Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know. This is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. Around eight am Wednesday, janu
Speaker 1: a forest defender who went by Torte Guita sent out
Speaker 1: a text message that read morning raid. Please help. Just
Speaker 1: minutes prior, a multi agency coalition of heavily armed law
Speaker 1: enforcement officers led by the Georgia State Patrol began a
Speaker 1: raid on the Wollanee Forest in southeast Atlanta. Encampments have
Speaker 1: sprung up throughout the forest since November one in protest
Speaker 1: and militant opposition to a proposed militarized police training facility
Speaker 1: with a mock city to practice combating civil unrest in
Speaker 1: the wake of the corporate funded Atlanta Police Foundation seeks
Speaker 1: to control over three hundred acres of the Willannee or
Speaker 1: South River Forest to construct this sprawling state of the
Speaker 1: art police compound with a starting budget of ninety million
Speaker 1: dollars for its first phase of construction. The police raid
Speaker 1: on January eighth started off pretty similar to previous raids
Speaker 1: that had taken place in the prior months, but for
Speaker 1: the Georgia State Patrol, seemingly it was their first time
Speaker 1: leading such a raid in the woods. Police shut down
Speaker 1: the parking lot at Entrenchment Creek Park and near by
Speaker 1: streets before entering the tree line with guns drawn. Within
Speaker 1: the first hour, swat teams arrested two people in the
Speaker 1: woods and destroyed multiple tents, and then, shortly after nine am,
Speaker 1: forest defenders in the woods reported hearing a rapid sequence
Speaker 1: of about a dozen gun shots. Quickly, news spread that
Speaker 1: Georgia State Patrol officers shot and killed a protester in
Speaker 1: the woods who was defending the forest, and that a
Speaker 1: state trooper was being sent to Grady Hospital with a
Speaker 1: bullet wound. After the gunshots rang in the air, police
Speaker 1: were quick to publicize a palatable sequence of events depicting
Speaker 1: an exchange of gunfire. Rather predictably, the police claimed that
Speaker 1: the deceased force defender had surprised the armored swat team
Speaker 1: and fired First, this is Peter, a force defender I
Speaker 1: talked with a few days after the shooting, so luckily
Speaker 1: I was in the woods on that day. Um, just
Speaker 1: in a whim, I decided to stand mum. The day
Speaker 1: of the shooting was really jarring. Trying to figure out
Speaker 1: who was safe and who was unaccounted for was like
Speaker 1: the main thing on my mind for most of the day,
Speaker 1: and by the afternoon I realized that it was probably
Speaker 1: tour The last message that they sent was at eight
Speaker 1: am saying morning raid, please help um, and the shooting
Speaker 1: was at nine am. It was a weird space to
Speaker 1: be in of knowing that it was likely toward a
Speaker 1: GIDA that had died, but not being able to grieve
Speaker 1: yet because not really having confirmation. The only eyewitnesses were
Speaker 1: the police, and then all the other witnesses just like
Speaker 1: heard noises. In contradiction to the exchange of gunfire narrative,
Speaker 1: activists on the ground reported hearing a single burst of
Speaker 1: gunfire and suspected that the injured trooper was hit by
Speaker 1: friendly fire and cautioned against taking police narrative as fact.
Speaker 1: Due to cops track record of lying about police killings
Speaker 1: and covering for fellow officers. Here's Sam from the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Community Press Collective for more information about the sequence of
Speaker 1: events that day. We know from speaking to people who
Speaker 1: were in the area on that day that p D
Speaker 1: m HM. The various police agencies that were involved in
Speaker 1: the raid began the operation around maybe seven thirty or eight.
Speaker 1: Records show that two people were arrested maybe thirty to
Speaker 1: forty minutes before tour It was shot. Tour It was
Speaker 1: shot around nine am. Um. Some of our are sources
Speaker 1: that were in the woods at the time say they
Speaker 1: only heard like one I guess you could call it
Speaker 1: a volley of gunfire followed by a large boom. You
Speaker 1: can speculate a lot about those statements, but they were
Speaker 1: pretty independent. They were almost all identical, independent of each other.
Speaker 1: We know that. Sorry, it's it's hard to talk about. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until late into the night that people in
Speaker 1: the movement were able to confirm that the person killed
Speaker 1: by the Georgia State Patrol was Manual Tehran, also known
Speaker 1: by their forest name Tortu Ghita, which means little turtle.
Speaker 1: Torto Guita, was a young Queer afro Venezuelan twenty year
Speaker 1: old forest defender, described by friends and loved ones as
Speaker 1: your friendly neighborhood anarchist as a kind, earnest, fierce, welcoming, funny,
Speaker 1: exceedingly helpful and brave person. They were an artist in
Speaker 1: urban farmer, a trained street medic, and heavily involved in
Speaker 1: mutual aid all across the South. This is it could
Speaker 1: happen here. I'm Garrison Davis or just Gare And after
Speaker 1: checking in with friends and various people I know in
Speaker 1: the movement, I made my way down to Atlanta late
Speaker 1: Wednesday night. I've been reporting on and writing about the
Speaker 1: Defend the Forest and Stop Cop City movement since summer
Speaker 1: last year. In two I put it around six hours
Speaker 1: of audio related to the forest encampments, protests, organizing weeks
Speaker 1: of action, and the forgotten history of the prison farm
Speaker 1: that operated on the land. Cops City is slated to
Speaker 1: be built on, but these new episodes serve as a
Speaker 1: follow up to the two part series from last May
Speaker 1: titled on the Ground at Defend the Atlanta Forest, but
Speaker 1: the various updates put out since then will certainly help
Speaker 1: fill in the gaps. This four part series will feature
Speaker 1: interviews with forest defenders, audio clips from on the ground
Speaker 1: in Atlanta and accounts on what's changed the past few months.
Speaker 1: Episode one, what You're listening to right now will largely
Speaker 1: cover the events around the shooting itself. Episode two we'll
Speaker 1: get into who Tortuguita was as a person and the
Speaker 1: stories about them from friends and comrades. Episode three and
Speaker 1: four will cover protests in the wake of the police killing,
Speaker 1: state repression, and how the movement might evolve going forward
Speaker 1: due to increasing state repression. We will be using a
Speaker 1: mix of voice distortion and re dubbed voice replacement for
Speaker 1: some of the interviews and discussions I had with forest
Speaker 1: defenders on the ground in Atlanta. Speaking of the next
Speaker 1: forest defender you're going to hear from is Cricket talking
Speaker 1: about their experiences the day of the shooting. God, I mean,
Speaker 1: I can only obviously only speak for myself. Um, for me,
Speaker 1: it was terrifying. We we had obviously already lived through
Speaker 1: the raid in December, but when we heard someone had
Speaker 1: been shot and killed, it was it was terrifying, and
Speaker 1: in part because of the complete lack of information. Uh,
Speaker 1: we had so few details for so long, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't at least for me, it wasn't until the following
Speaker 1: day that I found out that it was towards um
Speaker 1: and it. It was just devastating. I mean, there's not
Speaker 1: really words for it. It was like it felt like
Speaker 1: the world stopped and then kept going. But it shouldn't
Speaker 1: have like it felt like it should have stayed stopped
Speaker 1: like it. It shouldn't have kept turning. After the deadly
Speaker 1: shooting in the morning, the police continued their multi agency
Speaker 1: rate of the Wolani forest in a pretty regular fashion,
Speaker 1: with cops reportedly firing pepperballs at people up in tree
Speaker 1: houses and making arrests throughout the day, into the night,
Speaker 1: and even the next morning. I think a total of
Speaker 1: seven folks were arrested in the forest that day. It
Speaker 1: might have been six. Six arrested on the day toward died,
Speaker 1: and then one person remained the last tree center. The
Speaker 1: last person arrested in the deadly police raid was up
Speaker 1: in the trees or night and surrounded by police for
Speaker 1: about twenty hours straight. All seven people arrested in the
Speaker 1: forest were charged with criminal trespassing and domestic terrorism. There
Speaker 1: was one person who remained in a tresa because we
Speaker 1: had some communication with them throughout the night. They were
Speaker 1: just like perched in their climbing reg in a tree
Speaker 1: um for about twelve hours until a little after sunrise
Speaker 1: when de cab County SWAT moved in and took them
Speaker 1: into custody. I guess you could say, as they were
Speaker 1: trying to repel back up the tree. They had been
Speaker 1: and the tree pretty much the whole day and then
Speaker 1: all night. Um they ran out of food and water,
Speaker 1: I think sometime after nightfall, and then after dark they
Speaker 1: were turning their phone on and off to conserve battery,
Speaker 1: so it was a little sporadic. They were able to
Speaker 1: send us some picture yors of two cops standing in
Speaker 1: the platform of like a a tru acuity used to
Speaker 1: work on a telephone pole and uh they both had
Speaker 1: like the SWAT operator helmets on, and one of them
Speaker 1: had a long gun. And then later on in the evening,
Speaker 1: four or five police cars just like backed up to
Speaker 1: the tree and just like surrounded the tree and showing
Speaker 1: their spotlights up in the tree. And they didn't the
Speaker 1: cops didn't that were there over night. They didn't say anything.
Speaker 1: They were just waiting. They were just waiting for the
Speaker 1: sun to come up so so SWAT could move in
Speaker 1: the night of the shooting. Before we even knew who
Speaker 1: was killed, there was a small vigil turned to march
Speaker 1: in the Little Five Points neighborhood of Atlanta. The first
Speaker 1: twenty four hours after the shooting were extremely hectic, as
Speaker 1: many people were not even sure who the police had killed. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the first thing on everyone's mind was who who was killed,
Speaker 1: and by late Wednesday night, some folks that help us
Speaker 1: source our reporting UM came to us saying that they
Speaker 1: believed it was this person UM that they believed it
Speaker 1: was toward a lot of people's friend was just murdered
Speaker 1: by the police, and folks wanted to get ahead of
Speaker 1: the police narrative, and as a community press collective, of course,
Speaker 1: we wanted to support the community in that UM, so
Speaker 1: we just immediately offered like two post whatever UM towards
Speaker 1: family and I believe their their partner consented to UM
Speaker 1: that that was the primary thing. Once the community had
Speaker 1: kind of definitive, definitively identified that it was tour, it
Speaker 1: was obtaining consent from from those closest to tourt to
Speaker 1: publish their name, any pictures, details, and we wanted to
Speaker 1: give people a way to help tell everyone who was
Speaker 1: about to be paying a lot of attention to the
Speaker 1: story who Tour actually was and not who the police
Speaker 1: would like people to think toward was. State agencies were
Speaker 1: swift in their attempts to control the narrative surrounding the
Speaker 1: deadly raid. Hours after the killing, the Georgia Bureau of
Speaker 1: Investigation set up a press conference as the raid was
Speaker 1: very much still ongoing. First, a gb I spokesperson explained
Speaker 1: the purpose of the raid. The operations goal is to
Speaker 1: secure the site of the future City of Atlanta Public
Speaker 1: Safety Training Center. Next, gb I Director Mike Register gave
Speaker 1: his account of the day's events so far as you
Speaker 1: are aware. A few weeks ago, several individuals were arrested
Speaker 1: for domestic terrorism in the area around the future site
Speaker 1: of the public scifety training facility. This morning, the g
Speaker 1: b I, with other local state law enforcement agencies such
Speaker 1: as the CABPD, Atlanta p D, the Georgia State Patrol,
Speaker 1: and Georgia d n R, conducted a planned clearing operation
Speaker 1: to remove them individuals who were illegally occupying the area.
Speaker 1: At approximately nine o'clock this morning, as law enforcement was
Speaker 1: moving through various sectors of the property, an individual, without warning,
Speaker 1: shot a Georgia State Patrol trooper. Other law enforcement personnel
Speaker 1: returned fire and self defense and evacuated the trooper to
Speaker 1: a safe area. The individual who fired upon law enforcement
Speaker 1: and shot the trooper was killed in the exchange of gunfire.
Speaker 1: The gb I is working the officer involved shooting and
Speaker 1: the investigation is still active and fluid. The circumstances was
Speaker 1: an individual confronted law enforcement, uh, and I don't think
Speaker 1: that he was seen until he fired. I'm not sure right.
Speaker 1: Later that day, a gb I statement claimed that officers
Speaker 1: located tour to inside a tent in the woods and
Speaker 1: that they did not comply with verbal commands from law
Speaker 1: enforcement officers. The day after the shooting, the Georgia Bureau
Speaker 1: of Investigation also announced that there is no body cam
Speaker 1: footage of the incident. They also claimed that twenty five
Speaker 1: campsites were located and removed Wednesday and that quote mortar
Speaker 1: style fireworks, edged weapons, pelleant rifles, gas masks, and a
Speaker 1: blowtorch were recovered unquote, after people pointed out that the
Speaker 1: list of recovered items was absent any firearms. The next day,
Speaker 1: the gb I released a photo of a nine millimeter
Speaker 1: handgun allegedly found at the scene of the shooting. It
Speaker 1: was the only firearm police claim they found in their
Speaker 1: extensive sweep of the forest. The g b I has
Speaker 1: been as the independent agency investigating all of this has
Speaker 1: changed their story a little bit, which it was a
Speaker 1: breaking news story. I think they first went before the
Speaker 1: cameras at noon when it happened at nine am, not
Speaker 1: to grant the police segative leafy at all because buck
Speaker 1: hum But it was a rapidly evolving situation, as they say.
Speaker 1: That said, the story changed kind of dramatically over the
Speaker 1: first few days. They released an initial list of items
Speaker 1: that had recovered, but it didn't mention a gun. And
Speaker 1: then when the community kind of said, hey, he said
Speaker 1: torch shot this this trooper, where's the gun? Then a
Speaker 1: gun was produced. Then when people still didn't believe it,
Speaker 1: the g b I said that they had a bill
Speaker 1: of sale for the gun. The g b I and
Speaker 1: Georgia State Patrol have also come out and said that
Speaker 1: they won't release the identity of the trooper for concerns
Speaker 1: about their safety. Results from an independent autopsy were released
Speaker 1: on February third. It found thirteen gun shot wounds. Attached
Speaker 1: to the report was a statement from Tortuguita's family, of
Speaker 1: which I will read quote. The g b I has
Speaker 1: claimed that Many shot an officer and that the bullet
Speaker 1: matches the gun possessed by Many, but even if that
Speaker 1: is true, there are still many unanswered questions. The g
Speaker 1: b I has selectively released information about Manny's death, says
Speaker 1: civil rights attorney Jeff Philipovits. They claim many failed to
Speaker 1: follow orders. What orders. The g b I has not
Speaker 1: talked about the fact that Many faced a firing squad
Speaker 1: when those shots were fired, or who fired them. While
Speaker 1: the g b I has publicly stated there's no body
Speaker 1: camera footage of the shooting, it has not stated whether
Speaker 1: there is any audio or other video from other sources,
Speaker 1: such as aerial drones or helicopters that were used during
Speaker 1: the time of the incident. The family has contacted the
Speaker 1: gb I and specifically requested that released whatever audio and
Speaker 1: video exists of the incident, or any other information that
Speaker 1: would shed light on what happened. Any evidence, even if
Speaker 1: it's only an audio recording, will help the family piece
Speaker 1: together what happened on the morning of January. This information
Speaker 1: is critical and it is being withheld, said Brian Spears,
Speaker 1: a civil rights attorney with nearly five decades of experience
Speaker 1: litigating police shootings. Unquote. Whatever you believe about the exact
Speaker 1: series of events that led to towards death personally, I
Speaker 1: doubt that will ever know what happened for sure, But regardless,
Speaker 1: the killing of a force defender at the hands of police,
Speaker 1: coupled with the domestic terrorism charges marks a significant escalation
Speaker 1: in the fight against cops city and even environmental activism
Speaker 1: in this country at large, as this seems to be
Speaker 1: the first killing of an environmental protester by US law enforcement.
Speaker 1: As horrific as this escalation is, it's not out of
Speaker 1: the blue as one might think. All the way back
Speaker 1: in May of two, police were already talking on scanners
Speaker 1: about using deadly force against stop coops city protesters. Right,
Speaker 1: how old you four encounter? So last time I was
Speaker 1: like in the woods for a decent amount of time
Speaker 1: was like last last spring, last summer. What how is
Speaker 1: and in what ways has like living in the woods
Speaker 1: changed since then? Like? What? What? What sort of developments?
Speaker 1: I guess has has there been? Well? One thing that's
Speaker 1: changed m the day to day life in the woods
Speaker 1: and the past several months is that the raids by
Speaker 1: the police have been more thorough and so it's required
Speaker 1: a lot of more vigilance to live in the woods
Speaker 1: and a lot more being aware of places to run
Speaker 1: and hide and escape routes. The past few months, police
Speaker 1: raids have been increasingly violent and destructive, from the demolition
Speaker 1: of the gazebo in Willani People's Park to the flattening
Speaker 1: of Commune the gardens and the trashing of makeshift cafes
Speaker 1: and kitchens within the forest. Using consistently escalated violent tactics,
Speaker 1: police have routinely attacked protesters with chemical weapons and rubber bullets,
Speaker 1: have cut tree limbs and safety lines from under them,
Speaker 1: and reportedly threatened lethal force, often targeting just peaceful people
Speaker 1: who were sitting in trees or walking through the public park.
Speaker 1: In an article for The Bitter Southerner, an unnamed tree
Speaker 1: sitter spoke about a police raid in September where they
Speaker 1: described their interactions with law enforcement as such quote they
Speaker 1: threatened to shoot me. They didn't draw their guns, but
Speaker 1: they talked about it. Several showed their side arms while
Speaker 1: locking eyes with me. They very easily could have killed
Speaker 1: my friend in the other tree sit. It was fucking
Speaker 1: nuts unquote, and here's a bit from Peter again. Ever
Speaker 1: since the beginning, it's it's been on my mind that,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a possibility of people dying in the woods,
Speaker 1: ever since I started living in the woods, beginning of
Speaker 1: the encampments. It was just something that kept coming up
Speaker 1: into my mind as a possibility. I think before this happened, though,
Speaker 1: people were generally under the impression that the police wouldn't
Speaker 1: murder forest offenders because it would look bad for them.
Speaker 1: Just a month prior to the deadly January raid, another
Speaker 1: police rate took place a couple of weeks before Christmas,
Speaker 1: which resulted in the first domestic terrorism charges being levied
Speaker 1: against people arrested near the forest. In the aftermath of
Speaker 1: this raid, a spokesperson for the Atlanta Solidarity Fund talked
Speaker 1: about the developing pattern of police escalation against the protest
Speaker 1: movement and warned that steadily increasing police repression would lead
Speaker 1: to protesters being killed. And it's clear that if the
Speaker 1: public doesn't respond, if the public doesn't do something about this,
Speaker 1: that escalation is going to continue. Are we going to
Speaker 1: end up in a situation where the police are murdering
Speaker 1: protesters in order to advance not public safety, but their
Speaker 1: particular political agenda in building Cops City. The use of
Speaker 1: infleted charges like domestic terrorism not only make life for
Speaker 1: the people charged a living hell, it also lays the
Speaker 1: narrative groundwork to justify extreme physical escalations of force and
Speaker 1: increasingly brutal crackdowns. Take it from the gb I director himself,
Speaker 1: as director of Mild said, I'm Director Mike Register of
Speaker 1: the g b I, and over the last several months,
Speaker 1: law enforcement and portions of our community have experienced growing
Speaker 1: criminal behavior and terroristic acts committed by individuals and groups
Speaker 1: concerning the building of Atlanta's new public safety training center.
Speaker 1: These individuals and groups have attempted to disguise their activities
Speaker 1: as being protests against the building of this facility. I'm
Speaker 1: going to read a short quote from an article for
Speaker 1: the Habit Territories newsletter that sums this up nicely. Quote.
Speaker 1: The violent escalation which led to this murder comes during
Speaker 1: increased and coordinated repression against the movement to defend the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Forest, where the movement has built a diverse and
Speaker 1: welcoming community through years of organizing. The police have used
Speaker 1: every tactic to bad mouth, harass, threaten, surveill, criminalize, and
Speaker 1: attack participants. Unquote. One of the forced defenders I spoke with,
Speaker 1: who goes by Noah, talked about coming to terms with
Speaker 1: something that everyone kind of knew was the possibility, but
Speaker 1: still had this element of shock and disbelief. I think
Speaker 1: it was really shocking. I think any time you introduce
Speaker 1: polish into a situation, you have the possibility of somebody dying.
Speaker 1: Like anybody who's in the forest, anybody who spent time
Speaker 1: and around activision against the police knows that this is
Speaker 1: like a thing that can happen to um two people
Speaker 1: fighting against various types of state power. But it was
Speaker 1: it was really really shocked, and I think everyone was
Speaker 1: just kind of a loss I personally. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just kind of like I saw with it for a
Speaker 1: really long time. It was just kind of like there
Speaker 1: was an era of disbelief to just kind of knowing
Speaker 1: that like these were the people we were, that we are,
Speaker 1: we were fighting against him, like this is the type
Speaker 1: of thing that they're capable of. Being very shocked and
Speaker 1: really scared that this is where we were, that like
Speaker 1: the police were now killing activists and you know, you know,
Speaker 1: likelihood going to get away with it. It was a
Speaker 1: really terrifying implication for the future of them, for the
Speaker 1: future of all social start list in the US. Following
Speaker 1: news of the shooting, the Atlantas Solidarity Fund, which provides
Speaker 1: bail and legal assistance to political prisoners, protesters and activists,
Speaker 1: put out a statement saying, quote, Georgia State Patrols story
Speaker 1: is suspect. They have released few details. We are concerned
Speaker 1: a police cover up could be underway. We are preparing
Speaker 1: a legal team to investigate and pursue a wrongful death suit. Unquote.
Speaker 1: Here's Cricket again talking about the trustworthiness of the official
Speaker 1: information being released about the shooting. And I mean, we
Speaker 1: still have so little information, and though the information that
Speaker 1: we do have is so tainted, it's so untrustworthy that
Speaker 1: it doesn't actually feel like information at all. It doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like we can it doesn't feel like information we
Speaker 1: can trust. That's that's sort of the long and short
Speaker 1: of it. Last month, over undred climate justice and racial
Speaker 1: justice groups from across the United States joined Atlanta residents
Speaker 1: and community organizations in calling for an independent investigation into
Speaker 1: the killing of tortu Quita and any police shooting you'd
Speaker 1: like to see an independent investigation, because how can you
Speaker 1: let the person who shot the gun investigate the crime? Right,
Speaker 1: So it was it was a pretty easy thing to
Speaker 1: call for, but especially given the inconsistencies in everyone's story.
Speaker 1: You know, the g b I has said has changed
Speaker 1: a couple of times, like the sequence of events and
Speaker 1: that first like towards surprise to them, then they're surprised Towart,
Speaker 1: Then Towart was in a tent. You know, the narrative
Speaker 1: has has changed a couple of times. GSP georg to
Speaker 1: Stay Patrol also does not wear body cams, and that
Speaker 1: was that's not that's just a day to day thing
Speaker 1: for them. That's hate to say it, but that's not
Speaker 1: a something that did specifically for this right just to
Speaker 1: screw the movement over that's it's it's actually the pretty
Speaker 1: well known issue in the state. There were two little
Speaker 1: wear body camps. Gets cidering how many people they kill
Speaker 1: every year. There has come with that. A p D
Speaker 1: says that the bodycams after the incident. Yes, um, we know.
Speaker 1: The raid was kind of a joint operation between Georgia
Speaker 1: Bureau of Investigation, Georgia State Patrol Atlanta Police Department to
Speaker 1: cab County Police Department, UM and some other state agencies.
Speaker 1: Georgia State Patrol seems to have been the ones in
Speaker 1: the immediate area when it seems to have been a
Speaker 1: trooper that the shot toward. UM. Atlanta Police first came
Speaker 1: out and said that there was no body camp footage,
Speaker 1: that they weren't there, and it seems to be true
Speaker 1: that they weren't in the immediate area when the shot
Speaker 1: was fired, but they kind of later had to correct
Speaker 1: themselves and say, well, we have body cam of the incident,
Speaker 1: but we're not going to release it like on the
Speaker 1: incident itself or like like during the time of yes,
Speaker 1: of what their officers were doing in the part of
Speaker 1: the rate they were doing, they were enacting UM when
Speaker 1: toward a shot. I have seen claims from both local
Speaker 1: media and law enforcement that the GBI investigation does qualify
Speaker 1: as independent, framing the GBIS investigation into the actions of
Speaker 1: the Georgia State Patrol as this separate, non biased operation,
Speaker 1: despite the g b I being fellow participants in the
Speaker 1: deadly raid. As an interesting little side note, the Georgia
Speaker 1: State Patrol and the Bureau of Investigation began in late
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties as two branches of the same agency, the
Speaker 1: Georgia Department of Public Safety. So the standard in the state.
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of places when a person is
Speaker 1: shot by the police, you get it's supposedly independent agency
Speaker 1: to review it. In Georgia, it's usually the Georgia Bureau
Speaker 1: of Investigation. But the gb I was a participant in
Speaker 1: the raid. The GBI has been involved in. The GBI
Speaker 1: has been present for several forest raids. Um open records
Speaker 1: requests show that they've been involved in emails and conversations
Speaker 1: about the forest for quite some time. Now. We know
Speaker 1: their agents were on scene. We're probably in the woods
Speaker 1: when tour It was shot. In addition to that, they're
Speaker 1: both state agencies. In addition to that, there's still police.
Speaker 1: Police are going to cover for each other. We know
Speaker 1: this by now. A day after the shooting, the Georgia
Speaker 1: Bureau of Investigation stated that there was no body cam
Speaker 1: footage of the incident, but open records requests were filed
Speaker 1: asking for bodycam footage from the forest around the time
Speaker 1: of the incident, not only from the State Patrol, but
Speaker 1: also from the Atlanta and De Cabb County police departments.
Speaker 1: Two days after the police killing in Atlanta, p D
Speaker 1: spokesperson said that a p D officers were not in
Speaker 1: the area of the shooting and that no footage from
Speaker 1: Wednesday's operation would be released, citing the ongoing investigation. And
Speaker 1: then a whole three weeks after the shooting, on feb
Speaker 1: weary eight, the Atlanta Police Department released bodycam footage from
Speaker 1: four officers who were in the woods at the time
Speaker 1: of the shooting. An officer in the group estimated that
Speaker 1: they were just one hundred feet away. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: play audio of the gun shots or any use of
Speaker 1: police weapons, but I'll be including a few brief snippets
Speaker 1: of police chatter that I and others found relevant. Most
Speaker 1: of the clips will only be a few seconds long,
Speaker 1: so you can skip ahead if you want. I'll give
Speaker 1: you a heads up at time of recording. There are
Speaker 1: four videos released, and they show a self described quote
Speaker 1: unquote clearing operation being done by a single group of
Speaker 1: ap D officers. Shortly after tearing apart and slicing up
Speaker 1: two tents with a pocket knife, suddenly four gun shots
Speaker 1: are heard nearby, followed a second and a half later
Speaker 1: by a large volume of gunfire. I estimate over thirty
Speaker 1: gun shots fired by multiple weapons. No verbal commands were
Speaker 1: picked up by the microphone. Two chest mounted cameras were
Speaker 1: rolling before the shooting. Forty seconds after the gunfire, ap
Speaker 1: D officers were told to turn on their body cams
Speaker 1: and two more cameras began rolling. At that point, Officer
Speaker 1: down started getting repeated over the radio, but initially there
Speaker 1: were questions among officers about how much of the sounds
Speaker 1: heard were fireworks versus gunshots. Multiple officers identified hearing suppressed gunfire,
Speaker 1: meaning the use of a quote unquote silencer. Here's two
Speaker 1: clips totaling around fifteen seconds for that sounded like suppressed gunfire. Here.
Speaker 1: Just minutes after police opened fire and killed Tortuguita, an
Speaker 1: ap D officer on the ground said this in response
Speaker 1: to the Georgia State Patrol trooper that was shot. You
Speaker 1: fucked your own officer up, possibly said in response to
Speaker 1: other officers noting that the gunshots sounded suppressed. Confirmation spread
Speaker 1: on the ground that estate trooper was shot, but never
Speaker 1: once mentioning anything about a protester firing. Police continued advancing
Speaker 1: toward a nearby tent with guns drawn and officers yelling
Speaker 1: back and forth to check their crossfire. As teams were
Speaker 1: organizing the evac of the injured trooper and warning about crossfire,
Speaker 1: police stated that they did not want to cause another incident.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll just we just need a hole until
Speaker 1: we can get them out, get the whole steal first.
Speaker 1: We don't want to cause another incident. At this point,
Speaker 1: there was a great deal of intentional coordination of officer
Speaker 1: movement and a lot of effort being put into preventing
Speaker 1: police officers from being in each other's line of fire.
Speaker 1: This next batch of adio will be a little bit longer,
Speaker 1: about a minute. Hey, wat's cause fire order? What's call fire?
