense
Speaker 1: eviction for like what it was. Essentially we were what
Speaker 1: amounted to a homeless camp living there, and they had
Speaker 1: two helicopters circling, more police than I could count. They
Speaker 1: were throwing our ship into dump trucks and like actively
Speaker 1: like pursuing people through the woods. It was like an
Speaker 1: absolutely I mean, it was like like very like visible
Speaker 1: show of force against us. Quoting the crime Thing article
Speaker 1: again quote at the urging of Black Hall the Cab
Speaker 1: County police entered the forest on mass mobilizing police cruisers
Speaker 1: and the parking lot officers on foot, helicopters and drones overhead,
Speaker 1: and unmarked vehicles in the streets. The officers were likely
Speaker 1: intimidated by the low visibility to rain. In any event,
Speaker 1: all of the force defenders based in the encampment escaped
Speaker 1: without being detained. This was the first time a concerted
Speaker 1: effort was made by law enforcement to engage protesters in
Speaker 1: the South River Forest. And be honest, it was a
Speaker 1: fucking pain in the ass and it was a traumatizing
Speaker 1: and like that is all true, but it's also even
Speaker 1: we learned from and like we got a pretty good
Speaker 1: idea of like apd s and like the Cab Counties
Speaker 1: the capabilities, and like how they are like surveilling thing
Speaker 1: protests and how they're surveilling camps, and like how they
Speaker 1: figured out where we were and like what triggered them
Speaker 1: to act against us, and like that's allowed us to
Speaker 1: move in far more confident ways that are also far
Speaker 1: more subversive. It's really interesting that you know, just like
Speaker 1: when they make it, you know, illegal to do n
Speaker 1: v d A whenever they attack, like that and do
Speaker 1: these really violent raids that put people in like awful
Speaker 1: positions and like traumatize the ship out of people. They
Speaker 1: are teaching us how to fight back. They are showing
Speaker 1: us their weaknesses, and in a really ironic way, the
Speaker 1: next time they come in and they funk it up,
Speaker 1: because people know what to expect, it'll be a monster
Speaker 1: of their own making. Because like for every one step
Speaker 1: of aggression that they take, that's two steps further we
Speaker 1: can take towards them with everything that we learned from
Speaker 1: the struggle. And obviously this forest is really beautiful and
Speaker 1: the more time I spend here, the more I feel
Speaker 1: connected to it and driven to like protect it. But
Speaker 1: also a big part of it for a lot of us,
Speaker 1: is for me, is like, um, you know, they're doing
Speaker 1: this for their own morale, and so my goal is
Speaker 1: to make sure they are unhappy. And so yeah, even
Speaker 1: if I uh yeah, even if they win, as long
Speaker 1: as we come back and we learn from that and
Speaker 1: we keep pushing back, you know, it is a lay
Speaker 1: of attrition, and um, it is about their morale. And
Speaker 1: like it doesn't matter if they build the police facility.
Speaker 1: What matters is that every single time that the police
Speaker 1: moved to recuperate that their losses, which they just took
Speaker 1: a big one, they are faced with just unyielding hostility.
Speaker 1: Um And I think that, like that's something that's really important,
Speaker 1: is that we don't expect to not take a lot
Speaker 1: of hells. Like in the forest occupation, we understand the
Speaker 1: nature of this thing. We're in a static position, completely
Speaker 1: moving around it. But like it's a it's about making
Speaker 1: them fight for every inch the best we can. The
Speaker 1: encampment was just one part of a large ongoing fight.
Speaker 1: Over the course of those six weeks, hundreds of people
Speaker 1: were able to circulate through this camp, enjoying meals and performances,
Speaker 1: making arts together, and spending time around campfires, building and
Speaker 1: sharing a life in the woods. After the camp was
Speaker 1: attacked and structures were destroyed by the Cab County Police,
Speaker 1: land offenders and Atlanta residents mobilized quickly to recover camp
Speaker 1: supplies and belongings and continued on with efforts to defend
Speaker 1: the forest. A great thing about these types of free
Speaker 1: autonomous zones is that they can directly demonstrate to people
Speaker 1: what a free life outside the confines of in a
Speaker 1: society can look like and what it can feel like
Speaker 1: it's not just like we want to save the words
Speaker 1: and we want to go back to our regular asse lives.
Speaker 1: A lot of us are realizing that we're living in
Speaker 1: the apocalypse and we're just gonna we want to keep
Speaker 1: living like this. It's not just this words, it's not
Speaker 1: just this police facility, and we want them to not
Speaker 1: have any more space or platform to organize this police.
Speaker 1: But we want a lot of us want to be free.
Speaker 1: We want other people that like during the idea of
Speaker 1: like whatever the funk it is, hitchhiking train happening living
Speaker 1: in the woods, the fact that it's a fucking crime
Speaker 1: or considered crazy to be the people living in the
Speaker 1: woods is insane. And that's kind of the vibe we
Speaker 1: got from the muscoge for Access today. They're like our
Speaker 1: whole world, like we're here trying to reclaim our culture
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of hope for saving the land
Speaker 1: from like an indigenous perspective, if people would respect them.
Speaker 1: And the whole point is the US government doesn't actually
Speaker 1: want them and doesn't actually respect them, and as a ations,
Speaker 1: I literally have prisoner of war numbers because they're hoping
Speaker 1: by blood quantum if they kill these people off, they
Speaker 1: can take their land back, So the whole land back
Speaker 1: idea of fucking freaks and not anyway. We want to
Speaker 1: save this for us, but it's not just about this
Speaker 1: forest for kind of endangered species. We've talked about ourselves
Speaker 1: feeling like deer Like how deer like they'll be chilling.
Speaker 1: They'll be like all around being a deer and mating food,
Speaker 1: and we're like, I was on guard, you know, to
Speaker 1: do something else if there's an enemy around. It kind
Speaker 1: of feels that way, like it will be chilling. Nothing's
Speaker 1: going on. Also, there's caps. But the whole point is
Speaker 1: if it can happen here, ha ha, did it, it
Speaker 1: can happen somewhere else. And we help to spread the
Speaker 1: vibe that people not like Occupy would a varriable name
Speaker 1: for a movement. But it's cool that that happened at
Speaker 1: the time that we had made sense. We all have
Speaker 1: nobody knew any better. We know better now, that's great,
Speaker 1: but get the vibe. We're getting this vib to like
Speaker 1: continue this kind of stuff. And obviously there's people in
Speaker 1: all kinds of places, a squad buildings and do all
Speaker 1: sorts of ship. But the more territory that we occupy
Speaker 1: and control and can help remake treat to indigenous grassroots comrades,
Speaker 1: not IRA and Reorganization Act, government sanctioned Indigenous groups right
Speaker 1: if they can't. Not everyone's air. Ally, these have to
Speaker 1: be ally. Ships that make sense. The Muscogee commrads that
Speaker 1: we're close to, obviously not all of them, that some romanticized,
Speaker 1: generalized bullshit. They said the same ship that when we
Speaker 1: talk to them, they're like even our own people betray
Speaker 1: it sometimes because we're not all the same. It's some
Speaker 1: homogeneous bullshit. And I've seen that play out poorly in
Speaker 1: other places. And like the garity of the land back
Speaker 1: to the neightives and like which natives like people were
Speaker 1: all on the spectrum of conversation and be conization. And
Speaker 1: sadly some of us are further along the lines and others.
Speaker 1: And it's very much on the colonizer's fault for doing that.
Speaker 1: But where we're at is the people, the people that
Speaker 1: feel the call the anarchy, the people that feel the
Speaker 1: call to the some kind of radical left orientation. They
Speaker 1: can find it in their hearts and in their patients
Speaker 1: to tolerate each other, need to band together to come
Speaker 1: up with better plans because we're all we got and
Speaker 1: it doesn't get better, it's getting worse. So hopefully this
Speaker 1: can be an inspiration for people to do other ship.
Speaker 1: I'm inspired. I'm not from anyway freaking her here, but
Speaker 1: I've been here for a year now and i don't
Speaker 1: want to leave because I'm tired at the same old tactics.
Speaker 1: And I have been a part of stuff that has
Speaker 1: been successful before and I had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: non valid direct action and I had to do time
Speaker 1: for it, and I know people that have done time
Speaker 1: for it also. And if there's any message I can
Speaker 1: give to the young generation is there's no future and
Speaker 1: it's worth it. And like if your future is just
Speaker 1: like working at nine to five and like watching the earth,
Speaker 1: so they're like shriveling and nothingness, I would argue it's
Speaker 1: not really a life. Might as all well might as
Speaker 1: well be dead. So I'm happy to live. I'm hope
Speaker 1: you choose to live. I think it's a really like
Speaker 1: interesting thing that psychological aspects of this, because the first
Speaker 1: time you do the way we're surcialized in the society
Speaker 1: is to be obedient and fearful, and the first time
Speaker 1: you do something illegals, the first time you do something
Speaker 1: that you know is against the world, the first time
Speaker 1: you steal some food, the first time you smash the window,
Speaker 1: the first time you do any of that, you're scared.
Speaker 1: But then you get away with it. You realize that
Speaker 1: this is a thing you can do, and I think
Speaker 1: that the state can't stop you from doing and you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: I can do so much more. And once you get
Speaker 1: over that initial fear, once you've smashed that window and
Speaker 1: you've gotten home and you're like, oh, I didn't go
Speaker 1: to jail for this. But when when you like get
Speaker 1: home and you're like, I have all this food now
Speaker 1: that I didn't have to pay for it, you start
Speaker 1: to realize maybe I don't need to work a job.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't need to work nine to five or
Speaker 1: you know, five to midnight every day to get a
Speaker 1: job and pay for You realize, wait, maybe I can
Speaker 1: just steal the food. Yeah. I've been wanting to talk
Speaker 1: about that for a while. For I want to make
Speaker 1: another Hyper Objects episode UM and talk about the anarchist
Speaker 1: properties of client bottles UM and I described this type
Speaker 1: of freedom is like it's like how a client bottle
Speaker 1: works or like a fourth dimensional object. It's like you
Speaker 1: need in order for there's like this extra degree or
Speaker 1: extra dimension of movement that we usually don't think it's possible,
Speaker 1: but it is actually there if you know how to
Speaker 1: interact with it. UM And Yeah, it's like we're domesticated
Speaker 1: in so many ways to view here's what's possible, here's
Speaker 1: what's impossible. I have to exist within this framework UM
Speaker 1: and only doing these things which are seen as correct.
