Speaker 1: The few days leading up to Saturday, January twenty first
Speaker 1: felt like the calm before the storm. Nobody knew exactly
Speaker 1: what was going to happen at the weekend protest in
Speaker 1: downtown Atlanta, but there was a sense that something would.
Speaker 1: Shortly after the Wednesday shooting, a flyer went out calling
Speaker 1: for a gathering at Underground Atlanta on Saturday, January twenty first,
Speaker 1: and to wear black clothes in morning. This is it
Speaker 1: could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis, and I arrived at
Speaker 1: Underground Atlanta just a bit before five pm. The crowd
Speaker 1: was still slowly grown, and a bunch of big news
Speaker 1: cameras were filling up the central area. As more people
Speaker 1: filtered in, some who knew Tort went up in front
Speaker 1: of everyone to share memories of Torti Ghita and talk
Speaker 1: about the continuing fight to defend the forest.
Speaker 2: Obviously, we're all here because Tort was an amazing person
Speaker 2: and their life meant a lot. But Tort also shared
Speaker 2: something in common with all of us, and that was
Speaker 2: the values and things that they were fighting for, and
Speaker 2: all of us are fighting for a great content. We
Speaker 2: all have it in common, but it makes us all targets.
Speaker 2: They will always target us because they don't believe in
Speaker 2: the things that we believe in, and they will always
Speaker 2: be after us. And we all have to stand here
Speaker 2: and stay together and stay resilient, to fight for what
Speaker 2: we believe in, and never let Towort's memory go without honor.
Speaker 3: If they would kill an innocent person like Torque, someone
Speaker 3: who loved their community, they will stop to kill us.
Speaker 3: They won't stop to kill everyone in that forest. They
Speaker 3: won't stop to kill anyone who defies them. And that
Speaker 3: is pretty much all I had to say.
Speaker 1: A few people from the Atlanta Resistance Medics, a local
Speaker 1: street medical group dedicated to the liberation of medicine and
Speaker 1: providing medical resources for underprivileged and marginalized people, spoke about
Speaker 1: Torti Ghita, who was a member of their collective.
Speaker 4: If there's one thing that we want people to remember
Speaker 4: Tourt for, it's if they were somebody who protected the
Speaker 4: people around them, who went through the training along with
Speaker 4: the rest of us, to be able to provide medical
Speaker 4: resources to the people that were around them. They may
Speaker 4: not have access to those no matter what else the
Speaker 4: news says about tort they were a protector. Everything they
Speaker 4: did was out of love. Everything they did was out
Speaker 4: of hope for a better world. And I don't care
Speaker 4: what the police say. I don't care what the media says.
Speaker 4: I don't care what anybody says. Torpe was out here
Speaker 4: working for a better world. They may want to smear
Speaker 4: them as an extremist, they were not. They were out
Speaker 4: here protecting their fellow people. And that's what we want
Speaker 4: everybody to remember about them. Just say they were out
Speaker 4: here trying to build a better world, no matter what
Speaker 4: anybody else says.
Speaker 5: All right, I'd love y'all to repeat after me, Art Doug.
Speaker 5: La lu Ja siege, La lu Ja Siege is a
Speaker 5: medic in our collective. They were a forest defender. They
Speaker 5: were a friend, They were funny kind Sarta Vida was
Speaker 5: constantly thinking of others. They were constantly trying to protect
Speaker 5: other people, trying to protect the forest, trying to protect
Speaker 5: everyone who was marginalized. They centered voices on them who
Speaker 5: are on the margins and brought them into the center.
Speaker 5: They recognized that our struggles are interconnected. They recognized that
Speaker 5: cop City will never be built. They died defending that forest.
Speaker 5: The memory Oftito that I keep returning to is after
Speaker 5: the police destroyed the gazebo at Leilani People's Park in
Speaker 5: the parking lot. They were at a meeting and they said, yeah,
Speaker 5: so the cops think they can destroy our morale, they can't. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Tartuita was one of the most resilient, strongest people. Well
Speaker 5: I know, they hugged everyone. They were so kind and
Speaker 5: so giving, and even as the state tries to assassinate
Speaker 5: their character in addition to their body, they were a
Speaker 5: freedom fighter. They were a person that I am honored
Speaker 5: to have known that I am honored to have called
Speaker 5: a friend.
Speaker 1: About four hundred people eventually gathered around Underground Atlanta. It
Speaker 1: seemed like slightly more people than we're at the vigil
Speaker 1: the previous night.
Speaker 6: Everything in modern life serves to atomize you, to make
Speaker 6: you feel like you were an individual, divorce from any
Speaker 6: sense of collective identity, divorced from any sense that you
Speaker 6: have a purpose and that there is good in the world.
Speaker 6: The fact that you're here means that you're fighting against that.
Speaker 6: Don't let go of that. That is powerful. And that's
Speaker 6: why cop City isn't going to be built, is because
Speaker 6: we have love for ourselves and for the people around us.
Speaker 7: All right, So I'm sure all of you are fairly
Speaker 7: upset about this. I am Tort was a friend of mine.
Speaker 7: They were a friend of the community. Their death, their
Speaker 7: death will not be in.
Speaker 8: Vain, fucking top city fuck at all.
Speaker 1: By five point thirty, about half the crowd gathered at
Speaker 1: Underground Atlanta were in Black Bloc and the rest were
Speaker 1: a variety of activists, organizers, and random people who decided
Speaker 1: that it was important to be at this event. After
Speaker 1: some speeches, chants, and stories of Tort, the gathering of
Speaker 1: people turned into a march and took to the streets.
Speaker 1: March is starting just left Underground Atlanta. Around three hundred
Speaker 1: people maybe maybe more, are marching down the street. There's
Speaker 1: mix of people in block. There's medics here, people it's
Speaker 1: kind of in regular clothes, holding signs. There's a banner
Speaker 1: in the front that reads they can't kill us All.
Speaker 1: Firework banner at the front that says trees give life,
Speaker 1: police take it. After just a minute of marching down
Speaker 1: one street, the crowd suddenly stopped. Looks like the marshes
Speaker 1: turning around going to the other side.
Speaker 5: Stop stop doges.
Speaker 9: Some more small.
Speaker 1: Fireworks betting launched in the sky. Banners getting moved to
Speaker 1: the front. It looks like the mark is now heading
Speaker 1: north into downtown. Organizers from the Party for Socialism and
Speaker 1: Liberation attempted to take control of the march and lead
Speaker 1: the group south in the direction of the State Capitol
Speaker 1: Building or possibly looping around to the CNN Center, but
Speaker 1: autonomous activists in the crowd turned the march around and
Speaker 1: the group four hundred strong headed north. It sounds like
Speaker 1: the PSL people who were gathered at the underground tried
Speaker 1: tried to lead the march in one direction and everyone
Speaker 1: was like, no, we don't want to go that way.
