Hello, Welcome to It could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. Recently, I just wrapped up a whole five episodes about the previous week of action to stop cop City in Atlanta, Georgia. In a somewhat unsuccessful attempt to shorten the running time of those episodes, I had to cut out many of the funny bits, jokes, gaffs, goofs, bloopers, and related tomfoolery.
But as demonstrated by the police's massive mobilization to shut down a canceled comedy event in the woods on March seventh, the Willani Forest and surrounding area of Atlanta are often home to manifestations of absurdist humor. There's been a lot of not great news recently. Well, there's kind of always a lot of not great news now that we live in an ever expanding hyperreality oversaturated with information. But I digress.
I think it's just as important to not overlook the comedic, lighthearted side of things as it is to keep up with all of the doom and gloom that we usually platform on our show. So, without further ado, I present to you jokes from the Atlanta Forest. Side note, I am now invoking Jester's privilege. Legally, everything we say in this episode is a joke as a little heads up. Okay, this episode will probably make more sense if you listened to the four part Week of Action series or the
retrospective episode. But also I will do my best to pop in via this narration to help fill in any gaps so that listeners will not be completely lost if you've not listened to those other episodes. Anyway, we shall start by tuning back into my conversation with Matt from the Atlanta Community the Press Collective as we discuss the March fifth police raid of the South River Music Festival. Welcome, it could happen here. Cast I'm Garrison Davis.
In World of Warcraft. You can shield bash.
So that there's been this effort from police and media to frame these arrests as like these were arrests that happened at a crime scene, like these these arrests were people who were who were torching equipment, who were involved in all these actions, who are doing domestic terrorism. But all the rest that happened were at a music festival, like they were in a completely different section of the forest, like.
At a music festival at the parking lot even away from the music festival. And you know, police surveillance may be good and they may have been able to pick out an individual or two, but for the most part, like you had something like two hundred people partake in this direct action and then disappear into the woods, there's really no way too And of course most of them were wearing block of some form that there's really no way.
Much of that block, which has now been burnt and it's no longer existing in the physical material realm, so there's no way to like really tell who was there, and other than allegedly having mud on your clothes, you want to talk about what the warrants were in the oddity of how the warrants were formatted.
Once you started to listen to them, you noticed this very repetitive nature of them. And so about halfway through we get to a lawyer who straight up calls out the fact that these warrants seem like they were just copy.
Pasted, like every single person all the way downline. And one of the such claims the mud mud.
So I don't know, I don't know how many festivals you've attended in your life, but I've been to a few, and they are never clean affairs.
So it it rained like one day before the night before the festival started, there was a tornado warning in Atlanta. I've forgotten about that, and there was rain, which makes I don't know if the prosecutors know this, but when rain mixes with dirt, it creates something called that we that we refer to as mud. My dock martins are
still caked in mud. Future me cutting back in here for a sec So for the record, I have since cleaned my dock Martins, but the mud was still on there for well over a month until I was forced to wash my shoes after I stepped in much much more mud while in the Telemac forest as I was failing to shoot a Keltech, which yeah, that is that was That was probably my bad. These charges don't make any sense. There's no evidence these people committed any actual crimes,
so they're just being charged with terrorism. This is like a nebul this concept. The judge said that the legal basis of these claims will have to be decided on another day. Similarly, they said that in regards to like actual evidence that these people charged did any crimes, she said that she had none of this none of the She said that she had none of this evidence in front of her, and that evidence is for another day.
So it's absolutely I think bonkers it is an appropriate word.
One of those one of those kangaroo court moments.
It really my faith in the legal system was really solidified this day. There was also the threat of arrest for the New York Times reporter that happened. I forgot to mention that. So yeah, we'll leave that commentary by itself.
They should have they should have charged Sean Keenan with domestic terrorism. Sorry for making fun of noted trans ally the New York Times. I promise it won't happen again. Wait. Wait, no, that's that's a lie. There's at least two more New York Times jokes in this script. Fuck, I guess let's talk about Monday. Monday Monday, So, uh, don't.
It is the editor? No, Daniel, Daniel, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.
He's not going to hear any of this shit. Oh im because the way these work, as I transcribe them and then I copy and paste sections, so they only move the section over.
So when I say ask Garrison about okay, So it turns out that was a lie.