Speaker 1: We're on on the side. Let's say let's say let's
Speaker 1: say what I'm saying. Everyone is back here because we
Speaker 1: need to shift. There's everyone is back here, so y'all
Speaker 1: shoot from that side. There's more officers over here, so
Speaker 1: we need to shift back on this side. Public. Ta hey, sorry,
Speaker 1: s the hill potter, come this way. We watched this
Speaker 1: dis lay part of call. All right, go around, Okay, cool,
Speaker 1: We're going on the other side. There, I got you,
Speaker 1: I got you right right there is the face of
Speaker 1: our art semi circle. Everyone he could pick back this way. Hey,
Speaker 1: keep coming this way, keeps coming back this way? On anybody,
Speaker 1: do a contact? What they want from? Who are you
Speaker 1: wring about? They need who? Police started firing off flashbangs
Speaker 1: and prepping chemical weapons as they moved further into the
Speaker 1: woods near where the deadly police shooting just took place
Speaker 1: moments prior. Holy hey nine or you will be bit
Speaker 1: fuck around and you're gonna find out. From another angle,
Speaker 1: you can hear a cop laugh in response to his
Speaker 1: fellow officer threatening funk around and find out, just minutes
Speaker 1: after police killed a protester. Yeah, if you listen carefully,
Speaker 1: you can hear an officer muttering about how large the
Speaker 1: police presence is, saying, we've got so many resources. We
Speaker 1: don't need to rush this ship sandwich on a second,
Speaker 1: I've got so many resources rushes shop. Cops shot off
Speaker 1: quote unquote les lethal pepperballs at an unoccupied green tent
Speaker 1: and only ended up gassing themselves as they had to
Speaker 1: walk through the peppered up trees on their way to
Speaker 1: the tent. Literally, there was over a minute and a
Speaker 1: half of just straight coughing. When they arrived at the tent,
Speaker 1: officers got into a brief conversation about the deadly shooting
Speaker 1: that just took place and the injured trooper step shoot
Speaker 1: it on there. Huh when will we get shot? That
Speaker 1: first arts worked, the first one that's right now for
Speaker 1: threw round the Twitter. Remember that just two hours after
Speaker 1: the shooting, even before the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's first
Speaker 1: press conference that defend the force twitter account said quote,
Speaker 1: we have reason to believe the officer shot today was
Speaker 1: hit by friendly fire and not by the protester who
Speaker 1: was killed unquote in an extremely un characteristic move. The
Speaker 1: g b I put out a statement commenting on the
Speaker 1: evidence during their ongoing investigation, cautioning against quote unquote speculation
Speaker 1: and that quote memory and perception are fragile and the
Speaker 1: myriad of factors can influence perception and memory unquote. The
Speaker 1: morning after the body cam footage went public, a statement
Speaker 1: was released by Tortoquita's family, saying, quote, the videos show
Speaker 1: the clearing of the forest was a paramilitary operation that
Speaker 1: set the stage for the excessive use of force and
Speaker 1: also call into question previous reporting regarding the events leading
Speaker 1: up to the police shooting unquote towards own mother, who
Speaker 1: recently arrived in the United States on an emergency visa,
Speaker 1: said weeks ago in an interview for The Guardian, quote,
Speaker 1: I will go to the US to defend Manual's memory.
Speaker 1: I'm convinced that they were assassinated in cold blood, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna clear Manual's name. They killed them like they
Speaker 1: tear down the trees in the forest, a forest Manual
Speaker 1: loved with a passion unquote. There is an official go
Speaker 1: fund me for Tortuguita, managed by and for their family,
Speaker 1: with funds going to funeral expenses, plus travel, legal costs,
Speaker 1: and to support the family in general during this time
Speaker 1: of events grief. The fundraiser will be linked in the
Speaker 1: show notes. This first episode has been a lot tackling
Speaker 1: many of the most gruesome aspects of the struggle thus far.
Speaker 1: Cricket talked about one way of responding to this influx
Speaker 1: of anger and grief that everyone's been experiencing since the shooting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's just been there's been so much grief
Speaker 1: and so much anger, and so many people coming together
Speaker 1: and so many people trying to support one another. There's
Speaker 1: been a at least among the folks I know, um,
Speaker 1: a lot of trying to think through like what would
Speaker 1: tort do w W t D and like loving one
Speaker 1: another and supporting one another keeps being one of the
Speaker 1: first things on that list. We will hear more about
Speaker 1: Torteguita in the next episode memories and stories from friends, partners,
Speaker 1: and comrades based on conversations and moments from the vigil.
Speaker 1: But today I'll leave us with the words of Torteguita
Speaker 1: quote the abolitionist mission isn't done until every prison is empty,
Speaker 1: when there are no more cops, when the land has
Speaker 1: been given back. That's when it's over. I don't expect
Speaker 1: to live to see that day necessarily. I mean, I
Speaker 1: hope so. But I smoke unquote music for this episode
Speaker 1: by the narcissists cookbook and to propaganda. See you on
Speaker 1: the other side. Yeah, the rain on leaves tickling, the
Speaker 1: earliest of instruments the melody were mimicing is the sound
Speaker 1: of wind whistling long before the safety its channing under
Speaker 1: the stars, on the camp under or canopy. She sang
Speaker 1: on song and she was far from silent. No virus
Speaker 1: or violets, but the fragrance of her flowers. It continue
Speaker 1: to invite us of medicine materials of vitamins are minerals
Speaker 1: and all that is essential which just grew right beside
Speaker 1: us and Tyson started fighting over the gifts that she
Speaker 1: provided us, scorching the very soil that all of us
Speaker 1: arrived from. And when empires learning can't withstand Bia, we
Speaker 1: returned to the land where our ancestors rain dance. We
Speaker 1: are all her creatures. We still bear her features, the
Speaker 1: one and only reason all living things is breathing. The
Speaker 1: city's deceive and lead. Go see the dirt, young gon,
Speaker 1: be among the lungs of Mother Earth. Cud, I have
Speaker 1: found your voice. Yea fare you take your fromm Yeah,
Speaker 1: fire flashing bone Yeah. Before the shop him down, Before
Speaker 1: that shop him down, there was the forest. A lot
Speaker 1: of things have changed in the woods since I visited
Speaker 1: last year. The even Trenchman Creek Park trailhead at Wilani
Speaker 1: People's Park is now basically a massive mud pit, the
Speaker 1: trees cut down and all the grass gone. Sidewalks and
Speaker 1: bike paths have all been turned into rubble. As we
Speaker 1: talked about in the last episode, the police have been
Speaker 1: increasingly destructive during their more and more frequent raids on
Speaker 1: the forest in the past year. The cops have demolished
Speaker 1: dozens of treehouses and targeted protesters with escalatory tactics. The
Speaker 1: last thirteen people who have been arrested near the forest
Speaker 1: have all been charged with domestic terrorism for their mere
Speaker 1: association with the Stop Cops City movement. As hard as
Speaker 1: the cops are making it to continue being in the woods,
Speaker 1: there is still something undeniably special about being in community
Speaker 1: in the forest, or else people wouldn't be risking life
Speaker 1: and legal consequences. Living in the woods for me was
Speaker 1: like a dream. I came to the woods because I
Speaker 1: was homeless and unemployed and was actually living in different
Speaker 1: woods by myself, and tour actually came to the woods
Speaker 1: for similar reasons. Toward lost their housing in Tallahassee and
Speaker 1: decided to give this place a try as a place
Speaker 1: to live in the forest, there was always over time
Speaker 1: just developed like you know, um people built coffee shops
Speaker 1: and like a kitchen people used and places for people
Speaker 1: just like hang out and that and that continued. I
Speaker 1: never stopped, you will never stop, and they never stopped
Speaker 1: making life out better. It's comfortable, it's comfortable, and it's welcoming,
Speaker 1: and there's a community as possible That's really the best
Speaker 1: thing I feel like I could I can speak to
Speaker 1: one It is that no matter what was going on,
Speaker 1: people were always working to make the forests as welcome
Speaker 1: out of spitch towards many people as possible. As the
Speaker 1: night of the December thirte police raid, Tortuguita went back
Speaker 1: to the camp in Wilani People's part to start rebuilding
Speaker 1: after police tore down the encampments and protest infrastructure just
Speaker 1: hours prior. I've never experienced such emotional and material security
Speaker 1: as I have living in the Wolawnie Forest because there
Speaker 1: are a community of people that are dedicated to taking
Speaker 1: care of each other and making sure that we all
Speaker 1: have our needs met. And that was something that tort
Speaker 1: and I did for each other, often making sure that
Speaker 1: we had enough water and food and rides to places.
Speaker 1: It's really a wonderful place to live, and I've also
Speaker 1: deep in my relationship to the earth being there, Like
Speaker 1: living with the same trees for over a year is
Speaker 1: a really profound experience. And also it's a really stressful
Speaker 1: place and people are always butting heads in really interesting ways,
Speaker 1: but we're committed to remaining in relationship with each other
Speaker 1: as part of the magic too, is that if you
Speaker 1: get into a fight with someone at camp, you don't
Speaker 1: just you know, like move to a different apartment and
Speaker 1: stop talking to them, like they're still around and there's
Speaker 1: still a comrade. So we're committed to each other in
Speaker 1: a way that's it's rare to find the society. Here
Speaker 1: is Cricket talking about the type of support everyone has
Speaker 1: for each other in the movement and how Towart really
Speaker 1: embodied that. I think one of the things I've seen
Speaker 1: in my experience of the movement is just the tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of care that everyone has for one another. You
Speaker 1: don't have to know one another, we don't have to
Speaker 1: be on a legal name basis, and we still fight
Speaker 1: for one another, we still protect one another, we still
Speaker 1: try to save one another, and that is something I
Speaker 1: saw tort embody regularly and I'm um, I'm grateful to
Speaker 1: everyone who has helped keep me safe, and I always, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm always trying to keep everyone else safe in any
Speaker 1: capacity that I can. So we've done a lot of
Speaker 1: safety trainings. Something that tort was a really big part
Speaker 1: of was medic medic trainings, making sure that people have
Speaker 1: access to life saving techniques and skills that are often
Speaker 1: kept away from really vulnerable folks. So that is something
Speaker 1: we've been trying to contribute and and that we're trying
Speaker 1: to continue now toward us no longer with us we were.
Speaker 1: We were supposed to meet yesterday to put together a
Speaker 1: curriculum marginalized vulnerable people who face gun violence both from
Speaker 1: the state and from right wing Newo Nazi fascists. You
Speaker 1: name it um and we'll be continuing that work in
Speaker 1: their in their name. When spending time in the Wulani forest,
Speaker 1: and even for the many peripheral aspects of the movement,
Speaker 1: people will choose a forest name. It's like a nickname
Speaker 1: that helps hide your legal identity and Norman de plume.
Speaker 1: Many chose Tortu Guita, which is Spanish for little turtle.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just chosen for its cute animal association.
Speaker 1: I'll read from bitter Southerner quote. It was a nod
Speaker 1: to the colonial era indigenous military commander of the same name,
Speaker 1: who led Native American forces to one of their most
Speaker 1: decisive victories against the then nascent U s Army in
Speaker 1: seven Teene. Now Toward was allegedly apprehensive to share the
Speaker 1: meaning behind their chosen name with a journalist who was
Speaker 1: interviewing them, because quote that does not make us look
Speaker 1: like peaceful protesters. We are very peaceful people, I promise. Unquote.
Speaker 1: There are's a few other quotes attributed to Toward across
Speaker 1: various articles that seemed to espouse a belief in non
Speaker 1: violence as a tactical strategy. Quote, it's incredibly important to
Speaker 1: continue having popular support. Cops. City is incredibly unpopular already.
Speaker 1: We're very popular. We're cool. We get a lot of
Speaker 1: support from people who live here, and that's important because
Speaker 1: we win through non violence. We're not going to beat
Speaker 1: them at violence, but we can beat them in public
Speaker 1: opinion in the courts, even unquote. Based on frequent phone
Speaker 1: calls with Toward about forced defense, Tortuguita's own mother has
Speaker 1: shared similar sentence about towards politics, saying they quote carried
Speaker 1: no malice unquote. I'm going to read one more quote
Speaker 1: from Tortuguita about this topic. The right kind of resistance
Speaker 1: is peaceful, because that's where we win. We're not going
Speaker 1: to beat them at violence. They're very very good at violence.
Speaker 1: We're not. We win through non violence. That's really the
Speaker 1: only way we can win. We don't want more people
Speaker 1: to die. We don't want Atlanta to turn into a
Speaker 1: war zone. During my time in Atlanta, I wanted to
Speaker 1: learn as much as possible about Torto Guita, about who
Speaker 1: they were as a person, what kind of stuff they
Speaker 1: enjoyed doing, what they were to the movement, but mostly
Speaker 1: just listened to people's stories and memories of tort Peter
Speaker 1: met Towards just shortly after they moved to Atlanta. So
Speaker 1: I met Towards in Mayo, around the time when they
Speaker 1: first got to the forest from Tallahassee. I met them
Speaker 1: during that week of action, and they were like insanely
Speaker 1: enthusiastic about being there. We met around a fire and
Speaker 1: talked about how our enthusiasm for life sometimes offended people.
Speaker 1: That was something that we had in common. They talked
Speaker 1: about their mom a lot. I won't say I was
Speaker 1: a close friend of Torts, but I was a dear
Speaker 1: comrade to them, and being in relationship with them really
Speaker 1: sharpened my conflict skills. I was in a few different
Speaker 1: conflict with Towart and also on the sidelines for some
Speaker 1: conflicts that they had with other people, and I learned
Speaker 1: a lot about how to be more gentle with my
Speaker 1: comrades and how to give people more grace in times
Speaker 1: of high stress. This is a snippet from my conversation
Speaker 1: with Cricket on what Tortu Guita brought to the movement
Speaker 1: and how they really lived their politics to it was hilarious.
Speaker 1: They were someone who always brought fund to whatever they
Speaker 1: were doing. And I'm sure through the folks that you're seeing,
Speaker 1: the folks that people can see on social media with
Speaker 1: like the outpour and support for TOURT, that they were
Speaker 1: involved in so many different groups, like so many different causes. Um.
Speaker 1: And they were. They were an incredibly dedicated activists, but
Speaker 1: someone who really felt that resistance could be fun, could
Speaker 1: be joyful, could be celebratory. It was always an opportunity
Speaker 1: to meet new people, to hug new people. Um. They
Speaker 1: were a big hugger. They were someone who was always
Speaker 1: checking in on other people. They were someone who was
Speaker 1: always there to lend a hand, either literally or or
Speaker 1: or metaphorically. And they really inspired I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people, and I think that that was something huge
Speaker 1: that they contributed to the movement, not just as a person,
Speaker 1: but also bringing that joyfulness bringing that that energy, that
Speaker 1: passion and excitement really inspired me and inspired a lot
Speaker 1: of people. It's it's funny a lot of the people
Speaker 1: I've I've talked to you were like have have like
Speaker 1: mentioned just because of the different like you know, affinity
Speaker 1: groups they've been in and stuff. There's like all people
Speaker 1: I've talked to you talked have mentioned a lot like that.
Speaker 1: They would not like regularly, but like everyone's in a while,
Speaker 1: like get into conflicts with tort Like there was there
Speaker 1: was someone who you would you would sometimes um who
Speaker 1: there would be just happened to be disagreements with. But
Speaker 1: despite disagreements, they were like one of the kindest people
Speaker 1: that they met. Even when they're you know, arguing about
Speaker 1: about something. It's like they would go so far to
Speaker 1: make sure that other people knew that they were like
Speaker 1: cared for and would would go and I just be
Speaker 1: be very open towards like everybody they meet. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think they really tried to live into and walk the
Speaker 1: walk of abolition and noncarcetol conflict of it's okay to disagree,
Speaker 1: and disagreement doesn't mean that you've got to get kicked out.
Speaker 1: It does not mean that you're a bad person. They
Speaker 1: allowed for complexity and a law for processes of working
Speaker 1: through things, of talking through things, and that's a a
Speaker 1: huge gift. I I mean, I think anyone, regardless of
Speaker 1: their level of activism, can relate to the idea that
Speaker 1: it's hard to disagree. It's it's hard to be in
Speaker 1: conflict sometimes. But I do think that they were really
Speaker 1: committed to the relationships of trust where you could disagree,
Speaker 1: where you could have different opinions, but that there was
Speaker 1: still so much love and still so much care, and
Speaker 1: that those things were not themselves in conflict. Those things
Speaker 1: were actually very very much related. And yeah, no, it
Speaker 1: was there. They're special and yeah, I'm just I'm just sorry.
Speaker 1: I'm just heartbroken. Tortuguita's partner and a close friend of theirs,
Speaker 1: recorded a video shortly after the shooting, just talking about
Speaker 1: who Tortuguita was and how they lived in community. I
Speaker 1: got permission from their partner to use clips from that
Speaker 1: video in this episode tour. It was always a very
Speaker 1: welcoming presence there, always one of the greatest organizers we
Speaker 1: had out there. They took care of everyone who came through.
Speaker 1: They always want to make sure everyone was taken care of.
Speaker 1: They were the ones who would welcome you into the
Speaker 1: forest and they would make sure you have a sleeping bag,
Speaker 1: a sleeping pad at tent, whatever you could possibly you
Speaker 1: always making sure people are getting fed and just like
Speaker 1: I'm transparent, you've never had One of the people I
Speaker 1: spoke with, Noah also talked about how Tortuguito was quick
Speaker 1: to welcome people into the movement. I need to work
Speaker 1: through various actions and around the forest and doing medical
Speaker 1: work with them. Um. I think I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people have recurred this, but I remember them as
Speaker 1: being one of the kind of stuff not welcoming people
Speaker 1: that I ever not working on the forest. Kind of
Speaker 1: people come in was very like, very often kind of
Speaker 1: like one of the first people agree with them, and
Speaker 1: was always very like open to letting people come and
Speaker 1: see and be a part of the community that had
Speaker 1: been established on the woods. It was a very um
Speaker 1: there was a strongly welcome in person. They were a
Speaker 1: very welcome in person. I was always willing to do
Speaker 1: to help somebody out and do the work I took
Speaker 1: to make sure that's the commit that it could continue.
Speaker 1: So much of the stuff around the forest, it's all
Speaker 1: about like the militants in the woods and towards kind
Speaker 1: of fell into that category, you know, people who are
Speaker 1: wearing bala lava's camping out in the forest. Most of
Speaker 1: the people I've interviewed are also more on that side
Speaker 1: of things, but not everyone feels like they have the
Speaker 1: ability to put on a ski mask and live in
Speaker 1: the woods. One of the people I spoke with was
Speaker 1: a mother named Karen, who started doing local neighborhood organizing
Speaker 1: after connecting with Tortuguita last summer. So I met tourt
Speaker 1: Less summer and there was like lots of things happening
Speaker 1: in the park and you know, I'm a neighbor and
Speaker 1: so I was a who really fought for you know,
Speaker 1: tried to get the city council to vote against it.
Speaker 1: And so I was interested, you know, curious and interested
Speaker 1: about all of these events happening at the park. They
Speaker 1: were all like mostly at nighttime. And I have a toddler,
Speaker 1: and so I'm like boring and have a strict bedtime,
Speaker 1: so I don't, you know, go out at nighttime. Um.
Speaker 1: So I was like trying to find a place for
Speaker 1: me and like people like me and they're boring, you know, parents,
Speaker 1: and so I got connected them with Tort and we
Speaker 1: start and we started, I guess going during the daytime,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm taking my toddler over there to the
Speaker 1: park to explore, and you know, we Tort and I
Speaker 1: talked a lot about well, at first, they were really
Speaker 1: excited about all the the idea, like children being at
Speaker 1: the park. They really wanted it the park to be
Speaker 1: for everyone, and very much like a neighborhood mom. Like
Speaker 1: I was new to activism and I didn't even know.
Speaker 1: I was like, um, you know, I thought we were
Speaker 1: just like visiting a park, but you know, there's like
Speaker 1: a whole lot of different things about being in it
Speaker 1: that really kind of helped me navigate and showed me around.
Speaker 1: In my experience, it takes a special kind of person
Speaker 1: to onboard somebody new to this sort of thing. Some
Speaker 1: anarchists can come off as a bit pompous sometimes or
Speaker 1: at least hesitant to welcome new people in. Karen spoke
Speaker 1: on how Tortuguita kind of showed them the ropes and
Speaker 1: helped educate on everything from local organizing to security culture. Well,
Speaker 1: I didn't have signal before. I was like, okay, I
Speaker 1: want to reach out to try and make my neighborhood aware.
Speaker 1: I made flyers and just like put like the environmental effects,
Speaker 1: you know, and I send it to tort and they
Speaker 1: were like, okay, yeah, this looks good. And then I
Speaker 1: was like, should it just be like anonymous or should
Speaker 1: I you know, like make like Instagram or should I
Speaker 1: put my name on it and you know all those things?
Speaker 1: Should I put my number on it? And they were like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: get a Google Voice number and you can set up
Speaker 1: like an email for it, maybe use Proton. Then I
Speaker 1: was like, should I just like I don't have to
Speaker 1: put any information on it? But like what if you
Speaker 1: know there's people like me and the neighborhood. I guess,
Speaker 1: like how do you balance that? And they said no,
Speaker 1: I think if you've got to like organize a neighborhood group,
Speaker 1: it would be sick. So yeah, you know, they were
Speaker 1: conscious of all those things, but also like knew where
Speaker 1: when and where it was like appropriate, and we just
Speaker 1: like bounced ideas back and forth. They really helped me
Speaker 1: like navigate that. I really think it just shows how
Speaker 1: inclusive they were that they like how they were engaged
Speaker 1: with me and like, you know, an older neighborhood mom.
Speaker 1: But they were really supportive and you know, I guess
Speaker 1: made me feel valued, never made me feel embarrassed at anything.
Speaker 1: I think it was just like if it wasn't about
Speaker 1: like the party or I don't know, like being cool
Speaker 1: or anything. They just really wanted the forest to be
Speaker 1: for everyone and just how they were like willing to
Speaker 1: engage with the community. My conversations with Karen and others
Speaker 1: in Atlanta really showed toward as a person who was
Speaker 1: always thinking about others and how to support the people
Speaker 1: around them, not even just focusing on themselves while live
Speaker 1: in the forest, but working to expand that care outwards.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I made this flyer and called a bunch
Speaker 1: of other I don't even know if they were people
Speaker 1: that were living in the forest or just people and
Speaker 1: you know, friends or whatever, but and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're all going to go canvas and and I think
Speaker 1: they slept in that day we met at the park,
Speaker 1: but me and a couple of neighbors met like you know,
Speaker 1: and I was like I had zero expectations and in
Speaker 1: they texted me later and I was like, I'm so sorry,
Speaker 1: but we'll do it again. But yeah, just that you know,
Speaker 1: like they were willing to come put flyers door to
Speaker 1: door and yeah, just like support me in that way.
Speaker 1: Karen has continued to do neighborhood organizing since meeting towards
Speaker 1: last summer, and it's a great example of the variety
Speaker 1: of people involved in the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement.
Speaker 1: Based on the many local people she's spoken with, Karen
Speaker 1: says the stop cops any proposal is pretty unpopular in
Speaker 1: the area. So yeah, we've just been like dropping flyers
Speaker 1: off and just letting them know the environmental effects. And
Speaker 1: everyone we've talked to like, you know, no one wants it,
Speaker 1: and I think lots of people, lots of them called in,
Speaker 1: you know, to city council. But yeah, I guess Tort
Speaker 1: and I and our kind of idea was like if
Speaker 1: we can make a space. It's like, you know, they
Speaker 1: may not want to go to the forest, but if
Speaker 1: we can kind of create a space for them in
Speaker 1: the movement. Cricket talked about the many projects that Tort
Speaker 1: had a hand in and it's willingness to just go
Speaker 1: out there and do things, not just sit around and
Speaker 1: wait for the world to get better. They lived anarchism
Speaker 1: in a very active way. I don't know if anyone
Speaker 1: mentioned the Transanctuary that tort built and helped built and
Speaker 1: and helped organize. I just want to uplift that as
Speaker 1: just another sort of amazing project that they were involved with.
Speaker 1: I remember hearing about it to talked about it and
Speaker 1: they were like, oh, yeah, you know, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: a volunteer day. And then two weeks later we had
Speaker 1: like another little check in and they were like, oh, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: we we like did it. And I was like, excuse me,
Speaker 1: Like I just just I don't know, they were just
Speaker 1: like this this Tasmanian devil of social justice. Like I
Speaker 1: felt like they were just constantly on the move getting
Speaker 1: stuff done, supporting people. It's just it was I don't know,
Speaker 1: like that's just another memory that I keep revisiting of
Speaker 1: just being like, oh my god, they are not paralyzed
Speaker 1: like they are living. They were living day to day right,
Speaker 1: like they knew that tomorrow could bring another raid, like
Speaker 1: they Yeah, they weren't stupid. They were really actually brilliant
Speaker 1: and they could just they just lived every day so
Speaker 1: fully and brought everything they had. A friend of Tortuguitas
Speaker 1: that goes by the name levitate the Pentagon, which is
Speaker 1: definitely in the top three force names that I've heard.
Speaker 1: But they gave a statement to Rolling Stone where they said,
Speaker 1: quote Tortuguita was a proud and figures anarchist. The struggle
Speaker 1: for a total liberation came as their first commit and
Speaker 1: in life we must honor that commitment. From a lot
Speaker 1: of the like many of the trains that we did
Speaker 1: together and times out there, they were just, um, I
Speaker 1: don't have really funny they like to make people have
Speaker 1: be like a very common presence during stressful times. Um.
Speaker 1: And they could make like a joke really out of
Speaker 1: manning in a situation. But a lot of remember like
Speaker 1: a lot of conversations just about what we were doing
Speaker 1: in the forest, and there are like reasons for being
Speaker 1: out there, um and there you know, just kind of
Speaker 1: a going these ideas of combating there you know, the state,
Speaker 1: and then then the state's pushed for you know, destroying
Speaker 1: the forest, for the effects that the would have on
Speaker 1: the climates, for the increasing ability of the placed militarize
Speaker 1: and to suppress not just people have la but law
Speaker 1: enforced agencies across the country. Coming to training at the
Speaker 1: facility to better clamp down on the presence. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: they're really time to come back to pression. Towards capacity
Speaker 1: for wit under high stress situations is something I heard
Speaker 1: from a lot of different people, including towards friends and
Speaker 1: their partner just really really like always like had a joke,
Speaker 1: had like a really like good sharp commentary, or would
Speaker 1: like give you like a cigarette professional ship poster. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean their meme game on point um Yeah, and
Speaker 1: just always like doing a lot of things. And so
Speaker 1: they were running around a lot, like getting things for
Speaker 1: people and then handing it off to them, and so like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the times when we would
Speaker 1: run into like for like often times we run into
Speaker 1: each other be like oh hey, hi, hi, okay, we're
Speaker 1: doing a thing and then like okay, I gotta go by,
Speaker 1: you know, and there's always like yeah, they were super
Speaker 1: into that, oh that smile. Yeah. They love fruit snacks,
Speaker 1: loved them, couldn't get enough of them. And they always
Speaker 1: helped do the dishes. Can I just say like that's
Speaker 1: a big deal. Yeah, Like no one likes doing the dishes.
Speaker 1: It's like they were always there doing the dishes. They
Speaker 1: were like oh my god, running water, hot water, like
Speaker 1: I mean like like they're like like oh my god,
Speaker 1: and just like yeah, that's that's what I want people
Speaker 1: to know. Fruit snacks and dishes. Fruit snacks have come
Speaker 1: up a lot throughout my conversations with people. Tortoquita's partner
Speaker 1: and friend also talked about how Tort tried to balance
Speaker 1: helping other people with their own self care. They were
Speaker 1: always so passionate because they want to help people so
Speaker 1: bad that they would put their all into it. And
Speaker 1: it took a toll on on them in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. But they always were so fucking strong and
Speaker 1: took on so much more than I ever could. They
Speaker 1: they are an inspiration to us all. They also need
Speaker 1: to like disappear for like hours or days at a time,
Speaker 1: and just like rechart, they read a lot. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I were one of the like one of the things
Speaker 1: to be sitting in their hammock near their tent and
Speaker 1: just just we were eating and whatever it was they
Speaker 1: were doing, shipping post and whatever they could to distress.
Speaker 1: They were good about taking care of themselves, but they
Speaker 1: did get into some conundrums where they'd get stressed out
Speaker 1: and then you just see them like go off on
Speaker 1: their own and then coming back in a few days
Speaker 1: and then they're all good again. I'm gonnappy, go lucky.
Speaker 1: I've heard them described as kind, and they definitely were.
Speaker 1: I think the word that comes to mind the most
Speaker 1: is earnest. They were just like incredibly earnest. I think
Speaker 1: like the earnestness I'm talking about is like they truly
Speaker 1: lived their politics like anyone can talk about like conclusivity
Speaker 1: and love and fighting for the future, but they actually,
Speaker 1: you know, just in how they carried themselves and interacted
Speaker 1: with me. They really did that. And lots of people
Speaker 1: might be like cynical about it or maybe calum like
Speaker 1: optimistic or naive, but they actually lived. I feel like
Speaker 1: love sounds corny, but yeah, just like a love for
Speaker 1: people in nature in the forest. What was that pace
Speaker 1: we were talking about? Revolutionary death? Yes, yeah, they read
Speaker 1: that this last summer and it really had a strong
Speaker 1: impact upon them and they I think you were sharing
Speaker 1: as well that they had spoken about how they knew
Speaker 1: it was very possible that they were going to have
Speaker 1: this revolutionary a death and that back to them kind
Speaker 1: of giving their all. They were prepared and they unfortunately
Speaker 1: paid the ultimate prices. As said, as we all are
Speaker 1: sure Torto, wherever they are now, is happy to know
Speaker 1: that they gave their all all the way until the end.