Speaker 1: The ps AND people are gonna lead everyone into like
Speaker 1: the Federal Building section of downtown going south, and very
Speaker 1: quickly they turned around. Well, other other people turned around.
Speaker 1: It was like, no, we're not going that way. They're
Speaker 1: taking a ride down Peachtree heading heading north into down town.
Speaker 1: Right beside the Coca Cola sign on Marietta. The march
Speaker 1: entered the Commercial District, a section of the city completely
Speaker 1: gutted out by years of the Atlanta Way neoliberal policies
Speaker 1: that we talked about in the Defend the Forest episodes
Speaker 1: from last May. The area is populated almost exclusively by
Speaker 1: business people, university students, and unhoused citizens, and was a
Speaker 1: common sight for Atlanta's twenty twenty BLM protests. Now that
Speaker 1: the march is moving, it's easier to see everyone.
Speaker 9: In black, all of all, all the people in bloc.
Speaker 9: It's looking more just like a.
Speaker 1: Large, large, massive people in bloc now have not seen
Speaker 1: much police presence downtown yet because that's just a few
Speaker 1: few patrol cars.
Speaker 9: It's really unclear.
Speaker 1: How Atlanta Police argus is going to respond to this.
Speaker 1: Got some flares, a lot more of those smoke fireworks
Speaker 1: or smoke grenade things. It's not a grain, it's like.
Speaker 9: A cardboard tube shooting smoke out.
Speaker 1: The block continued to travel north Road. Flares and fireworks
Speaker 1: lit the path in the darkening evening. Graffiti quickly sprung
Speaker 1: up on walls with phrases like rip little turtle and
Speaker 1: stop cop city the march. The march is now approaching
Speaker 1: an Atlanta police vehicle who's trying to back up the
Speaker 1: cop does not one of the cop cop car is right
Speaker 1: in the middle of where the march is gonna go.
Speaker 1: They're like less than one hundred feet away, Just one
Speaker 1: single cop car that happens to be in the path
Speaker 1: they are. They are trying to back out of the street.
Speaker 1: The march has the trees give life, Please take it banner.
Speaker 1: There's a big cardboard cutout of a tree right behind it.
Speaker 1: Police have their lights turned on. Now looks like the
Speaker 1: cop cars turning around. Yeah, and the cop car is
Speaker 1: leaving rather quickly. The sun was just starting to set
Speaker 1: as the block arrived at the main goal of the night,
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Police Foundation Headquarters at one nine to one
Speaker 1: Peachtree Street.
Speaker 9: They've stopped in front of.
Speaker 1: Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters.
Speaker 9: People are thrown throwing stuff at the windows and doors.
Speaker 1: Broken windows at the Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters.
Speaker 9: The people funding cop City firework thrown.
Speaker 1: Umbrellas moved in to block local news cameras as windows shattered.
Speaker 1: Rocks emerged from backpacks and smashed into the front of
Speaker 1: the building. Hammers met the glass entrance as fireworks lit
Speaker 1: up the scene. Another fire, another firework at the a
Speaker 1: lot of Police Foundation. The march is tightening up a
Speaker 1: decent bit. March is definitely tightening up. A lot of
Speaker 1: people just in block now. Shouts of bee water kept
Speaker 1: the mass moving forward as bank windows received a similar
Speaker 1: pelting of rocks and hammers, people chanting to move like water.
Speaker 1: I feel a lot of police cars right beside the march.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing they're going to pull in in front of
Speaker 1: pull in behind the march. Two police cars right there.
Speaker 1: People hitting Chase Bank. Another stuff being dragged into the
Speaker 1: street for like a top two barricade. Chase Bank's head
Speaker 1: of Regional Investment Banking, John Richard, serves on the board
Speaker 1: of the Atlanta Police Foundation. Police officers exited the two
Speaker 1: cop cars that were trailing the march and quickly ran
Speaker 1: away from the crowd, leaving their vehicles abandoned. Corker's trying
Speaker 1: to keep track of where the police are in relation
Speaker 1: to the march. Looks I got some cars pulling up
Speaker 1: behind the police car pulled up behind the march. Scott
Speaker 1: their windows broken, fireworks.
Speaker 9: From under another firework.
Speaker 1: Another Atlanta Please vehicle had their windows smashed.
Speaker 9: So there's two.
Speaker 1: The two that was behind the march, the two Atlanta
Speaker 1: Police officer cars that were behind the march.
Speaker 9: This got hit.
Speaker 1: Wells Fargo, one of the main cop city funders, received
Speaker 1: special love and attention from the block. The Atlanta Area
Speaker 1: president for Wells Fargo. Mitch Grahl is also on the
Speaker 1: board of trustees for the Atlanta Police Foundation. A few
Speaker 1: other banks hit around this area. Wells Fargo one of
Speaker 1: the contributors to the Atlanta Police Foundations, one of their
Speaker 1: big funders and backers. A lot of the media here
Speaker 1: very very thirsty to get to get stuff of, you know,
Speaker 1: put into people breaking windows and shit. It was kind
Speaker 1: of surprising that the crowd made it this far without
Speaker 1: any real police response. Time almost stretches during these brief
Speaker 1: moments of uprising. About seven minutes after the first window shattered,
Speaker 1: Atlanta police finally arrived and made their move.
Speaker 9: Police are in front of in front of the march.
Speaker 1: Now please in front of the rough march. People might
Speaker 1: be turning around. They want to do a full like
Speaker 1: water type thing.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Multiple cop cars are approaching the march from the front.
Speaker 1: Unclear what the crowd is gonna do. Well, Atlanta p
Speaker 1: D is now now approaching the march.
Speaker 9: They're getting closer.
Speaker 1: They're going after one of the banners, dragging somebody down,
Speaker 1: pulling someone to the ground. They're chasing people. One person's
Speaker 1: being arrested. M march is splitting in two different directions.
Speaker 1: Officers started randomly tackling and arresting anyone they could get
Speaker 1: their hands on. More police arrived from the south and
Speaker 1: chased it down a small section of the march that
Speaker 1: branched off. Atlanta police coming from behind as well, so
Speaker 1: they got Alanta police from both sides. Not many officers though,
Speaker 1: just a few officers. Looks like the majority of the march.
Speaker 10: With out street direcree chan movie dispersed, disperse, get, disburse.