Speaker 1: And there's actually more degrees of freedom than that. We
Speaker 1: just don't often like acknowledge them. But you can totally
Speaker 1: phase through things and you can totally find that extra
Speaker 1: degree of freedom, and once you do, that's a super
Speaker 1: interesting feeling. UM. As opposed to like waiting for gay
Speaker 1: luxury space communism, you can instead do like fourth dimensional
Speaker 1: like hyper anarchism, which gives you so much more freedom
Speaker 1: right now instead of just waiting for the communism that
Speaker 1: will never come and the relationship you build. The relationships
Speaker 1: you build that are based on a trust that is,
Speaker 1: I trust you to have my back, I trust you
Speaker 1: to work with me and do this thing is so
Speaker 1: much deeper than the trust of I guess I trust
Speaker 1: my coworker, but like I really trust them not to
Speaker 1: sttion my boss. Like the trust that comes from a
Speaker 1: relationship where you're like, yeah, let's like we need food,
Speaker 1: that's going to steal it together. That kind of trust
Speaker 1: is not something that can be recuperated. And that kind
Speaker 1: of like relationship where it's like our relationship is built
Speaker 1: on the fundamental we will do it we have to
Speaker 1: to survive. It creates an intimacy that you can't find
Speaker 1: anywhere else, and a criminal INTERNNA say, you might say, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that that was the point as somebody else think, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just to double down't know too, Like I think it's um,
Speaker 1: it's cool too because uh, when you also come through
Speaker 1: a space like this, Like you can live like that
Speaker 1: on your on your own or with your friends, but
Speaker 1: then there's something wild when you come to this space. Um,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, it's like when you
Speaker 1: start attacking something that a lot of other people want
Speaker 1: to see attacked, All of a sudden, all you have
Speaker 1: to do is attack that thing and foods there, yeah,
Speaker 1: and like you know like that and and like yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm like you have all these resources and you can
Speaker 1: focus on that and so like it's like yes, I'm
Speaker 1: like it's like a joke to some degree, but like
Speaker 1: if you want to be a lifestyle and because like
Speaker 1: if you want to actually be an anarchist right now
Speaker 1: and do anarchist ship, you can come to Atlanta and
Speaker 1: do and like it's not easy. It's fucking scary, it's sketchy,
Speaker 1: it's hard, there's freaky as bugs, but like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't have to wait, and like, yeah, it I think
Speaker 1: that that's something that like, for me, is really magic.
Speaker 1: Is that like actually the more you attack and the
Speaker 1: more you like position yourself to be antagonistic towards the world,
Speaker 1: the more of it's like fourth dimensional like winn shoot,
Speaker 1: don't you know, like which imediately understand like starts to
Speaker 1: kind of like self actualize. And yeah, I think it's cool.
Speaker 1: And like it freaks me out to think that there's
Speaker 1: not people who are probably probably pretty cool like waiting
Speaker 1: for some opportunity like waiting, just teachers waiting, and we
Speaker 1: don't have that much time. Yeah, you can live anarchy now.
Speaker 1: You don't need to wait for the collapse TM because
Speaker 1: turns out that party it's already happening and that already happened.
Speaker 1: We're just waiting in the liminal space until the climate
Speaker 1: change catches up with the admissions are already there. We're
Speaker 1: already living in it. We just don't realize it yet,
Speaker 1: or some of us are in denial of it yet.
Speaker 1: But the collapses like now, we it's already the thing.
Speaker 1: We don't need to wait for the one big collapse,
Speaker 1: because that's a myth. But you can live anarchy and
Speaker 1: do stuff. You don't need to wait for the next
Speaker 1: communist president who's going to run and fail. There's no
Speaker 1: coming social there's no coming collapse. There's nothing to wait
Speaker 1: for to keep on waiting madness aside. I think a
Speaker 1: really interesting aspect of this movement about like we are
Speaker 1: attacking a popular target, and how in attacking the popular
Speaker 1: target we've built this thing is we are ye, We're
Speaker 1: not just here and attacking this thing that doesn't exist
Speaker 1: in isolation. We're here and we've built a movement and
Speaker 1: we've built u We've through attack, we've built a built
Speaker 1: this like popular idea that like actually, you know, like
Speaker 1: if you want something to not be there, instead of
Speaker 1: like talk to a politician, you can send it on
Speaker 1: vote harder, vote harder, just just just just one more vote,
Speaker 1: I swear I'm different. Sorry, Now I like to talk
Speaker 1: more about tactics. Since the City Council about on the
Speaker 1: ground tactics have gained a much more integral role and
Speaker 1: grown past the basic sabotage and house visits, although both
Speaker 1: of those still are crucial aspects in keeping the movement going.
Speaker 1: Different ways of preventing physical construction, surveying of land and
Speaker 1: destruction of the forest made up most of the on
Speaker 1: the ground direct action efforts inside the forest. I think
Speaker 1: a really interesting aspect of the way that the struggle
Speaker 1: has happened here is that because it's so decentralized, there
Speaker 1: are people and no one really knows who, there are
Speaker 1: people who will just to show up and like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like there were people who are like getting the
Speaker 1: crops called on them in the woods and ships, and
Speaker 1: then like a bunch of anonymous people have showed up
Speaker 1: and like toppled all the camera powers and people stopped
Speaker 1: getting the crops called on them in the woods for
Speaker 1: really a long time. And like that kind of decentralized thing,
Speaker 1: especially where it's like, you know, regardless of even like
Speaker 1: if the people in the Woods were like, you know,
Speaker 1: like into doing ship. It's like, it's really useful when
Speaker 1: people who have more skills and people have more knowledge
Speaker 1: and more ability to do things and more ability to
Speaker 1: take risks. It's really awesome when those kinds of people
Speaker 1: can come and make things safe for a larger massive people.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that is like a strategy and
Speaker 1: like the interactionary space that can be truly like expanded
Speaker 1: on where people who know their ship can make things
Speaker 1: safe for large groups of people. To generalize revolt, yeah,
Speaker 1: I regret like a lot of hard a struggle and
Speaker 1: struggle has been framed from the very beginning as it
Speaker 1: like there was no call to action do x y Z.
Speaker 1: There was a bunch of people pursuing their own individual
Speaker 1: desires and what they saw as a forward facing like
Speaker 1: a reprojection of their own ideas into the future and
Speaker 1: made that happen. And it was underneath this framework where
Speaker 1: there was no limit, there were no boundaries um, and
Speaker 1: there was no idea of like us all having to
Speaker 1: be on the same page about that. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: need to like attend a march to be to do
Speaker 1: effective things. In fact, it turns out doing things that
Speaker 1: are not attending a march can often be way more
Speaker 1: materially effective, and to double down on that, like, um,
Speaker 1: so many times there's just like a script other people follow,
Speaker 1: this is how we do it. And then there's there's
Speaker 1: like this action that's applied to everything that people don't
Speaker 1: like and holy ship, that's a crazy book. That was
Speaker 1: a wild fire u um, things like that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but there's these like things that applied to everything, and
Speaker 1: this struggle very much has no script, which is really exciting.
Speaker 1: And but but what's even cooler about that is that
Speaker 1: it's not it's awesome not reinventing the wheel. And so
Speaker 1: there's people who are taking from you know, like kind
Speaker 1: of like classic insurrectionary anarchists like approaches. There's people looking
Speaker 1: at ego defense stuff from all over the world thinking
Speaker 1: about um, there's people looking at some successful like non
Speaker 1: violent direct action. There's people looking at alf struggles and
Speaker 1: like how like those campaigns, target campaigns, secondary targeting, how
Speaker 1: things like that worth The contracting and subcontracting companies hired
Speaker 1: by the Atlanta Police Foundation made up the new targets
Speaker 1: of the pressure campaigns and direct confrontation methods that threatened
Speaker 1: physical and Social Capital bringing back the house visits mentioned
Speaker 1: in the previous episode. In late December, banners that read
Speaker 1: Reeves Young out of the Atlanta Forest were hung in
Speaker 1: the backyard of the private residence of Dean Reeves in Suani, Georgia.
Speaker 1: Dean Raeves serves as the chairman of Reeves Young Construction
Speaker 1: and was among the board members present at the November action,
Speaker 1: and he personally allegedly shoved and assaulted protesters inside the brawl.
Speaker 1: After the backyard banners were hung, an anonymous online statement
Speaker 1: read quote, we hope this action gives but a miniscule
Speaker 1: dose of what the creatures in the South Atlanta forest
Speaker 1: you want to bulldoz might feel unsafe in the place
Speaker 1: they call home. A month later, on January, Reeves Young
Speaker 1: Construction and representatives of the Atlanta Police Foundation entered the
Speaker 1: forest with a bulldozer. They started knocking down trees to
Speaker 1: complete more surveying work and determine the construction supplies needed
Speaker 1: for a laying of building foundation force. Destruction was halted
Speaker 1: when approximately a dozen protesters approached the workers in Atlanta
Speaker 1: Police Foundation representative Alan Williams and demanded that they leave.
Speaker 1: Workers were safely escorted out of the woods, and the
Speaker 1: bulldozer was left at the scene and was subsequently taken
Speaker 1: out of commission. In my interviews with some force defenders,
Speaker 1: I believe one of them referred to this as the
Speaker 1: bulldozer tripping and falling, so that's fun. The day after
Speaker 1: autonomous groups of people finished construction of multiple well built
Speaker 1: treehouses up in the canopy near the site of the
Speaker 1: previous day's confrontation, people climbed up into treehouses and announced
Speaker 1: their intention to remain there in order to delay further construction,
Speaker 1: ripping off the old tree sit and bipod tactics. From
Speaker 1: October twenty one to this point in the struggle, just
Speaker 1: like mid January, work was consistently able to be stopped
Speaker 1: by small, dedicated groups of people without resorting to force.
Speaker 1: Throughout the next week, attempts at land surveying in the
Speaker 1: area of the old Atlanta Prison Farm continued, but now
Speaker 1: with workers being accompanied by the Atlanta Police Foundation, Atlanta
Speaker 1: Police officers, and a cab County police. With the backing
Speaker 1: of cops, workers were able to accomplish more of their tasks,
Speaker 1: including tree felling and soil boring per Crime Thing quote.
Speaker 1: In some instances, only handful of activists were on the
Speaker 1: scene behind makeshift barricades. Reinforcements cannot arrive rapidly enough to
Speaker 1: assist those on the ground. Unquote Reportedly, undercover cops surrounded
Speaker 1: the forest, intimidating those who would park nearby. As such,
Speaker 1: some outside support did show up, but not in mass. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: in the forest, it was a game of cat mouse
Speaker 1: between the workers, forest offenders, and cops. Police went so
Speaker 1: far as to start chasing people on forest trails while
Speaker 1: writing on a t V. S. Barricades and the tactical
Speaker 1: remove of land survey markers did slow down work on
Speaker 1: some days, but ultimately efforts were unsuccessful in halting the
Speaker 1: destruction process entirely. This week of land destruction and caton
Speaker 1: mouse culminated on January. Around sixty people, the largest crowd
Speaker 1: in months, gathered to march into the south of a
Speaker 1: forest and on to the old Atlanta Prison farm to
Speaker 1: directly confront construction workers who were boring holes in the
Speaker 1: ground doing soil sample collection. The cab County police attacked
Speaker 1: the protesters, tackling multiple people and arresting four, the first
Speaker 1: arrests inside the forest. Within the context of the movement
Speaker 1: quoting crime thing again quote. Police attacked the march, tackling
Speaker 1: several people. The other demonstrators did not mount a proportional
Speaker 1: response to this aggression, despite outnumbering the police. Perhaps some
Speaker 1: of the tactics popular during the rebellion, such as the
Speaker 1: mass use of umbrellas or makeshift shields, could have equipped
Speaker 1: the participants to feel more capable of decisive action. Allen
Speaker 1: Williams of the Atlanta Police Foundation was filling protesters, looking
Speaker 1: a little anxious as he did so. A statement on
Speaker 1: the Defend the Forest scenes dot no blogs dot org
Speaker 1: site concluded their report back with this sentiment quote, at
Speaker 1: this point, we are in need of two main things.
