On the Ground at Defend the Atlanta Forest: Part One

small creek. Save for the occasional train, all you can hear is the croaking of frogs and chirping of cicadas, crickets, and grasshoppers. The night air you breathe through your mask is noticeably cleaner than the air from downtown that you spent months riding in during not even counting the tear gas in the air. As you and your pals slowly trek through the forest, your feet squished into the grassy ground, you avoid the area's caked in clay and stick to

the cover of trees, brush and the soft wetland. After a short walk and with only a few wrong turns, you reach an artificial break in the embrace of the forest. You look at your masked up friends, and for a brief moment during the moonlight night, you can't quite tell who's who. Which is a good thing. You suppose everyone exchanges glances, but no one says anything. Everyone already knows what to do. As you approach the barren mound of dirt, you get angry, a jarring crack in the beauty and

mysterious allure of the forest. You're no longer in the woods. You're at the site of destruction, a clear cut that seeks to expand its radius. Without the tree coverage, you can see the harsh blue light of l eds in the distance. There, among the mounds of dirt and fallen trees are several unguarded machines of destruction. With no cell phones in sight. You and your friends get to live in the moment. Your agenda becomes the sound of shattering

glass in the cold night. Hammers meet windows and serrated knives cut the inner tubing of bulldozers and excavators. The undoing of the mechanical monsters that have violated the forest has begun. No tool of the evil doers goes unharmed. Rattling cans of spray paint, leave antagonistic and proclamatory messages with rebellious hiss for those who intend to continue destroying the forest. Defend the forest, no cops city, no Hollywood dystopia.

In little time, the light pollution, moonlight, and distant LEDs are accompanied by a bright orange blaze emanating from the machines, lighting up the area around the sad mound of dirt. A splash of gasoline acts as the extension of the blood that fuels the burning fire in your hearts that became a light with the rage felt at the sight

of the decimated woods. By the time the fire department took notice, you've already disappeared into the night, like a specter, fading like the curling black smoke that drifted into the midnight sky. As you exit the forest, you go about as if what happened tonight never did. You never tell a soul, You never talk about it with your masked

up queer friends, since they were never there either. Details fade in your memory like a dream, but deep down you still remember the feeling, the peak moment of true freedom. When the fire engulfed the machines, it was upon broken, uneasable machines that the fires were extinguished, laying incinerated, the excavators and bulldozers who are rendered immobile worthless. Piles of trash.

Fires are only temporary and can be undone. But the connection between those who live in a forest, who breathes air, and who drink its water filtered through its wetlands is not so easily broken. Any further attempts that destroying the forest we met with a similar response. The forest was here long before us, and we'll be here long after. You and your friends, among many other anonymous strangers will

see to that welcome. Took it up in here a podcast about things falling apart and how we can put them back together, And today we'll be spending that entire spectrum. I'm Garrison Davison. The story I just read isn't merely a fictional one. It was inspired by over a year's worth of communicators and report backs coming out of the Defend the Forest movement in Atlanta, Georgia. So excuse the

pretentious poetry of anarchists and speak. In early one, it was real to the public that mainly four entities, namely the City of Atlanta, the Atlanta Police Foundation, de Cab County and Black Hall Studios had dual plans to devastate two complementary sections of the South Atlanta Forest. The City of Atlanta and Police Foundation plans are to turn the area of the forest, known as the Old Atlanta Prison Farm, into the largest police training facility in the country, complete

with a mock city, helipad and bomb range. Meanwhile, Entrenchment Creek of a public forest land will be traded by De Cab County to Black Hall Movie Studios to clear cut the land on which they plan to build America's largest sound stage. This project lies at a horrific intersection of police militarization, gentrification, copaganda, and exasperating the local effects of worsening climate change by clear cutting hundreds of acres

of forest. In the last year, activists, ghosts like saboteurs, and open source researchers have vultraals together into an anonymous and diverse movement that's brought the plan to destroy the forest out of the shadows of secretive, backdoor corporate deals and into the public spotlight, forming the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement that's consistently been able to get ahead of police and media by breaking news about the force to strug action plans and setting the terms of engagement and

what's deemed as acceptable direct action, all well being able to foster relationship with the woods that they are defending. I've been really interested in this project since I heard about it last summer. Along with the intersection of police militarization and climate change. On the flip side, there's this unique intersection of urban city protest and classic forest echo defense. The mix of tactics have produced a movement unlike anything

really seen before here in the States. Not to get ahead of myself, but ever since last fall when the Atlanta City Council approved the plan to build the largest police training facility in the country, dubbed cops City by activists due to the plans to build a mini version of Atlanta within the facility to practice urban combat. But I figured that I would eventually find myself inside the forest.

So this last April, when an opportunity presented itself to travel to Atlanta, stay in the woods and talk with some forest defenders, I could not pass it up. I packed a tent, sleeping bag, and some microfilms and made my way to Georgia. The first thing I noticed upon arriving in Atlanta is that when they say Atlanta is a city in a forest, they really do mean it.

The amount of continuous tree coverage throughout the city was astonishing, and that's coming from someone who lives in Portland, Oregon. As it turns out, the city of Atlanta actually has the highest amount of tree canopy of any city in the United States. On top of the citywide tree coverage, there is the South River Forest, which makes up the largest continuous section of woods and serves as Atlanta's first line of defense in the face of rapidly accelerating climate change.

The forest in southeast Atlanta is said to function as the lungs of the city. The canopy offers shade and traps carbon, with some of the more heavily forted areas acting as wetlands that filter rain water and prevent flooding by collecting runoff. It's marsh is one of the last breeding grounds for a lot of amphibians in the region, as well as an important migration site or wading birds, and serves as a home to a lot of local wildlife. Nearly five acres of this forest is under threat by

the Atlanta Police Foundation and Black Hall Studios. If plans succeed to develop this precious strip of forest into the massive police compound and adjacent movie sound stage, the entire metropolitan area will face much harsher effects of climate change, including worsening floods, higher temperatures, and less clean, tree filtered air, not to mention the increased police militarization and gentrification. Speaking of the second thing I noticed once I arrived in

Atlanta is how much gentrification is currently underway. The amount of hideous five of our one apartments that are being built was impossible to overlook. And as we'll see, the way police feed off gentrification, which feeds off the corporate and movie making sides of Atlanta, is not merely a coincidence. Last fall, I interviewed Jamal from the Atlanta chapter of the Community Movement Builders, a black blood collective of community

residents and activists serving poor, working class black communities. They focus on responding to encroaching gentrification, displacement, and over policing. Here's what Jamal had to say on the intersection of issues owing around the cops city and defend the forest project. Just to piggyback off of that, I think it's extremely

important for us to recognize the connections between all these things. Right, this, like Cops City is a perfect blend of UM environmental justice issues, uh just flat out racism, police brutality, and

also gentrification. Right, it's not a it's not a mistake that they're building this Cops City right at this moment when UM Atlanta is also becoming the for the first time and I don't know how many decades, um Non no longer a majority black city because neighborhoods like Pittsburger were located out of and all across Southwest and West Atlanta have becoming more like the black people have been

being displaced from the from our communities, right. UM. So a perfect example is that with my gganization Community Movement Builders, we UH purchased We've been we've been doing work in the Pittsburgh neighborhood for a while, but we purchased a community house in the neighborhood about six years ago. Right at that point, we purchased the house for fifty thousand dollars. Right. UM,