Speaker 1: Please getting more aggressive, pushing a lot of people. Footage
Speaker 1: and audio of these violent arrests were shared by the
Speaker 1: Defend the Forest account, Unicorn Riot and myself your numbers.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 9: I hear screams coming from multiple directions. Large.
Speaker 1: Looks like the march kind of split in two.
Speaker 9: I've seen a lot of arrests.
Speaker 1: The individuals targeted likely committed no crime other than being
Speaker 1: in the wrong place at the wrong time. The majority
Speaker 1: of the march split away and in a different direction
Speaker 1: from the cops. So I stated where the cops were
Speaker 1: most of the march. I was able to get away
Speaker 1: by going through two differ direction.
Speaker 9: We have.
Speaker 1: It looks like and Atlanta PD vehicle is on fire.
Speaker 1: Atlanta PD vehicle burning in the street, burning cop car.
Speaker 9: Police with AR style AR style rifles.
Speaker 1: So I feel like most of the march had had
Speaker 1: hitded on that way I saw over there. It seems
Speaker 1: one of the cop cars that got smashed also spontaneously
Speaker 1: lit on fire. When the police first confronted the march,
Speaker 1: most of the block was able to peel off and
Speaker 1: disappear into the night. Affinity groups reconnected, block was shed
Speaker 1: and protesters evacuated out of downtown as the police flooded
Speaker 1: the mile long stretch of Peachtree Street that the crowd
Speaker 1: marched on. After a fire truck put out the burning
Speaker 1: cop car, police taped off the area, and as they
Speaker 1: were pushing people out, I recorded an officer saying this
Speaker 1: amazing line.
Speaker 9: The whole than fireworks, is my bomb going off?
Speaker 1: Bombs or discount New Year's Eve fireworks? You choose all.
Speaker 1: In all, the actions that night only took about an hour,
Speaker 1: and crews made it home in time for dinner. Six
Speaker 1: people were arrested at the protest Saturday night. Five were
Speaker 1: tackled and pinned down as the crowd initially scattered, and
Speaker 1: one other person was chased by a cop car. Sam
Speaker 1: from the Atlanta Community Press Collective has more on that.
Speaker 11: A protester who was subsequently arrested was witnesses state they
Speaker 11: were uh basically followed through the streets by an Atlanta
Speaker 11: police vehicle before witnesses say that they were hit by
Speaker 11: the same vehicle and they were then taken to jail. So,
Speaker 11: you know, corn RYE released that video and we were
Speaker 11: able to speak with the few witnesses because, as I'm
Speaker 11: sure everyone saw on social beautia this weekend, the arrests
Speaker 11: were a familiar brutal, familiar brutal site.
Speaker 1: Before we continue, I do want to play two short
Speaker 1: clips that were circulating the night of the protest. First
Speaker 1: is police at scanner audio of the cop whose car
Speaker 1: spontaneously combusted.
Speaker 10: You want a car, you know, yeah, I will these protests.
Speaker 12: They bloom a damn car and I ain't able to
Speaker 12: go getting uneat only you know as what you did.
Speaker 1: This next one is from live news coverage of the march,
Speaker 1: and this clip became an instant meme, so.
Speaker 9: They're now saying GBI suck.
Speaker 4: GBI is a Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Speaker 1: Mayor Andre Dickens and the chief of Police gave a
Speaker 1: press conference hours later, which gave us a look at
Speaker 1: how the state was going to try and frame the
Speaker 1: protest and acts of targeted vandalism.
Speaker 13: My message is simple to those who seek to continue
Speaker 13: this type of criminal behavior, We will find you, and
Speaker 13: we will arrest you, and you will be held accountable.
Speaker 13: We have arrested several of them this evening, and Chief
Speaker 13: surebamb will give you the details on that. And some
Speaker 13: of them were found with explosives on them. You heard
Speaker 13: that correctly, explosives, and that has led to a police
Speaker 13: officer's car being set on fire.
Speaker 1: During the press conference, the Chief of Police clarified that
Speaker 1: no law enforcement officers were injured as a result of
Speaker 1: the protest, and neither were any bodystanders, which means the
Speaker 1: only violence against people was done by the cops who
Speaker 1: randomly tackled any protester that they could chase down.
Speaker 14: And so it doesn't take a rocket scientist or an
Speaker 14: attorney to tell you that breaking windows and.
Speaker 15: Setting fires not protest.
Speaker 14: That is terrorism, and that they will be charged accordingly,
Speaker 14: and they will find that this police department in the
Speaker 14: partnership is equally committed to stop that activity. We already
Speaker 14: have prosecutors in the room as we speak, and we're
Speaker 14: reviewing everything and we have a lot of evidence to
Speaker 14: still go through. So even charges you see tonight, those
Speaker 14: can easily be upgraded, and they will be upgraded if appropriate.
Speaker 1: I brought up the police chief's comments to a few
Speaker 1: of the forest offenders that I spoke with after the
Speaker 1: protest on Saturday in downtown. Police chief schneierbamb it's hard, I've.
Speaker 9: Read it before.
Speaker 1: On Yeah, anyway, they alanted police chiefs said that breaking
Speaker 1: windows and setting fires is terrorism. I'm curious to get
Speaker 1: everyone's thoughts on that.
Speaker 12: Sure, I think the Least and Andre Dickens are doing
Speaker 12: what a lot of city governments have done, especially during
Speaker 12: twenty twenty, which was like do things like call property
Speaker 12: destruction terrorism, which like it's not and you can call
Speaker 12: it whatever you want.
Speaker 16: You can call it like property destruction and call it terrorism.
Speaker 15: Is a very like.
Speaker 12: Specific political strategy that exists. I think the right wing
Speaker 12: does it a lot.
Speaker 15: And it would be worth calling that, like, you.
Speaker 12: Know, because Defend the Forest doesn't have a BodyCount. The
Speaker 12: police have only murdered an activist for defend the Forest,
Speaker 12: whereas Defend the Forest has not strucken out violently against
Speaker 12: anybody except in defense against the police.
Speaker 15: You cannot do.
Speaker 16: Violence to property. You cannot be violent towards a police car.
Speaker 12: It's the same way that Andre Dickens is now getting
Speaker 12: on TV and claiming.
Speaker 15: That like fire calling fireworks explosives.
Speaker 12: It's like, yes, there are objects that explode, but this
Speaker 12: is very clearly being done in bad fith because it
Speaker 12: is it is it justifies. This is the same way
Speaker 12: like the DoD and the FBI, you.
Speaker 16: Call something terrorism, the money just pours on.
Speaker 12: You get funding, you get justification to do things like that,
Speaker 12: and you can arrest people and charge them with domestic terrorism.