Speaker 1: More people to help support tree sets and defend the
Speaker 1: force from destruction, and legal attempts to delay construction. Yeah. Always,
Speaker 1: you want more people to be on the ground in
Speaker 1: the woods, in the city. Cass wed cass like the
Speaker 1: cast like um. You want to wear out the enemy
Speaker 1: and a lot of different ways, and the enemy has
Speaker 1: a lot of different people. Of the enemies. Enemies are
Speaker 1: subcontractors and enemy as a police enemies. George a power
Speaker 1: powers quote unquote the power that divides both in Trenchman
Speaker 1: Creek and said, there's a lot of different people. So
Speaker 1: if there's a lot of and we also have a
Speaker 1: lot of different people involve in a lot of different ways,
Speaker 1: people living in the worlds, people living in town, so
Speaker 1: people already know anything that it's already happening. We should
Speaker 1: be visiting the offices, we should be visiting at home,
Speaker 1: at the goddamn church, we should be visiting there. In
Speaker 1: the forest, there should be there should be no peace.
Speaker 1: And I believe that's how we can win, because we
Speaker 1: need to make it unpopular and savory and hopefully next
Speaker 1: to impossible for them to make these choices, because even
Speaker 1: this as a small part of the forest, they're just
Speaker 1: going to continue on the next thing. I want to
Speaker 1: briefly go into some details about a method of protests
Speaker 1: that combines pressure to both physical and social capital in
Speaker 1: hopes of resulting material changes from businesses, corporations, or people
Speaker 1: in power. It features many of the actual tactics we've
Speaker 1: in fact already discussed. Will refer to it as the
Speaker 1: Shack method. For reasons that will be shortly explained. House visits,
Speaker 1: targeted vandalism, phone calls, and hanging banners and backyards all
Speaker 1: have a place in this method adology, it's a focused
Speaker 1: drive to dissolve that safe political or corporate astral space
Speaker 1: that I talked about in the last episode. The cred
Speaker 1: of the article contains a really good summary of the
Speaker 1: Shack method. So instead of just like regurgitating their explainer,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm just gonna narrate certain sections of it
Speaker 1: because that will make my job easier and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a hacking of fraud blah blah blah blah blah quote.
Speaker 1: The goal is to hold those responsible for these projects
Speaker 1: personally liable for their decisions and the decisions of the
Speaker 1: companies they own. Because the entire system of rules and
Speaker 1: norms we live under dictates that exploiters, warlords, math murderers,
Speaker 1: and those that destroy ecosystems must not face pressure at
Speaker 1: home as a consequence of the decisions that they make
Speaker 1: at work. This strategy is bound to be controversial. It
Speaker 1: rejects the entire logic of limited liability that forms the
Speaker 1: basis of corporate rule in our society. At the beginning
Speaker 1: of the twenty first century, animal rights activists in the
Speaker 1: UK and the US set out to take down the
Speaker 1: biggest animal testing corporation on the planet Huntington's Life Sciences.
Speaker 1: The campaign to stop Huntington's Life Sciences was called Stop
Speaker 1: Huntington's Animal Cruelty or SHACK. It formally disbanded, and it's
Speaker 1: best known for its period of ambitious international participation in
Speaker 1: the early two thousands. The methodology of this movement, which
Speaker 1: encompassed direct actions, symbolic protests, cultural events, sabotage, pranks, and more,
Speaker 1: included many features that have been since used in a
Speaker 1: wide range of campaigns. The overall strategy of SHACK involved
Speaker 1: mobilizing a few hundred people to maximize their effectiveness against
Speaker 1: a major enterprise by focusing only on their ability to
Speaker 1: function economically. The SHACK model is centered around tertiary targeting
Speaker 1: I isolating service providers from third party contracts in order
Speaker 1: to limit their ability to provide services to the client,
Speaker 1: which is the actual target. Okay, now I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: pause here because if that sounds confusing, let me let
Speaker 1: me briefly provide an example. So the actual target here
Speaker 1: would be the Atlanta Police Foundation, since they're the ones
Speaker 1: with plans to build a cops city. The Police Foundation
Speaker 1: has contracted a few companies of Brassfield and Gory for
Speaker 1: one and Reeves Young, So these companies are the service provider.
Speaker 1: The shack model attempts to isolate the service provider, so
Speaker 1: Reeves Young from all of their third party clients and contracts,
Speaker 1: which will in the end go back to hurt the
Speaker 1: actual target, which is the Atlanta Police Foundation back to
Speaker 1: crime think the service provider. So in this case Heves
Speaker 1: Young Uh. The service provider depends on many third parties.
Speaker 1: Third parties provide the service provider with insurance, materials, equipment, security, catering, cleaning, mail, service, data, maintenance,
Speaker 1: and more. All of those third parties can be pressured
Speaker 1: to drop the service provider. Furthermore, the service provider is
Speaker 1: likely a company with more than one client, and those
Speaker 1: other clients can also be pressured to drop the provider.
Speaker 1: Any company or contractor that is able to move their
Speaker 1: money away from the service provider because they have other
Speaker 1: economic opportunities can be pressured to do so. Essentially, this
Speaker 1: strategy does not directly challenge the bottom line of any
Speaker 1: of the third party companies. It only isolates and demoralizes
Speaker 1: the service provider and therefore the end target. Today, it
Speaker 1: still remains unclear who is the service provider for the
Speaker 1: Black Hall Studios development, although that information will come out
Speaker 1: sooner than later. In considering the limits of the shack
Speaker 1: strategy in actions outside of the forest, it might be
Speaker 1: more difficult for activists to maintain a sense of urgency.
Speaker 1: Targeting individuals at their offices and homes will chiefly bring
Speaker 1: out those who are excited about such confrontational methods, rather
Speaker 1: than those who prefer to maintain welcoming spaces of encounter,
Speaker 1: to build treehouses, to or to clean campsites, to cook
Speaker 1: for others, to cultivate the kind of collective imagining that
Speaker 1: is needed to transform society. Also, if people fail to
Speaker 1: do proper research or mapping, activists could waste their time
Speaker 1: targeting minor institutions and companies that are unwilling or unable
Speaker 1: to drop their contracts. They could spend months facing down
Speaker 1: insignificant companies with many possible replacement subcontractors. Oh sorry, that
Speaker 1: was a lot. That was a big info dump, but
Speaker 1: I think it is useful information. So the goal isn't
Speaker 1: to sway companies with moralizing arguments, but to frame their
Speaker 1: association with militarized policing or ecological destruction as a bad
Speaker 1: look that could hurt their reputation and ability to secure
Speaker 1: future clients. Combined with economic consentives inflicted on the service
Speaker 1: provider like access sabotage, the resulting targeted campaign attacking physical
Speaker 1: and social capital can lead to pressure on third parties
Speaker 1: to influence the decision of the service provider on whether
Speaker 1: or not to stay on the project. Methodologies can put
Speaker 1: to the test through practice and be judged by the outcome.
Speaker 1: The proposal to employ the shock strategy to defend the
Speaker 1: Forest is just built on the simple hypothesis that if
Speaker 1: Reeves Young is forced to drop the contract with Atlanta
Speaker 1: Police Foundation, the Atlanta Police Foundation investors will then lose
Speaker 1: the confidence that's required to find an adequate replacement and
Speaker 1: the project could stumble or fail. The same goes for
Speaker 1: the Black Hall project. If activists defeat Reeves Young by
Speaker 1: means of direct action and self organization, even if the
Speaker 1: project of finds a new contractor, sophistication and confidence in
Speaker 1: the movement will have developed in the process will likely
Speaker 1: help it evolve once again. Also that people have figured
Speaker 1: out because like for the first to after the first
Speaker 1: to arsons, you could literally just walk up to during
Speaker 1: daylight up to the area of Michelle Opa Park and
Speaker 1: touch take pictures of like uh have sex around, like
Speaker 1: make out with the construction equipment I've been burned, and
Speaker 1: you could see the stickers of where they had rented
Speaker 1: these like construction equipment, UM destruction equipment, and like after
Speaker 1: the first one it changed, there was no longer rented
Speaker 1: from the same company, and after the second one it
Speaker 1: changed again. And there is reason to believe that with
Speaker 1: every arson or attack that they are changing construction equipment
Speaker 1: companies because rental companies tend to not like it whenever
Speaker 1: their equipment is destroyed to cost them a lot of money,
Speaker 1: and oftentimes they cannot afford hundreds of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: going down the drain be to support a pot project
Speaker 1: that is highly unpopular. And the other thing what we're
Speaker 1: talking about with the modified like a police and modifying
Speaker 1: itself as it's interesting because where at this point where
Speaker 1: policing is highly unpopular, and so it's kind of padging
Speaker 1: its bets and it's doing two things. First, it's calling
Speaker 1: itself like the Social Peace and Justice cute Bunny Rabbits
Speaker 1: Center for your racist if you don't like us or whatever.
Speaker 1: And then it's also just like mask off, doubling down
Speaker 1: buying mad guns like like yet just becoming increasingly more militarized,
Speaker 1: increasingly more violent and like moving mask off like an
Speaker 1: occupying force. So there's this split where there's no and
Speaker 1: people are well aware of this. There's there's no like
Speaker 1: public chance of convincing um a lot of companies that
Speaker 1: this is wrong. Right, there's it's it's it's well, it's
Speaker 1: very divided. So the people who are committed are very committed.
Speaker 1: There are fucking enemies and where their enemies and that's it.
Speaker 1: But then there's other people who are doing this for
Speaker 1: economic reasons and kind of understand that policing is not cute, right,
Speaker 1: and then it's at least unpopular, going out of fashion
Speaker 1: to some degree, and can make money in other ways.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's this interesting thing where like being able
Speaker 1: to like fight battles for public opinion maybe doesn't super work,
Speaker 1: and all you have to do is um kind of
Speaker 1: trying to cut away the people who are supporting people
Speaker 1: who are ideologically committed to our destruction, and we are,
Speaker 1: you know, field reciprocal. If you look at the photos
Speaker 1: of what was happening with Michelle Obama park, the land
Speaker 1: swap site they were trying to build on. You can
Speaker 1: tell that heavy yellow equipment. LLC of Marietta, Georgia stopped
Speaker 1: providing them equipment after like the first or the second
Speaker 1: time that their machines got lit on fire. And now
Speaker 1: it's alf A l I f of I don't know
Speaker 1: where Georgia. So you know, these are photos that you
Speaker 1: can see, like you can look at these communities and
Speaker 1: just tell like like if there's a photo attached, like
Speaker 1: there is a traceable like trend of companies are dropping
Speaker 1: the funk out because they, for whatever reason, just cannot
Speaker 1: take the heat. On June twelve, while fully in the
Speaker 1: throes of nationwide revolt against police after the murder of
Speaker 1: George Floyd, two Atlanta police officers killed Ray Schard Brooks,
Speaker 1: a black man who had been sleeping in his car
Speaker 1: in the parking lot of a Wendy's. Not long after,
Speaker 1: the restaurant was burnt to the ground by determined crowds.