Pittsburgh has been historically uh poorn working class community. It was uh it was founded as a black community, which is different from a lot of other other neighbors in Atlanta. Was founded as a black community from uh freed Africans UM who were trying to escape some of the more rural areas of the South and found work in Haven in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Atlanta. And it's been a poor and working class black community ever since. But now UM,

because of the gentrification has been going on. How a house just sold maybe about a month and a half ago for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, So the person's house at fifty thousand dollars six years ago. A house just sold UM just a few blocks away from that house for seven fifty thousand dollars. Now, it's not every house to sell in for that amount, but that

just shows you the rate of gentrification that's happening. And then and we know that cops are on this necessary part of being able to defer to displace people from gentrifying communities. They play an integral role within gentrification. Yeah, I'm just wondering, does any of you have anything like even like anecdotal experience with like basically Marvel and men

tons of other industries like invading Atlanta. How is that like affected specifically, Like you already talked about how how you know, increased the increase in the film industry and other things. Has you know, has made more gentrification, But like how has that even affected just like like other types of stuff including like policing, Like has has this type of like growth um affected people or people you

know in in other ways? Yeah? Absolutely so I think a lot of this kind of got I won't say it got started, but a lot of it went even uh you know, escalated when Tyler Perry Studio opened up in East Point, UM and a lot of people you know were praising It's like, oh look at this uh you know, it's a black man. And I was able to move down and be able to start this thing

within Hollywood. But no, it's all that is one of the things that also spurred the gentrification in East Point, which is you might not be familiar with Atlanta, but East Point is like literally right next to Atlanta, So it's a lot of it's it's really close proximity, and so that also spurs over to the gentrification here in the city as well. Um property values have gone up

since that point even more. UM even my tax bill has gone up a thousand dollars a year per a year UM for the past like three years, right, UM, So it's yeah, it's it's definitely. We definitely see the effects and you know, and just talking to you know, we do, we do do a lot of work around gentrification. UM. And I think this is in tandem with you know, because we have COVID nineteen out here now, with the Vision moratorium which has now been you know denied um

with by the Supreme Court. Um. But even when there wasn't a Vision moratorium, there were still people that were getting evicted from their homes. And and I think all of this in tandem when Atlanta specifically has already been going through a gentrification crisis and um with COVID nineteen where people have been losing jobs left and right, or not been able to go to their jobs that they've had,

um and look and having us salaries cut. People have been hurting, and the response from the city has not to been that has not been to provide more resources to people. It's been too fund cops city to be able to get more peace out. Who are the ones that execute then actual evictions themselves? And I think it all it all it all is connected in that in

that type of way. I arrived in Atlanta a few days before the Muscogee Summit, a weekend event where the original indigenous people from the area of the South River, or for the native name of the said land, the Ulannie Forest, traveled back to their ancestral homeland to discuss indigenous environmental philosophy, what land back and rematreation means in

theory and practice. Several Indigenous authors were present and led workshops, including Indigenous feminist, scholar and community planner lower Are Joe from the University of Oklahoma, author of Spiral to the Stars, Muskogee Tools of Futurity, and Dr Daniel Wildcat of the Haskell Indian Nations University, who wrote the book Read Alert,

Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge. In the less academic portions, there were forest walks, community meals, and singing of old Muscogee songs, including ones that are performed two centuries ago during the Trail of Tears. Muskogee Creek. Attendees also gathered around a sacred fire to perform a stomp dance, recreating rhythms heard and sensed in the forest long ago to rekindle the relationship with the Earth and connect back to

the ancestral presences. This was the second ancestral migration the Muskogee Creek Title members have done since being forcibly removed two centuries ago and displaced to Oklahoma. The first one took place just this last November, and both times the particular section of land they gathered on in Transparant Creek Park is one of the areas under threat of being

ecologically destroyed and clear cut. Over the course of a few days during my week long stay, I sat down in the woods to record with two groups of forest defenders, one group sitting around a campfire at night next to a high security child prison, and the other group during the sunny bird chirping day outside the Black Hole Studios movie plot. So if you hear campfires or bird sounds

in the background, just embrace our forest punk aesthetic. Up front, I think it's really important to first talk about the history of the land that is under threat because on top of issues regarding gentrification and the plans of this police training facility. As a response to the George Flayne uprising and the false manufactured crime wave media narrative intended to rejusify American policing in the wake of the uprising, that the fact that the Atlanta Police Foundation shows this

plot of land in particular is particularly gross. The history of this small section of land in the South River Watershed is deeply scarred and desperately needs time to heal. There are centuries of oppression and state violence tied to this particular spot of land, and now we're seeing that trying to be continued with this Cops City plan. Local tribes were expelled for millions of acres in the southwest region of what is now known as the United States

during the early decades of the eighteen hundreds. Forced removal and displacement of the Muskogee Creek people began in the region in eighteen twenty one through a series of treaties which then eventually led to a quote melee of removal. More on that from one of the force defenders I spoke to, and I'll note we'll be using a mix of voice distortion and voice actors combined with other audio distortion to help protect the identities of the forced defenders

that I spoke to against possible state repression. So enjoy our our our cool voice distorted audio. Yeah, I think it's important because a lot of our comrades relatives repressed lands in the early eighteen hundreds. They a lot of

them did not go quietly in the night. I think that's important to remember because I feel like a lot of people are just like the Trail of twos or like they were pushed out, but they're they fought against being pushed out, and then when a lot of them are pushed out or killed off, then it was used to incur sory and house mostly black people. So we're taking it back. That is most of the people that I have seen involved. It is a diverse group of people.

It's not just like white anarchists in the woods. That is a misconception. There's all kinds of folks, which really I think is interesting and makes this trouble unique and important. But there is also a lot of like white anarchists that are using their privilege to help take the land back for our comrades that want to see it back,

and it feels things feel like they're in a good way. Um, there's good relations that are existing between like the anarchists and Indigenous Alliance down here, where like obviously no one person speaks or represents any one group, but the alliances that we have are very informed of the variety of activities that have happened down here, including the persons of machinery, and we were positively told to quote unquote keep on going.

So that feels empowering and it feels beautiful, and it feels important to note that some of the comrades that have ancestral tires to this area, it's such a dark history and they're still here. Is something that they're mentioning, and they're excited. The people that were close to obviously we are close to all of them. They're excited that people are choosing to use their privilege to help make

sure these facilities don't get built. Continuing with the scarred history of this land, Shortly after the lands at the South River Forest were stolen from Muskegee Creek people, plots were distributed to white settlers in the fourth Georgia Land Lottery of one, which made available landloads of two undred in two point five acres. Many of these white settlers established slave plantations on which cotton and other crops were

produced through slave labor. Through archival records, we know of at least twelve plantations that were on this land that existed from the eighteen forties up until eighteen sixty five, and then in the early nineteen hundreds, the very same land started being used as a prison farm, now known

as the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. The Old Atlanta Prison Farm was originally bought in nineteen seventeen to incarceraate prisoners of war, but this plan was abandoned within two years and the land was converted into a prison farm where inmates including a moonshiners, public drinkers, and just loiterers and really anybody, were sent to and forced to perform unpaid agricultural labor. This shift from plantations to prison farm marks

the rebranding of slavery into for profit prison labor. This labor included washing cows and arsenic laden water, which led to the early deaths of countless prison nurse. The facility ran up until in which it was shut down, and then two child prison facilities were put on the adjacent land, and the Atlanta Police Department already currently uses sections of this hollow ground as a firing range. Tear gas canisters and bullet casings from police are frequently found throughout the forest.