Speaker 1: They were always they were a true revolutionary and gave
Speaker 1: their all to this movement. And I think now it's
Speaker 1: our job to take up that banner and carry on
Speaker 1: his name their name in multiple ways. Escalatory actions of
Speaker 1: police last December lad to the current fatal scenario, not
Speaker 1: just with the domestic terror framing as a pretext for
Speaker 1: using increased force, but also the physical destruction of treehouses
Speaker 1: resulting in people being out more vulnerable positions. They were
Speaker 1: very calculated in in their risks and they would never
Speaker 1: have had to be put in this situation if their
Speaker 1: home in the trees hadn't been destroyed. They lived in
Speaker 1: a treehouse, and the treehouse that they were really holding
Speaker 1: down and staying in was bulldozed in the mid December raids.
Speaker 1: On November twenty one, two thousand six, undercover Atlanta Police
Speaker 1: Department officers executed a no knock warrant on the home
Speaker 1: of ninety two year old Katherine Johnston in the Bankhead
Speaker 1: neighborhood of Atlanta. Police claimed to have evidence that crack
Speaker 1: cocaine was being sold out of the house. Officers in
Speaker 1: plain clothes cut off the burglar bars to Johnston's home
Speaker 1: of seventeen years and broke down her door. According to
Speaker 1: the police, the nine two year old woman shot several officers.
Speaker 1: Multiple cops were treated for a gunshot wounds. Katherine Johnston
Speaker 1: was shot and killed by the police in her own home,
Speaker 1: where police then claimed to have found marijuana thanks to
Speaker 1: an informant who said that they bought drugs at the house,
Speaker 1: except every single thing the police claimed was a lie.
Speaker 1: Earlier that day, an officer had found bags of marijuana
Speaker 1: in the woods. The drugs were planted on a suspected
Speaker 1: dealer who didn't have any drugs on him. The officer
Speaker 1: threatened to arrest the suspected dealer if he didn't give
Speaker 1: up information, leading to an arrest. The man gave the
Speaker 1: police an address on a Neil Street and a fake
Speaker 1: name to buy cocaine with. The ap D claimed the
Speaker 1: police were raiding the house because an informant had bought
Speaker 1: crack at Johnston's home. It turns out all of the
Speaker 1: injuries to officers came from friendly fire. They fucked up
Speaker 1: their own guys. The cops fired a total of thirty
Speaker 1: nine shots, five or six of which hit Johnston. As
Speaker 1: a ninety two year old woman living alone, she owned
Speaker 1: a rusty revolver for self defense. As these unannounced strangers
Speaker 1: in plain clothes kicked down her door, Johnston did fire
Speaker 1: once and missed. Three police officers in Atlanta executed Katherine
Speaker 1: Johnston as they shot each other with friendly fire. To
Speaker 1: cover this up, they lied and planted evidence. They ran
Speaker 1: a smear campaign against Johnston, further victimizing the old woman
Speaker 1: that they killed and who the cops knew was innocent.
Speaker 1: The police in Atlanta have a track record of shooting
Speaker 1: each other, killing civilians, and lying about it. With that
Speaker 1: history in mind, this next part might get a little complicated,
Speaker 1: but I think it's important. A lot of the people
Speaker 1: who knew Tort have talked about how they often advocated
Speaker 1: for non violence in direct action. Many have said the
Speaker 1: sequence of events put forth by police just doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like something Tort would do, and I very much understand
Speaker 1: this reaction. Police lie all the time, especially when it
Speaker 1: comes to people the cops have killed. It is very
Speaker 1: likely that Towart really was just murdered by the cops,
Speaker 1: But I also think there's part of this reaction that's
Speaker 1: almost like a self preservation mechanism, stemming from a worry
Speaker 1: that if a certain Pandora's box gets opened, what that
Speaker 1: would mean for the movement and for the struggle against
Speaker 1: militarized police and ecological collapse. More broadly, there's also many
Speaker 1: scenarios that can lead to a brief exchange of gunfire,
Speaker 1: especially with the Georgia State patrols relative inexperience conducting raids
Speaker 1: in the forest. You can spend days just thinking of
Speaker 1: various possibilities for what could have happened, as I'm sure
Speaker 1: many people in Atlanta have. The recently released body cam
Speaker 1: makes some things more clear, but also opened up many
Speaker 1: possibilities to endlessly ruminate about, especially with on the ground
Speaker 1: chatter indicating cops shot each other. This next person is
Speaker 1: one of the original Force defenders I interviewed for my
Speaker 1: previous Defend the Atlanta Forest series from last May. As
Speaker 1: their partners stated, as it's from stated, what's from about
Speaker 1: being moved by a piece called reflationary. They did not
Speaker 1: show from the idea that they could buy for the
Speaker 1: things that I believe in. They'd not show from the
Speaker 1: idea that they could be murdered for the ideas that
Speaker 1: I believe in. If I want to live, we should
Speaker 1: not dismiss the possibility and reality. People can and maybe
Speaker 1: even should, look at this world, look at the police
Speaker 1: murdering three or four people a day, of a climate
Speaker 1: catastrophe in them, and live him, of the rising tide
Speaker 1: of fascism, of the absolute fucking hell that we fucking
Speaker 1: live him and bent. This can't go on. And I'm
Speaker 1: willing to do any of them and pay any of
Speaker 1: them to make it stop. We can't dismiss if that
Speaker 1: is a very feel possible grievance, that is a very
Speaker 1: real impossible instead of mind and that if that was
Speaker 1: to rus face toward to wait us, if those came is,
Speaker 1: if that was its position, that is not learn that
Speaker 1: and I, undoubtable are not will that in our willingness
Speaker 1: to die for what we believe him. Tortuguita both privately
Speaker 1: and publicly talked about an appreciation for non violence as
Speaker 1: a long term strategy, and the flip side of that
Speaker 1: is toward has also been described to me as somebody
Speaker 1: who acts with intention, acts with great thought, and if
Speaker 1: they did decide to do something, they would have had
Speaker 1: a good reason to, and they would not have chosen
Speaker 1: to do something if it had the potential to put
Speaker 1: fellow forced defenders in unnecessary danger. Based on some of
Speaker 1: my conversations. While Toward advocated for the potential of non
Speaker 1: violence as a political strategy, they itself were not solely nonviolent.
Speaker 1: The Atlanta Police Foundation have lied about every single aspect
Speaker 1: of this project's development since the start. The g b
Speaker 1: I said that there was no bodycam footage, and the
Speaker 1: police have spent the last year fine tuning their propaganda
Speaker 1: to frame the Defend the Force movement as a criminal
Speaker 1: enterprise and anyone protesting against cops City as a dangerous
Speaker 1: terrorists and threat to public safety. But there is a
Speaker 1: difference between mindlessly believing the police narrative and trying to
Speaker 1: not retroactively take away somebody's agency, especially if they did
Speaker 1: make a decision that they thought was the right choice
Speaker 1: given the circumstance around the idea. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people have I've been talking a lot about trying
Speaker 1: to you know, there there's a there's there's narrative flaws
Speaker 1: and the police of story about what happened on that
Speaker 1: right There's inconsistencies. We just now got photos of the
Speaker 1: gun that their legend e legend was used, just like
Speaker 1: a couple of days ago, and it was days after
Speaker 1: the GPS and the show evidence final report. It does
Speaker 1: all look suspicious that I think. The thing that's bothered
Speaker 1: me is that I would never want to take away
Speaker 1: agency from someone who cannot speak for themselves that they
Speaker 1: may have committed if torque that cop that as a
Speaker 1: shot fired in liberation against the state that murders thousands
Speaker 1: of people and destroys millions more for the car solar system,
Speaker 1: the same state that seeks to help the South River
Speaker 1: flood and to make the soil tony degrees honor and
Speaker 1: to make Atlanta's air quality go down. I would never
Speaker 1: want to take agency away from my comrade to have
Speaker 1: done that when they cannot speak for themselves. And I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody should try and make it seem like
Speaker 1: make it seem like it would have been an unjustified
Speaker 1: at a shot fired at the police and defense of
Speaker 1: the forest as a shot fired in self defense. Cop
Speaker 1: shoot each other all the time, and actually they're terrible
Speaker 1: with arms. They're just not good at their jobs. GSP.
Speaker 1: I think as a as a specific agency is UM
Speaker 1: sometimes be focused time. I'm more here. I've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of people kind of wrap up GESP and a
Speaker 1: p D and like the CAMPD as they like very
Speaker 1: like just as one agency um g SP as A
Speaker 1: as Georgia State Patrol is under the direct command of
Speaker 1: our vern and do not where a body comes as
Speaker 1: as an agency policy, UM they were the governor's star trippers.
Speaker 1: When he wants something done violently and without accountability, that
Speaker 1: is who he sends. And you know my reaction all
Speaker 1: of this, whether or not what the events transpired, is
Speaker 1: that our comrade is that our comrade was murdered by
Speaker 1: the state, whether or not they allegedly fired on an officer.
Speaker 1: I think the solarity and rage that people should show
Speaker 1: should be the same either if there were to come
Speaker 1: out that there was in fact shot, I would be
Speaker 1: so disheartened if people turned their back on our comrade,
Speaker 1: who was slamed by the police for when I see
Speaker 1: is an act of self defense. With all of the
Speaker 1: unknown around what happened the day of the shooting, what
Speaker 1: we do know for sure, I've heard boiled down to
Speaker 1: two simple points. Tort was killed defending the forest and
Speaker 1: they die doing what it loved. The first event type
Speaker 1: thing I went to in Atlanta was a noised demo
Speaker 1: outside the Cab County Jail Thursday night for the seven
Speaker 1: people arrested as a part of the deadly raid, all
Speaker 1: seven of whom are now facing domestic terrorism charges for
Speaker 1: being in the forest. The next day, Friday, there was
Speaker 1: a large public vigil in Wolani People's Park. Last time
Speaker 1: I was there, it was for the Muskogee Creek Summit
Speaker 1: near the end of last spring. It was sunny. I
Speaker 1: was hanging out in the gazebo listening to ecological presentations.
Speaker 1: There was a large tent kitchen in the grass, and
Speaker 1: I got to sit around a table and eat food
Speaker 1: with people. When I arrived Friday evening for the vigil,
Speaker 1: the first thing I saw was the destroyed remains of
Speaker 1: the gazebo, almost on display by the entrance of the
Speaker 1: torn up parking lot. It was is such a clear
Speaker 1: visual indicator for how things have changed since the start
Speaker 1: of last summer. Near the tree line, a few hundred
Speaker 1: people were gathered around a sort of outdoor shrine, a
Speaker 1: few large stone slabs, overturned candles, flowers, forest plants, little turtles, pictures, art, cigarettes,
Speaker 1: and yes fruit snacks forming an orange glowing mound. People
Speaker 1: gathered and shared memories of Tortuguita. Many spoke of its
Speaker 1: kindness and solidarity with struggles across the South, from the
Speaker 1: defense of drag shows in Tennessee to mutual aid work
Speaker 1: in Florida, where they helped build housing in low income
Speaker 1: communities hit hardest by hurricanes. I feel like Tortuguita's compassion
Speaker 1: was something that really shifted the culture in the forest
Speaker 1: and touched all of the lives of the people that
Speaker 1: they met. Um. They lived what they believed, which is
Speaker 1: something that I hope we can all be inspired by. UM.
Speaker 1: There are so many stories of people who were just
Speaker 1: mentioning to Tort like, oh, I'm in this situation, or
Speaker 1: this happened to my friend, and they would just immediately
Speaker 1: be thinking of ways that community could help them or
Speaker 1: that they could help them. And someone just shared a
Speaker 1: story with me that the last time that they saw TOWRT,
Speaker 1: they were telling them about how uh the on housed
Speaker 1: folks in their community. We're getting their tents and sleeping
Speaker 1: bags like swept and then tort gave them two hundred
Speaker 1: dollars to UM like replace the sleeping bags and tents.
Speaker 1: And I feel like they were just they had such
Speaker 1: a sense of kinship with people, even people that they
Speaker 1: didn't know, they were so connected to like the ways
Speaker 1: that we are all a part of this web of life, UM,
Speaker 1: and so committed to living in a way that can
Speaker 1: bring us all into a better community with each other,
Speaker 1: whether it be us and our fellow human beings or
Speaker 1: us in our forests, UM. And they loved these woods,
Speaker 1: and I feel like the fact that these woods were
Speaker 1: where they departed from this realm into the next just
Speaker 1: makes it that much more important that we protect them
Speaker 1: and that we make sure that this forest remains intact UM.
Speaker 1: I know that that's what Tort would have wanted, That's
Speaker 1: what they died doing. And I think that in all
Speaker 1: of the chaos and desperation and devastation that this loss
Speaker 1: is bringing our community, I think that one of the
Speaker 1: things that has been keeping me going is remembering the
Speaker 1: love that Tort had for people and for all living
Speaker 1: beings and just feeling really connected to their compassion UM.
Speaker 1: And I hope that that's something I know that that's
Speaker 1: something that is touching has touched all of us, and
Speaker 1: the ripples of it are continuing. The love that Tort
Speaker 1: brought to this world is still here and it is
Speaker 1: continuing to grow. So I think that they're I think
Speaker 1: that they're here with us, and I think that they
Speaker 1: always will be because they brought so much joy and
Speaker 1: goodness and love into this world, and that's something that
Speaker 1: never goes away, it only grows. I've gotten permission from
Speaker 1: a few of the people that spoke that night to
Speaker 1: share some of their stories of Tortuguita. One of the
Speaker 1: small things that stuck with me was how someone described
Speaker 1: Tort as possessing a playful, rebellious energy. Good Tort and
Speaker 1: I watched this UH yugoslav film together called My Father
Speaker 1: is the Socialist Lock, which was this joyful Yugoslavian film
Speaker 1: from the eighties about the transition after World War Two
Speaker 1: and Yugoslavia to autonomous self rule and breaking apart with
Speaker 1: the Soviet sphere. And in it UH, early on in
Speaker 1: the film, they're they're changing their social customs, adopted a
Speaker 1: new way of greeting each other in Yugoslavia where they
Speaker 1: they say good morning, death to fascism. And from that time,
Speaker 1: when I would see towards always they would that's the fascism, comrade,
Speaker 1: that's the fascism, and um toward towards. When I first
Speaker 1: met them, invited me to teach Aikido in the forest,
Speaker 1: which is called it's a martial art, that's called the
Speaker 1: art of peace. And so while we train as warriors,
Speaker 1: we train as peaceful warriors. But as many people have said,
Speaker 1: we for instance, did defenses of drag shows in Tennessee
Speaker 1: from assemblies of Nazis and proud boys who showed up
Speaker 1: in body armor with sualt rifles and tour. It was militant,
Speaker 1: but joyful tour. It took all of the always it was.
Speaker 1: It was with the utmost gravity and yet with the
Speaker 1: utmost lightness. And you know, uh we we we as
Speaker 1: well arranged a weekend of conflict resolution training here where
Speaker 1: toward rallied and and was the one that brought you know,
Speaker 1: a half a dozen people. Was was always rallying people,
Speaker 1: brought people to the drag defense, brought people to the trainings,
Speaker 1: brought people to my i Kedo class, maybe brought two
Speaker 1: dozen different people through over the course of several dozen classes.
Speaker 1: They were a peaceful warrior and they were in my
Speaker 1: flaudney and they got shot dead. And I'd like to
Speaker 1: I'd like to lead a chance in that spirit too,
Speaker 1: honor some of torts Warrior spirit tonight. And I know
Speaker 1: one that they liked is ah Auntie Antique Capitalista. And
Speaker 1: we could start together, slow and quiet and build together
Speaker 1: a powerful voice and pierce the night Auntie Antique, Happy
Speaker 1: Talista antiph thank you. Throughout the night, many songs were
Speaker 1: sung alongside screams of rage. Tortuguita actually left a tag
Speaker 1: with a little red sharpie on the guitar being played
Speaker 1: at the vigil. It's a little doodle of a cat
Speaker 1: face next to the words all cats are beautiful. Somebody
Speaker 1: at the vigil read out a few of the messages
Speaker 1: sent in to the remember tort at ProtonMail dot com
Speaker 1: email address, many of which you can now find collected
Speaker 1: at stop cop dot city. That's stop cop period city.
Speaker 1: One of the things about tour it that was really
Speaker 1: inspirational is that they weren't just against capitalism, they weren't
Speaker 1: just against the police. They made abolition about what they
Speaker 1: were fighting for, and on the we Remember tort Uh
Speaker 1: proton mail. A lot of people have been sending in
Speaker 1: stories about how they contributed so much to each community
Speaker 1: that they were in, And I want to read this
Speaker 1: one that came in from someone in Tallahassee. Everyone in
Speaker 1: Tallahassee knew Manny. I'm not even exaggerating. They were a
Speaker 1: part of almost every single organization they could get their
Speaker 1: hands on in town. Food Not Bombs, the Plant, Live Oak,
Speaker 1: Radical Ecology, International Workers of the World, Tallahassee Community Action Committee,
Speaker 1: Free Dan Baker, Stopping HB one, etc. With every person
Speaker 1: who was lucky enough to be graced with their presence,
Speaker 1: they felt safe and free to do whatever they could
Speaker 1: for the community. They ran cold night shelter for the
Speaker 1: homeless practically on their own when the Kearney Center couldn't
Speaker 1: do it. They helped do grocery deliveries for those in
Speaker 1: the south side of town for free. They showed up
Speaker 1: to almost every single meal share the F and B hosted.
Speaker 1: And this is only a fraction of the work that
Speaker 1: they did for the Bond community here in Tallahassee and beyond. Manny,
Speaker 1: I always watched you from the periphery with awe. I
Speaker 1: always wanted to be your close friend. I wish you
Speaker 1: could have seen the vigil that we had, you would
Speaker 1: have been proud. The large overturned stone by the flowers,
Speaker 1: candles and fruit snacks at the Wolani vigil had a
Speaker 1: message written on it that I read when I returned
Speaker 1: to the park a few days later. The big boulder
Speaker 1: reads erected in memory of all whose lives were lived
Speaker 1: and unjustly lost in Wolani Forest. You live on in
Speaker 1: the trees, and I remembered by the land. You will
Speaker 1: never be forgotten until every prison is empty, until every
Speaker 1: slave is free, until all of without fear, until earth
Speaker 1: has healed. Our work is not done. If it's okay,
Speaker 1: I'll share another of the message that was sent. Manny
Speaker 1: was a close friend, comrade, and above all constant fighter
Speaker 1: for working people. I knew them in Tallahassee through the
Speaker 1: IWW food not bombs and live oak radical ecology, and
Speaker 1: I will never cease to be amazed by their tireless activism,
Speaker 1: their extreme empathy, and their ability to make everyone feel
Speaker 1: welcomed in radical spaces. They died as they lived, fighting
Speaker 1: for a better world and defending the forest from destruction
Speaker 1: in the name of a fascist, militarized police force. I
Speaker 1: hope their name will not be forgotten, and that their
Speaker 1: killer is brought to justice. But more than anything, I
Speaker 1: hope the cause that they fought for is victorious. Now
Speaker 1: we mourn this great loss to the Tallahassee in Atlantic communities,
Speaker 1: but tomorrow we will fight back twice as hard against
Speaker 1: capitalism in the state, so that Tortuguita did not die
Speaker 1: in vain. This is another one. They were kind and
Speaker 1: fear They were sweet, extraordinarily funny, conscientious, tender, silly, loving
Speaker 1: and one of the most generous people I have met.
Speaker 1: And that contagious smile and laugh three exclamation points. I
Speaker 1: went to bed last night hearing their laughter in my head,
Speaker 1: loud and beautiful. They somehow were still there to add
Speaker 1: levity and joy as I screamed, cried, and choked on
Speaker 1: my own spit all night, and they killed you. You're gone, comrade.
Speaker 1: I missed you. I miss you. They had a deep
Speaker 1: understanding of solidarity and struggle. When the cops swept an
Speaker 1: encampment in my neighborhood without hesitation, they shared their forest
Speaker 1: funds to get more tents and sleeping bags, because they
Speaker 1: knew that these are not individual battles, but that these
Speaker 1: struggles are inherently tied to one another, that they are
Speaker 1: part of the same struggle. This is a lesson for
Speaker 1: the movement that must be carried forward, for them, for
Speaker 1: all of us, for the strength of the fight to
Speaker 1: stop cops City. I will miss how we greeted one
Speaker 1: another and our meager attempts to make it a thing.
Speaker 1: Death to fascism, liberation to people. One of the people
Speaker 1: playing the tortuguita tag guitar at the vigil played a
Speaker 1: version of Bella Chow and I'm just gonna read out
Speaker 1: the way that they described the song. Bella Chow means
Speaker 1: goodbye beautiful in Italian. The song was originally about an
Speaker 1: Italian partisan who goes out to fight the fascists in
Speaker 1: the mountains during World War Two. And I like to
Speaker 1: dedicate this version to somebody who laid their life down
Speaker 1: to fight against fascism, militarism, and against the expansion of
Speaker 1: the police, and against the destruction of nature. Somebody who
Speaker 1: lifted up all of the people they were around, knew
Speaker 1: so many people, was involved in so many communities, and
Speaker 1: was just so funny, so loving, so friendly, and they
Speaker 1: laid their life down for their community and to stop
Speaker 1: cops city and to stop militarism and the destruction of nature.
Speaker 1: They really believed in what they were doing, and the
Speaker 1: way we can honor them is by continuing their fight.
Speaker 1: Death to fascism. See you on the other side. The
Speaker 1: world is wicking outside my window. Bella chow bella chow
Speaker 1: bella chow chow chow drags my senses into the sunlight.
Speaker 1: For there are things that I must do. Wish me.
Speaker 1: Look now I have to leave you. Bella chow bella
Speaker 1: chow bella chow chow chow with my friends. Now in
Speaker 1: the forest, We're gonna shake the gates off how and
Speaker 1: we will tell them you. We will tell them your
Speaker 1: bellow chow bella chow bella chow chow chow, that we
Speaker 1: Lonnie's not for the franchise in which the bastards drop
Speaker 1: down dead. Next time you see me, I may be smiling.
Speaker 1: Obell a child, bella chow bella chowd chow shall I'll
Speaker 1: be in prison or on the TV. I'll say, the
Speaker 1: forest called me. The world is wickham I sign my window,
Speaker 1: bella child, bela child, bella chow chow child, try my
Speaker 1: senses into the sunlight for their things that I must do.
Speaker 1: Wish me now I have to leave you. Obella child,
Speaker 1: bella child, bella chow chow chowd my French that in
Speaker 1: the forest we're gonna shake the gate of Hell and
Speaker 1: we will tell her, Yeah, we will tell him a
Speaker 1: bella chow, bella chow, bella chow chow chow, that we
Speaker 1: loes not for the franchise, which the bastard's drop done dead.
Speaker 1: Next time you see me, I may be smiling, Belichi belichower,
Speaker 1: bella chow chow chow. I'll be in prison or on
Speaker 1: the TV. I'll say, the forest called me here, the
Speaker 1: world is waken. I'll sign my window a Belichi bella chower,
Speaker 1: bella chow chow chow. Dry my senses into the sunlight.
Speaker 1: For their things I must do. I gotta leave you,
Speaker 1: oh bella chow bella chow, bella chow chow chow with
Speaker 1: my friends. Now in the forest we're gonna shake the
Speaker 1: gates off Hell, and we will tell him. We will
Speaker 1: tell them bella chow, bella chow, bella chow chow chow,
Speaker 1: that we Lonnie's not for the franchise, and wish the
Speaker 1: bastards dropped dune down. Next time you see me, I
Speaker 1: might be smiling. Bella chow bella chow bella chow chow chow.
Speaker 1: I'll be in prison or on the TV. I'll say,
Speaker 1: the forest called me here. Next time you see me,
Speaker 1: I may be smiling, bella chow bella chow bella chow
Speaker 1: chow chow. I'll be in prison, or on the TV,
Speaker 1: I'll say the fest called me here. The few days
Speaker 1: leading up to Saturday, January one felt like the calm
Speaker 1: before the storm. Nobody knew exactly what was going to
Speaker 1: happen at the weekend of protest in downtown Atlanta, but
Speaker 1: there was a sense that something would. Shortly after the
Speaker 1: Wednesday shooting, a flyer went out calling for a gathering
Speaker 1: at Underground Atlanta on Saturday, January one, and to wear
Speaker 1: black clothes in morning. This is it could happen here.
Speaker 1: I'm Garrison Davis, and I arrived at Underground Atlanta just
Speaker 1: a bit before five pm. The crowd was still slowly growing,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of big news cameras were filling up
Speaker 1: the central area. As more people filtered in, some who
Speaker 1: knew toward went up in front of everyone to share
Speaker 1: memories of Torte Guita and talk about the continuing fight
Speaker 1: to defend the forest. Obviously, we're all here because Toward
Speaker 1: was an amazing person and their life meant a lot.
Speaker 1: But Towards also shared something in common with all of us,
Speaker 1: and that was the values and things that they were
Speaker 1: fighting for. And all of us are fighting for a
Speaker 1: great cause and we all have it in common. But
Speaker 1: it makes us all targets. They will always target us
Speaker 1: because there they don't believe in the things that we
Speaker 1: believe in, and they will always be after us. And
Speaker 1: we all have to stand here and stay together and
Speaker 1: stay resilient, to fight for what we believe it, and
Speaker 1: never let Towards memory and go with our honors. If
Speaker 1: they would kill an innocent person like Tork, someone who
Speaker 1: loved their community, they won't stop to kill us. They
Speaker 1: will stop to kill everyone in that forest. They won't
Speaker 1: stop to kill anyone who defies them. And that's pretty
Speaker 1: much all I had to say. A few people from
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Resistance Medics of Local Street medic group dedicated
Speaker 1: to the liberation of medicine and providing medical resources for
Speaker 1: underprivileged and marginalized people, spoke about Tortuguita who was a
Speaker 1: member of their collective. If there's one thing that we
Speaker 1: want people to remember Tord for is that they were
Speaker 1: somebody who protected the people around them, who went through
Speaker 1: the training along with the rest of us to be
Speaker 1: able to provide medical resources to the people that were
Speaker 1: around them. They may not have access to those. No
Speaker 1: matter what else the new who says about Tort, they
Speaker 1: were a protector. Everything they did was out of love.
Speaker 1: Everything they did was out of hope for a better world.
Speaker 1: And I don't care what the police say, I don't
Speaker 1: care what the media says. I don't care what anybody says.
Speaker 1: Tort was out here working for a better world. They
Speaker 1: may want to smear them as an extremist. They were not.
Speaker 1: They were out here protecting their fellow people. And that's
Speaker 1: what we want everybody to remember about them, is that
Speaker 1: they were out here trying to build a better world.
Speaker 1: No matter what anybody else says. All right, I'd love
Speaker 1: y'all to gripete after me. Start do God be there,
Speaker 1: la lu Josse there, start do God there, la lu Josse.
Speaker 1: THERETO is a medic in our collective. They were a
Speaker 1: forest defender, They were a friend. They were funny, they
Speaker 1: were Kinda was constantly thinking of others. They were constantly
Speaker 1: trying to protect other people, trying to protect the forest,
Speaker 1: trying to protect everyone who was marginalized. They centered voices
Speaker 1: on the who are on the margins and brought them
Speaker 1: into the center. They recognized that our struggles are interconnected.
Speaker 1: They recognized that Cops City will never be built. They
Speaker 1: died just sending that forest. The memory of Tortuga that
Speaker 1: I keep returning to is after the police destroyed the
Speaker 1: gazebo and Wilani People's park in the parking lot, they
Speaker 1: were at a meeting and they said, yeah, so the
Speaker 1: cops think they can just drawing our morale um, they can't. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Fuita was one of the most resilient, strongest people I know.
Speaker 1: They hugged everyone. They were so kind and so giving,
Speaker 1: and even as the state tries to assassinate their character
Speaker 1: in addition to their body, they were a freedom fighter.
Speaker 1: They were a person that I was I am honored
Speaker 1: to have known that I am honored to have called
Speaker 1: a friend. About four hundred people eventually gathered around Underground Atlanta.
Speaker 1: It seemed like slightly more people than were at the
Speaker 1: vigil the previous night. Everything in modern life serves to
Speaker 1: atomize you, to make you feel like you were an individual,
Speaker 1: divorce from any sense of collective identity, divorced from any
Speaker 1: sense that you have a purpose and that there is
Speaker 1: good in the world. The fact that you're here means
Speaker 1: that you're fighting at in stat So let go of that.
Speaker 1: That is powerful. And that's why Cops City isn't going
Speaker 1: to be built. It is because we have law for
Speaker 1: ourselves than for the people around us. All right, so
Speaker 1: I'm sure all of you are fairly upset about this.