Speaker 12: That makes continuing and movement incredibly hard. That's a really
Speaker 12: dangerous implication that any act in dissidence to the state
Speaker 12: could be called domestic terrorism. Should really scare of the
Speaker 12: ship and everybody just here bit around the control and
Speaker 12: should not be allowed to stand and should be competed against.
Speaker 12: Some of reform.
Speaker 1: I talked with Peter about how if the police are
Speaker 1: viewing vandalism or destruction of inanimate objects as domestic terrorism,
Speaker 1: if breaking a window is terrorism, that makes the question
Speaker 1: what exactly is destroying a forest?
Speaker 8: That juxtaposition of what the police consider violence, and like,
Speaker 8: what sort of like destruction of objects is violence?
Speaker 12: To me?
Speaker 8: This demonstrates what they see like as valuable. And also
Speaker 8: this demonstrates the police state and the corporation's inability to
Speaker 8: understand the aliveness of all things and how sacred the
Speaker 8: earth is. It shows that what they consider sacred, what
Speaker 8: they hold as sacred is property, and specifically their property.
Speaker 8: I think they fear the woods in part because it
Speaker 8: moves in ways that they can't comprehend. It moves in
Speaker 8: nonlinear ways.
Speaker 1: Cricket also had something to say on this topic, well.
Speaker 17: And what is destroying a forest? What is destroying a person?
Speaker 17: They're more upset about the destruction of property than the
Speaker 17: destruction of a person, a whole human being who is
Speaker 17: twenty six years old. They were young, they just started.
Speaker 17: And that does not seem to measure up against some
Speaker 17: glass panes. That doesn't seem to register. And what about
Speaker 17: the terror they inspire in the forest? What about the
Speaker 17: I mean, obviously that these rhetorical questions when I'm preaching
Speaker 17: to the choir, but I mean, god, no, it's it's
Speaker 17: just infuriating. There's no how long for the day When
Speaker 17: the line is not drawn at well, you can do
Speaker 17: anything except touch private property.
Speaker 1: Noah mentioned the juxtaposition of broken windows being terrorism, but
Speaker 1: violent actions that actually hurt people seemingly not mattering nearly
Speaker 1: as much at least compared to a cracked window.
Speaker 12: Right, So it's a clear double standard in the same
Speaker 12: way that like, you know, during twenty twenty, people setting
Speaker 12: farm to police precincts was insurrection and an anarchy and
Speaker 12: on these things, But when the National Guard would shoot
Speaker 12: people it was a tragic air, I justified shooting. When
Speaker 12: when vigilantes would drive cars in the crowds and you
Speaker 12: know they can and play them for pit bombs protests,
Speaker 12: it does not get treated with the same levity because
Speaker 12: the powers that be can never, will, never will obviously
Speaker 12: never hold themselves the same standards that they will.
Speaker 15: Call us as their enemies, the meaning.
Speaker 16: Of words that matter to them.
Speaker 12: What matters is being able to get good sound bites
Speaker 12: to put on like Antifa actionship and make themselves because
Speaker 12: the city's decided that they can't back down from the
Speaker 12: procrap people that they're not willing to like backdown on
Speaker 12: that find.
Speaker 15: That this is where they're going to stake their flag
Speaker 15: and try and hold it out.
Speaker 1: From the start of the movement, the police have aggressively
Speaker 1: arrested and persecuted protesters associated with the struggle to stop
Speaker 1: cop City, starting all the way back with the first
Speaker 1: arrest of eleven peaceful protesters snatched off the sidewalk during
Speaker 1: the city council's vote to approve cop City. As corporations
Speaker 1: and the state moved to push cop Citi's development forward
Speaker 1: despite all public opposition. Repression has increased dramatically over the
Speaker 1: last few months. Since December, everyone arrested in connection with
Speaker 1: the movement against cop City has been charged with domestic terrorism.
Speaker 11: It's not a huge surprise in terms like terrorism and
Speaker 11: eco terrorism have been coming up, I mean in private
Speaker 11: conversations probably since the beginning, but we can trace it
Speaker 11: back to at least last summer, when and some emailed
Speaker 11: emails we've obtained throughout open records requests where a city
Speaker 11: council member and the Police Foundation were just kind of
Speaker 11: pejoratively throwing around the term terrorists in response to I
Speaker 11: think it was graffiti or something like, I hope they
Speaker 11: catch these terrorists soon. The terrorists who graffiti to building.
Speaker 11: It has also shown up in a couple different public
Speaker 11: meetings that are about the training center.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 11: Committee members who are pro Public Safety Training Center, anti
Speaker 11: anyone being opposed to it have also used the term
Speaker 11: eco terrorism.
Speaker 1: The dangerous escalation of protest to suppression is not limited
Speaker 1: to people engaging in pasive, resistance or direct action.
Speaker 11: Some of our open records requests have even shown that
Speaker 11: since sincest fall for several months now, anyone who participates
Speaker 11: in like a write in or a call in campaign.
Speaker 11: Sometimes those very simple emails of hey, I don't think
Speaker 11: your company should be participating in this project will get
Speaker 11: forwarded up to the chief of police. You know, people's names, emails,
Speaker 11: just very very simple call in campaign type stuff. The
Speaker 11: most monoculous stuff gets forwarded as part of you know,
Speaker 11: security alert.