From where on that here's some other parts that might sit down with the forest offenders. And then I guess like fast forwarding a little bit from this land where indigenous people lived to the prison farm, um, and then how this has like a long incarstral history and history

of being tied to policing. Uh well with the child prison that's still here, the prison farm, and then now trying to build this militarized training facility, just like continuing on this legacy of state violence, which is like another massive aspect in terms of like they're trying to take this very like land that needs to heal from the centuries of violence and just tear it all down and build more of that. Um. I know, there's like there's the firing range that we've been hearing shots from. Uh

there's it's like just this never ending thing. It just like just keeps happening. It's a pretty weird, surreal experience. Makes me feel like we're all like an endangered species living in like the last part of the forest and

fucking South Atlanta. I remember when I was explaining to one of my relatives, are like I was reading the internet about the Family Atlanta forest and not sure quite what's all going on, but sounds like you're living in how you're between two different chapters and sons of high security was the less security, a large massive power line cut and old Prettiston farm and two sides of the road at least three different police firing rangers and always

water treatment plane at the doubles as a firing range and super training facility for the police. Another interesting facet is this particular piece of land where they're trying to build Top City is like a really important turning point in history of slavery in the US, and like this is where a lot of things went from like shadow slavery um and transitioned into what we now have as

prison slavery. And as we're sitting here on what was literally a prison farm, even people in pretile detention were here and used for unpaid labor, even people who had not been convicted of any time. And so it's kind of like it's like like very like visible like stain on the like history of of like what you is racist policing, but it's harder to cover up and harder to like pink flash um and so like even as there is like a place where children are locked in

cages over they have not yards from me. So too, is this a place where people were brought for being used as slaves and like died and were buried in unmarked graves. Yeah. Can I talk a little bit more about that. This was the transition. This is like the intermediitary the intermediate transition between child slavery and mind day

prison slavery. UM. And it was like especially horrific, Like there is two lakes on the property, but where at one point said to be filled with arsenic um where they are slaves were not only watching cattle um with the arsenic to remove them like bugs, but also in those in those lakes and like suffering horrible diseases and

like dying from this. The reason they present, I'm actually that closed down was because of the amount of people going in and out of the reason why this city pushed to close it downwards because of the amount of UM people being sent to the hospital week after weekend, day after day, like efficient like actually overloading the medical

system in the area. UM. That's like publicly recorded information. UM. They closed down like the eighties or nineteen nineties UM, and like during the Civil War, escaped prisoners from here would be are sorry, escaped slaves are from here would be like going across battle lines and feeding information to the Union side in order to like serve their informs of liberation. I mean we like this land also exists right next to a major or like major road that

serves as a car serral center. Um. It has both like the Metro uh Metro reentry facility, the Metro Youth Detention center, and like a couple of other buildings um uh.

And like it's not just like the eighty lands of a plan to clear cut here, it's also the like three hundred that they plan to continue with the car serl legacy of terror and horror um from going from like chattel slavery and indigenous displacement to um the intermit intermediary UM poor that the prison farm was to this new legacy of like cover up of it all and

then and it Yeah. I think the continuation of this land being used by the state, by police, by um all these like oppressive groups to further their causes a really interesting aspect of des and for going to prison farm and then police trying to now turn into a militarized police training facility. UM. Yeah. Yeah, so first I think, UM, you know this misscowy Land and it's during the scurvy summer.

It's cool. You know, the scurvy people have been or displaced for the most part and there trying to participate in this migration back. And so they're on the land right now and it's been very special to have them here and to be able to express all audity and like work together with them has been really amazing and learned a lot and it's yeah, it's cool to understand

that and hear what you're saying. That interaction of like UM settler colonialism displacing people UM, like early slavery, prison slavery, and this this specific land has always been UM a place that I feel like has been almost like the vanguard of how like policing has and like such a settler colonialism, UM has experimented with how to reproduce itself in sustainable ways, UM with like just in general domestication of humans and the domestication animals. And that's like what

APD is trying to do on this land. And it's a direct reaction to the George Floyd uprising which caused a crisis, and policing is it actually bit back with serious power, and so they're trying to figure out and experiment with ways of reproducing policing for the future in the exact same way that when slavery took a serious all they said, how can we recuperate and how can we reproduce this in a way that sustainable. And that's why we have a modern prison system that lives on

to this day. And that's why they're realizing, as as we're gaining and we're threatening it, oh, we have to do something, and this LAMB has always been a site for doing that. It's they're an keep trying. Atlanta is a heavily corporate city. It's been dubbed the Silicon Valley of the South by people who surely must be insufferable to be around, but it is true that Atlanta and Georgia's economic policies have attached a swath of corporations to either start to grow, oh or migrate to the city.

It's home to Coca Cola, Delta Airlines, Ups, Home Depot, Chick fil A, and multiple media conglomerates, as well as having headquarters for like Google and other tech companies as well. The city serves as a massive transportation hub. In fact, Atlanta the city started off as a train hub, and now it boasts the world's busiest airport. Recent tax credits for the film industry have made Atlanta and Georgia the

new hot place to shoot high budget Hollywood movies. There's a whole effort to make the city effectively the new Hollywood, but like all economic growth, this comes with some heavy consequences, most often affecting those at the bottom. Atlanta is also the most surveilled city in the United States and the city with the most wealth and equality. All the corporations and film industry stuff moving to Atlanta has indeed created jobs, but many of those jobs go to workers from out

of state. On average, less than one third of new film industry jobs have gone to people who were already living in Atlanta. The result of this out of state economic migration boosts cost of housing, cost of living at Bush's lower and middle class residents of Atlanta out of

their neighborhoods, disproportionately pushing out to black people. And this is all while the increasing corporization and gentrification is actually pitched as quote unquote providing opportunities to the city's black population. Which is certainly something because the state of Georgia has the fourth largest incarceration rate in the entire world if you put a U S states on the same level

as like every single other country. The other top three states or countries with the highest incarceration rates are Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma. So yeah, but Georgia's number four. Those in Atlanta's top income bracket make nearly twenty times those who are at the bottom. And if you map the wealth disparity onto the layout of the city, it's a one to one match for the cities old segregation lines. The entire city runs on these like Reaganite neoliberal policies, but

under this mask of woke identity politics. And who enforces that wealth and equality and gentrification. That's right, police, which leads us to the origin of this plan for so called cops City. I'm gonna quote a crime Thing article that came out last month called The City in the Forest Reinventing Resistance for an age of climate crisis and police militarization, which I recommend you guys read. I'll I'll have it in the habit in the source notes. But yeah,

here's the quote from crime think quote. The government of Atlanta has developed a few tentative solutions to the dilemmas they face. To follow through on their commitments to their backers, city politicians need to continue sacrificing public assets on the altar of the economy in order to attract more major investors to the region, especially the film industry and technology companies.