Daniel did need to hear that, So sorry, Daniel, full transparency. Most of those bleeps were me making horrible, horrible, slurping noises into the microphone, as Daniel can probably attest. So really all of you should be thanking Daniel for suffering through those to bleep them out. Daniel died for your sins. I mean content truly, truly braver than the troops insert joke. Anyway, back to me from the past. So let's talk about
Let's talk about Monday. I want to talk about the clergy event that happened in from a city hall, so City council meeting. You work for the Atlantic Community Press Collective. You've you've covered a lot of city council meetings in Atlanta before. This was my first time covering an Atlanta
City Council meeting. Due to your you know, wisdom in this in this field, I would like for you to to to discuss what happened at the city council meeting and in relation to your to your to your years of experience in covering these these uh these meetings.
So I City Council meets every other week on Mondays. I cover several other committees but uh, you know, the big one is always the City Council meeting, and over over the course of time, there there's like a cast of characters that that you just begin to understand are going to appear either every week or or from time
to time. And you you had the pleasure of actually getting to see a few of these and I was like, there were were there were a few of us media folks there, and I was actually really happy that like people got to experience this with me, because I usually have to do it by myself. So you got to meet three of the characters. You got to meet Brother Hakim, you got to meet Rachel, and you got to be your favorite chef doctor.
So this is just somebody who everyone refers to as chef doctor. He is dressed up as what you can only describe as a chef doctor. I wondering half of a chef's outfit, half of a doctor's outfit. He had a Freemason pin on his shirt, because of course he did. And I just like watched him for a while because like initially in the City Council meeting, they were just like handing out awards to like the proclamation ceremony, the proclamations and awards to like various people, including like former
city council members like whatever. And then eventually public comments started and I guess, let's let's talk about doctor so well, no, so for the entirety of the city council meeting during the proclamations in the back in the back of the back of City Council, there was this large red like like heart just sitting sitting in the back.
But it looked like Bob the tomato from Vegetatis.
Look it looked that was exactly what I thought. I like this heart, Like, why is there this Bob the tomato ass heart mascot just sitting in the back of city Council. No one was inside the costume. It was just like the heart sitting there next to like another massive heart made up of like flowers. I saw. I was kind of confused for why that was there. There was like a pediatric surgeon that got like one of the awards, and like, oh, maybe the heart's there because
of like because of like heart surgery or something. I don't know.
No, no, that would make sense. And you have to you have to get out of that mindset for public comment.
For the most part, so then chef doctor gets ten minutes of public comments.
So we should explain that mechanism. Everyone who signs up for public comment gets two minutes. You can award your time or give over your time to somebody else. So there were four other people who gave their time over to Chef Doctor to give him ten minutes, and he used all ten minutes.
So what was chef doctor trying to get out of the city? Why was he giving public heart? So a shout out to chef doctor.
Okay, like is Chef Doctor wants to create a soul food museum in the West side of Atlanta, and she's shown up a few times to kind of ask city council for money, and as far as I know, that has gone nowhere. But that was what he is ostensibly there for today. However, beyond just the heart, the dancing, we haven't got there yet. However, beyond just the big red heart, and like the paper mache flower heart, he he brought a floutest.
A floutest. So a floutest is someone who plays the flute. If you are like an uncultured person, who's who's who's listening to this? And he walked up to the microphone, and then for five minutes, he got a floutist to play a flute cover of Amazing Grace.
Yes, but but he had backing music from a laptop that just kind of appeared up of nowhere, and so he played into the microphone.
They played this funeral song as as this now Heart that's been brought to life. It starts dancing, starts dancing. So this person wearing like heart pajama pants changed into this hard question at some point. I didn't see them change into this. I don't know how this happened. I must have missed it.
It's City Council magic.
Nice will be Chef, doctor Kenneth Wolhoyt.
You'll have ten minutes due to yielded time.
Chef, let's go ahead and get started.
My name is.
A chef, doctor Kenneth Wildhord. I'm the president of the Soul Food Museum and the Soul Food University. We are celebrating our twentieth anniversary and we are asking for the City Council and an honorable Mayor to get behind us and support us with donating a museum space, building and land with parking in the city of Atlanta for our tourists that come here to have a place to come and experience our hospitality, agriculture service of Atlanta. I'm gonna sell quick prayer because I'm spirit lead.
I do things by spirit.