Speaker 1: In the time period between June to the end of
Speaker 1: the year, more than two hundred Atlanta police officers left
Speaker 1: their jobs, including the a chief of police, local sheriff's deputies,
Speaker 1: state patrolmen, and transit cops also resigned during the year
Speaker 1: of the uprising at a higher than average rate, as
Speaker 1: the entire system of policing and capitalism faced a crisis
Speaker 1: of legitimacy. Corporations, business owners, landlords, business associations, and international
Speaker 1: real estate companies demand a public pacification and a reassurance
Speaker 1: of a future with stable consumerism. Profit incentive and police
Speaker 1: need each other in a symbia like relationship. I'll do
Speaker 1: one of my last crime thing quotes here. Quote. Forces
Speaker 1: in local and federal government, business associations, police departments, and
Speaker 1: our militias have continuously worked to make sure a popular
Speaker 1: uprising does not reoccur. A large part of the institutional
Speaker 1: reaction to the popular uprising has focused on managing public perception.
Speaker 1: Industrial interests and private investment companies have conducted influence campaigns
Speaker 1: using local news outlets which are owned by Sinclair Broadcasting
Speaker 1: Group of a right wing news organization between Sinclair, Next Star,
Speaker 1: Gray Tega, and Tribune. This coordinated reframing of events has
Speaker 1: damaged the way many sectors of the television viewing public
Speaker 1: perceive the revolt and its consequences. In the wake of
Speaker 1: the uprising, a false narrative circulated to the effect that police,
Speaker 1: while demoralized and underfunded, cannot control the crime waves currently
Speaker 1: sweeping the country. This orchestrated narrative has shaped the imaginations
Speaker 1: of suburban whites, small business owners, and many urban progressives.
Speaker 1: The crime wave framework implied that police departments around the
Speaker 1: country had in fact been defunded or had their powers curtailed,
Speaker 1: and were consequently unable to assure social peace or free enterprise.
Speaker 1: In reality, the vast majority of police departments received an
Speaker 1: annual increase in their budgets as they normally do. If anything,
Speaker 1: they accrued more power following the events of So it's
Speaker 1: no coincidence that the Atlanta Police Foundation and the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Police Department are pushing to build a militarized urban warfare
Speaker 1: training center in the wake of the uprisings by le
Speaker 1: virging that crime wave narrative and the fears of future
Speaker 1: social unrest, they want to have the tools to bring
Speaker 1: down the inevitable upcoming revolts for racial, environmental and economic justice,
Speaker 1: and now more than ever, including reproductive justice. Cops cities
Speaker 1: leading the charge is a part of a new effort
Speaker 1: to adapt American policing strategies to our new era of
Speaker 1: societal decay and the ever crumbling that will define this
Speaker 1: century as we face the escalating consequences of industrialization and
Speaker 1: climate change. I think another really important thing to look
Speaker 1: at this is like when you look at the Greg
Speaker 1: Floyd uprising in the crisis of private policing and they
Speaker 1: realize that, oh, holy sh it, people are so angry
Speaker 1: about this that they will pose a threat to the
Speaker 1: sovereg the state, which is the first time that has
Speaker 1: happened in an extremely long time. When that finally happened
Speaker 1: the state, the morale of police departments around the country
Speaker 1: was broken. Cops everywhere, We're like, it was a demoralizing thing.
Speaker 1: And when you think about cops as an occupying force,
Speaker 1: as an occupying military force, it thinking about the fact
Speaker 1: that we broke their morale is really important. And then
Speaker 1: thinking about this place as they intend to build a
Speaker 1: training facility to increase morale, which is a classic military
Speaker 1: tactic of create cool and interesting ways to train your
Speaker 1: soldiers to do a murder. Is like, that is a
Speaker 1: classic military tactic. And when you think begin to think
Speaker 1: about this as social or when you begin to think
Speaker 1: about this as not just a struggle against cops city
Speaker 1: that like as a struggle for like disabling and destroying
Speaker 1: the police. When you think about this as a material
Speaker 1: struggle against the occupying forces that are the police, this
Speaker 1: becomes like way more contextual. In fact, I feel like
Speaker 1: that is the best way to contextualize this movement. So
Speaker 1: one interesting thing is that after Ray Schard Brooks is
Speaker 1: murdered and the UM two cops involved were UM, they
Speaker 1: substitquently charged UM what was it, six hundred props went
Speaker 1: on second hundreds of hundreds UM, and their morale is broken.
Speaker 1: A land police has always been understaffed for like as
Speaker 1: long as I've known, UM and not understaffed by any
Speaker 1: media propaganda spend standard there standards. But like every single
Speaker 1: day they're facing backlogs in every zone where they cannot
Speaker 1: answer calls. And that's a good thing. This is a
Speaker 1: war patriction where their current training facilities have broken. Tottchney
Speaker 1: pipes have have have undeniably miserable conditions. Their cars are out,
Speaker 1: their cars are like continually on their last legs, and
Speaker 1: we that's that is a path through abolition is making
Speaker 1: it so it is so undesirable to be a cop
Speaker 1: in this city or any city that no one would
Speaker 1: dare do it. It is crucial that police are not
Speaker 1: the only ones that seek to evolve their tactics for
Speaker 1: a new era and moving beyond the kind of non
Speaker 1: violent action that's become so common during protests during the
Speaker 1: Trump era and the post Green Scare, and even like
Speaker 1: post occupy, there is this looking for a new form
Speaker 1: of anarchist or radical resistance. Really emphasized the learning things
Speaker 1: here is that this struggle took all the different rulebooks,
Speaker 1: tore them up, set them on fire, and use the
Speaker 1: ashes for their shutter. Like everyone here is learning things.
Speaker 1: People who have been who have been doing things along
Speaker 1: fucking time are here and learning new things. We're we're
Speaker 1: not just like tearing up and like destroying the rule books.
Speaker 1: We're like we're like largest were weird. Yeah, yeah, like
Speaker 1: put them like it, like tore all of them up
Speaker 1: and make collogious out of them, and like is trying
Speaker 1: to create this like weird paper mache mesh of a
Speaker 1: experimental path into the future, And and like we wouldn't
Speaker 1: when we say we are experimenting with new forms of revolt,
Speaker 1: new new tactics, new strategies, We truly mean, there aren't
Speaker 1: existing model to do what we're doing. We are writing
Speaker 1: the book as we could do it, and yeah, we
Speaker 1: sunk up sometimes, but we've also got some really cool
Speaker 1: ship happening. Ship that hasn't happened in twenty years is happening,
Speaker 1: and ship that hasn't happened ever is happening here. And
Speaker 1: I think that's like a really it's a really important
Speaker 1: thing to touch on. Is that, like much of the yeah,
Speaker 1: much of the like eco defense ship that's happened in
Speaker 1: North America that for quite a while has like not done,
Speaker 1: you know, or at least not released, communicates about like
Speaker 1: ship that happens here seemingly every couple of weeks. Now,
Speaker 1: like the ship here is crazy and wild under dreams
Speaker 1: is also scary and hard and traumatizing, and it's beautiful
Speaker 1: and terrifying and like, yeah, that sounds great, you should come. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a such a way from us actually evolving
Speaker 1: out of a I look at this as like a
Speaker 1: huge step in what land offense looks like after we
Speaker 1: have after we have faced green Scare repression, and now
Speaker 1: we are moving past the post green Scare repression movements
Speaker 1: and figuring out how to move forward and regardless of
Speaker 1: it for this like uh lands and are really repressive
Speaker 1: like bootstounded throats like situation. I don't think anyone should
Speaker 1: ever stop experimenting. I don't think people should go back
Speaker 1: to the old ways. I don't think that we should
Speaker 1: be resigned to not experiment. I think that everyone, like
Speaker 1: we are in a situation where there is nor future.
Speaker 1: They're like the collapses now, We're probably not going to
Speaker 1: avoid one point five degrees warming. Our police are only
Speaker 1: further mails rising. And the like reality of resistance is
Speaker 1: that we that we guess what we need experimentation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if there was a winning strategy that was proven to
Speaker 1: be effective, then it would have it would have been
Speaker 1: effective in therapy, we would have a winning strategy. There's
Speaker 1: a popular name in the forest, which is the are
Speaker 1: your name instead of are you? Are you experiencing the
Speaker 1: joy of attacks on UM? And I think that is
Speaker 1: an important line the same way Cops City is a
Speaker 1: part of the new evolution of American policing. Defend the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Forest can be seen as kind of trailblazing for
Speaker 1: future movements, a look at how they might develop post
Speaker 1: the George Floyd protests for my last final I think
Speaker 1: quote quote. This campaign represents a crucial effort to chart
Speaker 1: new paths forward in the wake of the George Floyd rebellion,
Speaker 1: linking the defense of the land that sustains us with
Speaker 1: the struggle against police. The movement opposed these developments, mobilizing
Speaker 1: around the watchwords defend the Forest and stop Coops City,
Speaker 1: have passed through several phases of experimentation, using a wide
Speaker 1: array of tactics and strategies to keep pace with the
Speaker 1: current course of events. It represents an important effort to
Speaker 1: revitalize eco defense and police abolition strategies in the wake
Speaker 1: of the George Floyd rebellion. So, considering the possible wide
Speaker 1: ranging impacts of both the evolution of policing and the
Speaker 1: evolution of resistance tactics that defend the Atlanta Force movement
Speaker 1: is extremely relevant to all people who want to improve
Speaker 1: the world, whether or not they live in Atlanta. Atlanta
Speaker 1: as a testing ground for new surveillance and like in
Speaker 1: like experimenting with new forms of struggle. Here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: there are things that not only are we in many
Speaker 1: ways on the front lines of experimenting with new tactics,
Speaker 1: and integrating new strategies and how they work. That we're
Speaker 1: also on the front lines of like different kinds of
Speaker 1: both like like in person and digital forms of oppression
Speaker 1: that don't have to be worried about other places, and
Speaker 1: like it also provides approving ground for ways to struggle
Speaker 1: specifically against those forms of surveillance and understanding the different
Speaker 1: ways that sometimes the most effective thing in protecting yourself
Speaker 1: from repression isn't some super high tech ship. It's a
Speaker 1: ski mask of paragloves and not bringing your phone, and
Speaker 1: like people don't seem to like think about that that
Speaker 1: I don't need to go to that part. But yet,
Speaker 1: so speaking of surveillance, we actually have like not we
Speaker 1: I don't claim that, UM. The police here and the
Speaker 1: state here has like the video Video re Integration System,
Speaker 1: which I believe is like one of our re integration
Speaker 1: video integration center where they take where businesses and homeowners
Speaker 1: are like rain cameras can call into here their video
Speaker 1: surveillance equipment to be plugged into a network UM that
Speaker 1: can be monitored and pulled up at any time by
Speaker 1: the police UM in a downtown location and they and
Speaker 1: that is like one of the largest surveillance network systems
Speaker 1: in the world, I believe, um and it was actually
Speaker 1: leading the charge in like new forms of surveillance, and
Speaker 1: other cities are looking at this as a model of
Speaker 1: how to how to better survey all their own cities,
Speaker 1: which obviously makes lend police defindation trying to create their
Speaker 1: own little mini city a very interesting prospect in terms
Speaker 1: of like establishing new you know, this means this is
Speaker 1: mentioned before, which was like establishing new ideas and how
Speaker 1: to take policing forward into thirties after we've had these
Speaker 1: wave of social justice like uprising and uprisings for Black
Speaker 1: liss Matter, um with you know. I mean not many
Speaker 1: places actually got defunded, but the propaganda has to be different,
Speaker 1: and like the way the police optics work definitely could
Speaker 1: need to be changed from their perspective, or they're trying
Speaker 1: to have them be changed. One of the strongest things
Speaker 1: I feel like came out of this movement really pass
Speaker 1: ahead was our ability to don't have the game on,
Speaker 1: like the narrative and then never being able to recuperate
Speaker 1: that narrative is their plan was this answertude for sexual justice.