To maintain control in a period of rapid displacement and rising cost of living, with chronic tension between the conservative statement and the liberal city administration, they need to funnel more resources towards law enforcement throughout the region. Finally, to appease the increasingly rebellious lower classes, they to frame this process of restructuring and repression in the language of black empowerment, social justice, and progressivism. The bureaucrats are not in a

good position to handle this. Decades of tax cuts and deregulation have created infrastructural failures and breakdowns of all kinds, among other concerns. Atlanta lost the bid for the second Amazon headquarters because the public transit, one of the least funded in the United States, was not even operable when the corporate scouts came to visit. At the same time. It's precisely the low taxes and absence of regulation that

attract capital to the state of Georgia. So cultivating a social democratic governing strategy may now be impossible without creating a flight of wealth to other parts of the country. It seems that the current plan is to give over as many public contracts and resources to private developers as possible, to allow them to incur the costs of social disintegration and anger, and to use police to control the blowback, and to use images of Martin Luther King Jr. To

preempt any meaningful resistance. Thus, the plan to transform a wild space into a police training compound is dubbed the Institute for Social Justice. That's right, the plan to make the country's biggest militarized police training facility. They're planning to call it the Institute for Social Justice. Ignore the bomb range and uh urban combat mock city section. Anyway. Um,

here is Jamal again from the community movement builders. I think one thing that's also really significant is that so my city council person for his District twelve, Joyce Shepherd Um. District twelve is where Pittsburgh is, where Summerhill is, where several of poor and black working class neighborhoods of Atlanta are located. There are also the areas where they're the most gentrifying areas of the city is well and it's

in in in City Council District twelve. Joyce Shepherd, she is the person who brought this proposal forward, right, she is over the quote unquote public safety. Um even know they are keeping ship safe quote unquote public safety. Um, you know commission and Um, she brought this forward. And she has been since she's been in office, she has been a even uh, she's been a champion of gentrification. Right,

she's been a champion of over policing as well. UM. And I think it's it's a tie between even our city council or even our representation has in their interests of being able of of gentrifying the city because that gives them more tax stars. It gives them a way to be able to say that they are decreasing their crime rates except and all those all these different types of things, when it's really just dep deplacing poor folks. Um. And so I think that's an important about talking about

how this kind of was established. That's the important topic to be able to address is that even and she's a black woman, right, so even um, you know, even how like when people when when people might you think they might be in representing your interests, when they get to be in these positions, we have to recognize that

they are not necessarily flo to people. In the aftermath of the George Floyd uprising against police violence, the city responded by striking down any police reform measures and restricting opportunities for republic input, while increasing the police budget and

upping citizens surveillance. On a national level, a media manufactured crime wave narrative has been used to rejustify American policing in the wake of the uprising, and the City of Atlanta is using that narrative while wrapping their increased militarization plans in a nice, woke social justice package, i e. A militarized police training compound being dubbed the Institute for

Social Justice. Heading up this effort is the Atlanta Police Foundation, which is a nonprofit police advocacy organization that claims to have quote united the business and philanthropic community with the Atlanta Police Department. It's a It's backed by an array of Atlanta area corporate donors including Delta Airlines, Upstrick fil A, Cox Enterprizes, which owns the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which is like the city's biggest newspaper, and they were formally formally

backed by Coca Cola. They Coca Cola dropped out this last November. A leak promo video for the Institute for Social Justice details some of the features of the Atlanta Police Foundations quote world class training campus. With an estimated cost of ninety million dollars, The space will provide a place for recruiting training, mid career education, and practice with new technology and equipment for police and fire department personnel.

The renderings show the campus will house a quote mock city for real world training, a canine training center, and forty horse stalls for police horses. Twelve acres of forest land are slated to be converted into an emergency vehicle operations course, and the whole compound will be located across three hundred and eighty acres of the old Atlanta Prison Farm, which is a city owned but technically outside of city limits, located just east of the city in unincorporated Dekapp County.

The Police Foundation has proposed funding the training center through a public private partnership, which will leave taxpayers to pay an estimated thirty million dollars for this out of city police training facility one, which is one third of the early estimated cost. According to the land Use Ordinance, the property will be leased to the Police Foundation by the city for ten dollars a year for fifty years. It's almost four hundred acres of forest land for ten dollars

a year. The ground lease will quote provide that the city will be able to have input or approval on the stages of construction along with the development of the property, and will allow waving of certain code requirements. Such a facility would be three times the size of the New York Police depart Mon's training facility and four times the size of the l a p D. S UH. It's worth noting that the NYPD and l a p D are the two largest police departments in the country, while

Atlanta is the only the nineteenth largest. Yet they'll have a facility that's like three times the size of New York's. According to the Mayor of Atlanta during the time of the facility's announcement, the massive training complex would quote raise morale among officers and hopefully bring more recruits to the department. And importantly, the whole project was initially supposed to be

totally under wraps, approved through backdoor deal making. The social justice something socialist justice I believe in the promo video specifically, which is not like really even a public release. This was like very much designed to be under the table, pushed through as fast as possible of the public. Where

is it really supposed to know about it? The videos that existed for only meant to be UM the sponsors, board members founders of the Atlantic Police Foundation UM and the Atlant Police Foundation, unlike most like police unions, is a foundation made to final corporate money into the handsOn police. The cops city side of things is just one part

of the Defend the Forest project. The other big aspect of this is pushing back on the movie studio Black Hall, from being able to clear cut more forced to expand

their sound stage. Projects shot on their current lot include a Godzilla, King of Monsters, Venom, der Van Hansen, HBO's Lovedcraft Country and Amazon Primes That Tomorrow War on the East side of the forested land, the part that's referred to as entrenchment Creek Park was bought by Hondy Booko founder Arthur Blank in the early two thousands with a plan to combine uh that section of land with three acres at the prison Farm to create a five hundred

acre park, a project that never came to fruition uh and now the park is currently under control of the Cab County. On top of the heat insulation and air filtering that the tree canopy provides, Entrenchment Creek plays a crucial role in maintaining the South River Watershed, being a partial wetland and marsh that mitigates flooding in South Atlanta.

Quoting that crime thing article again quote, the plundering of public assets from the benefit of a movie company and real estate mogul is described as an opportunity to create quote good jobs for local Atlanta's, not as a criminal expropriation of infrastructure. The clear cut that Blackall Studio has planned to trade in exchange for a section of forest

is to be renamed Michelle Obama Park unquote. So yeah, that also clearly demonstrates the type of gentrification wrapped in this nice woke package by doing this really sketchy land swap and then building a park on it and calling

at Michelle Obama Park. Cool stuff, guys. Blackhall Studios is currently a hundred and fifty acre complex about ten minutes south of downtown, and they seek to add over half a million square feet of sound stage, two hundred thousands square feet of offices UH, four hundred twenty thousand square feet for warehousing square feet of catering space, according to a filing made through the States Development of Regional Impact