I'm at that age you know it's not about me, it's about the spirit. Now we'll have a song that was selected by the spirit of the ancestors, not by me, but by the spirit of dancers. I asked God to say, Hey, God, what song should we introduce today? This is the one that was.
But this, this guy in the hard costume walks up and he starts like kind of dancing to this float music for five minutes. Talk about the dancing.
I don't think it was so much dancing as a swaying with a little bit of hand motion along with the swang. But like I, I wasn't expecting it.
I thought someone like dosed me with hallucinogens.
I did. Actually, there were some stress ballad I put them in your water bottle when you were looking.
This explained so much about what happened on Monday.
No, it would make much more sense if that's what happened. Unfortunately, Atlanta is a cartoon town and that's not what happened. This was real life.
So this, this this flood cover of amazing Grace played for five minutes along with the dancing Heart, and then we finally got to public comment for the reason for the reason we were for the reason for why we were there. Not only were we blessed with that stunning rendition of amazing grace, the floutist himself was was briefly able to address the city Council before President Dave Shipman rudely, very very rudely called time amazing grace. It's such a sort that made so much to the world.
So that's it.
Thank you, okay, and we are back. And just as a note, I have forgot to put this in the script, so I'm gonna say it now. It turns out that that heart costume that was quote unquote dancing to the music, that's actually rentable. You can rent that in Atlanta. So I have some really good ideas for the next for the next week of action, since we can rent more bouncy castles and also that heart costume, I think there's
a lot of potential, extremely funny things that could happen. Anyway, back to my conversation with Matt from the Atlantic Community Press Collective.
There are a couple like things to note about how city council public comment works. City council doesn't tend to pay attention to them. Osensibly the only one who pays attention is City Council President Doug Shipman, because it is his job to call time and to call up the next person. But you know, city councilors will like step in and out of the room, get something to eat during the seventeen hours of public comment for cop city like one of them held a press conference like it is.
It is weird, Heathery like legally allowed to not pay attention like that is that is bizarre?
You would you would you would think that if you allegedly work for the people, like you.
Would, you have to actually listen to them.
So amongst the city Council, there are two in particular that I'm glad you got to see there. There's Mary Norwood, who represents Buckhead, and then there's Dustin Hillis, who is the the committee chair for the Public Safety Legal Administration Committee, So he's basically in charge of police here.
Throwing molotov cocktails at officers and damaging millions of dollars of equipment.
And he gives off that vibe, and neither one of them will pay attention. They were they were on their phone from almost the entire time I was there. The the the Buckhead woman gave off ontologically evil vibe. Like I I did not know like who she was when I went to the city council, but once I saw her, I was like, oh, okay, this person is like obviously evil, right, And I asked people about it afterwards, like oh, yes,
that is a person that represents Bucket. I'm like, okay, yes, of course, of course.
Bucket of course being the like primarily white neighborhood in North Atlanta, that part of it wants to secede from the city. And that's that's a whole. Yes, that is a whole another issue. But to kind of give context of what Buckhead is redlining.
That's not a question, that's just a observation.
And so sitting directly next to her is Dustin Hillis, who is known for not paying attention ever.
Except except they did both pay attention after public comment when police gave their testimony on what happened to the night, and then these two people were very engaged. We will hear more from Mary Norwood ontologically evil in a bit, but first I have to saw Jesus Christ fucking fuck Jesus.
My cats are just running amuck. All right, We will hear more from Mary Norwood ontologically evil in a bit, but first I have to include some of councilmen Antonio Lewis's response after Police Chief Darren Cherbaum gave his little presentation at City Council. Because I don't think I've ever heard January sixth, the Atlanta Way, and six Flags all get mentioned in the same sentence before it.
Looked like January sixth. I ain't never seen police run from a group of people, and so the only thing I could think about when I saw that video. I saw it on Ato Scoop, the videos all out there. I've been seeing it all over And when I saw the police officers run, I mean I was a little nervous. When I saw the heat map, I saw one hundred people I saw, I saw it. I mean, like that
ain't the Atlanta Wait. I mean, I ain't never seen I'm just thinking about the At the same time, at six Flags, we had some young men that were fighting, some of our teenagers fighting at six Flags. They didn't run up on the police. They didn't run up on the police with molotail malory tail cocktails throwing to burn up stuff. What I will say, I thank you so
much for last night for working. I want to really commend the officers because y'all were under some immense pressure and to not see a gun fire back because when I see the firecrackers, I'm from Cleveland Avenue. If they throw firecrackers at me, I don't know those firecrackers. I've never seen that. So I appreciate APD for doing that.