Speaker 1: This is the anti democratic chilling effect in action. Politicians
Speaker 1: and police are trying to create a political climate where
Speaker 1: people are too scared to exercise their right to protest, organize,
Speaker 1: and take action. Georgia's Republican governor Brian Kemp has bolstered
Speaker 1: this alarming escalation of violence and repression against political speech
Speaker 1: by blaming out of state rioters and a quote network
Speaker 1: of militant activists who have committed similar acts of domestic
Speaker 1: terrorism across the country unquote rhetoric that has been mirrored
Speaker 1: by liberal politicians in the city of Atlanta. The broad
Speaker 1: labeling of environmental and racial justice movements as quote unquote
Speaker 1: terrorism and those who get associated with such movements as
Speaker 1: domestic terrorists is an extremely dangerous precedent designed to stifle
Speaker 1: public opposition and scare anyone concerned about police militarization and
Speaker 1: climate change away from protesting. It's a crude attempt to
Speaker 1: use as powerful tools as possible to crush opposition and
Speaker 1: remove the protest from public spotlight while creating cover for
Speaker 1: intensive suppression of protest movements. Police are making an example
Speaker 1: out of people by trying to pin the actions of
Speaker 1: autonomous individuals in a decentralized movement on anyone that was
Speaker 1: unlucky enough to cross paths with the police by threatening
Speaker 1: thirty five years in prison. Let's talk a bit about
Speaker 1: the role of the domestic terrorism charges in how they
Speaker 1: are being applied, because they're not even being applied to
Speaker 1: people that are like tied to specific acts like use. Specifically,
Speaker 1: we have evidence that you burned down an escap like
Speaker 1: it like a like a construction equipment. That's that's not
Speaker 1: what they're being used, not even being used for. Like
Speaker 1: we saw we saw you break this window, that's not
Speaker 1: even how you're being used. Like the people restaurant Saturday,
Speaker 1: all six of them got the same exact charges. Yes,
Speaker 1: how can all six people have done all the exact
Speaker 1: same thing? So they're obviously not being used and they
Speaker 1: type of like factual evidence based away it's all about
Speaker 1: like us trying to turn the movement itself into a
Speaker 1: criminal association.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 11: Yeah, APD has even said that themselves in a public
Speaker 11: meeting that's supposed to kind of like provide advice on
Speaker 11: like how the public wants this project built. You know,
Speaker 11: they in the December meeting, which I think took place
Speaker 11: a day after after those raids, they they bragged about
Speaker 11: pulling someone over illegally for for filming the police. They
Speaker 11: said they were very proud of themselves for taking that
Speaker 11: person to jail, and then they they just blatantly said
Speaker 11: that anyone arrested for this in connection with this movement
Speaker 11: will get a domestic terrorism charge, which creates an equivalency
Speaker 11: that being opposed to this project is domestic terrorism. You know,
Speaker 11: the chief of police Darren Sheerbaum went before cameras on Saturday,
Speaker 11: and I think pretty much verbatim said, breaking a glass
Speaker 11: window that is terrorism. A lot of people have opinions
Speaker 11: about how to protest, right, but what people have conveyed
Speaker 11: to us is that even those who are, you know,
Speaker 11: kind of horrified by property damage, it's just not domestic terrorism.
Speaker 11: It's just not being opposed to the police, wanting the
Speaker 11: police to do something differently is not terrorism.
Speaker 1: The Atlanta Solidarity Fund said of the six people charged
Speaker 1: after Saturday's protest, quote, protest, even disobedient protest, is not terrorism.
Speaker 1: It's tragic that we're at a point where this even
Speaker 1: needs to be said, but that makes it all the
Speaker 1: more important that the public speak out against this divisive
Speaker 1: and dangerous rhetoric. We have reason to believe these activists
Speaker 1: were arrested at random during the march. All six faced
Speaker 1: the same blanket charges. They are being held responsible for
Speaker 1: committing the same crime by virtue of simply being present
Speaker 1: at a protest where property damage occurred. Unquote. Twenty people
Speaker 1: have been charged with felonies under Georgia's domestic terrorism laws
Speaker 1: since last December. Police affidavits have detailed the alleged acts
Speaker 1: of so called terror, which include quote criminally trespassing on
Speaker 1: posted land, sleeping in a forest, sleeping in a hammock
Speaker 1: with another defendant being known members of a prison abolitionist
Speaker 1: movement unquote, and aligning themselves with defend the Lanta forest
Speaker 1: by quote occupying a treehouse while wearing a gas mask
Speaker 1: and camouflage clothing unquote. A review of the twenty arrests
Speaker 1: showed that none of those arrested and slapped with terrorism
Speaker 1: charges are accused of seriously injuring anyone. Nine are alleged
Speaker 1: to have committed no specific illegal acts beyond misdemeanor trespassing. Instead,
Speaker 1: mere association with a group committed to defending the forest
Speaker 1: appears to be the foundation for declaring them terrorists. The
Speaker 1: seven people arrested during the police raid where the Georgia
Speaker 1: State Patrol shot and killed Tortigita were given a bond
Speaker 1: amount totaling one hundred and seventeen thousand dollars. Escalating repression
Speaker 1: is taking form as egregious bail amounts for protesters, inflated charges,
Speaker 1: and as last month saw the killing of an activist,
Speaker 1: The environmental justice attorney Stephen Donzinger said. For weeks these
Speaker 1: people were called terrorists, which is a complete misuse of
Speaker 1: the word. The police have been conditioned to believe these
Speaker 1: people are terrorists, and what do you do with terrorists
Speaker 1: in the United States?
Speaker 9: You kill them.
Speaker 1: It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy unquote. A whole bunch
Speaker 1: of bail information has got released for the six people
Speaker 1: arrested at the protest in downtown Atlanta on Saturday, January
Speaker 1: twenty first, and it's pretty high. It's the highest bail
Speaker 1: for a protest that I've ever seen. Two people that
Speaker 1: are slightly more local to the area were granted three
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty five thousand dollars each for their bonds.
Speaker 9: That's over seven.
Speaker 1: Hundred thousand dollars with ankle monitoring and a twenty four
Speaker 1: hour curfew, so that's a lot of four Other people
Speaker 1: who were arrested were determined to be from too far
Speaker 1: out of town and deemed flight risks by the judge
Speaker 1: and they were completely denied bond. So they're going to
Speaker 1: be held in jail and perpetuity until both further legal
Speaker 1: challenges like this is going to get, you know, pushed
Speaker 1: up to a higher level judge. But who knows how
Speaker 1: long they're going to be in pre trial detention now
Speaker 1: for pretty pretty ridiculous charges like this arson riot, like felony,
Speaker 1: jaywalking essentially like pedestrian.
Speaker 15: Of them, the mesty terrorism terrorism.
Speaker 1: When they're going over the bill hearing, there was there
Speaker 1: was they were talking about how like this hearing is
Speaker 1: not for going over evidence, this is this is this
Speaker 1: isn't for Actually, yeah, they're they're not. They're not interested
Speaker 1: in dealing with what the facts actually were because there's
Speaker 1: no evidence that any of any of the people arrested
Speaker 1: did anything wrong besides march in the street, which has
Speaker 1: been a staple of the history of Atlanta for almost
Speaker 1: like almost a century. There's no absolutely no evidence but
Speaker 1: that that doesn't matter, and that's not really the point either.
Speaker 1: The point is this is a brutal form of punishment
Speaker 1: and a deterrent for other people to say that if
Speaker 1: you're going to go to a protest, if you're going
Speaker 1: to go to a march, you don't need to do
Speaker 1: anything at all, and we'll give you bond that's that's
Speaker 1: worth almost four hundred thousand dollars, poor person, or we'll
Speaker 1: just hold you until until this case gets litigated.
Speaker 15: Yeah, so if you.
