This summer has been a critical junction in the fight against copp City, the Atlanta Police Foundation's massive proposed training facility in de Cab County, which is slated to begin construction later this very month. The last week of action in March of twenty twenty three drew in over a thousand people against cop City and saw hundreds of forest defenders attack in mass the construction equipment and police infrastructure
stored on the site in a pretty successful action. The police repression came down hard, but the militancy of the force defenders left a pretty impressionable mark. Later that month, to Cab County closed and barricaded in Trenchman Creek Park citing public safety concerns and allegedly found booby traps. Police did an exhaustive sweep of the forest and established a
relatively firm control of the territory. After a year and a half of there being a nearly continuous presence in the Mulani by forest vendors, now the police began a
forest occupation of their own. During the month that followed, the Atlanta Police Foundation or the APF, rushed to clear cut around ninety acres of the Mulani Forest, seemingly in a ploy to show investors and the city that they are committed to the project and to crush the spirits of those who spent years opposing the facility and defending
the forest. People then set their sights on the Atlanta City Council, who in early June was to vote on whether or not to provide taxpayer funding for the APF's project. Over twenty three hours of public comment across multiple days, almost universally against copp City, culminated at the June fifth City Council meeting, which lasted into the early hours of
the next morning. Despite the record breaking turnout opposing the facility in the earth early morning of Tuesday, June sixth, the Lanta City Council voted eleven to four in favor of the sixty seven million dollar funding package to build cop City. The next day, a group of community organizers announced a referendum campaign to collect tens of thousands of petition signatures from Atlanta voters to put the cop City
land lease on the upcoming ballot. City council approving public funds for cop City was certainly disappointing, but not quite unexpected, because another week of action to Stop Cop City was already planned for later that same month. This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. In this three part series, I'll be talking about what's been happening in Atlanta this summer to Stop cop City. If you want to hear
more about the background of this movement. In the month of May, we put out a five part series on the Week of Action from that spring, along with the few other previous Defend the Forest, Stop Cup City mini series published over the course of the last year and a half. With much of the forest already destroyed and no easy access to Entrenchment Creek Park, this week of action in June was set to be very unlike any
that had come before. The kickoff rally was to begin on Saturday, June twenty fourth at Brownwood Park in East Atlanta. I made my way there and met up with Matt from the Atlantic Community Press Collective. My first feeling walking in is like it felt very society of the spectacle in terms of like the ratio of cameras to participants was the most extreme that I've really ever ever seen for like, you know, a week of action.
I think there was there was outside of like a press conference.
Yeah, and like it felt like there was so many just cameras looming around, and it's like it's like there's so many people trying to make a similar frum of the movements to sell back to other people at this point in time, and like there's just a very like that's just a very large, pervasive feeling, and that combined with the more of the more liberalization of certain certain aspects, again compared to the last week of action, which felt there was a strong militant continuent.
And like the liberals continued was still there if you will.
Burn it, And that's not the vibe here. That's not the vibe here. There's definitely a big separation in terms of what types of people at what side of the park.
Right now, there's a more like more like forested section of the park with a creek.
On the south side, which is where people are setting up some camping sites had a kitchen, that's where the well content is. And then there's the other side of the park that has like the rec center and the playground, which seems more like family friendly stuff.
Yeah, there are kids there, there's the popcorn setup.
It's more like there is a Bounty House, which is great return.
They couldn't, they couldn't keep this moving down.
I won't.
I won't rest until is destroyed, until the conty every Mounty Castle is in Atlanta.
Till till every Bounty Castle is to that is.
That is the new Movement's so good.
In contrast to the last kickoff rally at Gresham Park, which felt very unified, this time there was a noticeable separation in terms of what types of people are on the two sides of the park. People wearing camouflage and masks were more situated on the south side of the park where tents were being set up, versus people by the playground who were going around with the referendum signup sheet and where all the food was being handed out.
It's so separated the game.
No, the two groups.
Cannot cannot, cannot count see each other and even like people like.
Yeah.
Turnout seemed to be a bit lower than some people expected, and it was definitely much lower compared to the previous few weeks of action and overall the rally was very muted and lacked a sense of energy or focus. Like the rallies, was start at eleven, which kind of kind of think nothing happened like it just it felt very directtionless. I felt like people do not quite know why they were there at this point in.
Times, almost Nune before anyone really spoke on the bullhorn, and the music didn't start until noon, and then what was it like a half hour ago, so like twelve thirty probably when when the first like speaker said anything from the Faith Coalition.
I don't know.
So far, the rally kind of feels like a microcosmum of the entire movement at this point, just not quite sure where to direct the energy to.
There's a feeling that like people should do.
Something, but they don't quite know how to. They haven't decided how that should be directed yet, and so like there's some people showing up, but it's just like it feels kind of stagnant, and like there's this there's this need to evolve.
Right now, and I don't know.
I think maybe people got burnt out from the city council things and there's a lot of energy being.
Pumped into that. Yeah, and then I guess some people.
People like three weeks of pushing energy.