Truly, truly a stunning admission, just perfect. So I had to listen to Atlanta Police Chief Darren Sheerbaum's testimony a few times for the five episodes that were released earlier this month, so I didn't really feel like fully listening through again to find any funny bits to put in this episode, so I just kind of like skimmed through while multitasking, and weirdly enough, I noticed that the chief said some pretty shocking things that I somehow just must
have missed in my previous viewings. So I will play those for you now, and I will warn you it is. It is pretty disturbing, Like all the subjects we put on air. Their statements do not reflect our opinions or the official position held by whatever current company owns this podcast. So yeah, like I said, warning, these are shocking, but I will let the chief speak for himself.
Take aggressive action against these officers. Move to the front gate, more accelerant, inflict vitily harm upon them, launch illegal and criminal attacks to attack members of law enforcement, bring harm to our officers.
These attacks are.
Going to you pretty pretty shocking stuff coming from a police chief to Jesus, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. Because to my surprise, after public COVID was over and all the news cameras that left after I left, and you know, everyone everyone left the building. It turns out Darren Sheerbaum gave a second testimony at the very end of the city council meeting that I just completely missed until now. So I will warn you
it is kind of leude in nature. So if you want to skip past lewd police conduct, just fast forward like a minute or two. But anyway, without without further ado, here is the secret recently unearthed second testimony presented by Atlanta Police Chief Darren Sheerbamb.
Person ship, the members of the Council would like to brief you on evincent transpired yesterday. I'm going to let the video play here. Why I walked through each of the situations. What you see here is of our partners at the Decap County Police Department, the Share for Fulton County as well as the Georgia State Patrol. We're seeing changing out of the clothes that they were wearing. They're going to position themselves when it appears to be an
attempt to keep pursuing the officers. As the officers see these we had a rapid response from our partners as well as to change their clothing. Different groups were performing acts within the manner of their training and their discipline. At this time. Our officers repositioning themselves inside of our partners. These officers had been stationary to ensure that they are
being restrained. The officers are on city property and are positioning themselves and reposition themselves to be prepared to go back in. Our officers are showing great restraint. They remained in a position. It's what you see here is a
lieutenant that is discharging. We're very fortunate that that was the outcome, and I want to commend every man and woman on duty yesterday as they stood in the gap to do their job, those officers entered our partners, and what you see here, ladies and gentlemen, is as some of the individuals that had just previously had entered into those officers, they start changing back into the clothes that
they were just wearing moments before. Just last night, officers of this department, as well as the Cab County to the Georgia State Patrol and the Sheriff's Department moved in.
And I want to think of the men and women again of the Atlanta Police Department, the Georgia State Patrol, the Sheriff's Department, as well as the Cap County Police Department for the professionalism that they demonstrated throughout the night and to the early hours of this morning while many of us were asleep, they continue to work through the night.
I've never seen that, so I appreciate APD for doing that.
I would have loved for every one of those very hysterical people that we've been sitting listening to for two or three hours to have seen an actual video of what really did happen. And there may be great reasons if the administration chose to do it this way, but our media is gone and all the people that needed to see this are gone. I'm glad that nobody was hurt and none of our none of our employees were hurt.
Yesterday.
Oh boy whoa oh well that was That was certainly something I did not did not want to know that much about what the the APD and their partners get up to after hours. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled comedic, James I Know a sheer bomb was was addressed with some questions by Unicorn Riot when he was trying to exit, which he then did not He hea have a very frustrated face and then denied answering and promptly left the building well.
In the company of the New York Times journalist.
Oh with with with a friend of the show, Sean Keenan. So that was that was? Uh? That was most of Monday. Yeah, that is everything that happened on Monday.
So what uh Monday evening I went home to start working on article.
What did you do?
Guys?
I went to the perm in the Woods. I got to share my my memory of the Veggietail's esther story starring the Tickle monsters. I got to bond with a few expangelicals about that, so that was fine. Then there was an experimental noise show in the forest.