Program UH. The d r I s are filed when the projects size is large enough that it's likely to impact the infrastructure of neighboring communities. The De Cab County Board of Commissioners in October twenty voted to approve the land swap deal with Blackhe Studios. As a part of the planned expansion, the county would give approximately forty acres mostly wooded land around the South River Forest, and then in turn, Black Studios would give the county around fifty

acres of nearby land as well. The project has faced some legal and construction issues ever since then, and we'll discuss the details of those shortly. Also worth noting that Black Hall Studios was sold to a private equity firm in l a just last year and this last February announced that they purchased another one thousand and five hundred acres in Newtown County, Georgia, which is about forty miles

east of downtown Atlanta. Uh, and they plan to shoot productions there for an upcoming quote action oriented streaming service dubbed black Hall Americana, which sounds horrible. Um, here's a here, here's a quote from black Hole CEO Ryan millsap quote. This is the kind of space we need to fly in black Hawk helicopters and drive humpies at speed. We have lakes, we have swamps and rivers and forests and fields and hills and dales. That's the nice thing about

one thousand and five hundred acres. Yep. So look forward to uh, black Hall Americana, the new hit streaming service coming out of Georgia. UM. Destroying the forest for Black Hall Americana. Oh boy. But yeah, if, if, if this project succeeds, it would semit Atlanta as the new Hollywood, along with like Tyler Perry Studios and all of the other movie studios moving to Atlanta, and it would continue the skyrocketing cost to living in Atlanta and accelerate gentrification

at a even more horrifying right. So. Um, Actually, the Black Hall site that's a in as like being defended as well, is also in the Lining Forest, which is like what's been the scale named for the South Atlanta forests. UM. And it's actually right across the road from where we currently are, UM. So the and it's like, I want to believe three or four acres by itself. UM. And that is actually under imminent threat as well. They're waiting on the land destruction permit to pass, and that can

happen anywhere any week. On what you were saying about the gentrification issue. Um, that's something that's really noticeable to anyone that lives in Atlanta and has for any amount of time just looking around them, like the filming that is just regularly happening here and all all these kind of new companies popping up around it. Black Hall was sold maybe a little over a year ago now to

a hedge fund out in California. They're getting funding for all of these projects and the rent here in Atlanta, I'm sure across the country, I'm not sure what the trends are elsewhere has been skyrocketing, like you You'll see homes that sold during the financial crisis for like eighty thousand dollars two dollars selling for like half a million

dollars today. And you know, I'm not like a fucking economist, but the way that the film industry has been exploding and other industries like Google and Microsoft have been building these massive, expensive new headquarters while people literally go out on the street because they can no longer afford to pay rent here, and people just get displaced. It's like the opposite of white flight back into the suburbs, when you know, folks are moving into the city for economic

opportunities that only very wealthy people can get. I mean, it's it's difficult not to see Black Hall as ushering in just another huge wave of gentrification. Yeah, black making movies to support the American way of life. Yeah, Black Hall explicitly says they're making movies to support the American way of life. We hear gun shots from the police firing range all the time, and we hear almost as

many gun shots from the Black Hall filming sides. Um. And Yeah, it's very much about creating propaganda that makes people think they need police. Um. And that's like a huge part of of kind of what they're doing, a lot of filming and all the gentrification things. Like even just driving to the city the past few days, I've noticed so many places that used to be wooded, uh totally torn down and they're putting up these horrible quote unquote luxury condos which are like, you know, two thousand

dollars rent from on for a tiny studio um. And I've even seen things that were used to be secretion

ad housing turned into luxury condos. Like it's it's been absurd driving through the city and watching so many places that used to be wooded just turned like so much like active construction sites building these exact same like these identical apartment complexes that are the most hideous things you've ever looked at, and completely unaffordable for any for anyone who's not like someone who's working for a tech company.

So like the destroying a section of Atlanta called Park and it was like a large green space that was largely unmanaged in lakewod Um and creating quote affordable housing, which is really just the legal term for they have a certain amount of like available housing, thats like like like taking units and like a like one unit thing is affordable house, Like affordable just means market value or

like like the medium market value. Low income is things that people that aren't like average money makers come for, right. And I think one of the like I think it's has kind of kind of gotten lost about the struggle that the actual defending the Atlanta force struggles, like not specific to just cops of your black hole is actually

the entire forest as a city. Um. And that like part of the reason why it has been so focus is because of like how pressing these currents um things are and how like stretched thin people kind of a who are working on this um and that like yeah, chose to part as an example, there's also an area and that's like near Grant Park and like the Zone three old Zone three precinct and this or like this to they were like actually in the same property area. Um,

they kept the pigs near the zoo. Um. And like it was an entire forest land like absolutely enough at every app very clear Gardner doing disgusting condos all on the road. Um. Yeah. And it's it's a continuation again of a distinctive political pattern in Atlanta. Back when Mayor Jackson was elected as the mayor. He at first tried to build like affordable not affordable, like low income housing

and do community projects and stuff. But the business end of Atlanta fought back against those efforts, and that is what saw projects like the Olympic Games, which destroyed an entire community in Atlanta. You should look up People's Town here in Atlanta was just in summer Hill completely raised

to build arenas and all of this ship. And it feels like they can tinuation of the pattern where politicians decide what is best for the city the Olympics, a new police training facility or whatever business measures on the table today, not to mention that like during the nine day six Olympics, they're like specifically built Atlantic City Defention Center for the for a place to put houseless people who have been sweeped up the streets and like criminalize them.

And during the George Florida uprising in that was reused to as detainment and overnight states for protesters who are like going to get low bail justice a form of repression. It is regularly used. Again like that jails regularly used

specifically against protesters and isn't used for anything else. Is a like absolute scolar on the face of humanity, and Keisha Lance Bottoms said during her turn she was going to turn it into a social justice side or right, it's still a jail that probably already it probably always

will be until we fucking destroy it. Uh. And like now the Fulton County Sheriff wants to take over the jail and use all of those beds because the jails here are so overcrowded with bullshit charges that they are just expanding and expanding, expanding, and there's no sign of stopping. For every one time that they promise that they're going to be closing jails, repurposing ship doing all this liberal reform bullshit. There's a new training facility, they're selling jails

to people that are using them. More of the system just continues to expand and expand and expand until we fight back and destroy it. Need Black haw Yeah, police need Black Hall just as much as Black hall needs the police, you know. And these are the symbiotic relationship between the two. Police are instrumental in gentrification, and also police need entrification to capture poor black and brown people

and lock them in cages. And so these are two things that that feed each other in a relationship, so it's very important to do our best to attack book is Atlanta was the Atlanta Police who have like the point system for rest Yes Atlant Police website. Yes, Atlant Police has actually a point system where among the highest points is capturing a child. For capturing a child and arresting them are alongside felony charges, felony warrants and other things,

um alongest point system. They use it as a rubric to measure how well an officers during um. Yeah, yeah, I mean in terms of like needing gentrification to continue your job. Yeah, that's that's the exact same thing is, let's have this point system so we can get races and arrest all the people who are on the street.