Speaker 1: There is a new way of training police to quote
Speaker 1: be better or like not murder people as much and
Speaker 1: like more refined. Um, And I don't want more refined
Speaker 1: like police that like murder quote the right people or
Speaker 1: be the right people or cage the right people. That's
Speaker 1: not my desire I went into policing. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of projects happening in the forest,
Speaker 1: and you know, I also just want to emphasize, like
Speaker 1: I'm not from Atlanta, but I feel like it's really
Speaker 1: important for me to be here. You know. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people who felt inspired by the George
Speaker 1: Fluid uprising, like, um, this is an attempt to recuperate.
Speaker 1: Like I've said this a million times, it's a time
Speaker 1: for the police to recuperate from that, and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to finish what we started. I also think that we
Speaker 1: need to understand that this isn't just about Atlanta. Like
Speaker 1: one of the buildings that they're trying to build, and
Speaker 1: like one of the points of this training facility is
Speaker 1: that it is like a hub in the same way
Speaker 1: Atlanta with a with a movie theater, the same way
Speaker 1: they're trying to make Atlanta this hub. Right, It's there's
Speaker 1: an infrastructure for being a hub from shipping and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. And so now they're trying to make it
Speaker 1: this this economic habit on my white collar way. And
Speaker 1: so they're trying to make it a hub for police
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, but also to train police to do fucked
Speaker 1: ship and to mutate like nationally. And I know that
Speaker 1: the police from the you know, whatever city I live
Speaker 1: in are probably going to come here and go back
Speaker 1: and funk that up. So I'm trying to make sure
Speaker 1: that they can't come here, and that you know, police
Speaker 1: are demoralized in every city and they're having trouble on
Speaker 1: every city. And this isn't just about the ap D.
Speaker 1: If you live pretty much anywhere on the East Coast,
Speaker 1: there's a high chance that your police are going to
Speaker 1: come here and then go back to your house and
Speaker 1: fuck you up. So come here and make sure they can't.
Speaker 1: And the other thing I want to say is like, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: they want to make this a training facility for police.
Speaker 1: Right now, it is a training facility for anarchists. If
Speaker 1: you come here, I promise you you will leave with
Speaker 1: more courage and with more skills and knowing a lot
Speaker 1: of fun people who are really fucking down all over
Speaker 1: the country. Um, and I think it's worth it. I
Speaker 1: wanted to jump in and say, like, this is about you. Um.
Speaker 1: An hour or two hours south of here is the
Speaker 1: School of the America's you might have heard of it.
Speaker 1: It's here in Georgia. It's where a lot of awful
Speaker 1: fucking dictators and their henchmen learned how to do really
Speaker 1: awful ship a bunch of war crimes. And here in
Speaker 1: the city of Atlanta, a local school, the largest, the
Speaker 1: largest university in the state, Georgia State University, hears something
Speaker 1: called the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange or GILLY, which
Speaker 1: is where they and the i DF get together to
Speaker 1: train local police forces here in Atlanta and around the country.
Speaker 1: And if you don't think that Cops City is going
Speaker 1: to play a huge role in your police department learning
Speaker 1: from the i d F how to beat you up,
Speaker 1: you have another thing. You should come here to Atlanta.
Speaker 1: What's going on? Because this is about everyone here, like
Speaker 1: it's about the whole country. They're coming to Atlanta to
Speaker 1: learn how to brutalize people, and it's going to take
Speaker 1: all of us to stop it. A funny thing about
Speaker 1: this project is that there's these sort of dual intersections
Speaker 1: and dual microcosms. On one side, there is the intersection
Speaker 1: of policing, gentrification, racism, ecological destruction, and climate change. And
Speaker 1: on the other side there's the intersection between the tactics
Speaker 1: of urban city protest and rule eco defense. But there's
Speaker 1: also this dual microcosm. On the side of the state,
Speaker 1: they're trying to construct this police facility with a mock
Speaker 1: city to train in microcosm for protest suppression and practice
Speaker 1: urban combat against people who live in American cities. And
Speaker 1: on the people's side, there's this microcosm not only for
Speaker 1: how resistance movements can evolve post but more importantly for
Speaker 1: the people in up in the struggle, a microcosm for
Speaker 1: how you can live a life free of the oppressive
Speaker 1: societal mechanisms that we claim to oppose. I think another
Speaker 1: really interesting thing about this being like such an ungovernable
Speaker 1: space is that because it's ungeferable, because it's impossible to control,
Speaker 1: it allows us to create these new ways of relating
Speaker 1: to be traveled there that can't happen to other places.
Speaker 1: Like where else are like people in their everyday lives
Speaker 1: just gonna be able to walk around as gender funded
Speaker 1: as they want, and like just it's fine, like you
Speaker 1: know if they're if a clear basher comes into these
Speaker 1: fucking woods, like it's gonna be a bad time because
Speaker 1: literally everyone here is queer, like we don't. That's the
Speaker 1: thing is like when we exist in these spaces in
Speaker 1: this ungovernable way, we like are like eating many versions
Speaker 1: of Yeah, this thing I want to talk to, something
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about in terms of like the
Speaker 1: microcos of macrocosm idea of after uprising looking for new
Speaker 1: paths forward, the depending on a forest thing can be
Speaker 1: viewed as this microcost, like this micro causum of how
Speaker 1: we can approach different struggles going into going into twentyties
Speaker 1: and stuff um, because yeah, like it is like this
Speaker 1: small version of what we want. There's also the whole
Speaker 1: idea of like what I've seen here in the forest
Speaker 1: more closely resembles like an actual temporary autonomous zone than
Speaker 1: like the chads ever did in terms of like people
Speaker 1: actually like actually living free, actually living like not relying
Speaker 1: on like city water, like not like not living in
Speaker 1: like the in a downtown metro area. It's like it's
Speaker 1: an actual free space where people can be queer and
Speaker 1: be all of the things and climb trees and talk
Speaker 1: with the deer and like that's people are actually allowed
Speaker 1: to do that, Like there's there's not all of the
Speaker 1: stigma that even I think, like Chazz had like so
Speaker 1: many problems, right, like extremely extremely hashtag problematic in terms
Speaker 1: of how that resulted. Um, And yeah, this is such
Speaker 1: a microcosm of like like an autonomous area where people
Speaker 1: are able to do those things. I also kind of
Speaker 1: want to talk about like the like idea, our ideas
Speaker 1: of safety and security don't reside and like the ideas
Speaker 1: of say a safety or security for us, it doesn't
Speaker 1: really resides in our trust in ourselves and each other.
Speaker 1: It resides and like we actually keep each other safe.
Speaker 1: We have each other's backs, we will fight for each other,
Speaker 1: and any threat to any one of us is like
Speaker 1: taken seriously. We have this like intimacy, criminal intimacy like
Speaker 1: allows us to build more check nuan relationships with high
Speaker 1: highs and low lows than anything ever could. And like
Speaker 1: the deafening that society puts on us, this like chemically
Speaker 1: induced regulated median of gray and terrible is that's not
Speaker 1: what we live. Yes, some days here it sucks to
Speaker 1: wake up and everything you ownly wet and you gotta
Speaker 1: go ship in a hole that it's fled. But also
Speaker 1: some days things here are fucking awesome, and I get
Speaker 1: to wake up to the birds calling and go like,
Speaker 1: have a party with my friends. I don't like exist
Speaker 1: here in a way it is like comprehensible or legible
Speaker 1: to like a wider like society. I don't exist in
Speaker 1: a way that people look at this and be like, ah,
Speaker 1: that's what you need. But I have never been happier
Speaker 1: than when I've been in the woods with people I
Speaker 1: trust and care about and don't have my back. People
Speaker 1: people don't have to worry about working to pay their
Speaker 1: water bill because you can go just get the things
Speaker 1: you need from places you don't have to pay for it,
Speaker 1: And like, you don't have to worry about all of
Speaker 1: these things, all of these societal pressures. There's not this
Speaker 1: constant threat of oh I lose my job. Oh all
Speaker 1: those things, all those things, all these mental constructs that
Speaker 1: control us aren't there anymore. Because we've built a world
Speaker 1: it doesn't it doesn't rely on that in the slightest
Speaker 1: And I think that's like a really powerful thing that like,
Speaker 1: we've already met our own needs and so we can
Speaker 1: fight back in these beautiful and fiery ways. Pun intended
Speaker 1: that like allow us to just experience things that like
Speaker 1: I've been stolen from us generations. Yeah, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: we're not safe, but we're free. And I think that
Speaker 1: anyone who makes that decision as an active decision to
Speaker 1: not be safe but to be free, I may not like,
Speaker 1: but by definition I'll ride for them, because I can't say.
Speaker 1: We're now nearing the end of the episode, but before
Speaker 1: I finish, I need to go back to talking about
Speaker 1: tactics for a bit and end with some actual good news.
Speaker 1: From January to present time of recording, there's been an
Speaker 1: increase in solidarity attacks in cities across the country, some
Speaker 1: targeting Reeves Young and Long engineering equipment. In other states,
Speaker 1: a third party service providers of contracted construction companies or
Speaker 1: locations and offices of corporate sponsors of the Atlanta Police Foundation.
Speaker 1: This past March, X machines owned by Reeves Young, including
Speaker 1: two large excavators and a bulldozer, were destroyed in Flowery Branch, Georgia.