And then you had a tragic neck injury on Monday night. So Tuesday, the group that we followed left out of the church and went to Norfolk Southern, which is one of the funders of APF and Friend of the Environment in Ohio. When they finished reading the letter, like, all they asked was that the letter go to the CEO. Yep, And they denied that and all they had to do was accept it and and move on.
But they, while people were inside the security called ns Police. And if you're wondering, you're like, you know, ns Plice, a city that isn't the city in Atlanta, What could that be? That is the Norfolk Southern Police who are legally allowed to arrest people.
And we we thankfully we avoided going to Norfolk Southern Police.
Jail, going to Norfolk Southern Court.
Which certainly would have been a very legitimate court.
So I mean, it would have been almost as legitimate as the real court that that the bail hearings happened at that same day. After successfully evading Norfolk Southern jail. Matt and I headed downtown for a march that was accompanied by a cadre of over one hundred officers. Pinning this crowd onto the sidewalk, got a whole police court blocking the sidewalk like a Doorida State University canine unit. This blocking off the entire sidewalk next to a Fulton
County Sheriff's vehicle. I like the copturist, also commanding the corporate media on where they can stand and the whatever like boomer journalist is with whatever like mainstream news. Helle and was very peeered off at this cop for telling you to get on the sidewalk. The next day, a smaller crowd met up at the same spot and broke off into little subgroups to walk around downtown Atlanta and
hand out defend the forest to leaflets. So all the little subgroups kind of meet up on Andrew Jung and Peachtree, right next to the Hooters and the Hard Rock Cafe.
To classic examples of Atlanted food.
There was an Atlanta swat vehicle parked outside of the Hooters, fucking the fucking outside of fucking Hard Rock Cafe. So I can't I keep picking up this copyrighted music. But there's a big Atlanta Police swat vehicle parked on the block by the Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters. All right, there's actually a pretty decent number of people gathered here for
the flowering event today. They're at the Peachtree and Young International Boulevard intersection, right across from the Hooters and the Hard Rock Cafe. There's a swat vehicle parked right behind us. There is about, I don't know, twenty to thirty officersation a little bit to our north, you know, normal police responds to people handing out flyers, just fifty officers in a swat team. Lieutenant Neil Welch approaches the crowd and
gives them a dispersal order. They cross the street walk like a black north, past some of the cops that are guarding the Wells Fargo building. At this point, people chanted the cops to quit your jobs, quit your job, and one of the cops guarding the Wells Fargo says, that's actually a good idea, you can always quit your job.
That's actually a sound of box.
Yeah.
I already tried, And he's like, I tried to and they wouldn't let me. But like I don't like laughing, but that one got me. That one got me.
The cop responded like, not in like a glib tone like he was it was actually actually he wanted serious, like yeah, that's actually yeah, that's actually a good idea, extremely funny moment.
While this is happening, there's another group who comes in to the side of Peatree Center Mall and enters the mall to find Mayor Andre Dickens.
Andre Dickens is like the head of some kind of like board or something.
Yeah, there are a couple of boards in Atlanta that stipulate the mayor is like the head of the board, and this is one of them. And it meets in Peatree Center Mall as one does. So the mayor is having a meeting in the mall. It his office space is, you know, sort of above the mall. And so three Indigenous An activists along with Kamal Franklin arrive and they find the mayor. They enter the board meeting and they begin to read this letter from the Muscogie Nation aloud.
Mayor Dickens, in true mayor fashion, bolts away from this, running through an exit door which is then like blocked by a guard which I think that has its own like set of legal issues, essentially just ignoring them over his shoulder. He calls out, I've got a copy of the letter and hides just completely trying to escape what is not a good look for him.
This is what we call a Ted Wheeler moment. So as this happens, I think like Apex Swat is deployed.
So Apex and Swat had had been elsewhere and they were called back to their vehicles like right before this, and then the activist exit and almost like in this very comical moment, after they get out and away, squads of these special units start rushing into the building, of course, finding no one.
Charlie Chapman asks shit, truly okay, even a more future version of Garrison here. Apparently I've been told by Daniel that his name is Charlie Chaplin. I don't know he's a pedophile, so whatever, Charlie not Dan, oh boy, And I do want to say I did try multiple times to take Matt to the hard Rock Cafe or the Hooters, either one, and he refused my offer multiple times, very very rudely. So at some point when I'm back in Atlanta, I will have to gather a troop of fanboys and
head over to the Hooters anyway. Next was the Community Movement Builder's rally on the evening of Thursday, March ninth, which had fewer jokes that night. But there are a few embarrassing recording bloopers at the expense of my own ego. So I will play those for your amusement, you absolute seck Fox. Yeah, we'll start thirteen years. It is kind of raining. We'll see how many people show up and how large the police response will be in comparison. So what what what could happen here?