Speaker 12: Want to come from out of town to just go
Speaker 12: to a march, you could do nothing else and get
Speaker 12: arrested for rest lack with a domestics and then they
Speaker 12: decide that because you're.
Speaker 16: From I don't know, an hour and a half.
Speaker 15: Away and just happen to be across the state line,
Speaker 15: that flight rest are going to be held in definitely trial,
Speaker 15: which I mean, if there's one across system that this
Speaker 15: could be we could.
Speaker 1: Be talking years, years, eighteen months before before trial. If
Speaker 1: people are wanted, right, they obviously they want people to
Speaker 1: just plead guilty and not not have go to trial,
Speaker 1: which is nonsense because there's no evidence. But if it
Speaker 1: does get carried out all the way to trial, that
Speaker 1: could take over a year. That could be just being
Speaker 1: being held for things that you clearly didn't do. But
Speaker 1: because the police and prosecutors have decided to use these
Speaker 1: intense charges as a deterrent, it's just extremely blatant, like abusive,
Speaker 1: abusive legal system, abusive power. But I mean it's you know,
Speaker 1: I say abuse, but like this is the way it's
Speaker 1: also designed, Like this is this is the purpose of prothectors,
Speaker 1: this is the purpose of police they're doing their job
Speaker 1: as it's supposed to be.
Speaker 12: They're just like make it unfeasible for people to participate
Speaker 12: in dissonance and to make it so any like any
Speaker 12: chance getting for people.
Speaker 15: It's made so.
Speaker 12: Even for most people, Like looking at an amount like
Speaker 12: three hundred and fifty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 15: It's just an impossible amount of money to come up with.
Speaker 9: It's like.
Speaker 15: It's so out of the.
Speaker 12: Realm of what is possible for so many, like normal
Speaker 12: everyday people who are participating in aunts of protest that
Speaker 12: it's just it's just design people for as lar as pass.
Speaker 9: Well, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not even people who like this. This would be
Speaker 1: in many ways justice rrificus. Is if these charges were
Speaker 1: from people who were like in the forest, people like
Speaker 1: in a downtown marching like this is like downtown marching.
Speaker 12: Were like the most serious thing that happened was that
Speaker 12: a car spontaneously like that is it wasn't it it
Speaker 12: was there's no evidence to any of these people anyway.
Speaker 1: It was even noted inside during during these hearings that
Speaker 1: many of these people were arrested before the car even
Speaker 1: caught fire, Like.
Speaker 12: The Jurgans just decided that again they were not ready
Speaker 12: to live it bots of any kind, that this was
Speaker 12: not and making it so obvious that the point of
Speaker 12: this is not to in any way treat this with
Speaker 12: any realms like reality what happened, but just to make
Speaker 12: sure that we are that people are as punished as
Speaker 12: possible for any actions taken by a group that they
Speaker 12: were likely just even in the vicinity.
Speaker 1: Of a dantin Affidavid's for the seven people arrested at
Speaker 1: the deadly police raid on January eighteenth, in which Tortigito
Speaker 1: was killed, begin by alleging that the defendants were quote
Speaker 1: participating in actions as a part of the Defend the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Forest group, a group classified by the United States
Speaker 1: Department of Homeland Security as domestic violent extremists unquote, but
Speaker 1: a DHS spokesperson has responded to media inquiries by saying, quote,
Speaker 1: the Department of Homeland Security does not classify or designate
Speaker 1: any groups as domestic violent extremists unquote. The Atlanta Solidarity
Speaker 1: Fund responded to this news by saying, quote, when police
Speaker 1: brought terrorism charges against Stop Copcity protesters, they justified it
Speaker 1: by claiming that Defend the Atlanta Forest had been designated
Speaker 1: a domestic violent extremist organization.
Speaker 9: This was a lie.
Speaker 1: DHS has never designated any movement aligned organization in this way.
Speaker 1: What does this mean? It suggests that police and prosecutors
Speaker 1: have been lying not just to the public but to
Speaker 1: judges in an effort to justify outrageous, sensational charges against activists.
Speaker 1: This cannot be tolerated in a free society. The public
Speaker 1: has a long process ahead of unraveling the tangle of lies, distortions,
Speaker 1: and cover ups that the police, prosecutors, and their private
Speaker 1: backers have woven to suppress the right to protest. We
Speaker 1: are determined to follow that thread to its end. Injustice
Speaker 1: cannot go unchallenged. To date, the Atlanta Solidarity Fund has
Speaker 1: supported over sixty people arrested for protesting the proposed Copcity development,
Speaker 1: just a few days before the killing of Tortigita. It
Speaker 1: could happen. Here released an interview with people from the
Speaker 1: Solidarity Fund and Anti Repression Committee if you want to
Speaker 1: learn more about those organizations. The Solidarity Fund is dedicated
Speaker 1: to continue supporting protesters in Atlanta, but with the unprecedented
Speaker 1: seven hundred thousand dollars bail for just two people, they
Speaker 1: need help to continue supporting activists with bail and legal counsel,
Speaker 1: while they are also supporting civil litigation against unjust arrests
Speaker 1: and police violence, including an independent investigation into the death
Speaker 1: of Torteguita. In a statement released after the bail hearing,
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Solidarity Fund said, quote, the arrested protesters and
Speaker 1: all other future protesters targeted for political activity in Atlanta
Speaker 1: need your help. Please host fundraisers, reach out to your networks,
Speaker 1: and donate to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. We especially encourage
Speaker 1: you to consider becoming a recurring donor. Solidarity means all
Speaker 1: of us supporting each other for the long haul, until
Speaker 1: we are all free. Unquote. If the state is successful
Speaker 1: in creating this precedent of domestic terrorism, protesters across the
Speaker 1: country could be facing similar speech chilling charges. Activists and
Speaker 1: civil rights lawyers have called for everyone to strongly reject
Speaker 1: this extreme level of repression here and now, before where
Speaker 1: it becomes the norm for activists in every movement. What
Speaker 1: happens here will have legal implications for the whole nation.
Speaker 11: It creates and it creates fear, It creates a chilling effect.
Speaker 11: It was after the December raids a lot of folks
Speaker 11: in the community. We're really questioning what was next, and
Speaker 11: it is scary to think about, but it's been really
Speaker 11: heartening how people have seen through the bullshit. Right, Atlanta
Speaker 11: has an incredible resilience, and so does this movement, even
Speaker 11: with domestic terrorism in mind.