Speaker 1: I am Tort was a friend of mine. They were
Speaker 1: a friend of the community. Their death, their death will
Speaker 1: not be in vain. God City suck at all. By
Speaker 1: five thirty, about half the crowd gathered at Underground Atlanta
Speaker 1: were in Black Block, and the rest were a variety
Speaker 1: of activists, organizers, and random people who decided that it
Speaker 1: was important to be at this event. After some speeches, chants,
Speaker 1: and stories of Tort, the gathering of people turned into
Speaker 1: a march and took to the streets. March is starting
Speaker 1: just less Underground Atlanta. Around three hundred people maybe maybe more,
Speaker 1: are marching down the street. There's mix of people in
Speaker 1: block because medics here. People just kind of in regular
Speaker 1: clothes well, doing signs. There's a banner in the front
Speaker 1: that reads they can't kill us all firework crap. Banner
Speaker 1: at the front that says trees give life, police take it.
Speaker 1: After just a minute of marching down one street, the
Speaker 1: crowd suddenly stopped. Looks like the marches turning around going
Speaker 1: to the other side. Stop drop drop jarges. Some more
Speaker 1: small fireworks being launching. This guy, 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 to the march around
Speaker 1: and the group four hundred strong headed north. It sounds
Speaker 1: like the PSL people who were gathered at the underground
Speaker 1: tried to tried to leave the march in one direction,
Speaker 1: and everyone was like, no, we don't want to go
Speaker 1: that way. Uh the if you have some people are
Speaker 1: wannn to leave. Everyone into like the Federal Building section
Speaker 1: of downtown going south, and very quickly they turned around.
Speaker 1: Well other other people turned around, was like, no, we're
Speaker 1: not going that way. They're taking it right down Peach
Speaker 1: Tree heading heading north into downtown, right beside the Coca
Speaker 1: Cola sign on Marietta. The march entered the Commercial District,
Speaker 1: a section of the city completely gutted out by years
Speaker 1: of the Atlanta Way neoliberal policies that we talked about
Speaker 1: in the Defend the Forest episodes from last May. The
Speaker 1: area is populated almost exclusively by business people, university students,
Speaker 1: and unhoused citizens, and was a common site for Atlanta
Speaker 1: BLM protests. Now that the march is moving, it's easier
Speaker 1: to see everyone in black, all of all, all the
Speaker 1: people of block. It's looking more just like a large, large,
Speaker 1: massive people in block. Now. I have not seen much
Speaker 1: police presence downtown yet because there's just a few few
Speaker 1: patrol cars. It's really unclear how Atlanta Police is gonna
Speaker 1: respond to this. Got some flares, a lot more of
Speaker 1: those smoke fireworks or smoke grenade things. It's not a grain,
Speaker 1: it's like a cardboard tube shooting smoke out the block.
Speaker 1: Continued to travel north. Road. Flares and fireworks lit the
Speaker 1: path in the darkening evening. Graffiti quickly sprung up on
Speaker 1: walls with phrases like R I P. Little Turtle and
Speaker 1: stop cops City the march. The march is now approaching
Speaker 1: an Atlanta Police vehicle who's trying to back up the
Speaker 1: cough just not one of the cop cop cars right
Speaker 1: in the middle of where the march is going to go.
Speaker 1: They're like less than a 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 tree Trees Give Life Police take
Speaker 1: it banner. It's a big cardboard cutout of a tree
Speaker 1: right behind it. Police have their lights turned on. Now
Speaker 1: looks like the cop cars turning turning around. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the cop car is leaving rather quickly. The sun was
Speaker 1: just starting to set as the block arrived at the
Speaker 1: main goal of the night, the Atlanta Police Foundation Headquarters
Speaker 1: at one nine Peach Tree Street. They have stopped in
Speaker 1: front of Atlanta Police Foundation Headquarters. People are thrown throwing
Speaker 1: stuff at the windows doors MHM broken windows that the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters, the people, the people funding cops
Speaker 1: City firework thrown umbrellas moved in to block local news
Speaker 1: cameras as windows shattered. Rocks emerged from backpacks and smashed
Speaker 1: into the front of the building. Hammers met the glass
Speaker 1: entrance as fireworks lit up the scene. Not the other fire,
Speaker 1: another firework at the Atlanta Police Foundation. The march is
Speaker 1: tightening up a decent bit. March is definitely tightening up.
Speaker 1: A lot of people just in block now. Shouts of
Speaker 1: b water kept the mass moving forward as bank windows
Speaker 1: received a similar pelting of rocks and hammers. People chanting
Speaker 1: to move like water. Fuel line of police cars right
Speaker 1: beside the march. I'm guessing they're gonna pull in in
Speaker 1: from pulling behind the march to Atlanta police cars right there.
Speaker 1: People hitting a Chase Bank another stuff being dragged into
Speaker 1: the street for like a pop to barricade. Chase Bank's
Speaker 1: head of Regional Investment Banking, John Richard, serves on the
Speaker 1: board of the Atlanta Police Foundation. Police officers exited the
Speaker 1: two cop cars that were trailing the march and quickly
Speaker 1: ran away from the crowd, leaving their vehicles abandoned. Corkers
Speaker 1: trying to keep track of where the police are in
Speaker 1: relation to the march, because I got some cars pulling
Speaker 1: up behind. Nope, the police car pulled up behind the
Speaker 1: march just got their windows broken. Fireworks under another firework.
Speaker 1: Another Atlanta Police police vehicle had the windows smashed. So
Speaker 1: there's two. The two that was behind the march, the
Speaker 1: two Atlanta Plice officer cars ever behind the march just
Speaker 1: got hit. Wells Fargo, one of the main cops city funders,
Speaker 1: received special love and attention from the block. The Atlanta
Speaker 1: area president for Wells Fargo, Mitch Grawl, is also on
Speaker 1: the board of trustees for the Atlanta Police Foundation. A
Speaker 1: few other banks hit around this area. Wells Fargo one
Speaker 1: of the one of the contributors to the Atlanta Police Foundations,
Speaker 1: one of their big funders and backers. A lot of
Speaker 1: the media here very very thirsty to get to get
Speaker 1: stuff of, you know, when put into people breaking windows
Speaker 1: and ship It was kind of surprising that the crowd
Speaker 1: made it this far without any real police response. Time
Speaker 1: almost stretches during these brief moments of uprising. About seven
Speaker 1: minutes after the first window shattered, Atlanta police finally arrived
Speaker 1: and made their move police are in front of in
Speaker 1: front of the march. Now please are in front of
Speaker 1: the rug march. People might be turning around. They want
Speaker 1: to do a flow like water type thing. Yeah. Multiple
Speaker 1: cop cars are approaching the march from the front. Unclear
Speaker 1: what the crowd is gonna do. Atlanta PD is now
Speaker 1: now approaching the march. They're getting closer. They're going after
Speaker 1: one of the banners, dragging somebody down, pulling something to
Speaker 1: the ground. They're chasing people. One person is being arrested.
Speaker 1: Marches splitting in two different directions. Officers started randomly tackling
Speaker 1: and arresting anyone they could get their hands on. More
Speaker 1: police arrived from the south and chased it down a
Speaker 1: small section of the march that branched off. Atlanta police
Speaker 1: coming from behind as well. So I got Atlanta police
Speaker 1: on both sides. Not many officers though, just just a
Speaker 1: few officers. It looks like the majority of march withingt
Speaker 1: JA movie dispersed, dispet dips, get please, get me more aggressive,
Speaker 1: pushing a lot of people. Footage and audio of these
Speaker 1: violent arrests were shared by the Defend the Forest account,
Speaker 1: Unicorn Riot, and myself your here. I hear screams coming
Speaker 1: from multiple directions. Large. Looks like the march kind of
Speaker 1: split in two. I've seen a lot of arrests. The
Speaker 1: individuals targeted likely committed no crime other than being in
Speaker 1: the wrong place at the wrong time. The majority of
Speaker 1: the march split away and in a different direction from
Speaker 1: the cops. So I stated where the cops were. Most
Speaker 1: of the march I was able to get away. It's
Speaker 1: by going through two different directions we have. It looks
Speaker 1: like and Atlanta p D vehicle is on fire, Atlanta
Speaker 1: p D vehicle burning in the street, burning cop car.
Speaker 1: Police with a style a r style rifles. So I
Speaker 1: feel like most of the march had to hit it
Speaker 1: on that way. It seems one of the cop cars
Speaker 1: that got smashed also spontaneously lit on fire. When the
Speaker 1: police first confronted the march, most of the block was
Speaker 1: able to peel off and disappear into the night. Affinity
Speaker 1: groups reconnected. Block was shed and protesters evacuated out of
Speaker 1: downtown as the police flooded the mile long stretch of
Speaker 1: Peachtree Street that the crowd marched on. After a firetruck
Speaker 1: put out the burning cop car, police taped off the
Speaker 1: area and as they were pushing people out. I recorded
Speaker 1: an officer saying this amazing line. Bombs or discount New
Speaker 1: Year's Eve fireworks, you choose. All In all, the actions
Speaker 1: that night only took about an hour, and crews made
Speaker 1: at home in time for dinner. Six people were arrested
Speaker 1: at the protest Saturday night. Five were tackled and pinned
Speaker 1: down as the crowd initially scattered, and one other person
Speaker 1: was chased by a cop car. Sam from the Atlantic
Speaker 1: Community Press Collective has more on that. A protester who
Speaker 1: was subsequently arrested was Witnesses state they were basically followed
Speaker 1: through the streets by an Atlanta police vehicle. Before this
Speaker 1: is say that they were hit by the same vehicle
Speaker 1: and they were the untaken to jail. So, you know,
Speaker 1: corn Ry released that video and we were able to
Speaker 1: speak with a few witnesses because, as I'm sure everyone
Speaker 1: saw on social media this weekend, the arrests were a
Speaker 1: familiar brutal familiar brutal site. Before we continue, I do
Speaker 1: want to play two short clips that were circulating the
Speaker 1: night of the protest. First is police scanner audio of
Speaker 1: the cop whose car spontaneously combusted. You want to call. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well the car I ain't able to go getting an
Speaker 1: eat longer. You know. This next one is from live
Speaker 1: news coverage of the march, and this clip became an
Speaker 1: instant meme, so they're now saying gb I suck my
Speaker 1: dick gb I is a Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Mayor
Speaker 1: Andre Dickens and the Chief of Police give a press
Speaker 1: conference hours later which gave us a look at how
Speaker 1: the state was going to try and frame the protests
Speaker 1: and acts of targeted vandalism. My message is simple to
Speaker 1: those who seek to continue this type of criminal behavior,
Speaker 1: we will find you, and we will arrest you, and
Speaker 1: you will be held accountable. We have arrested several of
Speaker 1: them this evening and Chief Sure Bob will give you
Speaker 1: the details on that. And some of them were found
Speaker 1: with explosives on them. Uh you heard that correctly, explosives
Speaker 1: and that has led to a police officers car being
Speaker 1: set on fire. During the press conference, the Chief of
Speaker 1: Police clarified that no law enforcement officers were injured as
Speaker 1: a result of the protest and neither were any bodystanders,
Speaker 1: which means the only violence against people was done by
Speaker 1: the cops who randomly tackled any protester that they could
Speaker 1: chase down. And so it doesn't take a rocket scientist
Speaker 1: or an attorney to tell you that breaking windows and
Speaker 1: setting fires not protests that just tears him and that
Speaker 1: they will be charged warningly and they will find that
Speaker 1: this police department in the partnership is equally committed to
Speaker 1: stop that activity. We already have prosecutors in the room
Speaker 1: as we speak, and we're reviewing everything. We have a
Speaker 1: lot of evidence to still go through. So even charges
Speaker 1: you see tonight, those can easily be upgraded, and they
Speaker 1: will be upgraded and appropriate. I brought up the police
Speaker 1: chief's comments to a few of the forest offenders that
Speaker 1: I spoke with after the protest on Saturday in downtown. Um,
Speaker 1: police chief Schneier bomb it's hard, I've i've i've I've
Speaker 1: read it before. On anyway, they let police chiefs said
Speaker 1: that breaking windows and setting fires as terrorism. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: curious to get everyone's thoughts on that. Sure, I think
Speaker 1: the police and doing what a lot of city governments,
Speaker 1: especially which was like things like property destruction terrorism, which
Speaker 1: like it's not and you can call whatever you want,
Speaker 1: you can call it, like property struction terrorism is a
Speaker 1: very like specific political strategy that exists. I think the
Speaker 1: right one does it a lot it and it would
Speaker 1: be worth calling that, like, you know, because defend the
Speaker 1: Forest doesn't have a body count. The police have only
Speaker 1: murdered uh an activist for Defend the Forest Rush to
Speaker 1: Find the Forest has not struck in our violently against
Speaker 1: anybody except in defense against the police. Um, you cannot
Speaker 1: do violence to property. You cannot be violent towards the police.
Speaker 1: Carra It's in the same way that Andrea Dickens is
Speaker 1: now getting on TV and claiming that, like calling fireworks explosives.
Speaker 1: It's like, yes, there are objects that explode, but this
Speaker 1: is very clearly being done in bad fifth because it is.
Speaker 1: It is it justifies. This is the same way like
Speaker 1: the d D and the FBI. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: the ship. You call something terrorism, the money just pours on,
Speaker 1: you get funding, you get justification. Do things like that,
Speaker 1: and you can arrest people in charge them with domestic terrorism.
Speaker 1: That makes continuing to move and incredibly hard. That's really
Speaker 1: dangerous implication that any act and dissidents to the state
Speaker 1: could be called domestic terrorism should really ship of everybody.
Speaker 1: It should not be allowed to stand and should be
Speaker 1: comparative against every from I talked with Peter about how
Speaker 1: if the police are viewing vandalism or destruction of inanimate
Speaker 1: objects as domestic terrorism, if breaking a window is terrorism,
Speaker 1: that makes the question what exactly is destroying a forest?
Speaker 1: That juxtaposition of what the police consider violence and like
Speaker 1: what sort of like destruction of objects is violence? To me,
Speaker 1: this demonstrates what they see like as valuable. And also
Speaker 1: this demonstrates the police state and the corporation's inability to
Speaker 1: to understand that alle nous of all things and how
Speaker 1: sacred the earth is. It shows that what they consider sacred,
Speaker 1: what they hold a sacred is property, and specifically their property.
Speaker 1: I think they fear the woods in part because it
Speaker 1: moves in ways that they can't comprehend. It moves in
Speaker 1: nonlinear ways. Cricket also had something to say on this topic, well,
Speaker 1: and and what is destroying a forest? What is destroying
Speaker 1: a person? They're more upset about the destruction of property
Speaker 1: than the destruction of a person, a whole human being
Speaker 1: who is twenty six years old. They were young, they
Speaker 1: just started and that does not seem to measure up
Speaker 1: against some glass panes that doesn't seem to register. And
Speaker 1: what about the terror they inspire in the forest, what
Speaker 1: about the I mean, obviously that these rhetorical questions when
Speaker 1: I'm preaching to the choir, but I mean, god, no,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just infuriating. There's no I long for
Speaker 1: the day when the line is not drawn at well,
Speaker 1: you can do anything except touch private property. Noah mentioned
Speaker 1: the juctaposition of broken windows being terrorism, but violent actions
Speaker 1: that actually hurt people seemingly not mattering nearly as much
Speaker 1: at least compared to a cracked window. Right, So it's
Speaker 1: a clear double standard. And in the same way that
Speaker 1: like you know, during people setting far too police precincts,
Speaker 1: was insurrection and an anarchy and all these things. But
Speaker 1: when the National Guard would shoot people it was a
Speaker 1: tragic air I justified to And when roving vigilantes would
Speaker 1: drive cars in the crowds and and play them pipe
Speaker 1: bombs protests, it does not get treated with the same
Speaker 1: levity because the powers that be can never, will, never
Speaker 1: will obviously never hold themselves the same standards that they
Speaker 1: will call us as their enemies, that the meaning of
Speaker 1: words does not matter to them. What matters as being
Speaker 1: able to get good sound bites to put on like
Speaker 1: anti for Action ship and make themselves because the city
Speaker 1: has designed that they can't back down from the prop
Speaker 1: people that they're not willing to like back down state.
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: Cops 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 Cops City as corporations
Speaker 1: and the state moved to push cup Cities 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 Cops City has been charged with domestic terrorism.
Speaker 1: It's not a huge surprise in terms like terrorism and
Speaker 1: eco terrorism have been coming up, I mean in private
Speaker 1: conversations probably since the beginning um, but we can trace
Speaker 1: it back to at least last summer when and and
Speaker 1: some emailed emails we've obtained throughout open records requests where
Speaker 1: a city council member and the police Foundation, we're just
Speaker 1: kind of pejoratively throwing around the term terrorists in response
Speaker 1: to I think it was graffiti or something like I
Speaker 1: hope they catch these terrorists soon. The terrorists who graffiti
Speaker 1: to building. It has also shown up in a couple
Speaker 1: of different public meetings that are about the training center.
Speaker 1: You know. Committee members who are pro Public Safety Training
Speaker 1: Center anti anyone being opposed to it have also used
Speaker 1: the term eco terrorism. The dangerous escalation of protest to
Speaker 1: suppression is not limited to people engaging in pathsive resistance
Speaker 1: or direct action. Some of our our open records requests
Speaker 1: have even shown that since since last fall, for for
Speaker 1: several months now, anyone who participates in like a write
Speaker 1: in or a call in campaign, sometimes those very simple
Speaker 1: emails of hey, I don't think your company should be
Speaker 1: participating in this project will get forwarded up to the
Speaker 1: chief of police. You know, people's names, emails, just very
Speaker 1: very simple call in campaign type stuff. Um, the most
Speaker 1: monoculous stuff gets forwarded as part of you know, 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 rights 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 protests 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 and 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 you
Speaker 1: specifically we have evidence that you burned down and escaped
Speaker 1: like like a like a construction equipment. That's that's that's
Speaker 1: not that, that's not they're being used, not even being
Speaker 1: used for like we saw we we saw you break
Speaker 1: this window. That's not even how they're being used. Like
Speaker 1: the people restaurant Saturday, all six of them got the
Speaker 1: same exact charges. How how can all six people have
Speaker 1: done all the exact same thing, So they're obviously not
Speaker 1: being used for in the type of like factual evidence
Speaker 1: based way. It's all about like trying to turn the
Speaker 1: movement itself into a criminal association. Yeah. Yeah, a p
Speaker 1: D has even said that themselves in a public meeting
Speaker 1: that's supposed to kind of like a provide advice on
Speaker 1: like how the public wants this project built. You know.
Speaker 1: They in the December meeting, which I think took place
Speaker 1: a day after after those raids, they they bragged about
Speaker 1: pulling someone over illegally for phil for filming the police.
Speaker 1: They said they were very proud of themselves for taking
Speaker 1: that person to jail, and then they just blatantly said
Speaker 1: that anyone arrested for this in connection with this movement
Speaker 1: will get a domestic terrorism charge. That which creates an
Speaker 1: equivalency that being opposed to this project is a domestic
Speaker 1: terrorism You know, the the chief of police, Stare and
Speaker 1: sheer Bomb went before cameras on Saturday, and I think
Speaker 1: pretty much verbatim said, breaking a glass window that is terrorism.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have opinions about how to protest, right,
Speaker 1: but what people have conveyed to us is that even
Speaker 1: those who are, you know, kind of horrified by property damage,
Speaker 1: it's just not domestic terrorism. It's just not being opposed
Speaker 1: to the police, wanting the police to do something differently
Speaker 1: is not terrorism. The Atlanta Solidarity Fund said of the
Speaker 1: six people charged after Saturday's protest, quote, protest, even disobedient protest,
Speaker 1: is not terrorism. It's tragic that we're at a point
Speaker 1: where this even needs to be said, but that makes
Speaker 1: it all the more important that the public speak out
Speaker 1: against this divisive and dangerous rhetoric. We have reason to
Speaker 1: believe these activists were arrested at random during the march.
Speaker 1: All six faced the same blanket charges, They are being
Speaker 1: held responsible for committing the same crime by virtue of
Speaker 1: simply being present at a protest where property damage occurred unquote.
Speaker 1: Twenty people have been charged with felonies under Georgia's domestic
Speaker 1: terrorism laws since last December. Police affidavits have detailed the
Speaker 1: alleged acts of so called terror which include quote criminally
Speaker 1: trespassing on posted land, sleeping in a forest, sleeping in
Speaker 1: a hammock with another defendant being known members of a
Speaker 1: prison abolitionist movement unquote, and aligning themselves with defend the
Speaker 1: Atlanta forest by quote occupying a treehouse while wearing a
Speaker 1: gas mask and camouflage clothing unquote. A review of the
Speaker 1: twenty arrests showed that none of those arrested and slapped
Speaker 1: with terrorism charges are accused of seriously injuring anyone. Nine
Speaker 1: are alleged to have committed no specific illegal acts beyond Mr.
Speaker 1: Meaner trespassing. Instead, mere association with a group committed to
Speaker 1: defending the forest appears to be the foundation for declaring
Speaker 1: them terrorists. The seven people arrested during the police raid
Speaker 1: where the Georgia State Patrol shot and killed Tortuguita were
Speaker 1: given a bond amount totaling one hundred and seventeen thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Escalating repression is taking form as egregious bail amounts for protesters,
Speaker 1: inflated charges, and as last month saw the killing of
Speaker 1: an activist. The environmental Justice attorney Stephen Donzinger said, for
Speaker 1: weeks these people were called terrorists, which is a complete
Speaker 1: misuse of the word. The police have been conditioned to
Speaker 1: believe these people are terrorists, and what do you do
Speaker 1: with terrorists in the United States? You kill them. It
Speaker 1: becomes a self fulfilling prophecy unquote. A whole bunch of
Speaker 1: bail information has got released for the six people arrested
Speaker 1: at the protest in downtown Atlanta Saturday, January twenty one,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty high. It's the highest bail for a
Speaker 1: protest that I've ever seen. Two people that are slightly
Speaker 1: more local to the area, we're granted three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty five dollars each for their bonds set over seven
Speaker 1: thousand dollars um with ankle monitoring and a twenty four
Speaker 1: hour curfew. So that's a lot of four. Other people
Speaker 1: who are 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: um for pretty pretty ridiculous charges and like this arson
Speaker 1: um riot, like felony jay walking, essentially like Protestant domestic
Speaker 1: terrorism across the board. When they're going over the bill hearing,
Speaker 1: there was there was they were talking about how like
Speaker 1: this hearing is not for going over evidence, this is
Speaker 1: this is this isn't for Actually, yeah, they're they're they're not.
Speaker 1: They're not interested in dealing with what the facts actually
Speaker 1: were because there's no evidence that any of any of
Speaker 1: the people arrested did anything wrong besides the march in
Speaker 1: the street, which has been a staple of the history
Speaker 1: of Atlanta for almost like almost a century. Um, there's
Speaker 1: no absolutely no evidence, but that that doesn't matter, and
Speaker 1: that's not really the point either. The point is that
Speaker 1: this is a brutal form of punishment and a deterrent
Speaker 1: for for other people to say that if you're going
Speaker 1: to go to a protest, if you're gonna go to
Speaker 1: a march, you don't need to do anything at all,
Speaker 1: and we'll give you bond that's that's worth almost four
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars per person um. Or we'll just hold
Speaker 1: you until until this case gets litigated. If you want
Speaker 1: to come from out of town to you could do nothing,
Speaker 1: and then they decided that because you're from and just
Speaker 1: happened to be. This could be eighteen months before before try.
Speaker 1: If people are wanted a right, they obviously they want
Speaker 1: people to just plead guilty and not not have go
Speaker 1: to trial, um, which is nonsense because there's no evidence.
Speaker 1: But if they does get carried all the way to trial,
Speaker 1: that could take over a year. That could be just
Speaker 1: being being held four things 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
Speaker 1: abuse of abuse of the legal system, abuse of power. Um.
Speaker 1: But I mean it's you know, I say abuse, but
Speaker 1: like this is the way it's also designed, Like this
Speaker 1: is this is the purpose of professors, This is the
Speaker 1: purpose of police. They're doing their job as it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be. They're just like make it unfeasible for people
Speaker 1: to participate in dissidents, and to make it so any
Speaker 1: like any chance getting for people impossible, even for most people,
Speaker 1: like looking at an amount, like an impossible amount of
Speaker 1: money to come up with. It's so out of the
Speaker 1: realm of what is possible for so many, like normal
Speaker 1: everyday people who are participating in acts of profast then
Speaker 1: it's just it's just design people for as long as possible.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not even people who like this. This
Speaker 1: would be in many ways just as terrific. This is
Speaker 1: if if these charges were from people who are like
Speaker 1: in the forest UM so people like in a downtown
Speaker 1: marching like this is like dant marching. Like the most
Speaker 1: serious thing that happened was that a car spontaneously like
Speaker 1: that is it wasn't it was there's no anage that
Speaker 1: any of these people. It was even noted inside um
Speaker 1: during during these hearings that many of these people were
Speaker 1: arrested before the car he even caught fire. Like the
Speaker 1: just decided that again they were not ready to bats
Speaker 1: a kind that this was not and making sure obvious
Speaker 1: that the point of this is not too in any
Speaker 1: way treat this with any real reality or what happened,
Speaker 1: but just to make sure that we are the people
Speaker 1: are as punished as possible for any actions taken by
Speaker 1: a group that they were like intertionally, just even in
Speaker 1: the vicinity aftertown Affidavid's for the seven people arrested at
Speaker 1: the deadly police raid on January eighth, in which Tortuguita
Speaker 1: was killed, big In by alleging that the defendants were
Speaker 1: quote participating in actions as a part of the Defend
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Forest group, a group classified by the United
Speaker 1: States Department of Homeland Security as domestic violent extremists unquote,
Speaker 1: but 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 Cops City protesters, they justified
Speaker 1: it by claiming that Defend the Atlanta Forest had been
Speaker 1: designated a domestic violent extremist organization. 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 the public, but to judges
Speaker 1: 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 threat to its end. Injustice
Speaker 1: cannot go unchallenged unquote. To date, the Atlanta Solidarity Fund
Speaker 1: has supported over sixty people arrested for protesting the proposed
Speaker 1: Cops City development, just a few days before the killing
Speaker 1: of Tortoguita. It could Happen Here released an interview with
Speaker 1: people from the Solidarity Fund and Anti Repression Committee if
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about those organizations. The Solidarity
Speaker 1: Fund is dedicated to continue supporting protesters in Atlanta, but
Speaker 1: with the unprecedented seven hundred thousand dollars bail for just
Speaker 1: two people, they need help to continue supporting activists with
Speaker 1: bail and legal counsel while they are also supporting civil
Speaker 1: litigation against unjust arrests and police violence, in including an
Speaker 1: independent investigation into the death of Tortuguita. In a statement
Speaker 1: released after the bail hearing, the Atlanta Solidarity Fund said, quote,
Speaker 1: the arrested protesters and all other future protesters targeted for
Speaker 1: political activity in Atlanta need your help. Please host fundraisers,
Speaker 1: reach out to your networks, and donate to the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Solidarity Fund. We especially encourage you to consider becoming a
Speaker 1: recurring donor. Solidarity means all of us supporting each other
Speaker 1: for the long haul, until we are all free. Unquote.
Speaker 1: If the state is successful in creating this precedent of
Speaker 1: domestic terrorism, protesters across the country could be facing similar
Speaker 1: speech chilling charges. Activists and civil rights lawyers have called
Speaker 1: for everyone to strongly reject this extreme level of repression
Speaker 1: here and now before it becomes the norm for activists
Speaker 1: in every movement. What happens here will have legal implications
Speaker 1: for the whole nation. It creates and it create it's fear,
Speaker 1: It creates a chilling effect. It was after after the
Speaker 1: December raids, a lot of folks in the community. We're really,
Speaker 1: we're really questioning what was next, And it is scary
Speaker 1: to think about, but it's been really heartening how people
Speaker 1: have seen through the bullshit. Right, Atlanta has an incredible resilience,
Speaker 1: and so does this movement, even 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 first,
Speaker 1: uh 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. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think the terrorism charges. Well, I'll say I was out
Speaker 1: of town when the terrorism charges happened, and hearing about
Speaker 1: those was actually what motivated me to come back to
Speaker 1: Atlanta and move back into the woods because I knew
Speaker 1: that the terrorism charges were a scare tactic to try
Speaker 1: and discourage people from participating in the Woods and the
Speaker 1: movement at large. As the repression has intensified, and especially
Speaker 1: since the terrorism charges started coming in, the resolve and
Speaker 1: the strength of this community has intensified even more, and
Speaker 1: the increased repression has shown me the strength of this
Speaker 1: community and also how deeply committed people are to being
Speaker 1: a part of this fight no matter what. You can
Speaker 1: go to at jail Underscore support on Twitter for information
Speaker 1: on how to write to incarcerated protesters in Atlanta. The
Speaker 1: terrorism charges being brought against Stop Cop City protesters stem
Speaker 1: from a seventeen law passed in Georgia in the wake
Speaker 1: of the Dylan Roof massacre. This law, allegedly created in
Speaker 1: 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. And then the state
Speaker 1: is just as as a concept as a whole is
Speaker 1: is pretty much incapable of doing things for altruistic means.
Speaker 1: This is the same government that just so often uses
Speaker 1: like that completely simplifies like our issues, for example, with
Speaker 1: like foreign students in this country into just a problem
Speaker 1: to take away the abilities for the paratize people to
Speaker 1: defend themselves by oversimplifying it into a non ideological issue.