Speaker 1: The online communicate reads quote, so long as you continue
Speaker 1: to contract with the Atlanta Police Foundation for the destruction
Speaker 1: of the South Atlanta forest and the construction of a
Speaker 1: Cops City in its place. Know that your equipment is
Speaker 1: not safe, your offices are not safe, Your homes are
Speaker 1: not safe. Unless your company chooses to pull out of
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Police Foundation's Cops City project of its own volition,
Speaker 1: we will undermine your profits so severely that you'll have
Speaker 1: no choice but to drop the contract unquote. Subsequent solidarity
Speaker 1: attacks have happened in Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: and Highland, Michigan, to name a few. Many of these
Speaker 1: attacks were targeted at Atlas Technical consultants, who own many
Speaker 1: smaller companies such as Long Engineering, which has done work
Speaker 1: with Reeves Young and brass Field and Gorri for the
Speaker 1: Cops City project. The vein of shack style methods. This
Speaker 1: past April, on the ninth website called stop Reeves Young
Speaker 1: dot Com launched onto the interwebs. The site listed some
Speaker 1: of the various third party clients and subcontractors under Reeves
Speaker 1: Young Construction and ways to contact them to voice concern
Speaker 1: about their relation to the deforestation and this urban warfare
Speaker 1: construction project. As well as including the names and addresses
Speaker 1: of executives within Reeves Young and some of their affiliates.
Speaker 1: On the day I was set to leave Atlanta and
Speaker 1: say goodbye to the forest for the time being, activists
Speaker 1: got word that Reeves Young Construction might be dropping out
Speaker 1: of the project. This would obviously be a big, big
Speaker 1: win and an indication of the possible effectiveness of the
Speaker 1: shack method combined with sabotage and the forest encampment tactics.
Speaker 1: At a stakeholders meeting for the copsity of project the
Speaker 1: next day, it was publicly confirmed that Reeves Young will
Speaker 1: not get tinue work on the new police training center.
Speaker 1: In the public statement addressing Reeves Young's lack of future involvement,
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Police Foundation tried to frame the situation as
Speaker 1: Reeves Young simply have quote finished their role in the project.
Speaker 1: This is a laughable deception, as Reeves Young is one
Speaker 1: of Atlanta's major construction firms and has even built massive
Speaker 1: quote unquote public safety facilities in the past. They do
Speaker 1: not merely do preliminary sub contracting survey work. They work
Speaker 1: on projects from start to finish, taking lead contracting roles.
Speaker 1: It was speculated that Reeves Young itself may have been
Speaker 1: the main subcontractor hired to do complete construction of Cops
Speaker 1: City by brass Field and Gory, who have more established
Speaker 1: ties to the Atlanta Police Foundation. Quoting from the Stop
Speaker 1: for Reeves Young website quote, the Atlanta Police Foundation would
Speaker 1: have us believe that Reeves Young was contracted to do
Speaker 1: nothing more than hire a bulldozer and walk alongside long
Speaker 1: engineering work crews as they planted a few surveying stakes
Speaker 1: and did some soil testing. Police and their corporate backers
Speaker 1: don't want to let it be known that a focused
Speaker 1: group of activists have delivered a devastating blow to the
Speaker 1: Cops City construction, while the Atlanta Police Foundation tries to
Speaker 1: say face, we are celebrating a major victory pressuring a
Speaker 1: main contractor out of the project. We are pleased that
Speaker 1: the movement has built up so much momentum and that
Speaker 1: the Cops City development continues to face setbacks because of
Speaker 1: the intelligent actions of regular people. However, the struggle continues.
Speaker 1: Brass Field and Gory, another large general contractor, remains with
Speaker 1: the project. A Georgia Open records request from April confirmed
Speaker 1: via Paper Trail that the Atlanta Police Foundation has been
Speaker 1: working on the Cop City project with brass Field and Gory,
Speaker 1: another major general contractor in the Southeast region of the
Speaker 1: United States. Brass Field and Gory is an LLC and
Speaker 1: a multibillion dollar general contractor, ranked as a top contractor
Speaker 1: in the Southeast by Engineer News Record. Based on recent
Speaker 1: Atlanta Police Foundation emails required through public records, we can
Speaker 1: now assume that brass Field and Gory act as the
Speaker 1: sole contractor for Cops City. Quoting again from the Stop
Speaker 1: Reeves Young website quote, brass Field and Gory are dependent
Speaker 1: on subcontractors to complete their projects. Now they must hire
Speaker 1: a new entire set of subcontractors in order to build
Speaker 1: a Cops City. We believe it is in their best
Speaker 1: interests for brass Field and Gory to follow the lead
Speaker 1: of Reeves Young and drop Atlanta Police Foundation as a client,
Speaker 1: rather than remaining complicit in the destruction of the forest.
Speaker 1: It is up to all of us to make that
Speaker 1: clear to them. We can pressure brass Field and Gory
Speaker 1: out of Cops City by complicating their ability to do business.
Speaker 1: This does not have to be limited to the Cops
Speaker 1: City project. Their various construction projects and third party service
Speaker 1: providers are numerous. If brass Field and Gore begin to
Speaker 1: feel like they must choose between all of their contracts
Speaker 1: and their Cops City con tract, we are confident that
Speaker 1: they will choose the former, but we working to convince
Speaker 1: the subcontractors, consulting firms, surveyors, architects, etcetera around the country
Speaker 1: that brass Field and Gory are not a good business investment.
Speaker 1: We can make it easier for the construction company to
Speaker 1: do the right thing and dump the Atlanta Police Foundation
Speaker 1: for good. This has been an incredible period of momentum
Speaker 1: and research, but nothing is over yet. Now that we
Speaker 1: have made a decisive victory, it is important to remain
Speaker 1: more focused than ever. In the coming weeks and months,
Speaker 1: we will need to continue pressuring all of the contractors
Speaker 1: associated with the project to create economic consentives for them
Speaker 1: to simply move their time and resources to other endeavors.
Speaker 1: The Stop Reeves Young website will continue to serve as
Speaker 1: an educational hub for this ongoing campaign. End quote. On
Speaker 1: top of confirming that Reeves Young was dropping out of
Speaker 1: the project, a few other interesting pieces of information came
Speaker 1: out at the recent stakeholders meeting held on April. Allegedly,
Speaker 1: there will be a bid for the next contractors or
Speaker 1: subcontractors UH in the coming weeks and that will be
Speaker 1: publicly announced. It was also announced during the meeting that
Speaker 1: the cops city planners will keep construction timelines secret and
Speaker 1: may surround the construction site and future facility with an
Speaker 1: unwanted fence. In response to the quote law breaking protesters,
Speaker 1: Atlanta Assistant Police Chief and Site Security Chief Darren sheer
Speaker 1: Bomb said quote, we are working with decav County to
Speaker 1: address any criminal acts related to trespassing and vandalism unquote.
Speaker 1: He also stated that police were also concerned with protesters
Speaker 1: targeting those who work on the project at other locations.
Speaker 1: Here's an interesting note from our force defender pals on
Speaker 1: how the Atlanta Police Department function and are allowed to
Speaker 1: operate while inside the old Atlanta Prison Farm and Entrenchment
Speaker 1: Creek Park. This is something that's true police departments in Channel.
Speaker 1: But as soon as a cop is you know, out
Speaker 1: of like streets and things like that, that cop is
Speaker 1: uncomfortable and like cops here are carrying twenty pounds of
Speaker 1: gear on them at all times. And not only are
Speaker 1: they carrying that much gear, but they spend most all
Speaker 1: day sit running around and sitting in a car, and
Speaker 1: like you know, that cop not only doesn't want to
Speaker 1: chase you through the woods, but they also probably aren't
Speaker 1: capable of it. And aside from the obvious, like you know,
Speaker 1: their infrastructure issues, them being away from their cars, not
Speaker 1: being on the streets having all of their gear. We're
Speaker 1: also not in the City of Atlanta in this forest.
Speaker 1: We're an unincorporated the Cab County, which means Atlanta Police
Speaker 1: Department doesn't have legal jurisdiction as police here. They only
Speaker 1: have legal jurisdiction as agents of the City of Atlanta
Speaker 1: because the City of Atlanta owns this property which is
Speaker 1: outside of the city. So at any time when they're
Speaker 1: conducting and arrest they have to have the Cab County
Speaker 1: Police Department officers present with them. There. There can be
Speaker 1: an Atlanta Police Department and has been major like one
Speaker 1: of their huge like high ranks, who has no legal
Speaker 1: authority here except to represent the city. And that relationship
Speaker 1: is kind of like tenuous at best. They hate each pals.
Speaker 1: They hate each other, and you know, so if you're
Speaker 1: if you're headed in the town, like bear in minds
Speaker 1: that is a huge place to drive a wedge because
Speaker 1: they fucking hate each other. Yeah, I know there's like
Speaker 1: um and there is like one thing one time where
Speaker 1: like Atlant Police officers were inside the forest um with
Speaker 1: like a specific goal in mind in the Cab County
Speaker 1: Police cruisers. Not only good, the Cab police not want
Speaker 1: to gather the cruisers and go into the forest because
Speaker 1: they have they didn't care, they didn't want to do this.
Speaker 1: So the Atlant Police, uh, We're screaming into their radio saying,
Speaker 1: get this person. They're walking out of the forest, get
Speaker 1: this person. They're walking out of the forest, and it
Speaker 1: would just be like fib er ten minutes before the
Speaker 1: Cab police like preserves to just roll down the road
Speaker 1: and like you know, they're like people who like ran
Speaker 1: into the woods and like ran from the age Cat police.
Speaker 1: Like we're like, I'm not going in this world these words.
Speaker 1: And I'm also not calling to let the Atlant Police
Speaker 1: to let them know that this person just ran from
Speaker 1: me into the woods, because then they'll have to actually
Speaker 1: go in after them. Also, during the April stakeholder meeting,
Speaker 1: Security Chief shear Bomb announced that the FBI and the
Speaker 1: Georgia Bureau of Investigation agreed to an assistance request in
Speaker 1: mid April from Atlanta Police Chief Rodney Bryant, and we'll
Speaker 1: be assigned to the site. While attempting to work with
Speaker 1: neighborhood watch groups, he noted that quote, we look word
Speaker 1: to working with those agencies to ensure that this is
Speaker 1: a safe project that is occurring here and addressing any
Speaker 1: criminal acts that may be occurring on site to try
Speaker 1: to stop the project from proceeding unquote. The co chair
Speaker 1: of the Stakeholder Advisory Committee, Sharon Williams, invoked the term
Speaker 1: eco terrorism as relating to the forced defense, marking the
Speaker 1: first time that word has been used by the government
Speaker 1: officials to refer to this batch of protests. She also
Speaker 1: thanked the cop City planners for quote transparency in explaining
Speaker 1: why they cannot be transparent on the construction timeline. Emails
Speaker 1: between the Atlanta Police Foundation and the City of Atlanta,
Speaker 1: obtained via public records requests do give a possible look
Speaker 1: into the future of the development. In a January two email,
Speaker 1: Police Foundation representative Allen Williams said that we quote plan
Speaker 1: on enabling work possibly in the Mayo and June time frame.