And it's a mask off moment, as they say. And I also think it's this funny thing, like I don't know, right, they're building this fake city to train in, and I wouldn't be surprised if black horns up renting it out from time to time to shoot films. Right absolutely, But also at the end of the day, even if they don't, it's literally the same exact thing, Right, one is training people to actually do it and the other is performing

it too. People think it's cool exactly. Yeah, yeah, So I just pulled up the actually my friend just pulled up there like chart which is it's a one to five scale. It's five scale. It's five for juvenile arrests, five points for felonies, four for distoning or charge, three for a city, charge for for deal wise and it goes on um and like the fact that juvenile rest is the top one is sucking monstrous. No, I expect

it like that the big are the monster. Like if it's not, it's not shocking, but it it shows the extent of like the the horrible nous of what of like what their job is, like, that is their job. That's what that's what they do. That is the entire thing. One thing that's given the Atlanta Defend the Force movement an edge is being able to consistently set the terms of engagement and establish a media framework regarding the instruction of the forest and the development of Cops City to

stay one step ahead of the enemy. Like we've mentioned, the Cops City of project was never actually initially announced by the city or the Police Foundation. It was brought to light by activists digging through open source data and public records in April, when activists discovered the proposal to destroy the South of Our Forest first, news spread via word of mouth for several weeks about a large information sharing session at Entrenchment Creek Park, one of the areas

under threat. On May fifteenth, over two hundred people gathered for a barbecue and info presentation night on the threat of the forest and the broader campaign to defend it. The city government had yet to announce its plans publicly, so the activists and Force Defenders were able to craft the public narrative first and lay the media groundwork. At

the information session. Presenters were able to accurately contextualize the development within the cross section of racist and authoritarian backlash against the George Floyd protests, the increasing gentrification and urban displacement, and the devastating climate effects such a project will inflict

upon the region. Having activists and Force Defenders break the news such a development denies the city and the police the opportunity to introduce a development to the public with a distorted narrative, assuming that they were gonna announce their plans and make them public at all, And then, on May seventeenth, less than forty eight hours After the info sharing barbecue, seven unguarded machines at the forest destruction site,

including excavators, tractors, and other pieces of heavy machinery, were targeted by sabotage, with smash windows and severed inner tubing scorched by fire. The destruction equipment was left inoperable. An anonymous statement appeared online detailing their motivations and methods of attack, while tying the actions to the struggling and colonialism, authoritarianism, and the history of this particular land as the site of horrific abuses, of the site of displacement, child slavery,

and prison slavery. The communicate ended with quote to the developers, governments, contractors, corporations and politicians have perpetrated the heinous deforestation. Any further attempts at destroying the Atlanta force we met with similar response. The forest was here long before us, and we'll be here long after. We'll see to that defend the Atlanta Forest. Today,

no one has been arrested for these actions. The presence of such a targeted direct action campaign this early on in the movement is important for a few reasons, one of which being it's meant in sabotage as a part of this movement from the very beginning, like it was moven into the genetic fabric from the conception, so any debate around the validity of these tactics was virtually non

existent because they were there from the beginning. That's what this movement is, and that's been super interesting to watch because usually this type of sabotage or direct action happens later on in these movements, you escalate to that point, but in this case, it's been happening since the first week. People knew that this thing is was existing. Over the following weeks, there was meetings, posters, and flyers that spread throughout the city. People organized public forest walks through areas

of the woods that were under threat. Even a few candidates for city council adopted the struggle as a component of their electoral campaigns. The movement's consistent ability to break the news on the development and the destruction of the forest has been crucial in the efforts to gain public trust and setting the terms of engagement and the ground rules for the conflict. The type of public discourse regarding the forest was successfully established by anonymous activists, not by politicians,

and not by police. I think something that's been really cool about this movement is that from the earliest days of when this was going on, it was extremely radical, Like it wasn't it wasn't three or four months after the first initial meeting it was like a barbecue at the park where people were lighting bulldozers on fire except

prevent construction from happening. The Atlanta Police Foundation has had its offices, its office windows smashed like people are not afraid to fight back physically, and this was occurring at the same time as the more electoral tactics, as hell phrase it, and I think that you know, we've seen neither of these being able to successfully stop the movement. But when it comes to being able to measure that the police have and their allies have slowed down, the

electoral tactics have been a complete matter failure. Um and physically harming the property of the police, end of the black Hall and all of the fucking forces that would destroy the forest. That's been shown far and away to be a tactic that's not only acceptable in this movement, but it's something that's seen as like one of the go to strategies. It's we haven't had to work our

way to that. People were there from the get tho. Yeah, it was like a day or two after the Younger Knight with the very first like public facing vronment like bulldozers were set on fire, and like Michelle Obamba Park which is farming or enough another like recuperation tactic or like destruction of the environment, and like on during gentrification where that's actually Black Hall Studios old plan site for their new studio and the idea of the land swap

where they take this shitty land where they destroyed forest to replace it with an earth ground and in and as long as they turn into a park, they're allowed to um build and construct on public forest land um which is like a bunker's idea. Yeah, yeah, no, it's actually like a new precedent right here that has not

been done before. I think that like one of the other things, you know, along with the fiery start kind of kick off, is that the folks who you know, like in my experience most like kind of big broader campaign type things that people who are doing jail support, the people who have abroad reach, the people who you know have access to resources, et cetera. Kind of the like backbone life sustaining things of a movement tend to be folks who have really rigid moralizing ideas of like

what is acceptable, etcetera. And you know, people in Atlanta have been there's a lot of credit due to folks who have been putting in a lot of work and are a little wiser than to have such a limited R review. So most of the folks that control and

are not controlled. Most of the folks who like backline and are working really hard to do the more like reproductive things and jail support and get food and things like that, are also people who have a really like, um, creative and accepting view of you know, like what kind of things are okay and really don't want this movement to fail and aren't going to limit themselves based on abstract ideas. And so that's something that is really special and um, you know, one gets excluded for for doing

things are factor when talking with the force defenders. The other thing that was really emphasized is that instead of waiting for distant politicians to save the environment, and instead of dedicating tons of effort into petitioning companies with moralized gredic to make them feel bad in hopes of them dropping into the project. You can instead have immediate material attacks that hit them where it counts, and where it

counts is their pockets. Because you can't expect companies to be swayed by moral decisions around harmful policing or the environment, but you can attack their physical and social capital if it's framed as, hey, this is something that is not a good look, fam, and uh, this is going to hurt your bank accounts. That is the type of general language that these corporations do understand. I feel like this is the most interceptional thing I've been a part of

in a long time. There's just like so many different ways to oppose the facility, and there's so many different people involved. And I'm really grateful for all of the comrades, especially the anarchist comrades. We've been holding it down for years and helped push the struggle in a certain direction. Him. I think other people are touching on this. We want

to keep bringing it up because it's important. And other struggles we've been a part of, like the liberals control a lot of the money for jail support or bail funds or food district and a lot of those mutual aid aspects of the struggle that helped maintain an occupation which has really turned this place up, are in the hands of mostly anarchist folks, and that has also really set the scene for what we're able to do and not able to do, Like no one's getting thrown under

the bus for a leisured behavior. Like when I was reading about this before I came down here almost exactly a year ago, there were like machines are on fire, and I was like, holy shit, It's like usually that's like the way later in the struggle, and that was like right out the gate. People whoever they are, were attacking the machinery, and I think, to be honest with you, that was drawing a lot of people here because people are tired of the n v d A or non

violent direct action. It's not about like let's criticize something to death that makes us feel bad. It's like people are tired because they're losing a lot of comrades to long prison sentences. They're getting three different felonies that are like the same amount of time or more than if you would allegedly arson something. So these are things that are coming up for people, and people are realizing that

old tactics aren't working anymore. A lot of the comrades that were burned into a weird shade from the Green scare are aging out or the things that they're afraid of are very valid. But we're living in two dire of a time to neglect. Those tactics are a larger level, and people are just are seeing how terrible things are, and it seems like more people are down or just don't care anymore. Ever since the George Floyd uprisings, they've just seen an uptick and a lot of his behavior.