Speaker 1: Peter also mentioned how the increased charges have inadvertently shown
Speaker 1: just how strong the community is. After domestic terrorism charges
Speaker 1: first first got laid out in December, what was people's
Speaker 1: reaction to that, because that's a pretty substantial, like legal
Speaker 1: state repression effort. You know, you're in the woods, you
Speaker 1: hear that your friends are now getting these ridiculous charges, Like,
Speaker 1: how does that change what's on the ground.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think the terrorism charges. Well, I'll say I
Speaker 8: was out of town when the terrorism charges happened, and
Speaker 8: hearing about those was actually what motivated me to come
Speaker 8: back to Atlanta and move back into the woods because
Speaker 8: I knew that the terrorism charges were a scare tactic
Speaker 8: to try and discourage people from participating in the Woods
Speaker 8: and the movement at large. As the repression has intensified,
Speaker 8: and especially since the terrorism charges started coming in, the
Speaker 8: resolve in the strength of this community has intensified. Even more,
Speaker 8: and the increased repression has shown me the strength of
Speaker 8: this community and also how deeply committed people are to
Speaker 8: being a part of this fight.
Speaker 15: No matter what.
Speaker 1: You can go to at jail Underscore support on Twitter
Speaker 1: for information on how to write two incarcerated protesters in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: The terrorism charges being brought against Stop Copcity protesters stem
Speaker 1: from a twenty seventeen law passed in Georgia in the
Speaker 1: wake of the Dylan Roof massacre. This law, allegedly created
Speaker 1: in response to a white supremacist mass shooting targeting black people,
Speaker 1: is being used for the first time as a bludgeon
Speaker 1: against anti racist protesters who are fighting against the expansion
Speaker 1: and further militarization of police facilities.
Speaker 12: Well, the state is just also as a concept as
Speaker 12: a whole is pretty much incapable of doing things for
Speaker 12: altruistic means. This is the same government that are so
Speaker 12: often used as like that completely simplifies like all issues,
Speaker 12: for example, with like foreign mashootings in this country into
Speaker 12: just a gun problem, to take away the abilities for
Speaker 12: prioritize people to defend themselves by oversimplifying it into a
Speaker 12: non ideological issue. And it's so like there's such a
Speaker 12: clear pattern of who is perpetrating these things. It's all
Speaker 12: like the state.
Speaker 15: At any moment it can grab power, it.
Speaker 12: Will do so.
Speaker 15: And that looks better sometimes because.
Speaker 16: It might be like going after somebody, like jelling a roof.
Speaker 12: But it gets turned around later and used by them
Speaker 12: to murdern you know, trying to defend the forest and
Speaker 12: make sure that people cannot make bail, and for doing
Speaker 12: nothing more than asking the city to not do something
Speaker 12: that a vast majority of people Atlanta do not want
Speaker 12: to happen.
Speaker 1: Laws that are put into effect to stop far right
Speaker 1: violence will inevitably be used to repress left wing movements.
Speaker 1: Any expansion of state power will always come down the
Speaker 1: hardest on people who are actually pushing back on the
Speaker 1: power structures of this eight, like the police. And now
Speaker 1: this domestic terrorism law is being used against force defenders
Speaker 1: for mere affiliation with stop Coop City. The way the
Speaker 1: state is using these domestic terrorism charges is relatively unprecedented
Speaker 1: within the United States, but this stuff is not completely
Speaker 1: unheard of. It's new for white Americans who are protesting.
Speaker 1: It's new in a very specific context, but it's not
Speaker 1: new for many other people who've experienced state repression and
Speaker 1: have experienced state repression in other countries around the world.
Speaker 12: You know. It's it's very similar to the way that
Speaker 12: like the US would I mean, we had a lot
Speaker 12: of a lot of people who are in the US
Speaker 12: global in thousands of people who you know, so many
Speaker 12: of them are just the US Army rules into a
Speaker 12: country and like all of these people are terrorists.
Speaker 15: They do not have time to litigate the facts.
Speaker 12: They're looking at people as flight rests with new evidence,
Speaker 12: with unsistantially that claims to bout affiliations to whatever the
Speaker 12: hell it is, and then they you know, and they
Speaker 12: most extreme examples, end up detaining Gontanimo for the next
Speaker 12: twenty years or in you know.
Speaker 15: Bringing back to the connection to all of this.
Speaker 12: To the idea, it's the similar ways that the idea
Speaker 12: of persecutes their word of the Pastinian peoples of waging
Speaker 12: a war of population and then taking as much, like
Speaker 12: using as much force against the people who choose to
Speaker 12: fight that state power, and then.
Speaker 15: Just arresting huge numbers of people for claiming that they're
Speaker 15: like affiliated with AMAS or something for litis, living in
Speaker 15: the same neighborhood and.
Speaker 16: Just throwing the Kyoa.
Speaker 15: This is very similar to tactics that we've seen used across.
Speaker 16: The word, specifically during the Global War on Terror, just.
Speaker 12: To lock up huge numbers of people with impunity, without
Speaker 12: the ability for people to get proper or legal representation,
Speaker 12: or for there ever to be a moment to litigate
Speaker 12: the facts of what happened. And it's a really troubling
Speaker 12: development to.
Speaker 15: Happening here.
Speaker 12: This has been so destructive in other countries all across
Speaker 12: the world, and we should all be extremely concerned that
Speaker 12: this is happening anywhere, not just that it's touched in
Speaker 12: the US now, but this type of legal system should
Speaker 12: find comfort anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1: One of the topics of the original It Could Happen
Speaker 1: Here series was Thucau's boomerang. The idea was also brought
Speaker 1: up during multiple conversations I had in Atlanta. It's about
Speaker 1: how the types of imperialist and colonialist violence that are
Speaker 1: done in other countries don't just go away. They get
Speaker 1: transported back to the homeland. This boomerang effect resulted in
Speaker 1: a whole series of colonial models being brought back to
Speaker 1: the quote unquote West so that it could endlessly practice
Speaker 1: something resembling colonialism or an internal colonialism on itself. The
Speaker 1: forces of extreme gentrification can be seen as one of
Speaker 1: these frontlines. In that way, it only makes sense that
Speaker 1: this is happening in Atlanta to such an extreme degree.
Speaker 12: So like the idea of like when it comes to
Speaker 12: frougos boomerang is that any any strategies, tactics, equipment.
Speaker 15: The US is the best example of really has been
Speaker 15: tactics and equipment.
Speaker 12: Thus far that are used overseas in a country's colonial
Speaker 12: wars imperial wars will one day find their way returned
Speaker 12: to the core of said empire.
Speaker 15: To subjugate their own dissidents and their own people.
Speaker 12: The best example of this in the US was milatorized
Speaker 12: police and Copsit is a huge example of this.