Speaker 1: Our project will last until the last order, and our
Speaker 1: contractors are currently working on an overall site logistics and
Speaker 1: safety plan unquote, although at the time their contractors still
Speaker 1: included Reeves Young, so there's no telling how accurate that
Speaker 1: timeline is now. Other emails detailed plans for Homeland Security
Speaker 1: to obtain ring camera subscriptions to monitor quote criminal activity
Speaker 1: at the new Academy footprint unquote. In general, when involved
Speaker 1: in any level of protest, no matter of the alleged legality,
Speaker 1: security culture considerations should always be among people's top priorities,
Speaker 1: especially with more eyes being directed to the defend the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Forced project. Each person should be responsible for themselves
Speaker 1: and might I think that that type of action you're
Speaker 1: interested in taking should severely inform the type of personal
Speaker 1: security precautions that you're taking. Um. I think that's that's
Speaker 1: been a recurring theme as the movement builds. There are
Speaker 1: folks that come in to not having heard the term
Speaker 1: security culture up set or whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 1: and so that can be really jarring for folks that
Speaker 1: are just first trying to get involved, but people pick
Speaker 1: it up surprisingly quick once you have built as a
Speaker 1: community like norms and customs around is this a phone's on,
Speaker 1: our phones off meeting. Are we talking about this on signal?
Speaker 1: Is the call for this action going out on social media?
Speaker 1: Are we just sharing this amongst friends where that hadn't
Speaker 1: really been a thing and where frankly, a lot of
Speaker 1: people face significant repression here in Atlanta during the uprisings
Speaker 1: because of security culture decisions that were made. I think
Speaker 1: that a security culture is being built here that where
Speaker 1: it didn't really exist before, or at least wasn't widespread before,
Speaker 1: is going to survive long past this movement. I think
Speaker 1: like one of the biggest aspects of these things is
Speaker 1: like the social aspects of it, and like like the
Speaker 1: generalizing of the norm of if someone answers you vaguely
Speaker 1: and seems uninterested in to meet, in continuing the conversation,
Speaker 1: just understanding that they have your best interests in heart
Speaker 1: when they don't want you to know, and like, quite frankly,
Speaker 1: you just can't accidentally share information you don't have. And
Speaker 1: so like, you know, when we sit here in these
Speaker 1: woods and people say, you know, like you say, like,
Speaker 1: so you know you're where have you been? Blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and I'm just like, oh, you know, hey, our places
Speaker 1: or something like that, I just don't ask questions, and
Speaker 1: I understand that I don't just not only do I
Speaker 1: not need to, but I probably don't want to know.
Speaker 1: And like, you know, when it comes to like more
Speaker 1: like material technical things, those are important, but like the
Speaker 1: social aspects of security culture are so so much more
Speaker 1: important than the technical aspects. It's like I don't know
Speaker 1: as everybody talks about security culture as like take your
Speaker 1: phone out of the room, but like you know, if
Speaker 1: you take the phone out of the room and talk
Speaker 1: about doing crazy ship with complete strangers, you don't you
Speaker 1: know and have a reason to trust them, And like
Speaker 1: coming here to Atlanta, like if you want to do
Speaker 1: crazy ship, don't you know if you want to do
Speaker 1: if you're coming to Atlanta, let me reef is that
Speaker 1: you're If you're coming to Atlanta and you want to
Speaker 1: do crazy ship, like you to think about like how
Speaker 1: to do that in a safe way or as safely
Speaker 1: as possible. You know, don't don't come to us and
Speaker 1: be like, hey, I haven't met you before, but like
Speaker 1: do you want to go do some federal felonies? Because no,
Speaker 1: I don't and I don't want to know that you're
Speaker 1: doing that either like we have do you want to
Speaker 1: do crazy ship? That's cool, just like I don't want
Speaker 1: to know you did it. And like if you're like
Speaker 1: coming here with the intention of creating, like with the
Speaker 1: intention of like doing ship because it's like cool and fun.
Speaker 1: If you're coming here with the intention of, like I
Speaker 1: want to gain social capital because I did crazy things,
Speaker 1: like maybe you rethink that like if you if you
Speaker 1: want and find your closest friends, plan a road trip,
Speaker 1: and don't help anyone. In a recent interview, Atlanta Police
Speaker 1: Foundation President and CEO Dave Wilkinson estimates that defend the
Speaker 1: forest quote unquote group members have done hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars of damage to utility equipment and has brought
Speaker 1: up plans to add defense around the entirety of the
Speaker 1: site as construction begins, saying, and anyone on the site
Speaker 1: will be arrested and as we move forward, the enforcement
Speaker 1: will become stricter and stricter unquote. Also stated in an
Speaker 1: interview is that quote. The Police Foundation also hopes to
Speaker 1: build separate museums on site dedicated to police officers and
Speaker 1: the labor prison that was once located there. So that's
Speaker 1: that's what the kids call maskoff moment of building a
Speaker 1: dedicated museum two cops and labor prison a k A.
Speaker 1: Slave labor prison. Anyway, the first phase of the project
Speaker 1: had the initial ninety million price take attached, with taxpayers
Speaker 1: being forced to pay thirty million dollars of that, and
Speaker 1: it's still unclear what the final cost of the facility
Speaker 1: is slated to be, or what the estimated operating costs are,
Speaker 1: or really how many phases of construction they really plan
Speaker 1: on doing. The past few weeks, the site of Cops
Speaker 1: in the Woods has become a more and more common occurrence,
Speaker 1: whether to do scouting or just apparently detonating explosives for
Speaker 1: funzies at their current makeshift shooting range, like they did
Speaker 1: a few days ago. One morning when I was there,
Speaker 1: I woke up to people yelling Cops in the Woods, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, is a very effective substitute for caffeine
Speaker 1: in terms of making you very awake and alert quite
Speaker 1: early in the morning. Um. And then while running through
Speaker 1: the forest, I saw a beautiful deer and a hopping rabbit.
Speaker 1: So nice clash of of feelings and sensations there. In
Speaker 1: terms of closing sentiments based on conversations and observations I
Speaker 1: had from my brief time in the woods. It's this
Speaker 1: play to your strengths, don't play by the enemy's rules,
Speaker 1: utilize the intersection of urban city based tactics and resources
Speaker 1: while taking inspiration from classic forest based eco defense. Attacking
Speaker 1: from the cover of the woods and ensuring that the
Speaker 1: terrain is as unwelcoming as possible to vehicular machinery can
Speaker 1: help by time for rapid response popular mobilization from people
Speaker 1: living in the city. If and when that time comes,
Speaker 1: I'll be careful coming down a key road. They throwing
Speaker 1: bottles at the police, and the bottles a smoke ball,
Speaker 1: so be careful. They in the woods um throwing at
Speaker 1: the police cars and stuff like. Appreciate it. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: despite the defensive nature of the ending the forest, there
Speaker 1: still is a large amount of making sure that as
Speaker 1: often as possible you can do the prep work to
Speaker 1: set the terms of engagement so that they're fighting on
Speaker 1: your terms. You're not always complying to theirs, which is
Speaker 1: can be useful for defensive stuff. Obviously, the whole aspect
Speaker 1: of defending a forest like this that you I think
Speaker 1: the defenders can have this almost like spectral quality of
Speaker 1: like cops don't know where people are, what they've built,
Speaker 1: what's in the forest, what's in the woods, and that's
Speaker 1: like spooky, like you like you don't know who's who's
Speaker 1: up in a treehouse, you don't know who's behind what tree,
Speaker 1: you don't know what things are in the woods, and
Speaker 1: that spectral quality of the forest offense is a really
Speaker 1: interesting aspect of it that you don't see. And you
Speaker 1: don't see that. And then like pipeline protests as much,
Speaker 1: you don't really see that for like protests in a city,
Speaker 1: um because the city very much as like a more
Speaker 1: of like a cop story. Um So I really do
Speaker 1: like that aspect of like cops are kind of scared
Speaker 1: to go in the woods because they're spooky. They have
Speaker 1: openly testified, like in court testimony that said that when
Speaker 1: this forest defender was arrested, the police officer that gave
Speaker 1: his statement to the judge was shaking, physically shaking because
Speaker 1: he was so afraid from being yelled at, Like that
Speaker 1: was all that had happened, is a bunch of protesters
Speaker 1: were yelling at them and he was shaking. The police
Speaker 1: are really dependent on their infrastructure. They are dependent on
Speaker 1: all of that kid that they carry around. They are
Speaker 1: not mobile. They are meant to be attached to that
Speaker 1: squad car, and every further step they take away from that,
Speaker 1: they are more and more uncomfortable. And when they look
Speaker 1: around they realized they were in the middle of the
Speaker 1: fucking woods. That's terrifying for them and that needs to
Speaker 1: be like taking advantage of. And it is. What's that like?
Speaker 1: They their drones in their these helicopters have problem even
Speaker 1: with their thermal tracking of seeing through the canopy. What's
Speaker 1: that like? And I want to say, like, it was
Speaker 1: really funny to me that in that like it was
Speaker 1: said that the purposes were screaming, we know where you live,
Speaker 1: we know where you live. We're coming, We're coming, which
Speaker 1: is the whole, the whole ghost thing, um, because I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean in terms of in terms of thermal stuff.
Speaker 1: I brought a thermal camera of mine here and the
Speaker 1: woods are very hard to see through. With my thermal camera.
Speaker 1: I cannot see more than twenty ft away. I've I've
Speaker 1: tested it on people. It's that's the super interesting aspect.
Speaker 1: And yeah, like it's the whole like Fern Gully, Princes,
Speaker 1: Princess mononoke thing of like when people come out of
Speaker 1: the woods wearing ski basks, like that's freaking Like it's
Speaker 1: like we are you, Like you can be the thing
Speaker 1: that goes boo in the night like that, Actually that
Speaker 1: is you, um, and that's something that should be taken
Speaker 1: advantage of when there's people invading the forest and trying
Speaker 1: to destroy it. I think this is a really important
Speaker 1: to touch on. Is that for a lot of us,
Speaker 1: even though like may us have been like socialized to
Speaker 1: think of the dark and the night and the woods
Speaker 1: as this scary thing, this is where I feel the
Speaker 1: most safe. This is if you give me a bunch
Speaker 1: of camel and like send me off into the woods,
Speaker 1: there's nowhere I'm going to feel more safe and more
Speaker 1: capable both of safety and attack. When I'm out here,
Speaker 1: I feel like I can do anything. You give me
Speaker 1: a bunch of woods, a bunch of hills, Like, there's
Speaker 1: so much we can do because we're not in this
Speaker 1: position of you know, entering hostile territory to you know,
Speaker 1: do things. This is territory that we control, and this
Speaker 1: is territory that we are using to fight that and
Speaker 1: we're weaponizing not just you know the cops fear, but
Speaker 1: we're recognizing the terrain itself. We're weaponizing the trees, were
Speaker 1: recognizing the hills, were recognizing the ruins, and we're recognizing
Speaker 1: everything here as like literally a thing to use to
Speaker 1: attack the state. If you give me a ridgeline, I
Speaker 1: can hide from the cops better than any fucking you know,
Speaker 1: high tech thermal scattering delly suit is ever gonna give me.
Speaker 1: You know, out here, you don't need a bunch of
Speaker 1: fancy ship to like engage in conflict with the state.