Speaker 1: And it's so like there's such a clear pattern of
Speaker 1: who is perpetrating these things it's all like the state.
Speaker 1: At any moment it can grab at power, it will
Speaker 1: do so. And that looks better sometimes because it might
Speaker 1: be like going after somebody like jelling Roof, But it
Speaker 1: gets turned around later and used by them too, you know,
Speaker 1: as must trying to defer the forest and make sure
Speaker 1: that people cannot make for doing it, for doing nothing
Speaker 1: more than asking the city to not do something that
Speaker 1: a vast majority of do not want to happen. Laws
Speaker 1: that are put into effect to stop far right violence
Speaker 1: will inevitably be used to repress left wing movements. Any
Speaker 1: expansion of state power will always come down the hardest
Speaker 1: on people who are actually pushing back on the power
Speaker 1: structures of the state, like the police. And now this
Speaker 1: domestic terrorism law is being used against force defenders for
Speaker 1: mere affiliation with stop Coops City. The way the state
Speaker 1: is using these domestic terrorism charges is relatively unprecedented within
Speaker 1: the United States, but this stuff is not completely unheard of.
Speaker 1: It's new for white Americans who are protesting. It's new
Speaker 1: in a very specific context, but it's not new for
Speaker 1: many other people who experienced state repression and have experienced
Speaker 1: state repression in other countries around the world. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's very similar to the way that like the
Speaker 1: US would you know, we had a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are over the years from the
Speaker 1: global War on Terror, locking up thousands of people who
Speaker 1: you know, so many of them were just the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army rolls into a country and it's like all of
Speaker 1: these people are terrorists. They do not have time to
Speaker 1: litigate the facts. They are looking at people as flight
Speaker 1: rests with their evidence with unsubstantially that claims about affiliations
Speaker 1: to whatever the hell it is, and then they you know,
Speaker 1: and the most extreme examples end up detained them going
Speaker 1: Tanama for the next twenty years. Olor And you know,
Speaker 1: we're about to the connection to all of this to
Speaker 1: the idea if it's the similar ways that the idea
Speaker 1: of persecutes their poor as the Pastinian people as waging
Speaker 1: a war in the population and then taking as much
Speaker 1: like like using as much force against the people who
Speaker 1: choose to fight that state hour and then just arresting
Speaker 1: huge numbers of people for claiming that they're like affiliated
Speaker 1: with the mass or something for limtage living in the
Speaker 1: same neighborhood and just throwing the key. This is very
Speaker 1: similar to tactics that we've seen used across the rest,
Speaker 1: specifically during the globe were on terror just to lock
Speaker 1: up huge numbers of people with impunity, without the ability
Speaker 1: for people to get proper legal representation or for their
Speaker 1: ever to be a moment to litigate the facts of
Speaker 1: what happened. And it's a really troubling development to have
Speaker 1: happening here. This has been so destructive and other countries
Speaker 1: all across the world, and we should all be extremely
Speaker 1: concerned that this is happening anywhere. Um, not just that
Speaker 1: it's touched the US now, but this type of legal
Speaker 1: system should not find company anywhere on the world. One
Speaker 1: of the topics of the original It could Happen Here
Speaker 1: series was through Co'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 front lines. In that way, it only makes sense
Speaker 1: that this is happening in Atlanta to such an extreme degree,
Speaker 1: Like the idea of like when it comes to from
Speaker 1: post boomerang, any strategies, tactics, equipment that are used overseas
Speaker 1: in a country's colonial moorish returned to the core to
Speaker 1: subjugate their own dissidents and their own people. The best
Speaker 1: example of this in the U S was meltorized policing.
Speaker 1: COMPS City is a huge example of this. We've seen
Speaker 1: a return of weapons and equipment from the do O
Speaker 1: D to US police, just as abe we saw a
Speaker 1: murdering and his trailer by swat team using night vision
Speaker 1: goggles and equipment that looks like it came off of
Speaker 1: like army rangers. Like it is. It is a return
Speaker 1: like the tactics and the equipment and the strategy and
Speaker 1: the mindset of an occupying army come back to the
Speaker 1: center of the empire and are used to subjugate its people.
Speaker 1: And in this case, COMPS City is a huge expansion
Speaker 1: of this because of what it's designed to train people
Speaker 1: to do, which is urban combat, and even more so,
Speaker 1: the legal system that the US has used overseas to
Speaker 1: prosecute thousands of people with their evidences as a well
Speaker 1: being returned to prosecute. This is defending the forest. The
Speaker 1: man shot by Swat in a trailer last month did
Speaker 1: end up surviving. But what no is talking about is
Speaker 1: that there is no true other. There is no true awareness.
Speaker 1: This new military urbanism that seems to be necessary to
Speaker 1: sustain hyper capitalistic gentrification is providing zones of experimentation through
Speaker 1: which the state is able to try out and hone
Speaker 1: their techniques of oppression. In my conversation with Cricket, they
Speaker 1: talked about this phenomenon it comes back or it starts
Speaker 1: here and where the training ground and then the export it.
Speaker 1: I mean there, it's it's and I think you're absolutely
Speaker 1: right that there is no true other. Right like that
Speaker 1: is a construct to keep us out of solidarity with
Speaker 1: one another. That is a strategy to keep us out
Speaker 1: of alliance at the same table and demanding more. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's something that I remember, I think it was. I
Speaker 1: think it was maybe something Buddha, judge or I don't know,
Speaker 1: some other some other politician. Uh, talked about in the
Speaker 1: wake of you know, saying like military weapons should not
Speaker 1: be used against like like should not be used in
Speaker 1: our streets or something like that. It's like, okay, but
Speaker 1: the logical extension of that is that they should be
Speaker 1: in other people's streets, like those are also civilians, Like
Speaker 1: those are also people's towns and cities and homes. Like
Speaker 1: why are we deciding that it's okay for them to
Speaker 1: be there and not not here? And obviously we're not
Speaker 1: actually deciding that they're not okay to be here. Um,
Speaker 1: But I feel like even the sort of attempts to
Speaker 1: try and address the insane militarization of the police don't
Speaker 1: rely on that other as if this is not a
Speaker 1: global issue, as if this is not something that affects everyone.
Speaker 1: The Solidarity Fund has said, quote invoking terrorism is a
Speaker 1: dog whistle calling for more police violence. Ever since nine eleven,
Speaker 1: American policy has been to hunt and kill terrorists by
Speaker 1: any means. Applying this same terrorism label to activists in
Speaker 1: our communities is prompting police to approach protests as war zones,
Speaker 1: prepared to kill at any time. This can be seen
Speaker 1: in the way GSP stormed the Atlanta forest with militarized
Speaker 1: equipment and killed Tortuguita and God. I think there's also
Speaker 1: this tendency to think of the assassination of environmental activists
Speaker 1: is something that happens elsewhere, Like this is something that
Speaker 1: happens in Central America, this is something that happens in
Speaker 1: the Amazon, Like this is not something that happens in
Speaker 1: the US. And it absolutely is something that happens in
Speaker 1: the US. And I think just sort of too to
Speaker 1: the name of your podcast, right, like it happens here,
Speaker 1: it's not and it it could be any of us.
Speaker 1: I think that that's another sort of possible strategy or
Speaker 1: idea behind this, like oh, they're outside agitators, thing of
Speaker 1: trying to create this scary stranger danger and trying to
Speaker 1: make people think that the person who has murdered couldn't
Speaker 1: be them because they're from here, like oh, like I'm local,
Speaker 1: Like I wouldn't have been murdered. No, Like like no,
Speaker 1: absolutely not, Like they will murder with impunity. And it's
Speaker 1: really scary and it's really enraging. Like I I think
Speaker 1: it is both to me inspiring and because if they're
Speaker 1: going to kill no matter what, then why not cause
Speaker 1: as much good trouble as we can. On Thursday January,
Speaker 1: Governor Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency in response
Speaker 1: to protests Saturday night sparked by Torteguita's death. Under that order,
Speaker 1: one thousand National Guard troops were mobilized to quell protests
Speaker 1: and police the streets of Atlanta. Once again, I'll end
Speaker 1: with the words of Tortuguita quote, Dear comrades, we are
Speaker 1: in the trenches of the class war. The capitalists would
Speaker 1: rather see us dead or enslaved, so we must fight
Speaker 1: like hell. Billionaires are causing a mass extinction and can
Speaker 1: only be stopped by collective action. Cops city can and
Speaker 1: must be stopped, but we need more help. We need
Speaker 1: people on the front lines and robust supply networks. We
Speaker 1: need to love and support each other unquote. Now that
Speaker 1: the war is here, how are we going to fight it?
Speaker 1: In the rain on leaves, tickle lift earl is the
Speaker 1: veget to midst The melody we mimicing is the sound
Speaker 1: of wind whistling long before the safety. It's channing under
Speaker 1: the stars, camped under vorgenopy, she sang o song, and
Speaker 1: she was far silent. No virus of violets, but the
Speaker 1: fragrance of her flowers, and continued to invite us the
Speaker 1: medicine materials of vitamins and minerals and all that is essential,
Speaker 1: which just grew right beside us. And Tyson started fighting
Speaker 1: over the gifts that she provided us, scorching the very
Speaker 1: soil that all of us derived from. And when empires
Speaker 1: learning came withstand Bia, we returned to the land where
Speaker 1: our ancestors rain dance. We are all her creatures, We
Speaker 1: still bear her features, the one and only reason all
Speaker 1: living things is breathing. The city's deceive and leave. Go
Speaker 1: see the dirt. Young gonna be among the lungs of
Speaker 1: Mother Earth. Cud yeah, yeah, yeah down. Before that shop
Speaker 1: him down, there was a forest. In the early morning
Speaker 1: of January thirty one, news started to proliferate that to
Speaker 1: the City of Atlanta, the Atlanta Police Foundation and Decapp
Speaker 1: County reached a quote unquote compromise regarding the future of
Speaker 1: Cops City. Words spread that city officials in Atlanta were
Speaker 1: about to announce a major scaling back of the Cops
Speaker 1: City project. At the project size would be dramatically reduced
Speaker 1: and focused more on fire Department and First respond to resources,
Speaker 1: as opposed to the original plans for the militarized police campus.
Speaker 1: Many were skeptical about this news and saw this simply
Speaker 1: as an empty promise masquerading as a compromise in a
Speaker 1: savvy pr move, but even some who were pessimistic at
Speaker 1: least saw this as a sign that the movement is
Speaker 1: having a substantial impact. Activists rallied outside city Hall, holding
Speaker 1: stop Coops city signs and Defend the Forest banners. Some
Speaker 1: reporters were denied entry into the press conference, and protesters
Speaker 1: stood outside Mayor Andre Dickens office and chanted. At the
Speaker 1: press conference that afternoon, the Mayor of Atlanta and representatives
Speaker 1: of Decapped County announced an agreement to allow the previously
Speaker 1: announced eight five acre Copsy project to proceed as planned,
Speaker 1: with land disturbance permits to be issued. The rest of
Speaker 1: the land parcel of forest least to the police foundation,
Speaker 1: will be allegedly set for preservation, a claim that was
Speaker 1: already previously promised by officials involved with the project. De
Speaker 1: Cab County and the City of Atlanta released a memorandum
Speaker 1: of understanding for the building of the site, containing a
Speaker 1: quote statement of principles, commitments, and intentions unquote. Mayor Dickens
Speaker 1: framed the facility as an answer to demands for police
Speaker 1: training reform duringies George Floyd uprising, saying, quote, this training
Speaker 1: needs space, and that's exactly what this training center is
Speaker 1: going to offer unquote. The mayor also responded to environmental
Speaker 1: concerns by claiming the area of forest slated for destruction
Speaker 1: contains only quote invasive species, softwood, and weeds unquote. Officials
Speaker 1: said the so called compromise agreement would contain provisions for
Speaker 1: preserving parts of the South River Forest. When asked how
Speaker 1: the environment would be protected, Mary Dickens mentioned that it's
Speaker 1: a three D eighty five acre set of land. Cops
Speaker 1: City is eighty five acres. The rest is green space,
Speaker 1: and that quote the environment will be protected in that
Speaker 1: way unquote, with no indication given on how it would
Speaker 1: be protected or by whom. Among the few environmental promises
Speaker 1: are quote replacing any removed or impacted specimen trees with
Speaker 1: one hundred new hardwood plantings on the site or elsewhere,
Speaker 1: as well as one specimen tree for any invasive species
Speaker 1: tree that was removed unquote. It's unknown if they have
Speaker 1: even counted how many trees have been felled so far.
Speaker 1: Activists called this employ to hastily pushed through a seque
Speaker 1: of land disturbance permits. The most up to date site
Speaker 1: plans has the Public Safety Training Center spread out over
Speaker 1: a parcel of one and seventy one acres, with about
Speaker 1: eighty seven of those acres slated for disturbance. There is
Speaker 1: nothing in the least agreement that restricts the Police Foundation
Speaker 1: from building outside of those one hundred and seventy one acres,
Speaker 1: though they promise it will be protected green space. This
Speaker 1: compromise pr stunt is not even a new tactic. In
Speaker 1: August one, after initial protests against the project delayed the
Speaker 1: city Council voute, the Atlanta Police Foundation claimed a similar
Speaker 1: quote unquote compromise. Instead of clearing the three hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty so acres that they are leased by the City
Speaker 1: of Atlanta, they would reduce the footprint of buildings and
Speaker 1: disturbed surfaces to only ninety acres, while more of the
Speaker 1: land would be cleared and turned into turf fields, shooting ranges,
Speaker 1: and horses stables labeled vote unquote green space. And wouldn't
Speaker 1: you know that sounds almost exactly identical to this new
Speaker 1: plan for compromise unveiled at the end of last month.
Speaker 1: Upon such rhetoric and empty promises, the movement didn't falter,
Speaker 1: but continued to demand and fight for the full cancelation
Speaker 1: of the project, whether in the Wilani Forest or elsewhere.
Speaker 1: After the January thirty Feet press conference, organizers in Atlanta
Speaker 1: called for a week of solidarity actions starting February nineteen,
Speaker 1: through quote calling on all people wherever you are to
Speaker 1: take action in solidarity with the movement to Stop Cops City,
Speaker 1: protest sit in, call and email the contractors building Cops City.
Speaker 1: Every action has an impact unquote. At Stop Cops City
Speaker 1: solidarity dot org, there are guides for various actions people
Speaker 1: can take, from calling Cops City contractors or investors, to
Speaker 1: posting flyers around to own or planning direct action using
Speaker 1: the interactive target map. If you do go on any
Speaker 1: movement related website, it's strongly recommended to use a VPN
Speaker 1: and a tour compatible browser like Brave. The national spotlight
Speaker 1: on the movement has certainly increased a great deal in
Speaker 1: the past month, both with an influx of scrutiny and
Speaker 1: support from across the country. And even the world. The
Speaker 1: press collective has always had kind of a hybrid hybrid
Speaker 1: role both of reporting on the movement and researching the movement,
Speaker 1: researching the prison farm. But a lot of media outlets
Speaker 1: don't quite understand the autonomous nature of the struggle. So
Speaker 1: we have kind of found ourselves in a role of
Speaker 1: kind of liaison ng between media and the rest of
Speaker 1: the movement. But thankfully it's not just us doing it,
Speaker 1: because boys, everyone interested. All of a sudden, no one
Speaker 1: was talking about the move have been at the beginning,
Speaker 1: so we're like, all right, we'll talk about it ourselves.
Speaker 1: We've been able to use our platform to publicize a
Speaker 1: lot of solidarity events. Okay, not just share memorials and
Speaker 1: what people want others to know about torts, but you know,
Speaker 1: publicize these things across the nation and across the world.
Speaker 1: Statements and solidarity have come in from radicals in Italy, Germany, France,
Speaker 1: and Rojava. After the killing of Tortuguita, vigils happened in
Speaker 1: cities all across the United States. A wave of targeted
Speaker 1: vandalism and direct action against cops, city investors, and contractors
Speaker 1: happened across the country. In response, to towards death in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: There's a concerted effort to not seed perception of the
Speaker 1: movement to the state. People have an intentional, collaborative way
Speaker 1: to affect how the movement is seen externally. This media
Speaker 1: strategy is simply one pronged of the fight, along with
Speaker 1: the encampments, sabotage, vandalism, pressure campaigns, and canvassing. I think
Speaker 1: it's really representative of the type of people that are
Speaker 1: dedicated to the struggle in general, the way that anyone
Speaker 1: and everyone has come together to handle the influx of
Speaker 1: media requests to make smart decisions about it, to make
Speaker 1: sure that decisions are made with the consent of those involved,
Speaker 1: be it sharing the stories of people who are arrested
Speaker 1: that day, sharing the stories of towards family and towards partners,
Speaker 1: and making sure to respect their boundaries in space. Despite
Speaker 1: the diverse nature of requests, there always seems to be
Speaker 1: somebody in the movement who is able to speak on
Speaker 1: whatever aspect of the struggle is needed. You need someone
Speaker 1: who's cut a masters and environmental engineering. There's someone in
Speaker 1: the movement that can talk to you for forty five
Speaker 1: minutes about the good environmental reasons to stop Cops City.
Speaker 1: You need someone to talk for three hours about the
Speaker 1: history of the play. There's someone for that too. Um,
Speaker 1: you need someone to talk about how the project is
Speaker 1: a pretty good example of why the Black Mecca is
Speaker 1: a myth. The movement has people who can speak to
Speaker 1: that too. There's been a tremendous amount of attention paid
Speaker 1: to the movement all of a sudden, and again, the
Speaker 1: way folks have just stepped up and come together to
Speaker 1: handle it, I think speaks to the communal nature of
Speaker 1: the movement. It is dedicated to building. It's not just
Speaker 1: about saving the forest, it's about saving the forest for
Speaker 1: the community. When I spoke with Karen, the neighborhood mom
Speaker 1: who started canvassing and organizing in her community, she mentioned
Speaker 1: how even her older family, who are a long time
Speaker 1: Georgia residents, haven't totally bought the state's talking points. I
Speaker 1: can say, you know, my mom and my mother in law,
Speaker 1: and like, you know, family, they know that I care
Speaker 1: about this, and you know, their boomers. But I've been
Speaker 1: surprised how there's a lot of there's a lot of
Speaker 1: skepticism in the police narrative, which I found really interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, normally when something like this happens, it's just
Speaker 1: a hundred percent police narrative. Mayor Dickens, the day Torte
Speaker 1: died put out a pretty infamous tweet that just expressed
Speaker 1: their condolences to the family of the trooper that was injured,
Speaker 1: and not one single word about the person that died.
Speaker 1: And in most fatal incidents with police, you at least
Speaker 1: get some kind of boilerplate language about, oh, we're sorry
Speaker 1: that someone died, and a lot of the initial statements
Speaker 1: from government and large organizations just just said nothing. But
Speaker 1: the media, even local news, and pretty much every single report,
Speaker 1: there's at least a line or two, if not a
Speaker 1: pretty decent chunk of you know, whatever five PM news
Speaker 1: story it is. Let's say, protesters have questions, people have
Speaker 1: questions about towards death. And given the pretty universally negative
Speaker 1: way that local and Atlanta media in particular has covered
Speaker 1: the Defend the Force movement, the fact that even those
Speaker 1: outlets have to respond to the overwhelming amount of folks
Speaker 1: speaking out about how what happened doesn't make sense, about
Speaker 1: what kind of person toward was, about how none of
Speaker 1: this had to happen in the first place. I'd love
Speaker 1: to say that someone who pays attention to the meet,
Speaker 1: how the media covers this that I could have predicted
Speaker 1: that would happen. Three members of Congress, Rashida Talib, Corey Bush,
Speaker 1: and Senator Ed Markeys have joined in calling for an
Speaker 1: independent investigation into Tortuguita's death. Like I saw a screenshot
Speaker 1: from NBC News this morning NBC News, and like the
Speaker 1: Chiron was, protesters still have questions about towards death, like
Speaker 1: that's from this more even after after the riot, quote unquote,
Speaker 1: after the arson and property destruction, and almost like a
Speaker 1: week after the incident. I mean it was It's hard
Speaker 1: to remember now, but I think it was like almost
Speaker 1: a month after George Floyd died before folks really yeah,
Speaker 1: before it really got national attention. With when Ray Shard
Speaker 1: was killed here in Atlanta, it was a little more
Speaker 1: immediate because of because of a lot of things. During
Speaker 1: the rally at Underground Atlanta, while people were speaking in
Speaker 1: front of a dozen or so news cameras, someone talked
Speaker 1: about how there are still people in town that are
Speaker 1: just learning about Cops City and the fight to prevent
Speaker 1: it from being built. They work. I had four different
Speaker 1: conversations about the Lannie Forest in regards to everything that's
Speaker 1: going on, UM with four different people who were unaware
Speaker 1: of what was happening. UM. As big as this seems
Speaker 1: right now, a lot of people are still unaware. And
Speaker 1: as long as we keep being loud, as long as
Speaker 1: we make sure that cops they will never be fucking built.
Speaker 1: We just got to keep talking about it. UM. Maybe
Speaker 1: Dickens Ryan Mills said, you have blood on your hands, uh. City.
Speaker 1: I think we're about to really see how how the
Speaker 1: national media is going to pick up on the domestic terrorism.
Speaker 1: And frankly, the fact that they're talking to us at all,
Speaker 1: or the fact that they're talking to the movement at all,
Speaker 1: I think speaks to the strength of the movement and
Speaker 1: the simple truth of it, which is that it didn't
Speaker 1: have to die. Um. And this is a very wide
Speaker 1: ranging movement with a lot of people who have some
Speaker 1: very good reasons for being opposed to the project. And
Speaker 1: I think those reasons are so compelling that I don't
Speaker 1: want to say it's easy to see past the noise,
Speaker 1: but it's not that hard. I remember one conversation with
Speaker 1: Tort where I was like, this might just be like
Speaker 1: egotistical or something that I really think this is a
Speaker 1: lot bigger than you, you know, just a little neighborhood struggle.
Speaker 1: And yeah, we talked about We're like, yeah, no, people
Speaker 1: don't know it yet, but it's the intersection of so
Speaker 1: many things, and you know, if more people realize that,
Speaker 1: it would be huge. Um. And it's you know, really
Speaker 1: heartbreaking that I think they were they were right, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't get to see it. One of
Speaker 1: the main talking points the state has been trying to
Speaker 1: push through to the media is condemning cops, city protesters,
Speaker 1: and force defenders as outside agitators. There's a Good Crime
Speaker 1: Thing zine titled The Making of Outside Agitators that focuses
Speaker 1: on the use of the term as related to Ferguson
Speaker 1: uprising that gave birth to the modern Black Lives Matter movement.
Speaker 1: For this next section, i'll paraphrase a little bit from
Speaker 1: that zine. The state and media's invocation of the term
Speaker 1: in Atlanta has been celebrating rapidly since the raids last December,
Speaker 1: using it alongside notions of terrorism to justify the police's
Speaker 1: violent escalation of protest suppression. For example, this clip from
Speaker 1: the Cops City Community Stakeholders Advisory Committee meeting held days
Speaker 1: after the December raid that introduced the domestic terrorism charges
Speaker 1: speaking is the assistant chief for the Atlanta Police Department,
Speaker 1: and so one of the things we charged him with,
Speaker 1: to include criminal trustpath was domestic terrorism charge that we
Speaker 1: put on them. So going forward that that is one
Speaker 1: of the charges will be using because that's exactly what
Speaker 1: they are. None of those people live here. They do
Speaker 1: not have a vest interest in this property, and we
Speaker 1: show that time and time again. Um was an individual
Speaker 1: from Los Angeles, California, concerned about a training facility being
Speaker 1: built in the state of Georgia, and that is why
Speaker 1: we consider that domestic terrorism. There's a darkly prophetic sentence
Speaker 1: from that crime thing. Gazine I mentioned quote when we
Speaker 1: hear them say outside agitators, we know the authorities are
Speaker 1: getting ready to spill blood. A pretty consistent talking point
Speaker 1: by the police foundation police the state in general has
Speaker 1: been that a lot of the people they've arrested for
Speaker 1: incidents related to defend the forest have had out of
Speaker 1: state licenses, out of state addresses, and what they describe
Speaker 1: as no connection to Georgia. They have been sent here
Speaker 1: to too. Stirrup trouble. Right, Um, they aren't from here,
Speaker 1: they're just they're just here too because they don't like
Speaker 1: the cops, right, They have no they have no stake
Speaker 1: in the struggle. So there's some pretty obvious problems with that.
Speaker 1: And there's some pretty lengthy historic racism tied to the
Speaker 1: term outside agitators. Um that makes it, you know, especially
Speaker 1: hain us to to use. In the South, the term
Speaker 1: outside agitators was used to describe the Freedom Writers. So
Speaker 1: it's got a little bit, got a little bit of
Speaker 1: history there. Governor Brian Kemp declaring a state of emergency
Speaker 1: so that the National Guard can be on standby to
Speaker 1: occupy Atlanta sure seems like outside agitation. But even the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Police Department's use of the term carries with it
Speaker 1: a great deal of hypocrisy. Ap D has since really
Speaker 1: made a big deal out of stepping up its recruitment efforts,
Speaker 1: and if you go back and look at those presentations
Speaker 1: to the media to city council, they consistently talk about, oh,
Speaker 1: we went to New York for three days, we went
Speaker 1: to Miami for a week. I believe it was would
Speaker 1: have been September um, just after Darren Sheer bomb was
Speaker 1: officially installed as chief of Police, he went before the
Speaker 1: city Council and talked about how he was so proud
Speaker 1: to have personally recruited someone from Detroit per basically a
Speaker 1: part of their loan application, because they're applying for a
Speaker 1: loan to finance part of cops City. By their own
Speaker 1: numbers of recruits that will be trained at this facility
Speaker 1: will come from out of state. They are forty percent
Speaker 1: from outside the state of Georgia. Again in ap D
Speaker 1: s on statements about the facility, this facility is built
Speaker 1: to bring in people from out of state, from out
Speaker 1: of the country, even because Atlanta participates in the Georgia
Speaker 1: International Law Enforcement Exchange, which is basically an exchange program
Speaker 1: with the idea with with the Israeli military. Where we
Speaker 1: go there, they come here, we teach each other. News
Speaker 1: articles claiming that a majority of those arrested are residents
Speaker 1: from other states might sound like convinced the evidence to
Speaker 1: middle class readers, But anyone who has been poor and
Speaker 1: precarious knows that the permanent addres us you give when
Speaker 1: you're arrested may not be the same as the place
Speaker 1: you actually live. You might give a different address because
Speaker 1: you aren't sure your current housing will last because your
Speaker 1: landlord doesn't know your place has more people in it
Speaker 1: than are named on the lease, or simply because you
Speaker 1: don't want local vigilantes to know where you live. Instead,
Speaker 1: you might give a more reliable, long term address, perhaps
Speaker 1: from another state. I mean not a human level, like
Speaker 1: how many times have you moved somewhere and not changed
Speaker 1: your address? How many times have you going to the
Speaker 1: DMV sucks? Yes, going to the t m V sucks.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people don't have the privilege to
Speaker 1: be able to go to the d n B or
Speaker 1: don't have a permanent home address. A lot of people
Speaker 1: are dealing with housing instability, like there's there's so many
Speaker 1: aspects of this that makes it pretty egregious. And not
Speaker 1: only of course, is this a struggle that is deeply
Speaker 1: compelling regardless of where you call home. It just doesn't
Speaker 1: match up to like the facts of life, Like it's
Speaker 1: it's a little bit bizarre their insistence that the local
Speaker 1: populace couldn't possibly be that opposed to it, when grab
Speaker 1: any one person in the movement who's from who's from Georgia,
Speaker 1: and they know tend people who's opposed to it. That
Speaker 1: person knows ten people. And also you you have statistics
Speaker 1: like during the what's seventeen hours of public comment, seventy
Speaker 1: people who called in were opposed to it. Basically the
Speaker 1: only people who weren't were people who self identified as
Speaker 1: police officers, firefighters, and those who lived in Buckhead. And
Speaker 1: it's it's not that simple, but it's pretty clear that
Speaker 1: maybe you'd be okay with building the facility somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're an abolitionist, maybe this, that and the other.
Speaker 1: But Atlanta doesn't want this. Atlanta doesn't want this here.
Speaker 1: Let's imagine that some of these arrestees who gave out
Speaker 1: of town addresses are in Atlanta for the very first time.
Speaker 1: Would that make them outside agitators? Maybe if the issue
Speaker 1: was specific to Atlanta alone and they had no stake
Speaker 1: in the cause, Cops City would be a place that
Speaker 1: police agencies from all around the country and world come
Speaker 1: to to train and practice urban militarism. Climate collapse and
Speaker 1: the destruction of forests is similarly a worldwide issue and
Speaker 1: one of apocalyptic magnitude. It's a false narrative in one sense,
Speaker 1: because climate change effects everybody cutting down a forest would
Speaker 1: make climate change worse like that's a very, very very
Speaker 1: obvious talking point. If if environment of protecting the environment
Speaker 1: is important to you, it is obvious that this is
Speaker 1: a very key struggle right now, especially in the context
Speaker 1: of Atlanta being and growing and also gentrifying city, and
Speaker 1: this being in a largely black and brown, middle to
Speaker 1: low income neighborhood, and this being such a vast green
Speaker 1: space in those communities that don't have the manicured Piedmont
Speaker 1: Park in their backyards. When people are suffering the same
Speaker 1: forms of oppression everywhere, it makes sense for us to
Speaker 1: come to each other's assistance. This is not outside agitation.