Well, it could happen here? A podcast by Robert Evans. We are at the site of the Martin Luther King Memorial.
Did you see the two Sandy Springs police buses?
I did see the Sandy I lived in Sandy Springs for a year and that brought back some memories. But yes, to Sandy Springs police buses. Sandy Springs, of course, being mostly outside of the perimeter. A good A good drive from here. That was good, That was good? All right, Hauger's absolutely Paugers.
The police police has has been stating, well, I'll never mind, I cut that. What am I saying? Big puddle on the street, demonstrating the city's commitment to infrastructure. That was that was a joke because the dragon was plumped. I accidentally turned off my recording. But tripping on flo stairs. They're so they're so close together, we're they're just sandwiched in. Got a New York Times reporter standing in the middle
of the street. Of course, the only person allowed to stand in the street the one, the one New York Times reporter. I would estimate almost about a kilometer, but I'm Canadian, so that's not very helpful to you.
To you us listeners, the real outside agitators is Sandy Springs. Please. Yeah, the police were ready to mass arrest the entire time. I don't know if you mentioned this. So in between the police line in front of the APF building and the protesters was essentially like a mixture of cop Watch and National Lawyers Guild and a CLU, because of course you had to have like both both legal observer factions just to make sure everybody's watching each other.
A still you can watch energy get the West rested? Who can watch a still you get arrested.
It's turtles all the way down in Bigel Observers all the way down.
Hello, and we are back. That's great, all right. One of the stops on the tour of the Blonnie Forest that Joe Perry was doing throughout the week was the area of the landswap between the former owner of Black Hall Studios, Ryan Millsap, and the Cabot County's Entrenchment Creek Park. So on one side there's this beautiful forested park that Ryan Millsap wants to trade for. Then on the other side is this massive mound of dirt that he currently owns, which is right next to Bouldercrest Road.
That's a huge, huge dirt field that you see. And what happened is while that swap was being orchestrated, Blackhall was bringing thousands and thousands and thousands of dump truckloads of dirt and just filling it up, filling it up, filling it up. And somebody else is gonna have to do the math. But I don't know if you say, like fifteen acres of dirt that is twenty feet plus high, how much dirt that is.
That's a lot.
It's not natural. It's not something that's helping this flood prone area. All that's gonna run into here, no matter how many silk fences you put up. So that's what they're calling Michelle Obama Park. That's exactly exactly right. If somebody needs to talk to Michelle and say, nah, you need to take your name off of that one. I don't know who who got away with that, but that's not it.
By the way, you're seeing the most picturesque side of that.
Piece of land.
Yeah, you get to get to the top, it's worse.
It's just it's just it's garbage.
Well the thing, and it is literally garbage because a lot of this stuff, this dirt keep you know, Ryan millsp has he is. He's not a movie mogul. He's he's a land baron. He's he's in real estate, and he's made billions of dollars in real estate. And so that dirt comes from other properties. He's he's digging up a place on you know, on Boulevard to put some apartments in. He's pulling dirt out of there. That's what's coming in here. That's dirt coming from all these other
construction sites you have that is not top soil. You can and I believe me, I'm not saying I'm not making that up. I've been over there and I've walked and I've seen what's in there. I've seen water heaters in there. I've seen gutters in there, I've seen pipes, I've seen all kinds of crap.
It's trash.
It's a big trash mountain. That's what they want to have be Michelle Obama Park and hanging a hathen So, yeah, that's I just wanted you to kind of lay your eyes on what the county thought was a good idea, in what black Haw thought. Of course, you know, Ryan mill is a great idea for Ryan Millsepp because the land that he acquired is were way more millions more. It's now worth millions more than when he made the swap.
So he has made a lot of money on this swap, and that's why he's angry that he can't get his hands on it. Yet nobody knows what he's gonna do with it, because the original agreement between him and the county was he was gonna build movie studios on that land. Well he can't now because he sold his rights to the movie studios to accompany. It's now called Shadowbox. They're the ones that owns his previous studios, so he can't have a rival company right across the street from them.