Speaker 15: We've seen a return of weapons and equipment from the
Speaker 15: god to US police, just asibly what we.
Speaker 3: Saw a.
Speaker 15: Man murdering and his trailer by.
Speaker 12: Small team using their vision goggles and equipment that looks
Speaker 12: like it came off of like Army Rangers in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 12: Like it is, it is a return like the tactics
Speaker 12: and the equipment and the strategy and the mindset of
Speaker 12: an occupying army come back to the center of the
Speaker 12: empire and are used to subjepeen its people. And in
Speaker 12: this case, comp City is a huge expansion of this
Speaker 12: because of what it's designed to train people to do,
Speaker 12: which is combat. And even more so, the legal system
Speaker 12: that the US has used overseas to prosecute thousands of
Speaker 12: people with their evidence is well being returned to prosecute.
Speaker 15: That it is defending the forest.
Speaker 1: The man shot by Swat in a trailer last month
Speaker 1: did end up surviving, But what Noah is talking about
Speaker 1: is that there is no true other, There is no
Speaker 1: true awayness. This new military urbanism that seems to be
Speaker 1: necessary to sustain hyper capitalist to gentrification is providing zones
Speaker 1: of experimentation through which the state is able to try
Speaker 1: out and hone their techniques of oppression. In my conversation
Speaker 1: with Cricket, they talked about this phenomenon. It comes back
Speaker 1: or it starts here and more the training ground, and
Speaker 1: then they export it. I mean, there's it's and I
Speaker 1: think you're absolutely right that there is no true other.
Speaker 1: Right like that is a construct to keep us out
Speaker 1: of solidarity with one another. That is a strategy to
Speaker 1: keep us out of alliance. At the same table and
Speaker 1: demanding more. I mean, it's something that I remember, I
Speaker 1: think it was.
Speaker 17: I think it was maybe something Buddha Edge or I
Speaker 17: don't know, some other politician talked about in the wake
Speaker 17: of twenty twenty, you know, saying like military weapons should
Speaker 17: not be used against like like should not be used
Speaker 17: in our streets or something like that. It's like, okay,
Speaker 17: but the logical extension of that is that they should
Speaker 17: be in other people's streets, like those are also civilians,
Speaker 17: Like those are also people's towns and cities and homes.
Speaker 17: Like why are we deciding that it's okay for them
Speaker 17: to be there and not here? And obviously we're not
Speaker 17: actually deciding that they're not okay to be here. But
Speaker 17: I feel like even the sort of attempts to try
Speaker 17: and address the insane militarization of the police don't rely
Speaker 17: on that other as if this is not a global issue,
Speaker 17: as if this is not something that affects everyone. The
Speaker 17: Solidarity Fund has said, quote invoking terrorism is a dog
Speaker 17: whistle calling for more police violence. Ever since nine to eleven,
Speaker 17: American policy has been to hunt and kill terrorists by
Speaker 17: any means. Applying this same terrorism label to activists in
Speaker 17: our communities, is prompting police to approach protests as war zones,
Speaker 17: prepared to kill at any time. This can be seen
Speaker 17: in the way GSP stormed the Atlanta forest with militarized
Speaker 17: equipment and killed Tortigita and God. I think there's also
Speaker 17: this tendency to think of the assassination of environmental activists
Speaker 17: as something that happens elsewhere, Like this is something that
Speaker 17: happens in Central America, this is something that happens in
Speaker 17: the Amazon, Like this is not something that happens in
Speaker 17: the US. And it absolutely is something that happens in
Speaker 17: the US. And I think, just sort of to the
Speaker 17: name of your podcast, right, like it happens here, it's
Speaker 17: not and it could be any of us. I think
Speaker 17: that that's another sort of possible strategy or idea behind this,
Speaker 17: like oh, they're outside the agitators thing of trying to
Speaker 17: create this scary, stranger danger and trying to make people
Speaker 17: think that the person who is murdered couldn't be them
Speaker 17: because they're from here, Like oh, like I'm local, Like
Speaker 17: I wouldn't have been murdered. No, Like no, absolutely not,
Speaker 17: Like they will murder with impunity and it's really scary
Speaker 17: and it's really enraging. Like I think it is both
Speaker 17: to me inspiring and because if they're going to kill
Speaker 17: us no matter what, then why not cause as much
Speaker 17: good trouble as we can.
Speaker 1: On Thursday, January twenty sixth, Governor Brian Kemp declared a
Speaker 1: state of emergency in response to protests Saturday night sparked
Speaker 1: by Tortigita's death. Under that order, one thousand National Guard
Speaker 1: troops were mobilized to quell protests and police the streets
Speaker 1: of Atlanta. Once again. I'll end with the words of Tortighita. Quote,
Speaker 1: Dear comrades, we are in the trenches of the class war.
Speaker 1: The capitalists would rather see us dead or enslaved, so
Speaker 1: we might us to fight like hell. Billionaires are causing
Speaker 1: a mass extinction and can only be stopped by collective action.
Speaker 1: Copsity can and must be stopped, but we need more help.
Speaker 1: We need people on the front lines and robust supply networks.
Speaker 1: We need to love and support each other unquote. Now
Speaker 1: that the war is here, how are we gonna fight it?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 18: The rain on leaves tickling the earliest, the instruments, the melody,
Speaker 18: we mimick. It is the sound of wind whistle, And
Speaker 18: long before the safetyest chan and under the stars, camped
Speaker 18: underb canopy, she sang oh song, and she was far
Speaker 18: from silent, the virus of violence with the fragrance of
Speaker 18: her flowers that continue to invite us a medicine materials
Speaker 18: are vitamins and minerals and all that is essential, which
Speaker 18: just grew right beside us. Entice the starting fight end
Speaker 18: over the gifts that she provide us, scorching up the
Speaker 18: soil that all of us derived from. And when impious
Speaker 18: learn it came with stand bia, we returned to the
Speaker 18: land where An sets the rain dance. We have all
Speaker 18: her preaches, we still bear her features. The one and
Speaker 18: only reason all living things is breathe. And the cities
Speaker 18: deceive and leave. Go see the dirt, young, Go be
Speaker 18: among the lungs of mother Earth.
Speaker 15: Could yeah before him before shut him down. It was
Speaker 15: a forest.
Speaker 1: Music by the narcissist cookbook and propaganda.
Speaker 9: So they're now saying gb I suck my dick.
Speaker 15: GBI is a Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Speaker 1: It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 11: For more podcasts from Cool Zone media visitor webs say
Speaker 11: coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 11: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
Speaker 11: find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at
Speaker 11: coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 9: Thanks for listening.