Speaker 1: This is solidarity. Solidarity has always been the most important
Speaker 1: tool of the oppressed. This is why authorities go to
Speaker 1: such lengths to demonize anybody who has the courage to
Speaker 1: take risks to support others. Crickets spoke at length about
Speaker 1: the outside agitator narrative that the state has been employing.
Speaker 1: I think one thing that comes to mind is something
Speaker 1: that I've heard a lot, is that the people in
Speaker 1: this movement are not from here, quote unquote, that they're
Speaker 1: outside agitators, that they're not from this community, they're you know,
Speaker 1: and and it's it seems to be very clear to
Speaker 1: be an attempt to sort of discredit what is a
Speaker 1: very clear majority of the community that does not want
Speaker 1: this forest destroyed, does not want cops city built, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: And that argument infuriates me because I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: the U. S. Military is the biggest like outside agitator
Speaker 1: in the world. Um. And I just I find that
Speaker 1: irony sort of unbearable. And then I think there's this
Speaker 1: question we can get into questions of what does it
Speaker 1: mean to be from somewhere? And what I think is
Speaker 1: a more helpful question is how are you somewhere? How
Speaker 1: are you in relation to a place? And I I
Speaker 1: think Tort with someone who was always trying to be
Speaker 1: in the right relation with the land and in right
Speaker 1: relation with their neighbors, in right relation with the communities here.
Speaker 1: One story that I keep revisiting of them is when
Speaker 1: we were checking in uh And and people are asking them,
Speaker 1: you know, what, what do folks in the forest need?
Speaker 1: What can we get them? Do they need food? What?
Speaker 1: You know what do they need? And Toward was like,
Speaker 1: oh no, actually, you know, we have everything we need.
Speaker 1: But it would be great if people could start we
Speaker 1: could make sure they're giving food to the poor folks
Speaker 1: in their own communities, Like make sure you're giving the
Speaker 1: food to the people in your neighborhoods. Are you checking
Speaker 1: in with the un housed communities in your neighborhood like
Speaker 1: they were? Just I think, constantly seeking to be in
Speaker 1: right relation. And I think regardless of where all of
Speaker 1: us are from, if we if we can can claim
Speaker 1: to be from somewhere, I mean, arguably, if we're not
Speaker 1: Muscogee Creek, none of us is from here. Um. But
Speaker 1: I think it's a more helpful direction to think about
Speaker 1: what are we doing once we're here? How are we
Speaker 1: trying to be here? And yeah, I mean that that
Speaker 1: specific argument. Really, it really frustrates me because I think
Speaker 1: it really obvious skates how much this is a local movement,
Speaker 1: and also having solidarity from across state lines, from across
Speaker 1: national lines, speaks to the intersection of our the intersections
Speaker 1: of our oppressions, the intersections of our movements. It doesn't
Speaker 1: speak to the fact that this is co opted or
Speaker 1: it doesn't indicate anything other than that none of us
Speaker 1: is free, into all of us are free. The ultimate
Speaker 1: goal of the police is not so much to brew
Speaker 1: utalize and pacify specific individuals, as it is to extract
Speaker 1: rebelliousness itself from the social fabric. They seek to externalize agitation,
Speaker 1: so anyone who stands up for themselves will be seen
Speaker 1: as an outsider, as deviant and anti social. Noah mentioned
Speaker 1: how the outside agitated or narrative is rooted in stripping
Speaker 1: people of their own autonomy. It's it's completely denying, like
Speaker 1: the freedom of movement and the freedom to decide that
Speaker 1: you would like to go and support other issues, and
Speaker 1: so with like the empathy of solidarity with other people.
Speaker 1: Just deciding that if you are living here a bit
Speaker 1: from out of town, that somehow makes you, that makes
Speaker 1: ms more and more dangerous, and if you are an
Speaker 1: official resident in some way it's all I mean. And
Speaker 1: even some of the people who are like out of
Speaker 1: town there like not even two hours away from where
Speaker 1: from where the prosecutors are claiming where they're from. The
Speaker 1: outside agitator's narrative only works if we have this sense
Speaker 1: of other nests that we talked about in the last episode,
Speaker 1: This disconnect and separation from neighboring struggles, as if lines
Speaker 1: on a map change the morality of actions, keeping people
Speaker 1: in pre trial jail for an unknown amount of time
Speaker 1: could could be literally over a year because they are
Speaker 1: deemed non local, so the judge thought they were quote
Speaker 1: unquote flight risk beyond the charges themselves, which are innately
Speaker 1: kind of absurd. And the brutality is is the point
Speaker 1: she audacity of keeping people with no evidence in cages
Speaker 1: for years um for going to a protest is just
Speaker 1: it's not surprising, but it still is incredibly upsetting. Like
Speaker 1: it's like, it's no and it would be completely decried
Speaker 1: if we're happening at any other country, right and a
Speaker 1: massive human rights violation. If it's happening in China because
Speaker 1: of the U. S. China relations, like absolutely not there,
Speaker 1: there'd be an entire like I don't know, national outcry.
Speaker 1: But because it's people who are resisting this government in
Speaker 1: this state, then yeah, it doesn't get the same kind
Speaker 1: of empathy, it doesn't get the same outcry. When I
Speaker 1: talked with Karen, she spoke about how thankful she is
Speaker 1: that there are people from across the country, people like
Speaker 1: tort who care about the South River Forest enough to
Speaker 1: travel to Atlanta to defend it. In terms of the
Speaker 1: narrative of like outside agitators. You know, I'm I'm really
Speaker 1: grateful that people are coming to like protect the forest
Speaker 1: in my backyard, Like I am, I have like so
Speaker 1: much gratitude. It is so it is so meaningful. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I yeah, I think I I think after the
Speaker 1: first raid I told towards that I'm glad I did.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it really is like just so much gratitude.
Speaker 1: The framing of outside agitators is meant to keep people
Speaker 1: away and stifle solidarity, just like the domestic terrorism charges
Speaker 1: are meant to the state is trying out every tactic
Speaker 1: to scare people away from participating in the movement. So
Speaker 1: it feels like just the past month there's been such
Speaker 1: a intense increase in the level of state repression and
Speaker 1: state violence. How do you see things evolving in the
Speaker 1: next few weeks and months and or like even days
Speaker 1: at this point, like just with how both like physical
Speaker 1: violence definitely increasing with the raids and now like you know,
Speaker 1: killing somebody, um, and then the types of like you know,
Speaker 1: judicial abuse of power of giving people seven thousand dollar bail,
Speaker 1: keeping you know, many others just in jail and perpetuity
Speaker 1: for who knows how long. Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's clear looking at this movement that the state, the
Speaker 1: cops police have always been the first to escalate, have
Speaker 1: and have now murdered someone, have now assassinated someone, and
Speaker 1: are the ones who are constantly sort of making putting
Speaker 1: other people's lives in danger. They're really the people who
Speaker 1: are making folks unsafe. And and to it was a
Speaker 1: street medic. To it was someone who went through street
Speaker 1: medic training with someone who was passionate about protecting their community.
Speaker 1: And a street medic training one of the things that
Speaker 1: is taught, there's a whole section on police weapons and
Speaker 1: state weapons and ensure we cover tear gas, we cover
Speaker 1: on bullets, we cover all anything that you can sort
Speaker 1: of commonly see protests or in raids. And one of
Speaker 1: the biggest weapons that we always cover his fear. And
Speaker 1: that is really what I see happening with this escalation
Speaker 1: is that yes, there's a sort of increase of literal weapons,
Speaker 1: of of of arms, of just everything that we've heard
Speaker 1: about in in the forest um. But I think when
Speaker 1: you take add in combination with the ludicrous charges, what
Speaker 1: they're really trying to weaponize as our own fear, as
Speaker 1: our our our own emotions, making us think that it's
Speaker 1: too dangerous to be in the forest, that it's not
Speaker 1: worth it, that it's too risky, making us think that
Speaker 1: the forest itself is somehow an unsafe place, making us
Speaker 1: think that the people who protected are unsafe. And I
Speaker 1: think that's the that's the sort of trend that I'm seeing.
Speaker 1: I think in terms of what's coming next, I think
Speaker 1: they're going to keep leaning into the weapon of fear.
Speaker 1: I think it's um I think it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's not not ha ha funny that they accuse
Speaker 1: protesters and the people who have been charged with domestic
Speaker 1: terrorism of intimidation, when clearly they're using those charges to
Speaker 1: intimidate people, both the people who are charged with it
Speaker 1: and anyone who might consider themselves an ally or a
Speaker 1: friend of the forest and a friend of the forest defenders.
Speaker 1: So what I see moving forward in terms of carrying
Speaker 1: towards legacy forward, in terms of carrying this movement forward,
Speaker 1: is not buying into that bullshit, like very much being
Speaker 1: fear walking and not trying to say people shouldn't be
Speaker 1: scared or not have those feelings. But one of the
Speaker 1: memories of tor that I have is them very clearly
Speaker 1: refusing intimidation. Whether it was cops, whether it was you
Speaker 1: know whoever the sort of representative of the state was,
Speaker 1: they never gave into that. And I think that's what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to carry forward with a lot of us
Speaker 1: are trying to carry forward. Noah spoke similarly about fear
Speaker 1: being a powerful weapon of the state and a very
Speaker 1: insidious one because it doesn't punish people for actions they
Speaker 1: may or may not have done, but instead works to
Speaker 1: prevent people from taking action in the first place. Fear
Speaker 1: the number one that the state ranch to bear all
Speaker 1: of their their toys and their guns and ship do
Speaker 1: not have the reach and do not have the capacity
Speaker 1: to stop liberation. Fear making people afraid of the idea
Speaker 1: of sidence is extremely powerful, and it's something that we
Speaker 1: all have to combat our own ways. It's something we
Speaker 1: will have to resist in our own ways because that
Speaker 1: obviously the state is capable of murdering and of putting
Speaker 1: people in prison for a very long time, and that
Speaker 1: is scary, and that is a valid thing to be
Speaker 1: afraid of. But we stand to lose so much if
Speaker 1: we do not combat that fear, to face off with them,
Speaker 1: that it's just something that I've found I have to manage.
Speaker 1: It's something that because we I'm so much more afraid
Speaker 1: of what we all lose if we don't stop them
Speaker 1: here than I am of myself being harmed or going
Speaker 1: to prison. We all stand to lose ten tens of
Speaker 1: millions of people stand to lose everything if we allow
Speaker 1: climate backalypse to bear, if we allow the powers that
Speaker 1: be to get significantly more effective at combating dissidents in
Speaker 1: the streets from you in gosh, not not just in
Speaker 1: the United States, but for national struggling in the same
Speaker 1: police department that cross training. Do you think the idea
Speaker 1: wouldn't becoming the facility to try and better heart, you know,
Speaker 1: past and dissidence. This will mean something to every foreign military,
Speaker 1: to every foreign police, for every police forshon There's a
Speaker 1: quote from Tortuguita talking about how to deal with fear.
Speaker 1: What I'm about to read also demonstrates, as their partner
Speaker 1: said that tort was very aware of the risks inherent
Speaker 1: to resisting the state, especially as a non white forest defender.
Speaker 1: But with an understanding of that risk and the fear
Speaker 1: associated with said risk, they chose it was worth it
Speaker 1: to keep on fighting. Quote, Am I scared of the state?
Speaker 1: Pretty silly not to be. I'm a brown person. I'm
Speaker 1: might be killed by the police for existing in certain spaces.
Speaker 1: Fear is the mind killer. That's a quote I think
Speaker 1: about often. I must not fear, and fear's the mind
Speaker 1: the killer. And here's a little death that brings total
Speaker 1: of liliteration. Face my fear. I'm permitted to pass over
Speaker 1: me and to me to continue. What tort said, quote
Speaker 1: I am scared, but you can't let the fear stop
Speaker 1: you from doing things, from living, from existing, from resisting unquote.
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen sixties, Atlanta was dubbed the City
Speaker 1: Too Busy to Hate. The phrase can be traced back
Speaker 1: to a Civil Rights era marketing slogan attributed to Mayor
Speaker 1: Ivan Allen, who spent millions of dollars in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties to promote Atlanta as a business oriented city, a
Speaker 1: city moving forward from its racial past and into a
Speaker 1: hopeful new future. This was the beginning of the Atlanta Way.
Speaker 1: Still today, you can find this city Too Busy to
Speaker 1: Hate everywhere on on murals, posters, and t shirts. It's
Speaker 1: become part of Atlanta's identity, or at least Atlanta tries
Speaker 1: to tell itself that within the slogan lies this admission
Speaker 1: of the belief that racism and oppression can be beaten
Speaker 1: by hyper capitalism, meaning the first and foremost goal of
Speaker 1: the city is economic progress. Equality and racial justice must
Speaker 1: take a back seat because the city is just too busy.
Speaker 1: There's a few better examples of this in action than
Speaker 1: the black neighborhoods that were demolished to build infrastructure for
Speaker 1: the Olympics and later the Mercedes Benz Stadium. Since then,
Speaker 1: the belt Line's original vision of public transit to green
Speaker 1: space and affordable housing has been abandoned in favor of
Speaker 1: developing luxury apartments and gentrified retail joints. As Fouko's Boomerang
Speaker 1: brings the internal colonization of the gentrification and increasing police
Speaker 1: and militarization to Atlanta, it only makes sense that cops
Speaker 1: city and the battle to stop it is happening here.
Speaker 1: Towart died two days right after Martin Luther Catteck Junior
Speaker 1: Memorial Day. We're in Atlanta. There's this whole section of
Speaker 1: the Delta Airport in Atlanta dedicated to John Lewis you
Speaker 1: can hear his voice on a loop saying good trouble,
Speaker 1: And yet as soon as the festivities are over, as
Speaker 1: soon as the fundraising is over, when someone is shot
Speaker 1: resisting the state and a peaceful, non violent direct action,
Speaker 1: they're labeled a terrorist. I don't understand how someone can
Speaker 1: possibly reconcile those two things. They seem to me to
Speaker 1: be grotesque. I mean, it's it's disgusting, but I don't
Speaker 1: see that reflected in any mainstream narrative. Noah talked with
Speaker 1: me about how he first got involved in the Stop
Speaker 1: Cops City movement. In my introduction to Cops is starting
Speaker 1: where much people shou and it landed when it got
Speaker 1: first leaked that this was a thing that the city
Speaker 1: was planning. Um, I remember having just a very like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what the fuck like reaction to realizing, like,
Speaker 1: they want to destroy the largest urban canopy in the
Speaker 1: country to build a big fake city for them to
Speaker 1: practice doing urban combat, and that's like parity dysturbian. And
Speaker 1: very quickly people were organizing in various different ways to
Speaker 1: to stop them, to to make their voices heard that
Speaker 1: this was not something that it ran on was okay with,
Speaker 1: This is not something we were okay with having in
Speaker 1: our communities. It is not something that anybody wanted. That
Speaker 1: took a lot of different fronts. For me. I mean
Speaker 1: that went from working, whether that be on the streets too,
Speaker 1: just doing food destroys and medical trainings too, you know,
Speaker 1: scampering around the woods with my friends like that took
Speaker 1: many different forms, just as forms of resistance to UM
Speaker 1: and over time that has changed and evolved. But I
Speaker 1: still think of something that working on a different French
Speaker 1: to be person as possible. The sheer resiliency we've seen
Speaker 1: in Atlanta post has been incredibly impressive and inspiring after
Speaker 1: the radical communities in a lot of cities dealt with
Speaker 1: pretty extreme burnout to due to such a grueling summer,
Speaker 1: and ever since then, people seem to be recovering and
Speaker 1: anticipating the next cycle of mass uprising. As news spread
Speaker 1: of Memphis police's brutal beating of Tyree Nichols, which resulted
Speaker 1: in his death, there was renewed discussion if it was
Speaker 1: going to spark the quote unquote next. But Atlanta is
Speaker 1: one of the few cities where things really haven't halted.
Speaker 1: Since Defend the Four, stuff has been going pretty hard
Speaker 1: ever since, like UM and it's been a very compressive
Speaker 1: amount of resiliency. Can you kind of talk on that
Speaker 1: aspect of how people have been able to do that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it comes down to having a really good
Speaker 1: support network of people, of people who are willing to
Speaker 1: um be, support activists who are jail, support activists medically
Speaker 1: and financially, like we're able to make this possible. And
Speaker 1: it also comes down to that to defend the forest
Speaker 1: movement is so it is so important to anybody, It
Speaker 1: should be so important to anybody who looked at as
Speaker 1: a strike back against police violence what cops it image
Speaker 1: for all of us is a world in which has
Speaker 1: much harder to resist police, especially in cities. And for
Speaker 1: a lot of activists who come out defend the forest
Speaker 1: became an extension of that fight. It became its own
Speaker 1: it's on fright to prohect the forest and an extension
Speaker 1: of the battle against the violence of the state and
Speaker 1: against the ability of the place to further militarize. And
Speaker 1: I think that kept a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: people going UM but I certainly happens. I mean it is.
Speaker 1: It can be really exhausting work, It can be really
Speaker 1: defeating at times, and it's been really important I think
Speaker 1: for people everywhere and and here to have you know,
Speaker 1: friends and and things that they can do too decompress
Speaker 1: and take time off when needed, to stay to keep
Speaker 1: the ability to keep doing this UM and to not
Speaker 1: burn out completely, and to be able to keep going
Speaker 1: against what feels like all adds and terms UM. Also
Speaker 1: just activists here a pretty faking resilient just I'm continuous
Speaker 1: or impressed by the people I see just continuing to
Speaker 1: go out day after day and working behind the scenes
Speaker 1: doing everything possible to make sure that we can keep going.
Speaker 1: The solidarity friend has a couple of things today, people's
Speaker 1: commissaries and the past has done later writing campaigns for
Speaker 1: a political prisoners across the country, which is certainly like
Speaker 1: a thing that you know, we're looking at the potential
Speaker 1: people being held very long term. That's absolutely going to
Speaker 1: be something in the current weeks that I help people
Speaker 1: UM spread to the like. Obviously, these people who are
Speaker 1: incrostrated are supporting every way we can possibly possibly do that.
Speaker 1: If the people currently incarcerated are granted bond during the
Speaker 1: appeal process and it's set to the same amount as
Speaker 1: the last two individuals. That would be three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty five thousand dollars per person for at least five
Speaker 1: more people. That included with like the previous bonding mats
Speaker 1: that were set for previous rage. I mean, we're approaching
Speaker 1: three million dollars and potential bonds, which is just designed
Speaker 1: to drain people are such much as possible and make
Speaker 1: the idea of protests seem impossible. And again this is
Speaker 1: just under there attractive perpetuate power fear and making it
Speaker 1: same as impossible to protestants and making it seem like
Speaker 1: if you were to be arrested that you would never
Speaker 1: That's terrifying. That's that's the number one. There have been
Speaker 1: a few semi distinct stages in the struggle against Cops City.
Speaker 1: In summer, the initial stage was trying to get the
Speaker 1: city council to vote no on the project. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of canvassing, calling representatives, involvement from large above
Speaker 1: ground organizations like the d s A and Sunrise, you know,
Speaker 1: people trying to quote unquote campaign the right way to
Speaker 1: get the project shut down before even started. And then
Speaker 1: even despite seventy of the local people who called in
Speaker 1: not wanting this, the city council voted for it anyway,
Speaker 1: and then starting two months after the vote, and for
Speaker 1: over a year now, we've had this forest occupation or
Speaker 1: encampment stage. People going into the woods and having their
Speaker 1: continuous physical presence there itself be a deterrent for construction. Concurrently,
Speaker 1: there have been random acts of sabotage, with construction equipment
Speaker 1: spontaneously bursting into flames, alongside pressure campaigns targeting subcontractors and
Speaker 1: cops city investors. With the past few police raids having
Speaker 1: been increasingly violent and the last one resulting in the
Speaker 1: death of a force defender, I asked the people I
Speaker 1: spoke with if they saw any forthcoming new stage of
Speaker 1: the movement, considering the cops are trying really hard to
Speaker 1: make it very dangerous to camp in the woods right now.
Speaker 1: What's your sense from on the ground, how stuff might
Speaker 1: you know with these increasing charges increasing, with bail phones,
Speaker 1: increasing use of forth what's some kind of ways that
Speaker 1: you field stuff might start changing on the ground, Like
Speaker 1: do you like, do you think the encampment that I
Speaker 1: were content will continue or will it kind of evolve
Speaker 1: in a new kind of unexpected direction. It remains to
Speaker 1: be seen how um the approach to living in the
Speaker 1: woods will adapt to these changes. Um. The decap County
Speaker 1: Police Department has claimed that they're going to increase their
Speaker 1: surveillance and patrol of the neighborhood that the Woods is in.
Speaker 1: It remains to be seen what that will mean for
Speaker 1: the encampment and how active they're going to be in,
Speaker 1: you know, repressing people in a day to day sort
Speaker 1: of thing. And also I think one change is reconsidering
Speaker 1: what on the ground means and what the bounds of
Speaker 1: the forest are. There's more woods that black Hall plans
Speaker 1: to develop on nearby, so reconsidering what on the ground
Speaker 1: is you know, brass field and gory construction sites could
Speaker 1: be considered and on the ground site you know, for actions,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think there's a lot of room
Speaker 1: to grow in that direction as well. Like do you
Speaker 1: see this moment as like a substantial turning point? I
Speaker 1: think so. I mean, I don't think it couldn't be
Speaker 1: a turning point. Um. I think that every every escalation
Speaker 1: of violence that this happened has been perpetrated by law enforcement.
Speaker 1: There's never been a moment in which the people combating
Speaker 1: law enforcement have been the ones to escalate the violence,
Speaker 1: and I think that this marks a willingness of the
Speaker 1: government here in the city government, that this is the
Speaker 1: hill that they're willing to die on. This is where
Speaker 1: they're willing to stand their ground and where they are
Speaker 1: proven to us that they are are committed and so
Speaker 1: committed to the idea of building cops city that they
Speaker 1: are willing to kill people. And I think that that
Speaker 1: is a turning point and how we as a movement
Speaker 1: have to be willing to respond to the state, and
Speaker 1: how we have to be willing to look at them
Speaker 1: not just as this entity that we are facing down
Speaker 1: like in like the courts and doing fun blacks, because
Speaker 1: that clearly doesn't work. They are just going to to
Speaker 1: murder us, but as a force that is a you know,
Speaker 1: like offensive militarised force coming after us. I think that
Speaker 1: is a that it marks a really big to shift
Speaker 1: in overallly looking at what the city government here is
Speaker 1: willing to do to get this done. And I think
Speaker 1: that a variety of tactics will always being play. People
Speaker 1: are always going to have different ways that they feel
Speaker 1: comfortable and and safe and responding. But I do think
Speaker 1: that I think what we saw on Saturday was a
Speaker 1: with a response to that that that people showed up
Speaker 1: and they made it very clear that we were not
Speaker 1: going to take this lying down, that people aren't going
Speaker 1: to be willing to let the state going answered, and
Speaker 1: that they don't gonna let the police going answered for
Speaker 1: this acts. And I think from from now on and
Speaker 1: going forward, I think we will. I think I hope
Speaker 1: at least that we see more and more people taking
Speaker 1: up acts of physical resistance to law enforcement, to the
Speaker 1: state to prevent them from building city and prevent them
Speaker 1: from preventing further action violence. So far, the forced occupation
Speaker 1: has proved effective in delaying the construction of Cops City.
Speaker 1: In the past, barricades have inhibited the movement of construction equipment,
Speaker 1: Machinery left in the woods has been sabotaged, and during
Speaker 1: attempts to fell trees, force defenders have put their own
Speaker 1: bodies on the line by climbing into the tree tops
Speaker 1: to prevent them from being cut down. Other prongs of
Speaker 1: the movement have similarly produced successes. Pressure campaigns focused on
Speaker 1: getting contractors and businesses to divest or pull out of
Speaker 1: the project resulted last April in a Reeves Young Construction,
Speaker 1: The initial contractor for Cops City, severing ties with the
Speaker 1: project after months of pressure, and just this month, Quality
Speaker 1: Glass Company announced that they would not be working on
Speaker 1: Cops City, as well as no longer doing business with
Speaker 1: brass Field and Gory, the current contractor for the facility.
Speaker 1: These pussure campaigns can include protests at company offices, phone
Speaker 1: calls imploring them to drop the contract, or actions more
Speaker 1: along the lines of vandalism at job sites, or visits
Speaker 1: to the neighborhoods of company executives, even to simply drop
Speaker 1: off flyers or banners. I don't think this was ever
Speaker 1: a fright that we're gonna win. On one front um
Speaker 1: the amount of people that we were able to put
Speaker 1: in the in Cameron, the forest was really beautiful to see,
Speaker 1: but the state was always going to be able to
Speaker 1: put out enough manpower to shut that down. This is
Speaker 1: a battle that we ran on multiple friends, and that
Speaker 1: includes you know, that includes having conclude having physical presence
Speaker 1: in the forest and preventing machinery from permanent but that
Speaker 1: also includes acts of sabotage, making sure that contractors who
Speaker 1: are signed on the Cops that they do not feel
Speaker 1: comfortable and do not feel safe signing on against project
Speaker 1: and making this economically impossible for the city to continue doing.
Speaker 1: As far as being like a new strategy, I don't
Speaker 1: know if it would be spously combushed and judge things,
Speaker 1: but I do think this marks are a point and
Speaker 1: potentially like the frequency of things happening and necessary, I
Speaker 1: think evaluating of where we are now and thinking realistically
Speaker 1: about what our next step shout to make this an
Speaker 1: untenable situation for this idy to continue past well. One
Speaker 1: evolution that I see happening is a consensus amongst long
Speaker 1: term organizers in Atlanta that we want as many people
Speaker 1: coming here to participate as possible, and also that I
Speaker 1: think one change is being less picky in who we
Speaker 1: invite to participate and encouraging like liberals and moderates to
Speaker 1: be a part of this. They've always been a part
Speaker 1: of it, but really um emphasizing that side of the
Speaker 1: movement more. Back in the Defend the Atlanta Forest episodes
Speaker 1: from last May, I talked about the Shack model, the
Speaker 1: aim of which is to make construction economically untenable by
Speaker 1: maintaining a presence in the forest, sabotaging work, and targeting
Speaker 1: specific subcontractors locally and elsewhere. In addition to contractors, corporate
Speaker 1: funders affiliated with the APF can also be targeted to
Speaker 1: distincentivize affiliation with the project. Solidarity actions targeting Atlantic Police
Speaker 1: Foundation contributors have been happening nationwide. As mentioned at the
Speaker 1: top of the episode, A Week of Solidarity is coming
Speaker 1: up on February and Stop Cop City Solidarity dot org
Speaker 1: has many resources. In the past, actions have included everything
Speaker 1: from office protests, divestment campaigns, vandalism, and actions by workers
Speaker 1: within these companies to pressure them into cutting ties. No
Speaker 1: action is too small or too ambitious. In an palysis
Speaker 1: on tactics published recently on its going down, said this
Speaker 1: regarding the targeting of Cops City investors. Quote In other campaigns,
Speaker 1: banks like Wells Fargo have been forced to divest from
Speaker 1: police and prison expansion, but these efforts often take years
Speaker 1: and lots of resources. Atlanta Police Foundation supporters like public universities,
Speaker 1: Georgia State University, Georgia Tech, or Emery University could be
Speaker 1: lower hanging fruit. Comrades should identify which Cops City funders
Speaker 1: are most vulnerable to pressure, where potential allies like student
Speaker 1: groups and unions are positioned and share this info and
Speaker 1: synchronize actions. Unquote. Bureaucratic red tape can also be effective
Speaker 1: in delaying progress. Ongoing zoning appeals could result in an
Speaker 1: official stock work order, but it remains unseen if such
Speaker 1: an order will even be followed, as currently laws around
Speaker 1: zoning appeals are being ignored by the contractors and the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Police Foundation. Tortu Guita had spoken of a theory
Speaker 1: of THEIRS concerning the potential for intense police repression and
Speaker 1: how the aftermath of that might play out. Quote. They
Speaker 1: could come in and completely destroy the place, raise it,
Speaker 1: arrest everybody they could find, kill anybody who resists arrest.
Speaker 1: They could do that, and then days later there would
Speaker 1: be a shipload of people back here. For every head
Speaker 1: they cut off, there would be more who would come
Speaker 1: back to avenge the arrested, to avenge the tort did
Speaker 1: not finish that sentence, but resuming, what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: if they do a huge crackdown and completely try to
Speaker 1: crush the movement, they'll succeed at hurting some people, they'll
Speaker 1: succeed at destroying some infrastructure, but they're not going to
Speaker 1: succeed at stopping the movement. That's just going to strengthen
Speaker 1: the movement. It will draw a of attention to the movement.
Speaker 1: If enough people decide to do this with non violent action,
Speaker 1: you can overwhelm the infrastructure of the state. That's something
Speaker 1: they fear more than violence in the streets, because violence
Speaker 1: in the streets they'll win. They have the guns for it.