There's a campaign that launched publicly that mentions all the subcontractors that Reaves Young, one of the construction companies on the project, has to employ to make the Atlanta Police Foundations project here possible, and a lot of that could be home visits, it could be going to where they I don't know what's to do is obviously, but I'm just saying, long story short, everybody knows this, but you find where they store the evil equipment, that's the best

way to stop the project. Long story short. They usually don't listen to what we have to say, but actually speak louder than words may. If you really want to hurt them. You hurt them in their pockets, and if you cost them enough money damage, they may pull out of the project. They shut down. And even if there is other sub contractors that they could get to run machinery from to cut trees, whatever the funk it is they're going to do, we want them to be afraid.

If you look at very romanticized struggles that have largely been successful in their own ways throughout the world. I'm just going to mention a couple because people talk about them constantly, like the Zad in France, on a Hambach in Germany, or No Time in Italy. A lot of

the revolts around property destruction and defending your area. Another strong point of the Movement to Defend the Alant of Forest is that it's not simply coalesced around a single coherent strategy, whether that be sabotage or above ground organizing. For over a year now, force defenders and movement participants have employed several parallel strategies in tandem. Strategies of one

approach can fill in for the shortcomings of another. Often these differing strategies can be mutually beneficial, as the sabotage was happening. Opponents of Cops City also organized is to continuous stream of educational events on the land, as well as pressure campaigns aimed at pushing city and county officials, investors,

and contractors to drop out of the project. As summer began, more traditional political activist organizations like ones connected to nationwide socialist organizations, abolitionist networks, and ecological advocacy groups began doing more direct community outrage by knocking on the doors talking with people in the neighborhoods next to where the forest

was being slated for destruction. Forming connections and ally ships with the local community in the vicinity of the South River Forest is crucial, especially since that they would be among the first of those impacted by deforestation and the close proximity to such a militarized police hub with you know, explosive testing and helicopter pads um plus you know, local community outreach is useful for learning what might help mobilize

more regular folks. Other tactics and strategies emerging during early summer included getting those involved in the planning of Cops City to realize that they don't get to operate in some safe politics only realm. Their political decisions have real world consequences and real world effects for those people that they allegedly represent, so perhaps they too should be forced

to feel real world consequences. On June six, there was a city Council meeting which was supposed to vote on the Police Foundation's land lease ordinance, sponsored by then Councilwoman Joyce Shepherd. At this point back in, the meetings were all virtual due to the COVID nineteen pandemic, so the city council members hosted their conversations from inside their homes. With just a little bit of work, activists and researchers were able to locate the home address of Councilwoman Shepherd.

A group went to her home and displayed a banner during the city council meeting. Most protesters just chanted from the public sidewalk, and one individual approached her house, knocked on the door and ring the doorbell before returning to the street. It turns out Councilvan Shepherd did not like

this very much and went into a bit of a panic. So, um, one of the movements that I have been like kind of effective in terms of like city council or other targets has been like whenever the first time they were going to vote on this like um Institute for Social actually copsity um. When they were going to vote on copsoity Um, someone went up to Joyce Shepherd's house and

knocked on her door. They're so painful of protesters outside, and someone just knocked on her door and she went to her frenzy freaked out, called off the vote, left the meeting, ran to the precincts comments section, and then gave a long speech to like a bunch of friends which called up, which effectively called off for another like three months or so, just because someone visited the house of a politician because they had names and addresses, and

like that also happened with That's Sean Reeves, CEO and chairman of Reeves Young. There's this whole idea of politics as existing within this political astral space. Right, it's it's it's the same thing with like corporations. Right, everything exists in the corporate space that's removed from people's actual lives. Right,

it's it's removed from actual personal consequences. People in positions of power assume that their actions occur in this political or corporate astral plane that means that consequences of the decisions won't directly impact them, but we don't need to play by those rules. After a friendly knock on her door, Joyce Shepard called off the vote and left the meeting early to call the police, who arrived after the protesters had already dispersed. Immediately after, Joyce Shepherd held a press

conference from the newly constructed Zone three police precinct. Their Shepherd stood surrounded by police officers and news media and described in detail the aims of her land lease ordinance, the nature of the cop City project, as well as

the efforts of protesters to stopp her. By doing this short public statement, she catapulted the movement and the story into the mainstream, out of the political backdoors that it was existing in previously, and Atlantas any councilwoman says, protesters came onto her private property to speak out against a piece of legislation. Joyce Shepherd says, while she supports the right to protest, this time it went too far. People have a right to come out and say whether they

four or against it. I have no problem with that. I've been doing this for years and know that people have their right. But what they don't have a right to do is come up on my private property, knock on my doors, protests on my lawn, on my poet. They don't have that right. So I'm fair tonight that I'm still supporting the candy. I'm not scared. However, there will be no right for people to come out my

property and protests. The next day she made another statement which you just heard a little bit of, where she also claimed that she would be pushing through the ordinance no matter what the city residents that she sensibly represented had to say, And her and her fellow city officials took a stand against the protesters and rejected their tactics, falsely implying that the methods like going on a sidewalk

were illegal. But by showing up outside a politician's house and knocking on her door, just a few people were able to achieve an early goal of the movement to transform the cops city and black hall developments from back to agreements into big public scandals. They got out of the shadows and into the spotlight. As a bonus, the vote was delayed, buying more time to develop further strategies

in defense of the forest. It was an effective demonstration of the potential of direct confrontation with people in power, and it led to the emergence of another strategy that's become a big part of the genetic fabric of this movement, pressuring decision makers directly and dissolving their notion of a safe political or corporate astral space. During this time of showing up at politician stores, more sabotage and direct action

were also taking place. Signs appeared in the forest warning that trees in the area had been spiked, making it possibly dangerous to attempt to cut down trees, with the risk of saws being damaged and possibly injuring unlucky workers. On June tenth, three more excavators were burned at the Black Hole Studios the site. Neither action appeared much in the local news media, but anonymous communications and photographs of the incidents and damage circulated online among the radical anarchist

mill us. In late June there was the first planned Week of action. There's been another one since then, and there's another one upcoming from May eight through May fifteenth. We'll talk more about the upcoming Week of action in the next episode, but I strongly encourage people to travel to Atlanta as soon as possible. If you can make it for any of this upcoming Weeklung event again, that's from May eight through May. If you can make it fronty of that, please go to Atlanta. It will be

it will be fun, I assure you. The June Week of Action featured guided walks through the forest by day and by moonlight, discussion and conversations on ecology, abolitionism, colonialism, and queerness. There was a nightly bonfires and safe open sections of the woods at a nearby radical venue. There was a hardcore punk show during which hundreds of concert goers repelled the buzz kill police who are trying to

shut it down. And there was a night rave deep into the woods where five hundred people were dancing with glow sticks late into the night and early into the morning. In all throughout the Week of Action, thousands of Atlanta's got to gather under the banner defend the forest. They were able to learn about the project and get plugged