Speaker 1: You don't need thermal cameras and all that. You can
Speaker 1: walk into a military surplus store and buy, you know,
Speaker 1: for fifty bucks. You can buy everything you need to
Speaker 1: like do just about whatever you want out here. And
Speaker 1: that's like, that's like a really important and beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: Is It's not it's not hard to do what we're doing.
Speaker 1: You just have to break down the mental barriers and
Speaker 1: do it. Um. Yeah, we we do our best to
Speaker 1: protect the trees, and the trees protected us too. It's
Speaker 1: it's cool living here, and it's like obviously something ever
Speaker 1: on most people probably like think about is yet how
Speaker 1: important wild spaces are. But it's cool to really fucking
Speaker 1: feel it. And it's like like, yeah, this this place
Speaker 1: is super important because of how it interacts with the
Speaker 1: ecosystem and how it filters the water and that it's
Speaker 1: a safe haven for a lot of really beautiful animals
Speaker 1: and plants. But also this place is important because wild
Speaker 1: spaces are sucking uncontrollable and I want to live in
Speaker 1: an uncontrollable way and like you need those things, and um,
Speaker 1: it is it's really cool, like this is a wild space.
Speaker 1: It's also for in a city, which is cool. It's
Speaker 1: fucking weird, Like there's there's city people who come here
Speaker 1: who are fucking weird and do weird ship and it's sick. Um,
Speaker 1: and like it is an uncontrolled space and like sometimes
Speaker 1: that means that there's like fucking ship chemicals that are
Speaker 1: like fucking plants up. But also sometimes that means there's
Speaker 1: people who like are doing things that are free and
Speaker 1: doing things they couldn't do in the city. And um,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't matter if I like it or not.
Speaker 1: It makes me, Yeah, it makes me happy. They just
Speaker 1: know that those people can act on their desires. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's not always fucking convenient or good. And
Speaker 1: sometimes I intend to antagonistic relationships or that because it
Speaker 1: conflicts with my desire. But there's no mediation and there's
Speaker 1: there's there's no one getting in between. And yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just it's really important. And I think like the the
Speaker 1: slogan that people say of not what is there, not
Speaker 1: one tree, not one blade of grass, like is like
Speaker 1: an inspirational thing, but it's also like a strategy, Like
Speaker 1: it's like a tactical assertion that is important for us. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if like this forest and these wild spaces are essential,
Speaker 1: not just for us to physically stop the police, but
Speaker 1: like essential to be an anarchist. Like if there are
Speaker 1: not wild spaces, spaces that they can't put security cameras
Speaker 1: up here because they there's no electricity and the trees
Speaker 1: are two dens for solar panels and they get smashed anyway,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's important to have those things. If
Speaker 1: there's not places like that, there's not places where you
Speaker 1: you know, like and and so that for itself is cool.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is just living here with the
Speaker 1: fucking animals, Like, um, it's cool. The deer. If you
Speaker 1: want to find a get a hiding spot in the forest,
Speaker 1: pay attention to where the fucking deer sleep. They sleep
Speaker 1: in different places most nice. You won't suck them up
Speaker 1: as long as don't get the exact same one day're
Speaker 1: sleeping and they're really freaking hard to find. Something with
Speaker 1: the coylds, like sathing with the snakes, and like it's
Speaker 1: just very cool to get to observe and live with
Speaker 1: all these animals. And um, you know there's an owl
Speaker 1: such screaming five o'clock every day. It's like a nice
Speaker 1: little marker. And that's for me. That's better than you know,
Speaker 1: looking at my watch. It's pretty cool. This leads us
Speaker 1: up to our present day and the upcoming week of
Speaker 1: Action in Atlanta, Georgia, happening from Sunday May eight to
Speaker 1: Sunday May If you are anywhere near the Atlanta area,
Speaker 1: you have no reason to not check it out. It's
Speaker 1: a week's worth of events spanning from early in the
Speaker 1: morning till late into the evening every day for seven days.
Speaker 1: You can find the calendar of events on defend the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Forest dot com. And if you are not near Atlanta,
Speaker 1: I would still recommend you make your way there post
Speaker 1: taste if you are able to. Whether that's during the
Speaker 1: Week of Action or later on down the line. More
Speaker 1: boots on the ground is almost always a plus. Here's
Speaker 1: the more info on the upcoming Week of Action from
Speaker 1: May eight through May fifteen. So generally in the past,
Speaker 1: the past few week of actions have been like really
Speaker 1: above ground, really like giving people comfortable forest, getting people
Speaker 1: into a forest, like the immunity events are like UM
Speaker 1: and just like public gatherings, inform nights, skill shares, other
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And I believe that this one, like well,
Speaker 1: like we had a lot of those events. But I
Speaker 1: also believe that like due to the nature of what's
Speaker 1: going on UM, that it's much more urgent than people,
Speaker 1: uh come and creator bring their own ideas being known
Speaker 1: in science, their own desires, and yeah, we get action.
Speaker 1: It's odd, it's gonna be d it's gonna be crazy,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be add the things. I think there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a family family were lack hug and trees kind
Speaker 1: of ship, and I'm excited for that. And I think
Speaker 1: there's gonna be something like the funk is going on
Speaker 1: in the woods kind of shore is a bunch of
Speaker 1: cops kind of ship. Obviously, we don't know what's really
Speaker 1: going to happen. But anyone that has been reading stuff
Speaker 1: like oh man, I want to go throw down with
Speaker 1: the crazies, you should come and do that. And we
Speaker 1: have some stuff to share and hopefully there'll be so
Speaker 1: many people here that don't know how to deal with it.
Speaker 1: The problem going here is the Atlanta Police Force. Um,
Speaker 1: they there is a lot of them, but honestly they're
Speaker 1: also they're stressed out and they are run um what's
Speaker 1: it can run dry? Respect then they really they don't
Speaker 1: know how to deal with all this wood ship from
Speaker 1: ship that we've heard them talking about. They don't know
Speaker 1: what to do. They're not totally prepared. I think it's
Speaker 1: gonna be a really fun and crazy ship show and
Speaker 1: we want you all the Condor Chip show in a
Speaker 1: good way. And now they're like, oh, you shouldn't use
Speaker 1: those words, but in reality, nobody actually knows what's going
Speaker 1: to happen. We know what we're gonna do. We have
Speaker 1: plans that people can plug into, some stuff you can
Speaker 1: bring your kids to, and some stuf of you should
Speaker 1: not bring kids to, and there will be more. To
Speaker 1: be honest with, you really got to just be there
Speaker 1: in person, because there's something you can't put everything on
Speaker 1: Instagram and doing our best to communicate to folks what's
Speaker 1: going on down here, but there's just some things you
Speaker 1: gotta come two. Whatever the Week of Action, it's always
Speaker 1: a week of action, but this is like we're helping
Speaker 1: people get really turned up for this week of action
Speaker 1: and maybe we all just become a roving nomadic war
Speaker 1: machine together. That would be the dream. So you have
Speaker 1: a thing in your hometown, is going on in your territory,
Speaker 1: and we nomadic war machine over to your spot and
Speaker 1: we just keep doing that. A few resources that some
Speaker 1: of the force defenders wanted people to know about is first, obviously,
Speaker 1: Defend the Atlanta Forest dot com, which has the Week
Speaker 1: of Action calendar. To keep up on news regarding the movement.
Speaker 1: You can follow them on Twitter and Instagram at Defend
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Forest or Defend a t L Forest. There
Speaker 1: is the Forest Justice Defense Fund at Open Collective dot
Speaker 1: com slash Forest Hyphen Justice Hyphened Defense hyphen Fund, where
Speaker 1: people can donate to support the work of the Broad
Speaker 1: Coalition dedicated to saving the forest. There's of course stop
Speaker 1: Reeves Young dot com, which has information on subcontractors and
Speaker 1: third party service providers relating to the cops city construction.
Speaker 1: Very useful even just for simple calling campaigns. The website
Speaker 1: scenes dot no blogs dot org hosts other news relating
Speaker 1: to the movement, anonymous community, case and stuff like maps
Speaker 1: of the area and random other useful information resources for
Speaker 1: info and guides relating to direct action. There's a website
Speaker 1: titled Warrior Up dot no blogs dot org and people
Speaker 1: can go there or to a warrior up dot no
Speaker 1: blogs dot org slash guides for various interesting information. I'll say, um,
Speaker 1: and that last one is really best viewed on tour
Speaker 1: with via the tour browser just as a heads up.
Speaker 1: Also probably with like a VPN. And I don't know anyway,
Speaker 1: be careful with that last one. But all of these,
Speaker 1: all of these sites will be linked in the show notes.
Speaker 1: The future lies in your hands. You have more freedom
Speaker 1: than you know if you can find the unconventional ways
Speaker 1: of expressing it. See you on the other side. And
Speaker 1: I'll end with a word from our forced defender friend.
Speaker 1: There's yeah, hopefully we're gonna stop the police training facility.
Speaker 1: I think we really are looking forward to people, hopefully
Speaker 1: some people sticking around for the Week of Action because
Speaker 1: we're hoping that it doesn't die down too much to
Speaker 1: the point where smaller and to achieve them that was
Speaker 1: here for a reko action gets attacked and stay away
Speaker 1: exactly that if they can get happen here. I wasn't
Speaker 1: thinking about that. This funny enough it its It could
Speaker 1: happen where you live, and maybe we can just keep
Speaker 1: the idea. As we share enough skills, we make ourselves.
Speaker 1: Absolutely no one should be integral enough to the movement
Speaker 1: that you can't go off or leave and it can't continue.
Speaker 1: People should be reading manual, sharing skills, telling stories, having
Speaker 1: at the moons. We're doing all this stuff to make
Speaker 1: each other just a weird of the different things that
Speaker 1: are possible for us to run because maybe we don't
Speaker 1: have all the you know, the guns and the steel
Speaker 1: and the gold. But if we have enough people like
Speaker 1: being creative and doing some grilla ship, we can get
Speaker 1: a lot done. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: if you can do you have to be careful about
Speaker 1: how many hats to ring. If you don't know about
Speaker 1: the r n c AD, that's a long time ago.
Speaker 1: Now look that up. They were wearing. They are really
Speaker 1: great community organizers, but they were wearing too many hats.
Speaker 1: It was the first time that Patriot Act kind of
Speaker 1: new laws after not eleven was you lie down people,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it didn't stick. But if you
Speaker 1: what we really need is more faceless saboteuries because honestly,
Speaker 1: I'm saying that's what we need. We need people to
Speaker 1: be there's just in reality, there's not enough people willing
Speaker 1: to do nightwork. It looks like there's an uptick in
Speaker 1: the behavior, which is great, but be safe, be smart,
Speaker 1: act to interact with a little and that's that's what
Speaker 1: we need more than any saying. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: people that um are willing to do above ground stuff.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people that want to be known,
Speaker 1: and that's great, but we have enough for that. We
Speaker 1: need something else. It Could Happen Here is a production
Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
Speaker 1: for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone
Speaker 1: media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.