Speaker 1: We don't unquote. No matter how the movement continues, the
Speaker 1: weight of torts absence will be felt as long as
Speaker 1: this fight carries on. It's such a huge loss. Um.
Speaker 1: But as we as we keep thinking about you know,
Speaker 1: w W t D, what would TORT do. It's continue
Speaker 1: to support those projects. It's continue to uplift the spaces
Speaker 1: and groups that are supporting the most vulnerable amongst us
Speaker 1: and uplifting their voices, uplifting their safety. And they're going
Speaker 1: to continue to be trainings offered, training specifically for folks
Speaker 1: who are marginalized and afraid of gun violence and want
Speaker 1: to know how to be able to protect themselves and
Speaker 1: protect their friends. This came about specifically in the wake
Speaker 1: of the shooting at the gay bar Um I guess
Speaker 1: a few months ago now, Jesus, and that was something
Speaker 1: that Toward was helping to organize. So yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna keep doing that work. How do you think
Speaker 1: like a continue on without without towards there? Now? Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I think they set me up the hardest
Speaker 1: thing to navigate, Like, Okay, what can I do? Where
Speaker 1: can I fit in? Like I'm shorter, you know, living
Speaker 1: in the forest, And I think with just like the canvassing,
Speaker 1: I feel like I've really figured out the ways I
Speaker 1: can you know, my place in it enough to keep
Speaker 1: me busy. It was towards kind of very instrumental to
Speaker 1: having you help figure out like your role in this.
Speaker 1: I mean honestly, I would just like spitball, you know,
Speaker 1: an idea, and they'd be like, yeah, you should do that.
Speaker 1: Um we were like yeah, that'd be sick. And that
Speaker 1: gave me the confidence to be like okay. And also
Speaker 1: like I think this movement is into sting because it's
Speaker 1: totally different from any other organization or anything I've done
Speaker 1: in that like if you want to volunteer in any
Speaker 1: other thing, like you know, you make a graphic and
Speaker 1: you check it and you send it to someone and
Speaker 1: get it approved, you know, And just like the kind
Speaker 1: of deconstructing that thinking was like I mean to. It
Speaker 1: was really instrumental in that and it can be like
Speaker 1: difficult to navigate, but really just walking all that back
Speaker 1: and being like if you want to, like you know,
Speaker 1: canvass your neighbors like you just do it. The Stop
Speaker 1: Cops City movement has called for a fifth Week of
Speaker 1: Action to be held on March fourth through March eleventh
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, Georgia. They are asking all those opposed to
Speaker 1: Cops City to come participate in a variety of events
Speaker 1: and actions both in and out of the forest. And
Speaker 1: if you're able to bring a tent, if you're unable
Speaker 1: to travel, there's still calls to support people in your
Speaker 1: own community who might be able to do so. This
Speaker 1: Week of Action will be a key moment in the
Speaker 1: next phase of the fight to defend the forest. I
Speaker 1: want people to know that being in the woods, even
Speaker 1: if just for a few days, will transform you and
Speaker 1: unexpected and delightful ways. And that's something that we witnessed
Speaker 1: with Towart Toart lived in the woods for less than
Speaker 1: a year, and they transformed and blossomed into their purpose
Speaker 1: in unexpected and beautiful ways. And so if you have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to come and spend any amount of time
Speaker 1: in these woods. I encourage you to do so because
Speaker 1: I think that you'll find that it will nourish you
Speaker 1: and aid in your growth as a human. The police
Speaker 1: have not succeeded in scaring everybody out of the forest. Well, Lonnie.
Speaker 1: People's Park is still legally required to operate as a
Speaker 1: public park. Last month I saw regular people jogging the trails.
Speaker 1: People still come every day. The movement has only grown
Speaker 1: despite the rep Russian and now forced Defenders in Atlanta
Speaker 1: are urging people everywhere to organize for the upcoming mass convergence.
Speaker 1: A large list of resources and movement websites I'll be
Speaker 1: putting in the description for people to learn more and
Speaker 1: stay up to date with information regarding the Week of action.
Speaker 1: I'll end this series by reading from a defend the
Speaker 1: Forest poster that I saw around Atlanta. Quote, it is
Speaker 1: your mission to stop cops city by all of the
Speaker 1: means at your disposal, without hesitation. Defend the forest from destruction,
Speaker 1: the city from commercialization, the future from ruin, the imagination
Speaker 1: from conquest, and the heart from resignation. Do not wait
Speaker 1: for further instruction. Reality is the battlefield. The rain on
Speaker 1: leaves signle lift earliest, the vegetum midst the melody we
Speaker 1: mimic in is the sound wind whistling long before to
Speaker 1: say his channing under the stars. On camped under organic pie,
Speaker 1: she sang a song, and she was far silent. No
Speaker 1: virus and violets, but the fragrance of her flowers, and
Speaker 1: continued to invite us the medicine materials of vitamins and
Speaker 1: minerals and all that is essential, which just grew right
Speaker 1: beside us. And Tyson started fighting with the gifts that
Speaker 1: she provided us, scorching the very soil that all of
Speaker 1: us derived from. And when empires learning came withstand by you,
Speaker 1: we returned to the land where our ancestors rain dance.
Speaker 1: We are all her creatures, we still bear her features. Then,
Speaker 1: one and only reason all living things is breathing the
Speaker 1: city's deceive and lead. Go see the dirt, young gonna
Speaker 1: be among the lungs of mother Earth. Cuse, yeah, yeah, down,
Speaker 1: Let's shop him down. There was a forest. God, fucking
Speaker 1: damn it, I just got another fucking message about the
Speaker 1: gold ads. Leave me alone, all right? And could happen here?
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Speaker 1: you aren't currently putting all of your money into gold,
Speaker 1: and I mean all of your money, then you're just
Speaker 1: leaving cash on the table. Gold is such a good
Speaker 1: investment vehicle that if you had bought ten tho dollars
Speaker 1: worth of gold twenty years ago, you would have roughly
Speaker 1: the same amount of money. Can can you beat Can
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Speaker 1: if you're worried about instability, obviously if society collapses, gold
Speaker 1: is the thing that you want to have, because, of
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Speaker 1: who has read much more marks than idea marks, particular
Speaker 1: that we would go back to the gold standard. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you're it's gonna be great. The immortal science wins again. Um,
Speaker 1: this is actually today we are talking about um collapse,
Speaker 1: but not the collapse of the economy, because the economy
Speaker 1: is kind of always collapsing. That's part of what makes
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Speaker 1: the market for eggs has gotten insane. People are paying
Speaker 1: crazy prices for huevos these days. Um, and there's there's
Speaker 1: no no good reason for it, obviously, Like it's the
Speaker 1: you know, egg production in some places was like impacted
Speaker 1: by the bird flu, but that is not why eggs
Speaker 1: have gotten more expensive. It's pure corporate greed. But regardless
Speaker 1: of that, people are finding themselves thinking about like, wow,
Speaker 1: eggs are expensive as hell. Should I maybe get some chickens? Um?
Speaker 1: And today we have several chicken owners on the podcast,
Speaker 1: myself and James Stout, and several people who don't have chickens,
Speaker 1: but our chicken curious. So we're gonna talk about having chickens. James, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do. I've been training for this my whole life.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this, this was your idea. So yeah, Vince
Speaker 1: is very much my baby. So if you guys just
Speaker 1: want to sit back and learn about chickens, your baby
Speaker 1: James or your egg, well that's the thing. If nar
Speaker 1: robert one could be the other. I've given enough time.
Speaker 1: People have talked about this. I've heard. Yeah, it's been
Speaker 1: a discussion for some time in the chicken community. All right,
Speaker 1: talking about chickens. Uh. So I want to start out
Speaker 1: with like, if you're thinking about getting chickens, and I
Speaker 1: have written a script for this, thank you. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: ready to roll. So the most important thing, obviously when
Speaker 1: you're getting animals, you're getting any animals, is like that
Speaker 1: you're responsible for a living thing and you have to
Speaker 1: take care of it and you have to be kind
Speaker 1: to it. And you have to treat it well and
Speaker 1: make sure that if you're not able to look after it,
Speaker 1: like if you travel a lot for work and someone
Speaker 1: else can write. I think chickens are particularly useless, or
Speaker 1: they're useful, and they're very nice, but they're not like
Speaker 1: the most practical animals, like if you if you leave
Speaker 1: them alone, they will die. If it gets too hot,
Speaker 1: they will die, if it gets too cold, they will die. Um, Like,
Speaker 1: you do have to look after them. They're not like
Speaker 1: a wild animal that comes in sometimes in lace eggs,
Speaker 1: like they are an extremely domesticated animal that's been domesticated
Speaker 1: for probably thousands of years. So it's a responsibility. I guess. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna I'm gonna go through some of the stuff.
Speaker 1: If you guys have any questions as we move along,
Speaker 1: please feel free to ask him. I want to start
Speaker 1: out with the breeds of chickens, which I think are
Speaker 1: a good idea. And so when you're looking at chickens,
Speaker 1: the first thing you're gonna want to look at if
Speaker 1: your space right, Like how much space do I have?
Speaker 1: And there are websites where you can calculate like working
Speaker 1: with your acreage or or how many yards you have.
Speaker 1: How many chickens are appropriate? Was the level of prepper
Speaker 1: and the stuff. I'm like, I'm like so happy because
Speaker 1: I will I will note be be careful about getting
Speaker 1: too many. When I got the place that I got,
Speaker 1: I inherited fourteen chickens. And that is a tremendous quantity
Speaker 1: of chickens. And and there was especially chickens make you know,
Speaker 1: kind of in their prime. Egg laying can make one.
Speaker 1: Sometimes some chickens will do to a day. So there
Speaker 1: were weeks where I was getting like close to a
Speaker 1: hundred eggs, which is far more, far more eggs than
Speaker 1: a human being can possibly consume. You can consume, I
Speaker 1: can consume a hundred eggs. Well, they will, they will
Speaker 1: consume you. I will mail you eggs always be more eggs.
Speaker 1: Eggs are like eight. I walked into a grocery store. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm I'm now doing the bit. I walked
Speaker 1: through the grocery store in the eggs where eight fifty,
Speaker 1: and I was like, what the fund is going on here? Man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna make a fucking bank. I have
Speaker 1: like literally sick see eggs sitting in my kitchen. Right now,
Speaker 1: Robert's going to sell eggs in the dark web. You
Speaker 1: goddamn right. This is how I fucking leave this this
Speaker 1: damn podcasting bullshit behind. I'm gonna become the egg man
Speaker 1: and bitches. Finally, I used for cryptocurrency egg coin. It's
Speaker 1: actually it's tied to the value of eggs. As you
Speaker 1: completely collapsed. Um. Yeah, don't don't over chicken yourself like
Speaker 1: starting out, but also don't get too few. You do
Speaker 1: want at least three. They'll be sad, they won't get along.
Speaker 1: And if you if you're like a normal household, three
Speaker 1: is probably a great number of chickens. Like you, you
Speaker 1: will probably be quite happy with three to four chickens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'll get like if you estimate like six eggs per
Speaker 1: chicken per week, it's like a fair kind of estimate.
Speaker 1: They'll take some time off during the year or with seasons,
Speaker 1: change the molten stuff. So eighteen eggs, like, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: going pretty hard in a my household, you've eating that many.
Speaker 1: So I think if you start, people like to think
Speaker 1: that they should get bantams to off with, do we
Speaker 1: know what bantams are? Non chicken understanding. I have a
Speaker 1: lot of chickens, but I don't know anything about the
Speaker 1: kind chickens. So we've had a few bantams. They're not great,
Speaker 1: to be honest, Like bantams are mostly showing birds. So
Speaker 1: it's a smaller chicken I think of, it's like a
Speaker 1: half sized chicken, right, um, And if you've seen like
Speaker 1: a really fancy and you can go ahead and google
Speaker 1: some bantams like, yeah, they're really little. Yeah, they're really pretty.
Speaker 1: I like to I like large chickens. Now, look, I
Speaker 1: don't engage in cock fighting. I think it's immoral, but
Speaker 1: I like to know theoretically if they had to, my
Speaker 1: chickens could handle themselves in a fight. Did anybody ever
Speaker 1: think Robert would be like you, I'm a big chicken Guyable,
Speaker 1: it's a yeah, you want big chickens. Some breeds to
Speaker 1: look for Orpington's like buff Orpington's and you can remember
Speaker 1: that big buff and great ass chickens. Yeah, I could
Speaker 1: get a yoke to orpingtons. Get to get a hench
Speaker 1: Rhode Island red. People in America don't say hench, but
Speaker 1: azing oh yeah, we used to have a couple of those.
Speaker 1: So so one of the things about bantams is you
Speaker 1: can't get them. Point of lace. The point of flay
Speaker 1: is when they've been sexed. Right, so you know that
Speaker 1: they're girls and they they come to you just to
Speaker 1: when they're about to lay, right, and you don't. Generally
Speaker 1: you get bantams younger and you don't get them sexed.
Speaker 1: So in our case, we had one. She she crowed
Speaker 1: a lot, so we thought she's a rooster. She wasn't.
Speaker 1: Any other one was a rooster. Um, So that's going
Speaker 1: my question, do you need to get a rooster? Also,
Speaker 1: no chicken regardless. I can't. I don't understand how that works. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the chickens are gonna lay regardless, right, that's just
Speaker 1: how they can't do. That's that's the eggs on fertilized, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they won't make chickens. They will be baby Okay,
Speaker 1: I get it. It's I get it. Yeah, like a
Speaker 1: human doing it. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: like their equivalent of a menstruation effectively. Yeah. That now
Speaker 1: everything's coming back to me as far as like being
Speaker 1: in talking points. Go chickens, by the way, because chickens are,
Speaker 1: as James said, these are animals and you have to
Speaker 1: take good care of them. That is your responsibility. You
Speaker 1: do low key realize the longer you have them. But
Speaker 1: they're monsters, like their favorite food is their own kind.
Speaker 1: They have each other, kidsnosaurs. Yeah, so like, don't go
Speaker 1: outside with your chickens. Like the other day I was,
Speaker 1: I was cutting down some some bushes and I had
Speaker 1: was wearing shorts a little cut from the from the thorn.
Speaker 1: When they see blood, they are just like fucking missile.
Speaker 1: Does that affect the egg? Like? Yeah, I mean what
Speaker 1: you made them? So? Yeah, we we butchered a deer
Speaker 1: last year and we wound up with a lot of
Speaker 1: like deer fat and kind of like meat that you
Speaker 1: gave it to the chickens. Well, yeah, we had some
Speaker 1: stuff because the deer had been hit by a car.
Speaker 1: There was some meat we couldn't eat, so we would
Speaker 1: up giving several pounds of meat to the chickens and
Speaker 1: those eggs fucking ruled. Okay, it's not advised to feed them, dear,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so you wanted stuff actually if you so,
Speaker 1: they do be There's a stuff called purple spray. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's not what it's actually called, but it's purple
Speaker 1: and it's a spray and you can we already called
Speaker 1: it purple spray. You can spray it on them and
Speaker 1: it just stops it looking like blood. I'm sure it's
Speaker 1: like an antibiotic or maybe antiseptic, but yeah, you could
Speaker 1: spray that on the chicken. So, like one of mine,
Speaker 1: she's just got this little thing on her wing that
Speaker 1: opens up every now and again, and I just make
Speaker 1: sure I spray that and that stops her from the
Speaker 1: other ones from pecking her, right, Yeah, so they have
Speaker 1: to be. We had a last year some kind of animal,
Speaker 1: I think it was probably a like a like a
Speaker 1: possum or something, I don't really know. Some kind of
Speaker 1: animal got into the coop and attacked my chickens. And
Speaker 1: we had I had one chicken. We called it the
Speaker 1: anarchists chicken because it could always escape. It like never
Speaker 1: was in the cage um. And when when they got attacked,
Speaker 1: the anarchist chicken leapt to defend the rest of the
Speaker 1: flock and fought off whatever it was it attacked. But
Speaker 1: she wound up with a hole in her side, and
Speaker 1: so I like took her and I dressed the wound,
Speaker 1: and I put her back in the cage and they
Speaker 1: all immediately tried to have a separate Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I that was the lesson that I learned. I had
Speaker 1: to take her out because yeah, we have a tiny
Speaker 1: rabbit hutch that we use. It's called the Merrow Peet
Speaker 1: Memorial Chicken Hospital, because Merri, it's not about chickens who
Speaker 1: died and you. You just put put them in that
Speaker 1: for a few days until they're better, and then then
Speaker 1: they can reintegrate. It's fine. And so I did. We've we've,
Speaker 1: we've we've real little progress on my script. Okay, so sorry,
Speaker 1: you want to get buff or Pinkton's right down and
Speaker 1: reads are good. Plymouth rocks, americanas are nice. Have you
Speaker 1: guys seen those? If we don't have if we don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about talking about what do they
Speaker 1: teach you in school? Like so they're called Easter eggers.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they lay different colored eggs, like pastel colored eggs,
Speaker 1: like blue and green eggs. Have you not been exposed
Speaker 1: to this at all? No? I get up extra cornfield.
Speaker 1: But also I I guess, I guess I was a
Speaker 1: round a farm. But we didn't interact with the chickens
Speaker 1: because you don't I don't know they were like here
Speaker 1: de old cows instead, that was like, chickens are good.
Speaker 1: Don't go dive straight into cattle if you're getting into
Speaker 1: animal husband. But yeah, the americanasun say ladies colored eggs.
Speaker 1: One of my friends dad's had them when I was
Speaker 1: a kid and he made bank selling them around Easter.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if you're looking to get into your chicken hustle.
Speaker 1: And then leg horns are like really good. They're like
Speaker 1: high the chickens, but they are allowed. So if you
Speaker 1: live near people, um, I would consider not. You should
Speaker 1: also check your local laws, Like where I live, you
Speaker 1: can't have a rooster, and you can have up to
Speaker 1: five chickens within city limits. You can't have a rester.
Speaker 1: You don't really want a rooster have chicks. And one
Speaker 1: of the things roosters can do is like peck at
Speaker 1: your chickens and effectively like ware holes in there, like yeah,
Speaker 1: they wind up like parts. Yeah they're little sons of bitches.
Speaker 1: We harvested ours as soon as I got the place,
Speaker 1: and yeah, that's that's the term. This leads into a
Speaker 1: question that I've been wanting to ask, which is that Okay,
Speaker 1: it is my under is my firm belief that I
Speaker 1: could defeed a chicken in single combat. It would send
Speaker 1: me to the hospital. But apparently there's the thing you
Speaker 1: need to do with your chickens. So how how practical
Speaker 1: is it to defeed a chicken in single combat if
Speaker 1: you have to extract another chicken or something. I've never
Speaker 1: actually had any kind of aggression from my chickens. When
Speaker 1: I'm bleeding, they'll pick my leg. But yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: how's that had a greatful while we we hadn't realized that,
Speaker 1: Like they so a thing that you want when you
Speaker 1: get chickens, as a rodent proof freeder, right, So you
Speaker 1: don't want to just put the food in the bowl
Speaker 1: if you have an issue with rodents. You want to
Speaker 1: have a thing. So like basically she comes up, she
Speaker 1: stands on a step and that opens up the feeder
Speaker 1: and she can pack and eat, right, And you want
Speaker 1: to get a rodent proof feeder, you can just buy
Speaker 1: them attractive supply. But I was gummed up with rain
Speaker 1: and we didn't realize, and the chickens are obviously not
Speaker 1: getting food. They're upset with this, so they would attack
Speaker 1: me every time I came outside, like they'd attacked me
Speaker 1: and I'd be like, go away. So I'd give them treats, right,
Speaker 1: I give them like worms and apples. A kitten has arrived,
Speaker 1: I have to she was to hold or to be held.
Speaker 1: I'm holding my cat for anyone that's like, what's happening?
Speaker 1: Or she just wanted to be snuggled. That's okay, she's
Speaker 1: given your gears. Um. Yeah, so you the mind would
Speaker 1: attack me for a while and I just gave them meal,
Speaker 1: and when they would attach me so unconsciously, I was
Speaker 1: reinforcing the attacking behavior. And so they would attack me
Speaker 1: for a while. But I think you could take and
Speaker 1: just keep swinging and yeah, you know, you don't have to.
Speaker 1: They're very like most of the time, at least mine.
Speaker 1: I hand feed them. So like a nice treat for
Speaker 1: them is I'll cut a melon in half and I'll
Speaker 1: chase Sharne because she's allergic to melons a and then
Speaker 1: you just hold it out and they'll come and eat it. Um.
Speaker 1: And they they love scraps like that's often like what
Speaker 1: I do with basically all of my food waste is
Speaker 1: give it to the chickens, and they tend to be
Speaker 1: very happy with that. Yeah, it's very it's a very
Speaker 1: sustainable thing. Let's get onto space, and I want to
Speaker 1: talk about before, before, before, before we get into this.
Speaker 1: Speaking of sustainability, do you know who else is incredibly sustainable?
Speaker 1: I don't think we can say capitalism. Yes, inherently, so
Speaker 1: shiny stuff, it will last a thousand years, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll back yea by some gold. Buy some gold. Want
Speaker 1: to reinforce that, because gold, when you're starving, will be
Speaker 1: more useful than chickens because it's shiny. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: It'll make you forget that you're slowly starving. And it's
Speaker 1: the foundation of all of this. Ship's shiny. Okay um, yeah,
Speaker 1: so don't have shiny things. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: chicken coopes because there's a shiny thing, secual. I love
Speaker 1: a good coop. I do love. Have to make a coop.
Speaker 1: I'd have to buy a cooper, have to help my
Speaker 1: friends buy coopes. It's just it's it's a great conversation
Speaker 1: area anyway. So they do need a coupe. They need
Speaker 1: a place where they can go at night. And you
Speaker 1: want it to be shut off from predators, right, So
Speaker 1: you don't want your possum, your raccoon and your fox,
Speaker 1: your stout, your weasel, fare whatever whatever you're dealing with snake. Um. So,
Speaker 1: once you get above three chickens, you might have more
Speaker 1: than one nesting box in there. But like this doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that you need to go out and buy
Speaker 1: Like you can buy them on Amazon now, but they're
Speaker 1: quite expensive and they're often quite ship like the the
Speaker 1: pre made chicken coops are very poor quality. Like if
Speaker 1: you have a shed or a kennel or something like that,
Speaker 1: you can pretty easily make it into a coop and
Speaker 1: you can just put a drop down door on the
Speaker 1: front so you can close them in at night and
Speaker 1: let them out in the morning. And or I've seen
Speaker 1: people use like drawers, you know, like like dresses, just
Speaker 1: open those and use them as nesting boxes. Well, you
Speaker 1: want to put down some straw in your nesting books,
Speaker 1: And yeah, I have I have I think four for
Speaker 1: the chickens that I have now, which is about I
Speaker 1: think we've got about eleven, um, which and there they
Speaker 1: are two of them are large enough for two at
Speaker 1: a time, and then two of them are smaller. Although
Speaker 1: chickens all and and sometimes one of the thems you
Speaker 1: have to do occasionally is come in and like take
Speaker 1: them out of some of them out of the nesting boxes.
Speaker 1: Some of them get like stuck in a loop. Where
Speaker 1: did they get broody? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so you
Speaker 1: just I just like take them out and set them
Speaker 1: down where there's like some stuff to peck at, and
Speaker 1: they seem to it kind of resets their little chicken brains.
Speaker 1: Silkkey bantems, which are one of the like show bantams
Speaker 1: get broody as fun and it's like I've had friends
Speaker 1: who have had them, and they will they will not
Speaker 1: eat and not drink because it's just like no, I'm
Speaker 1: sitting on this egg, like you can't stop me, and
Speaker 1: you have to lock them out of there. There's not
Speaker 1: even an egg there, chicken, what's wrong with you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well they'll take another chicken's egg. Yeah, just yeah. Or
Speaker 1: even like silky it's cute. Look them up there, they're real,
Speaker 1: they're fluords. They're very cute. So you want to build
Speaker 1: them a run to write a place where they can
Speaker 1: say if you run around and have their food, have
Speaker 1: their water. And I would suggest using construction netting when
Speaker 1: you build a run. Broy that people called chicken wire,
Speaker 1: which is like maybe one inch size holes, but like
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff can get through that. You'd be amazed,
Speaker 1: like rats, my snakes can all get through that. And
Speaker 1: use construction netting, which is like maybe I'm not very
Speaker 1: good at inches, but like about one centimeter size a
Speaker 1: lot less. He's going to get through it. And you
Speaker 1: might want to bury it down to like a foot
Speaker 1: or two below the run if you're building something perm
Speaker 1: just because things can't dig underneath, right like a we
Speaker 1: had a fox stick underneath when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: and don't it's preferable to do that to putting on
Speaker 1: the floor of your run because they don't like the
Speaker 1: little wire on the little feet and yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: definitely not on the You want them to have access
Speaker 1: to dirt and ideally sometimes grass too. One thing that
Speaker 1: they because I I will let them out sometimes during
Speaker 1: the day and I have a barn that has like
Speaker 1: like it's kind of dust in there, like not dust
Speaker 1: um almost like almost like sandy dry dirt. And one
Speaker 1: of their favorite things, especially during the summer, is to
Speaker 1: just kind of like sit down and rub, yeah that
Speaker 1: making it all up in the like, and they kind
Speaker 1: of need to be able to do some version of
Speaker 1: that in order to be like healthy. Otherwise they Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's good for them, it's good for their skin,
Speaker 1: it's good for them existing. Yeah, it's good for their
Speaker 1: mental health. I think that like people keep kicking their
Speaker 1: terrible conditions commercially. But it doesn't mean you have an
Speaker 1: excuse to say. When I when I got these chickens,
Speaker 1: they had been the people who'd have them before. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the funk was wrong with them. They
Speaker 1: had a sizeable outside run, but whoever, the folks who
Speaker 1: had them had covered the entire bottom in stone, so
Speaker 1: they were just like living on stone when we know
Speaker 1: they were. They were in a horrible shape. And when
Speaker 1: I when we harvested the rooster, his gizzard was full
Speaker 1: of automotive glass, Like, yeah, it was fucked up. It
Speaker 1: was I spent because they all had they all had
Speaker 1: huge patches of them that like we're bald um. I
Speaker 1: mean we we we dealt with that, partially by getting
Speaker 1: rid of the rooster and partially by making sure we
Speaker 1: gave them. I was I still do mix in um
Speaker 1: oyster shell bits with the calcium is good for them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you'll know if they need that, like they stopped
Speaker 1: coming and he starts to really dangerous, like an egg
Speaker 1: can rupture inside if they're laying it, and that can
Speaker 1: be fatal. So you want to make sure, um, if
Speaker 1: we just we can have a few quickly, I guess.
Speaker 1: So they do like to grub for worms and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, right, look for insects, and they love to
Speaker 1: have scraps. But for laying chicken, you want to make
Speaker 1: sure it's getting a decent based diet of layers pellets,
Speaker 1: which should be like somewhere between six protein which sorry,
Speaker 1: what what kind of pellets? Layer pellets. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: number of brands of it, but yeah, they're called layer pellets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of them will already have oyster shell and grit,
Speaker 1: and like Robert said, they do need those. If not,
Speaker 1: you can augment them, but it's probably gonna be easier
Speaker 1: to just get one sack and just dump it all in.
Speaker 1: They do need access to water as well that they
Speaker 1: can get out all day. I think it's better to
Speaker 1: use like a nipple type drinker, which is a you
Speaker 1: can take a bucket, any bucket, right, fill it up,
Speaker 1: and then you put these little nipples and they just
Speaker 1: get their red and again they like to peck at
Speaker 1: red stuff, so they'll peck at them and then they
Speaker 1: get and that stops. Like you know, they can't put
Speaker 1: their feet in the water and get their ship from
Speaker 1: their feet in the water and get sick, like then
Speaker 1: they're not clean animals. So just if you do that.
Speaker 1: And then I like to put a little bit. It's
Speaker 1: hot where I live in San Diego, so I put
Speaker 1: a bit of electrolyte stuff in there for them and
Speaker 1: they don't seem to mind. It just seems to help um.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, like it's it's good to you can
Speaker 1: feed them kitchen straps, but you don't want to overload them,
Speaker 1: especially on carb stuff, like they do need enough protein
Speaker 1: to keep up their laying and they definitely need enough calcium.
Speaker 1: And one thing I would say if you're if you're
Speaker 1: going to buy something, if you're going to buy a
Speaker 1: chicken coop, there's a company called egg Glue, which is
Speaker 1: like iglobe egg. They make some really nice pre fab
Speaker 1: coops that are pretty good. And you can buy an
Speaker 1: attachment which puts a little door on it that it
Speaker 1: uses a solar panel I guess to charge itself and
Speaker 1: then it will open at daylight and close at sunset,
Speaker 1: and so if you're the sort of person who knows that,
Speaker 1: you'll forget to bring your chickens in. Obviously they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're at risk at night from predation and things, and
Speaker 1: they become completely fucking useless at night that when they
Speaker 1: go to sleep, you can pick them up and turn
Speaker 1: them upside down and just like, yeah, my in here,
Speaker 1: you're the interior of my coupe has. It's really cute.