So he hasn't said and nobody knows exactly what he's going to do with the property. If he wins this court case and gets those forty acres, who knows. It's a mystery. So that's that's where that stands right now. Hopefully we win the lawsuit. If we do, he will be he will have to put the bill for repaving the path and redoing the parking lot and putting a new gazebo in. That's what the judge decree. That's why they said we don't need a restraining order. All that
is replaceable. So except for the trees that he tore down, you know those are going to take another seventy five years, but who's counting.
The fate of Michelle Obama Park is still up in the air as of time of recording. So yeah, excited to visit that. If the landswap gets passed, almost done, we're gonna we're gonna briefly, briefly tap back into my conversation with Matt from the Atlantic Community Press Collective, and then unfortunately, our jokes must come to an end.
I think one thing that's been lost in all of this too is all of the lighthearted events that have continued to go on through the week. And you know, we have this this, this youth rally or there's the youth rally that's happening on Saturday, of course recording this beforehand, and like the joy of the movement that was represented in the bouncy castle rip which was first pointed at a Ford was pointing it.
And we haven't talked about the gun, talking about the guns and the bouncy castle.
So so one thing I think that that.
We didn't mention.
How can you forget about the guns and the bouncy castle. So when when the police came running up onto the tarmac at RCA Field where the bouncy castle was, of course they had to point a rifle at the bouncy castle. And if that doesn't show that police are not here to have fun and have joy, I don't know what what is I I don't know if anyone was in
it at the time, I don't think so. I think they were literally just pointing a gun at an empty bouncy castle which they have they destroyed, and and I think we have to take a moment to mourn that.
Did they destroyed or like defleate it?
I think they destroyed It.
Wasn't like a rental or something.
Yes, so r I P. Bouncy house. You will be missed and all the joy that you represented. My girlfriend's texting me cringe.
Let me let me check my my note, my notes.
In case Garrison doesn't cut this. Ask about Garrison's neck?
What hmm? What what did you say?
Ask about what Garrison did Friday.
Fire, burn tower Saturday, Gresham Park Sunday, Monday noon Tuesday. All right, all right, okay, I'm gonna just gonna look through my other notes app because I keep my notes in three different notes apps because I'm normal.
So one thing that's been notable, especially in how the police talk about the forest, is they've begun using like these these militarized terms, like the denial of operating area that we saw when Ryan mill SAP was important to
Cab County. He said the GBI told him to clear the area to deny operating space, and you know, the use of terrorism, like there's there's some eerie parallels between the language that was used to describe insurgencies in countries that America is invading or the United States is invading, and a lot of that language, like the military equipment that was used there has come home and is now being used against Americans engaged in like these liberation struggles.
I wonder where we've talked about that before. I don't know it could happen where speaking of it is still happening. The last week, approximately five hundred people came out to City Hall as the city Council is now in the process of voting to approve public funds for the Cop City project. Nearly three hundred people signed up for public comment,
with hundreds more waiting in line. A public comment lasted seven hours, and during so not a single person voiced support of using taxpayer money to fund the police training facility.
The Atlanta Community Press Collective have recently reported that the proposed city funds toward the Cop City project have ballooned to a minimum of fifty one million dollars, with the thirty million dollar package awaiting final vote in City Council, plus another at least twenty million dollar chunk to be given to the Atlanta Police Foundation via a quote unquote loan, which indicates that the Atlanta Police Foundation's private fundraising has
not gone as well as they initially had hoped. For more on that, I'd recommend checking out The Press Collective's recent article from May twenty fourth, and you can also donate to them to support their continued reporting of the happenings in Atlanta.
You can find us on Twitter at Atlanta Underscore Press. Our website is atl Press Collective dot com, and you can find our Instagram at at l Press Collective. We have partnered with Open Collective. We are fiscally sponsored now by Open the Open Collective Foundation in a way to transparently fundraise in order to sustain our reporting everything up until actually the Week of Action, we have everything that we have done up until the Week of Action was
all unpaid. And it is our desire to to continue to grow with the movement. And uh so we were excited to find a partner in the Open Collective Foundation that can uh continue that sort of horizontal open organizing that that we have done internally.
Okay, yeah, I think, I think, I think we're good.
I think we have a good job team.
Oh shit, I wasn't required.
It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at coolzonmedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.