into taking action. During the week, people under the cover of night visited the home of black Hole Studios CEO Ryan Millsap in the Atlanta suburb of Social Creek, UH. They also visited his second home in Tuxedo Park and the ups he frequents in Edgewood. According to an anonymous online statement, quote, flyers were distributed to all his neighbors mailboxes, as well as plastered on his front gate and the

streets that he frequents. The flyers let fellow concerned community members know about the harm he is responsible for, and I seally provided the address to his one hundred acre farms so that grievances could be addressed there. The flyers placed all throughout his neighborhood and investment properties were also distributed in hopes that it would quote inspire others to research and take the fight to those directly responsible for

the destruction of the forest. Two days later, on the final day of the week of action, around fifty protesters marched to the headquarters of the Atlanta Police found Dation, quoting crime Thing again quote. As the crowd emerged from the Five Points Metro station, a small contention of officers attempted to arrest somebody. The crowd engaged hand to hand

fighting with police and successfully repelled them. Advancing past the security, they marched straight to the Atlantic Police Foundation's office and smashed the glass doors and windows before overturning tables in the Towers lobby. According to police, on Friday, around four pm, multiple protesters stopped the flow of traffic on Peachtree Street

and Andrew Young International Boulevard. Photos taken by a local freelance photographer showing a group called Defend Atlanta Forests shattering glass doors and also holding signs that say our woods, not Hollywood's. CBS forty six reached out to the group but have yet to hear back. Atlanta police believe the protesting ignited over the building of the new public Safety training center. When officers arrived, protesters quickly fled the scene, but the damage still remains. At this time, we know

no arrest have been made and the investigation continues. In Atlanta. On barbawllyans CBS News momentum was growing throughout the summer. Police and corporate press have failed in crafting a counter

media strategy. Meanwhile, to defend the Forest project brought together police and prison abolitionist organizations, environmental justice and preservation organizations, civil and human rights nonprofits, and even neighborhood associations near the proposed site, including the East Atlanta Community Association, the Grant Park Neighborhood Association, South Atlantin's for Neighborhood Development, and the Kirkwood Neighbors Organization, each of which passed resolutions opposing

the proposal. Grassroots organizations that mobilized against the proposal included Defend Atlanta Police Department, Refusal Communities, the Atlanta Sunrise Movement, Community Movement Builders, the South River Forest Coalition, A World

Without Police, and the Autonomous Organizers. Working under the banner of Defend the Forest, organizers spread informational flyers and online fix, conducted interviews, knocked on doors, and organized phone in campaigns during subsequent city council meetings that were still held on Zoom because of coronavirus related restrictions. Through in August and September, the Stop Cops City Coalition and others worked to introduce

tension and clog up the city council process. Digging cues from the protest outside the home of Joyce Shepherd, which resulted in the vote being delayed for over two months. Protesters gathered outside the homes of possible yes voters on the nights that the vote was related to take place, causing further delays in the entire process. Got pushed back

from August into September, so again, another another delay. Briefly, it seemed like there was a possibility that the cold Stop Cops City campaign might be victorious before the end of summer. Votes on the groundle sordidens were repeatedly delayed because of these objections and demonstrations at the homes of Atlanta Chief Operations Officer John Keene and City council Woman Madaline Archibond. Eventually, September seventh was set as the final

vote day. Seventeen hours of pre recorded comments from over one thousand Atlanta residents delayed the discussion. Due to the sheer number of public comments, the volt got pushed back another day as Sydney Council members spent most of Tuesday

and Wednesday listening to the playback. After months of organizing, community outreach and public education efforts from these top Cops City organizers, proximately, the Collars fiercely opposed the proposal, explaining in great detail why they're quote unquote representatives should vote it down. The minority of callers who supported the Cops City project either self identified as residents of the disproportionately white and wealthy Buckhead and Northeast Atlanta area or we're

just like actual cops. Uh. At least thirty officers called in to say that they support the instruction of the forest to end the building of Cops City, Big big shocker, the cops what Cops City? Pro Cops City collars invoked the false crime wave narrative propagated after the George Floyd uprising and used the language of so called white flight by threatening to leave the city if something wasn't done

to stop the growing crime wave. And yet, when the seventeen hours of public comments ended and the council's discussion began, council members largely failed to acknowledge the hours of public comment that they had just spent two days listening to, much less acknowledged the far ranging movement that produced such

overwhelming public discontent. Quoting crime think again quote as those who study revolutionary movements now, the police perform an essential function in class society, without which many other hierarchies and explotitive relations could not exist for very long. This is not simply an economic or civic issue that can be worked around with some clever ideas in a bit of pressure unquote. Despite the efforts of organizers, which culminated in

seventeen hours of primarily oppositional public comment. The ordinance was passed on September eight, while the police arrested protesters outside the home of Councilwoman Madaline Archibond about an hour before the final vote took place. During the council's final session on September eight, the City Council voted by a margin of ten to four for the creation of the ninety million dollar facility, handing over almost four acres of for

US to the Atlanta Police Foundation. Obviously, many folks were pretty disappointed and kind of demoralized about this. UH. Some turned their frustrated energy into the upcoming local elections, hoping that the city government may be stacked with abolitionists or progressive candidates that might strike down the project. Mayor Bottoms did not end up running for re election, and the former mayor of Mayor Read lost to the now current

Mayor Andre dickens Um. I do think it's really funny that the old mayor of Atlanta was Mayor Bottoms and the new and the new Mayor is Mayor dickens Um. Anyway, UH, City council Woman Joyce Sheppard, who introduced the cop City plan, also lost her campaign for re election. But since the elections November, nothing has actually changed regarding the black Hole and Cops City developments, or nothing has changed on the

electoral front. There's there's no indication of electoral strategies being impactful, and thankfully not everyone focus their efforts on electoral reform. I'll leave you today with this sentiment that I kept hearing during my stay in the forest. When you criminalize

non violent direct action, the end goes away. On the final day of the vote, people went and protested outside a city council member's house, and eleven of them got arrested, despite the fact that they were already dispersing and following orders. During the Top Line three movement, people were receiving felony theft charges for using lock boxes to attach themselves onto construction equipment um which of recent hasn't even really been

an effective strategy resulting in any material winds. But if they're going to arrest you for standing outside of a politician's house and give you charges, you may as well consider doing something a bit more spicy. If you're gonna get felonies for basic non violent direct action like locking yourself onto machine, you may as well light that machinery

on fire. When non violent direct action results in fel any charges, if they're going to criminalize standing outside of a politicians house and holding a sign, then going into the forest and doing monkey wrenching suddenly becomes a very similar consequence level, and the action that can be done in secret turns out to be actually a bit easier to get away with. The funny thing is is that

this is the state's fault, not anyone else's fault. When state repression against public non destructive tactics increases, then what happens is the less public and more fiery tactics, which in this movement we're already present, we'll just end up becoming more and more prominent and even more integral to keep the movement going. In the next episode, we'll hear about how the more radical folks continue to defend the forest after the vote, and you'll hear a lot more

from the force defenders that I interviewed. And finally, if you can please head to Atlanta if you're able to, for the upcoming week of action from A eight through. More boots on the round are crucial as the large scale destruction of the forest is becoming more and more imminent. You can go to Defend the Atlanta Forest dot com and scenes dot no blogs dot org for more information. See you on the other side. It Could Happen Here

is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone Media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.