Speaker 1: It's basically like a ladder, like a like a very
Speaker 1: wide ladder going up the side of the building and
Speaker 1: they just all stand on like it's like a group
Speaker 1: of twenty like a different levels of the ladder just
Speaker 1: sit there as they as they sleep at night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they need to steep on Actually that's a good yea
Speaker 1: good mind. You can't just on the floor. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: don't like just being in the dirt and then like
Speaker 1: something to entertain them. So a good thing to entertain
Speaker 1: them is like if you have CDs. Still, young listeners
Speaker 1: may not remember having CD collections, but if you if
Speaker 1: you do have CDs, or you know you can find
Speaker 1: c ds, you can just hang those and then they'll
Speaker 1: pack at them and stuff because they're kind of shiny
Speaker 1: and they move around. So it's the thing to do
Speaker 1: with your lattice. Marseilles. They also really like, I mean
Speaker 1: one of the things that so I just tore out
Speaker 1: my what was left of my front lawn in order
Speaker 1: to grow more stuff, and I just tossed all of
Speaker 1: the the chunks of like so oil and and and there.
Speaker 1: They love pecking at that ship. It's like one of
Speaker 1: their favorite things in the world. Yeah, we put them on.
Speaker 1: I have some planters out back and they're like fen
Speaker 1: stuff the chickens car and then when we turn them
Speaker 1: over and we like replant them, we'll put them in
Speaker 1: there and they just go have and they find these
Speaker 1: huge worms. So I have no idea how they got
Speaker 1: in there, but yeah, they love that stuff. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I let him out into the yard periodically, and it's
Speaker 1: always whenever I have to like walk them back in
Speaker 1: because you kind of just like loop around them to
Speaker 1: like guide the flock as they move, because they'll kind
Speaker 1: of instinctively go away from you if you're walking towards them. Um.
Speaker 1: One of my one of my hobbies is to like
Speaker 1: pretend to be an old feel like we should stop
Speaker 1: this immediately, buy some gold. Okay, sometimes I pretend it's
Speaker 1: the Shawshank Redemption, which is where I'm giving my chickens
Speaker 1: boat by the coast. It's kind of go and show
Speaker 1: us why hold in this bed sheet? All of us
Speaker 1: love having health insurance? Plea, can I can I ask
Speaker 1: a question about space? So like how much physical room
Speaker 1: do they need? Like how much line do you have
Speaker 1: to have? So you can look at there are pretty
Speaker 1: good like calculators online. We can look at how many
Speaker 1: square yards or whatever you have. But I'm terrible at
Speaker 1: estimating size. But you know, my, my, I dn't have
Speaker 1: very big garden. You know, we've we've had up to
Speaker 1: six chickens. But you do want to just look it up.
Speaker 1: And it's not like the square yardage you have isn't
Speaker 1: as important as the access they have to stuff? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Can they get sunlight? Can they be like out in
Speaker 1: in like something that feels like you know where a
Speaker 1: chicken would want to be? But this is this is
Speaker 1: this is like not something you can run from an apartment, right,
Speaker 1: No need to be outside. Yeah, if you live in
Speaker 1: an apartment that like has a yard it or something
Speaker 1: that shared, you potentially could, but no, you you do
Speaker 1: need like some amount of dirt and grass. Essentially, if
Speaker 1: you maybe have like a community garden, you could talk
Speaker 1: to people about doing it. They're like them, So mine
Speaker 1: just go all around my yard all day and like, uh,
Speaker 1: you guys have noticed also coming to my office. Um,
Speaker 1: and then they'll put themselves to bed at night, and
Speaker 1: they know where their home is so that they'll just
Speaker 1: go back to bed at night. And I want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about health, because there are definitely
Speaker 1: some chicken health things and just it's very expensive stake
Speaker 1: chicken to the vet actually because you have to go
Speaker 1: to an exotic and avian vet, and they're quite rare
Speaker 1: exotic and avian vet. You could take them to a
Speaker 1: regular vet, but most of the time, so actually, if
Speaker 1: your chickens get sick, in most states, there's a state
Speaker 1: run helpline you can call and it's free and they'll
Speaker 1: put you onto a vet right away and they're very
Speaker 1: very helpful. And then the reason because of the danger
Speaker 1: of different avian flues like infecting arge. Numbers of of
Speaker 1: of animals. Yeah does does something similar to pet insurance
Speaker 1: exists for farm peep farm animals or not really it does,
Speaker 1: but I don't think you probably wouldn't want to be
Speaker 1: investing it out for your chickens. I give you. If
Speaker 1: you're breeding livestock, and that's the thing you can have,
Speaker 1: um And you know, one of the things you do
Speaker 1: have to keep in mind is that at some point
Speaker 1: you will have to kill them, um, you know, because
Speaker 1: they will get old enough or sick enough, and some
Speaker 1: form of euthanasia will wind up being kinder than continuing
Speaker 1: to like let them be um. Like, That's just that's
Speaker 1: true of any kind of livestock, right, at some point
Speaker 1: you have to if you don't just want to let
Speaker 1: it die naturally, which again in a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: will be prolonging and suffering. You you do have to
Speaker 1: be willing to take care of that one way or
Speaker 1: the other. Yeah, Like you can give them the best
Speaker 1: life you can give them and look aft for them
Speaker 1: as you can. But often times here they will or
Speaker 1: they'll get hurt, right like if some yes, they'll get injured.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good reality to my people love that.
Speaker 1: It's like it's actually like a serious thing to have
Speaker 1: a chicken and then be responsible for its life and death.
Speaker 1: And also like the egg comes out of their butth hole, right,
Speaker 1: so it's covered. Well, it's it's not just like cartoon
Speaker 1: and chicken laying, you know what I mean, Like I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not ago um, but it's not that game they
Speaker 1: everyone playing in COVID where you're in the island and
Speaker 1: you build stuff and yeah, I just think people usually
Speaker 1: are really flipping with stuff like like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a living animal, and like you have to take
Speaker 1: care of it, and it's your responsibility right at the storm,
Speaker 1: Like you need to think about that. You don't want
Speaker 1: to let the bumbholes get too poopy. We're talking about health,
Speaker 1: so they can get worms that way, and that's really bad.
Speaker 1: So if you see that, just just pick them up
Speaker 1: and they'll be And that's this is why you want
Speaker 1: to handle them when they're young, so that you can
Speaker 1: handle them with stuff like this. So like I'll pick
Speaker 1: them up and use a spray bottle or a little
Speaker 1: hose with a bit of warm water and and they
Speaker 1: they don't mind that at all, and at least they
Speaker 1: don't give me any ship. But you want to look
Speaker 1: up some of the common things you're going to see.
Speaker 1: Gape worm. It's called gape one because they'll gape you
Speaker 1: you'll see them gaping. They can be egg bound, and
Speaker 1: then depending on where you are right, they can be
Speaker 1: too hot too cold. You do need to make sure
Speaker 1: they have shade. I found this thing, um, I found
Speaker 1: it someone was moving out. It's like a it's like
Speaker 1: a mister, but like they have at restaurants. You know
Speaker 1: when you go to a restaurant in l A and
Speaker 1: it's hot and seven annoying wetness. Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've ever been to like an amusement park and like
Speaker 1: a like a line and they sometimes have them too
Speaker 1: sometimes in the like fruit and vegetables when there. But
Speaker 1: that's the only that's restaurants, not inside outside misters to
Speaker 1: make it if you're in Phoenix or somewhere, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I've got one of those. And you can find
Speaker 1: lots of ship by the way, like if you're if
Speaker 1: you live in a place that's gentrifying, like unfortunly has
Speaker 1: happened in the park San Diego I live in. Like like,
Speaker 1: for instance, all the wood for my chicken keeping pay
Speaker 1: for their ship. Like there's rich people doing stuff to houses.
Speaker 1: It doesn't need to be done, just like obtain wood
Speaker 1: from their building sites. Yeah, and obtain it's it's it's
Speaker 1: like those powles of bricks, and they didn't want you
Speaker 1: to use them. They wouldn't leave it out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and why I would live with Warren have sent the
Speaker 1: pallets of bricks if you didn't want to use so
Speaker 1: uh yeah obviously, Like healthwise, like I said, you want
Speaker 1: to make sure you have that purple spray on hand.
Speaker 1: You want to be giving them some electrolytes and their water.
Speaker 1: You want to make sure they have shade if it's
Speaker 1: hot and their coop is warm, like they don't like
Speaker 1: it much below freezing. Like yeah, I keep like a
Speaker 1: heat lamp basically all winter in there with a red
Speaker 1: bulb so it doesn't like upset their their sleep patterns. Yeah. People,
Speaker 1: the way battery people do it, like battery chickens is
Speaker 1: they they they do more day night cycles using artificial
Speaker 1: light to to make the chickens lay more if you
Speaker 1: see what I mean, and the chickens will lay an
Speaker 1: accelerated rate. I'll keep them laying during the winter. Be
Speaker 1: doing that that's not particularly good for the birds. And
Speaker 1: I let them rest this winter. Yeah, let them. You
Speaker 1: know there their animals, they you know, they don't just
Speaker 1: exist to provide your food. Like a question on this,
Speaker 1: like how cold is there like a point it gets
Speaker 1: in the winter where it's like you probably shouldn't have them.
Speaker 1: We just want to keep the coup warm. And then
Speaker 1: like so like when we were at Tenacious Unicorn ranch,
Speaker 1: right and they have chickens. I don't know how cold
Speaker 1: it was, but I went to bed every night with
Speaker 1: analgene full of boiling water and when I woke up,
Speaker 1: I was hugging an ice baby like it was yeah,
Speaker 1: the heat so where I was staying and work the
Speaker 1: first time, so it was called a f and the
Speaker 1: chickens had a nice warm coupe with a heat lamp
Speaker 1: and they were fine. Yeah you can. I mean people
Speaker 1: keep chickens in every imaginable climates, so as long as
Speaker 1: you're careful about making sure you know that you have
Speaker 1: a warm place for them to sleep, they will be okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can can Can you let them out in
Speaker 1: the snow and stuff or should you? Yeah? You know,
Speaker 1: yeah they have fun with that. There's it's snowed yesterday
Speaker 1: and my chickens are having a great time out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they like you actually, like they'll run like I remember
Speaker 1: at home this snow and yeah, and talks when you're
Speaker 1: buying the chickens, right, like, consider that in your breed choice,
Speaker 1: like something going to do, and they're going to do.
Speaker 1: Some of them are gonna not like heat and honestly,
Speaker 1: like one of the better things you can do in
Speaker 1: that situation. If you're like if I live in some
Speaker 1: weird ass part of the world where it's freezing half
Speaker 1: the time, just google like keeping backyard chickens whatever the
Speaker 1: name of your area is, and then Reddit and yeah,
Speaker 1: you will find people talking on yeah, yeah, I've gotten
Speaker 1: this is the this is the breed that I picked,
Speaker 1: and this is what I do, and people love to
Speaker 1: talk about the chicken. So yeah, brack your chickens read
Speaker 1: it was one of my resources exactly. It's a good
Speaker 1: place to look. And yeah, so if you have a
Speaker 1: cute you're gonna want to clean it, right, you can
Speaker 1: use that chicken pooper's fertilizers some of the best in
Speaker 1: the world. So then if you're if you're into this
Speaker 1: sort of you know, like growing your own food and
Speaker 1: this all works well, right, you give the chicken to scraps.
Speaker 1: Chickens make you eggs, a poop you put that into
Speaker 1: your plants. You have nice plants. You want to balance
Speaker 1: it out. It's a bit acidic, I think just using
Speaker 1: the ship, so you want to be combusting with other
Speaker 1: stuff as well, right, checking your soil chemistry before you
Speaker 1: sort of go ham But yes, you can do that.
Speaker 1: You do want to make sure. Yeah, I've got the
Speaker 1: poultry helpline. We spoke about that. California's is great though, Like,
Speaker 1: don't hesitate to call the poultry helpline if you need help,
Speaker 1: Like there's there's people who are being paid to help you,
Speaker 1: and that it's normally like I know, like most pet owners,
Speaker 1: unless they're very wealthy, will have had to make horrible
Speaker 1: decisions about their pets health versus their own income when
Speaker 1: when they've like you know, and it's it's ship. So
Speaker 1: that helpline is free, and like Robert said, it's because
Speaker 1: they're very scared of infectious diseases. So taken by mounteage
Speaker 1: of like your you know, taxpayer funded chicken fat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: give him a call. Um, I think I don't know
Speaker 1: he's hid every state, but I know it's a lot
Speaker 1: of them. And yeah, go ahead, Oh um, are you
Speaker 1: going to talk about U giving them, like the shake
Speaker 1: and bake treatment for uh what do you call it? Um?
Speaker 1: If they get uh mites? Oh yeah, yeah, go and
Speaker 1: go ahead and talk about it. So you know, chickens
Speaker 1: can get there's like a skin but it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's functions similarly to like a skin infection. There's like
Speaker 1: little mites that will get on them. You'll notice bald patches.
Speaker 1: It can be I mean, it's bad for their health obviously,
Speaker 1: like you would not want to be covered in mites.
Speaker 1: And so there's um. There's this kind of mite killer
Speaker 1: called promethrin um and the way that you you can
Speaker 1: apply it in a number of ways, but you basically
Speaker 1: need to coat the entire chicken. It's essentially a white powder.
Speaker 1: So what we did when we had to do it
Speaker 1: is we just took a giant a large feedbag and
Speaker 1: we filled it with promethrin, and we we put the
Speaker 1: cans in it once at a time and just kind
Speaker 1: of like give them a little shake so they got covered.
Speaker 1: You've shaken baking all of them, and then they're just
Speaker 1: like wandering around confused and covered in this white powder.
Speaker 1: Like what the funk happened? It's very funny that it's
Speaker 1: very fun. Um. I mean, it's just it's the best
Speaker 1: way because they get covered very goodly that way. Like
Speaker 1: there's you know, with mites and dust and stuff. You
Speaker 1: do want to make sure that where they're living is
Speaker 1: not too moist or not too dusty. They can get
Speaker 1: respiratory conditions from that, so you don't, Yeah, you want
Speaker 1: to make sure that you know they're living in a
Speaker 1: nice environment and they also like the biggest health thing
Speaker 1: you're going to see is so they will peck at
Speaker 1: each other, right, especially when you first get your birds
Speaker 1: are gonna establish what it's called a pecking order, and
Speaker 1: which you know people have used, heard and use an advantage,
Speaker 1: an order in which they get well, I didn't know
Speaker 1: the meeting. I didn't understand what that meant completely until
Speaker 1: right now this moment. It's my gift to helpful today.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of a lot of learning. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: what they call a knowledge transfer. The Yeah, so that
Speaker 1: they'll do that, they'll pick right, they'll establishing a when
Speaker 1: you get a new bird, you don't really want to
Speaker 1: introduce one new bird at once, right, So say this
Speaker 1: is how you get fucking conned into having bantams because
Speaker 1: Let's say your your garden can support four chickens, and
Speaker 1: then one of your girls dies and you're sad and
Speaker 1: you want to get more birds. So you're like, well,
Speaker 1: we can't, we can't go to five full size chickens.
Speaker 1: We'll get bantam for like two half sized chickens. And
Speaker 1: that that is good for the social dynamic because they
Speaker 1: weren't one won't get picked on, one won't be like
Speaker 1: the new girl, and then they pick on her. But
Speaker 1: then you've got bantams and then you you just I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm not no, it's not very pro bantam
Speaker 1: and they're just difficult. So how do they establish the
Speaker 1: pecking order? They pack at each other and peck at
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah, and well basically one of the well
Speaker 1: it's just like any other, like physical confrontation, like they
Speaker 1: peck at each other and like, okay, well you're harder
Speaker 1: than me, Like I can't you know, I'm not here
Speaker 1: for that. The back down. Sometimes they will really start
Speaker 1: picking on one and then you do have to separate
Speaker 1: them for a while. Um, so I think that you've
Speaker 1: got to watch out for that. And you've got be
Speaker 1: venger and when you first get them, you're going to
Speaker 1: be excited and you're gonna want to go outside and
Speaker 1: they interact with him, so you know you'll be watching
Speaker 1: that anyway. So just make sure you have treats and
Speaker 1: stuff and separate them and don't be scared. They can't
Speaker 1: hurt you. They do chickens, but um yeah, it's normal
Speaker 1: oftenm to peck at each other. You've gotta keep an
Speaker 1: eye out for if they do draw blood. I said,
Speaker 1: they are fucking dinosaurs and they will just hone in
Speaker 1: on that. So that's when you have to separate them
Speaker 1: or come in with your purple spray. Um, So you
Speaker 1: just have to make sure that you're aware of that.
Speaker 1: And they pecked out your leg when it was bleeding,
Speaker 1: does that hurt a little bit? Like you wouldn't do
Speaker 1: it recreationally? Yeah? Many people would? You know? You not
Speaker 1: yu you're young? Yeah, if you are, if you are
Speaker 1: turned on exactly like it's not. They're not like like
Speaker 1: full body attack that I walk in every day to
Speaker 1: feed my chickens and I don't get pecked or anything
Speaker 1: like they're they're fine. Um then like attack animals and
Speaker 1: chickens by the way, or like every other creature, some
Speaker 1: of them are assholes, right, like any kind of animal
Speaker 1: that you have and any like just like people, some
Speaker 1: of them are dick I remember, like on that subject.
Speaker 1: I was a few years ago. I was writing about
Speaker 1: rattlesnake behavior for his story and there's this run fucking
Speaker 1: rattlesnake which literally every time I ride past it, it's
Speaker 1: just like bam, like fucking Like. I've talked to the
Speaker 1: snake behavior expert and he's like, yeah, man, that one's
Speaker 1: an asshole. Some of them are just chases. Don't know
Speaker 1: what to tell you, dude, You've just come across a
Speaker 1: bell end like it it is what it is. Um,
Speaker 1: So yeah, if you sometimes he's gonna have a chicken,
Speaker 1: which is mean. I just gotta hope that doesn't. You know,
Speaker 1: you gotta make your choice end, right if it's really
Speaker 1: causing chaos in the flock, Like, what are you gonna
Speaker 1: do with it? Yeah, that may be a chicken that
Speaker 1: you eat. Um. You know, one of the things you
Speaker 1: learned keeping chickens is how wildly we have fucked up
Speaker 1: the chickens that we use from me because like a
Speaker 1: normal chicken does not produce breast meat that is that size,
Speaker 1: like that is the size of like a normal grocery
Speaker 1: store chicken breast. Those are from monsters that we made. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like breast meat was popular, so they made that
Speaker 1: that like they inserted like a horbone or whatever to
Speaker 1: make that part of the chicken grow. And I mean
Speaker 1: I've seen videos of like the chicken toppling over because
Speaker 1: it's so heavy's not supposed to be. It's madness, it's
Speaker 1: so sad, and then jones are not fully developed, like
Speaker 1: it's very cruel, Like I am, yeah, it's sucked up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't eat meat, Like I'm not really like down
Speaker 1: with the way the American commercially agriculture raised animals at toy.
Speaker 1: I grew up on a farm. I raised animals my
Speaker 1: home with you, I agree touching Yeah, cheap, cheap meating
Speaker 1: the store. I understand. Other people do you got to
Speaker 1: feed your families whatever, And obviously one way or the other.
Speaker 1: If you're raising chickens, like and you at some point
Speaker 1: you know the chicken is going to die if at
Speaker 1: all possible, I think you do kind of have a
Speaker 1: responsibility to find some use for that meat. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just that that's sick. In which case, yeah, to see
Speaker 1: if they get like, yeah, I had to I had
Speaker 1: to kill two last year because they got like some
Speaker 1: sort of avian flu and the state people will come
Speaker 1: and take them away and do an autopsy if if
Speaker 1: they do get sick like that, and so that that's
Speaker 1: nice to know because then you have, you know, do
Speaker 1: I have to worry about the rest of my flock?
Speaker 1: You know what? What is this? Is there something in
Speaker 1: the soil? It's something I'm feeding them? You know, you
Speaker 1: can if you have concerns like that, it's nice to
Speaker 1: have them that that's really really good note. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you if you are responsible for them, like and you
Speaker 1: have to give them the best life they can and
Speaker 1: the kind of death, and you know you're responsible to
Speaker 1: the suffering as little as possible in their little lives.
Speaker 1: We used to buy chickens when I was a kid
Speaker 1: from a guy who bread chickens for a battery farm,
Speaker 1: and we'd go and get them as chicks and just
Speaker 1: be like you you you you you are going to
Speaker 1: run around our farm. Will don't have a wonderful life,
Speaker 1: And I'm so sorry the rest of you have this
Speaker 1: fucking horrible existence. But it's nice to save some of them.
Speaker 1: So it's gonna be hard to get chickens right now.
Speaker 1: So my last thing was really like, when you're buying chickens,
Speaker 1: right where you're gonna get your chickens from, and so
Speaker 1: hopefully you know where you live you have a farm,
Speaker 1: shall steal them? Liberate them from a battery farm? Shoot
Speaker 1: your way in it. It doesn't it's worth it. They
Speaker 1: will probably. Well, I actually think people have literally gotten
Speaker 1: to munchy terrorism charges for that. But well I think
Speaker 1: it's pigs, wasn't it that they go? Yeah, yeah, chickens
Speaker 1: are not charismatic enough for people to go to prison over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know it's unfair, it's unfair. It's racism. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's one thing we could tell you, as a group
Speaker 1: of individuals legally responsible for what we say, I'm yourself
Speaker 1: and liberate poultry. Yeah, fight your way in like like
Speaker 1: the only not the only, but the most concrete evidence
Speaker 1: of like dinosaurs have like now devolved into these chickens,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like that is so funny
Speaker 1: to me that out of all the animals, that is
Speaker 1: the closest thing we have to a dinosaur and dinosaurs
Speaker 1: and again, their favorite food is their own kind and
Speaker 1: also like like they will like every now and then
Speaker 1: I will give them some of their eggs just because
Speaker 1: it makes them so happy to eat. Well, I was
Speaker 1: gonna ask, like what you said that it tasted different
Speaker 1: when you gave them meat, Like what is the difference
Speaker 1: that you caught in the taste when they do eat
Speaker 1: their own eggs versus like just the feed. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I mean their their own eggs, don't. I've never fed
Speaker 1: them enough for it to be a meaningful component of
Speaker 1: their diet. They will eat scrambled eggs and cheese. They
Speaker 1: like to know when they're sick. Can you can you
Speaker 1: like taste a difference if you give them herbs? So
Speaker 1: like one thing that people do is give them little
Speaker 1: bundles of herbs and you can taste that in the egg. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of richer, you know. When you it's
Speaker 1: like you'll notice different, like if you if they are
Speaker 1: calcium deficient, the eggs are really fragile, and if they
Speaker 1: have a shipload of calcium in their diet, like my
Speaker 1: eggs are, like you have to like you have to
Speaker 1: want to crack those fuckers. If you feed the flax seeds,
Speaker 1: then the eggs have a higher Amiga three content like you,
Speaker 1: it makes sense. It's super interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah you can.
Speaker 1: You can give them flax seats and like that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. You can mess with their diet bit and
Speaker 1: they they like that stuff. So yeah, when you're buying them,
Speaker 1: what you want, I think is a beginner is like
Speaker 1: a point of labored and you can say point of
Speaker 1: lay and that that's what they'll give you. Know that
Speaker 1: they're going to try and give you pullets sort of
Speaker 1: going to try and say it's nice to raise chicks,
Speaker 1: but and it is. It's really nice to raise chicks,
Speaker 1: but some of them will die and that will be
Speaker 1: upsetting for you, and um, it's hard because work. That's
Speaker 1: a general note any lifetime. If you if you decide
Speaker 1: that you want to be a person who has livestock,
Speaker 1: you have to be okay with them dying and it
Speaker 1: being an experience that is more direct to you than
Speaker 1: like obviously it's it's not as emotional as like when
Speaker 1: a catterat dog dies, but it will not involve a
Speaker 1: vet with the kind of frequency that like a dying
Speaker 1: pet does, like you will have to deal with, you know,
Speaker 1: animals die because animals just die. Sometimes they wind up
Speaker 1: with the same kind of ailments people have for like
Speaker 1: an animals herd will give out or something, and you
Speaker 1: didn't do anything wrong. It's just an animal was born
Speaker 1: with a heart effect. Right, It's just like a thing
Speaker 1: that occurs if you have enough animals. Yeah, we used
Speaker 1: to say, if you have livestock, you have dead stock
Speaker 1: one day. Yeah, like it's just something you have to
Speaker 1: face up to. But like someone else is already doing
Speaker 1: that ship and they're probably doing it with less compassion
Speaker 1: than you think. You're buying, you know, warm out eggs.
Speaker 1: So you let I say you you can't, You're not God,
Speaker 1: but like you owe these animals like a decent life,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's a little suffering as you can. So yeah,
Speaker 1: by the point of leg chickens, make sure that their
Speaker 1: sex right you you don't want to restie. You might
Speaker 1: not legally be able to have a rooster. And then
Speaker 1: something like a dog container. It's fine. I brought them
Speaker 1: home in a shoe box before, Like I'll just put
Speaker 1: them next to me in my truck and they're pretty
Speaker 1: chill that you know, give them, give them a little
Speaker 1: bit of water in there, but generally they don't You
Speaker 1: want to drink. You can kind of swaddle them. I've
Speaker 1: seen people swaddle them, um, you know if they're really
Speaker 1: panicking or whatever. And swaddling is like when you wrap
Speaker 1: them like you would with a baby, and people do that,
Speaker 1: I know, when they have to move them in like
Speaker 1: a hurricane to try and calm them down. It. I've
Speaker 1: always just put them in a dog container. Are we
Speaker 1: going to talk about storing eggs? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because people don't. Yeah, it's a weird American thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this doesn't happen in the rest of the world
Speaker 1: that you guys get your eggs refrigerated, and that's because
Speaker 1: they're washed before they come to Yeah, you don't need
Speaker 1: to do this normally. No, you shouldn't wash your eggs,
Speaker 1: nor should you refrigerate them. Just I have a little
Speaker 1: helter skelter thing, and it just looks like a spiral, right,
Speaker 1: and you put the egg on the top and it
Speaker 1: just rolls its little way down and it gets to
Speaker 1: the bottom, and that way I always take them from
Speaker 1: the bottom. That way, I'm always sort of getting the
Speaker 1: oldest eggs first, so I don't end up with like
Speaker 1: one at the bottom of the basket. Right, So you
Speaker 1: don't them, No, just just bring it in, not until
Speaker 1: you're ready to eat them. Obviously, wash them before you
Speaker 1: cook them, because some of them will have poop and
Speaker 1: stuff on them right right before that. Just keep them
Speaker 1: normal and then the last for months like that, like
Speaker 1: egg there there you can there are a couple of
Speaker 1: other ways to Obviously you could pickle them, be very
Speaker 1: careful with that. If you are canning them, Um, I
Speaker 1: would recommend just pickling them and putting them in the
Speaker 1: fridge because eggs in like hard boiled eggs in particular,
Speaker 1: are troublesome to can because there's always if you think
Speaker 1: about hard boiled eggs, there's always like a little bit
Speaker 1: of cracks and like the white of the egg, and
Speaker 1: that is where botulism can live. So be extremely careful
Speaker 1: if you're pickling eggs. Um, just I would recommend don't
Speaker 1: like you know, can them specifically, just pickle them and
Speaker 1: put them in the fridge and you know, the less
Speaker 1: a pretty good amount of time. Yeah, pickled eggs are delicious. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is the is the thing about not refrigerating the eggs.
Speaker 1: So do you actually still have to refrigerate like if
Speaker 1: you use in the store. If yes, you can in
Speaker 1: this country. Yes, you can roll them in vegetable oil
Speaker 1: and I think ash, which replicates the way that they
Speaker 1: have a membrane on that, but very intent if you're
Speaker 1: buying the membrane them, yes, yeah, when they come out
Speaker 1: like a little pole basically yeah, like it's kind of
Speaker 1: fills to pull something outside the ag I think because
Speaker 1: I understand it. So if you really wanted to store them,
Speaker 1: you didn't have access to refrigerator, you could do the
Speaker 1: actual thing. You should look it up. The other thing
Speaker 1: you can do that is because again, if you have
Speaker 1: any quantity of chickens, there's a good chance that they
Speaker 1: will produce, like I have a problem with this, significantly
Speaker 1: more eggs than you can consume. An interesting way, are
Speaker 1: you gonna talk about water glassing? Oh? You talk about
Speaker 1: it there? Yeah, that you can look like, look it up.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to give you a guide over this,
Speaker 1: because preserving stuff is something that you should take care on.
Speaker 1: But you can google water glassing. It's basically a way
Speaker 1: you can keep eggs for like up to a year.
Speaker 1: That way um in like crackable friable condition. But I
Speaker 1: think we are getting the note that James and I
Speaker 1: should stop talking about chickens for now. Continue in another episode.
Speaker 1: James and I will talk about chickens privately after this.
Speaker 1: And you are you aren't pretty? James said it. People
Speaker 1: love to talk about their chickens. They do talk about Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe let's start a side podcast for Patreon reasons, Chicken Cast,
Speaker 1: Chicken Cast Anyway, poultry Pod. Until next time, take a
Speaker 1: lesson from the chickens and eat your own young Okay,
Speaker 1: oh my god. Hey. We'll be back Monday with more
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