And that that was only like two weeks ago, like that that's still very recently three weeks it still feels it still feels very raw. Walking down the pathway on the south side of Brownwood you can see people setting up tents, carrying camping supplies and big jugs of water. Other people were assembling a makeshift kitchen in the tree line, and all of that was physically reminiscent of the last
week of action. But being four miles away from the forest at Brownwood Park instead of the Wailani impacted the feeling on the ground. We're both were so far away from the forest, but there's like that separation of space, like it feels so distant.
And distant, even more than than Gresham Park, even more Gresham, Like if this were happening in Gresham Park, I think that might even be a different feeling. Yeah, because at least you're attached to the Leilani.
There was more determination on like the south side of of the park.
And you could feel like the people want at least people want to do something physically, and they were.
But it's even still unclear how it's going to get directed towards, like like what is this to bring.
To stop prop city right now? Like that is and that's the.
Big thing is like people are trying to figure that out, and there's people here, but like what are what are people actually going to be doing?
Like that's that's the question that is You're going to be unanswered at least today.
I would say the last Week of Action in March was very important in terms of setting the stage for what the next few months would look like. The direct action that happened on Sunday during the music festival was very important and successful, but also carried large ramifications for how the rest of the movement would be shaped in terms of the police repression and increase police presence in
the forest. The weeks of Action definitely have this ability to affect how the movement as a whole evolves in the subsequent months. On Saturday, there were worries that if things were simply going to continue to be like the kickoff rally, that wouldn't be a positive direction and would be a bad sign. It's just so, I mean, it's hard not to convey this to the to the last Week of Action kickoff rally at Gresham, which is felt so different like that there was like almost ten times
as many people. There was like a feeling of like motion, There was a feeling of like we can, we have we have to go do a thing, and we're gonna do it no matter what, Like we don't know it's gonna be on the other side of the tunnel, but we're going there to do it anyway.
We're gonna find it out together.
And there was that was a lot of determination, and then there was a lot of like there was like a pointedness, like they knew where they were going, and this does not It lacks that pointedness. It feels like people aren't quite sure why they're here or what to do at this point in time. And if the movement wants to be able to continue in its goals, it has to find some way to evolve in these next two months as construction is going to ramp up.
And I guess this this week will kind of.
Will the bell weather either well, either a bell weather or a learning experience. Yeah, it might not be any sort of death now, but it will have to be a learning experience probably.
Yeah.
That's that's kind of most of most of my thoughts so far based on walking through both places.
There's just not much else talk looks and how much is happening, Like it soon.
Enough However, other things did start happening thanks to the Atlanta Police Department, but throughout that afternoon things remained mostly low key, and as the day went on, the gathering at Brownwood Park turned into a community barbecue and people started to get a much more clear idea of what the expectations for that day were. As people settled into the park, there ceased to be any big anticipation for what everyone was going to be doing that first day.
There wasn't supposed to be a vigil for Tortighita in the park that evening, which was interrupted by Atlanta Police officers who swept through the park issuing a quote unquote friendly reminder that the park closed at eleven PM.
All right, it's around eight thirty.
How about forty police officers just walked through Brownwood Park telling people that are gathered here that the park closes at eleven and everyone's basically anticipating the police are going to try to sweep the entirety of the park, including the sections where people are trying to camp out. Around eleven PM, the cops were walking south through the park as the crowd was walking and chanting along the way.
As well, cops left under the heels of like maybe seventy five to two hundred people who were chanting along the south side of Brownwood. They've been staging around Brownwood Park and Portland Avenue for the past hour or so. They had like twenty thirty cars, it's around forty fifty officers.
People decided they did not wish to stand their ground and fight off a possible police raid at Brownwood Park, so they spent the next few hours packing up all the supplies and equipment that they just spent all day setting up, and then evacuated from the area. Okay, it is eleven ten PM. It seems like the cops essentially
just did what I'm referring to as advanced bluffing. So they walk through it on eight thirty warning people, hey, park closes at eleven, which very much, very much indicating that, hey, we're.
Going to sweep through and fuck with your shit if you're still here.
So the next few hours people spent time, you know, packing up, breaking down the tents, of leaving heading to other locations, and then at eleven we kind of just expected police to do a standard sweep through, you know, destroy anything they find if they find people tell them
to leave or else get arrested, standard stuff. At this point, there's about seven or eight police cruisers staged around the south side of the park, but they're not actually sweeping through because it's pretty clear that there's like no one actually in the park at this point. It's just very clearly like empty and quiet, So I don't even I don't even think cops are going to sweep through. It's it's been already like ten to fifteen minutes. We expected them to kind of sweep on the hour, but they
just like don't need to. It's very clear that no one's in the park, so they just kind of like successfully bluffed themselves into getting everyone to leave. I mean, if there were people still here in invisible capacity, I'm sure police would sweep through, but there's really there's no invisible in the park for many of like the perimeters around, so they're not even gonna bother sweeping through. But yeah, it looks like this is the end of Brownwood Day
one and the very kind of low key kickoff rally. Still, the week definitely is lacking a sense of direction. There's been a cab swat doing perimeter sweeps around the Wailani forest and the round Greshian Park where there's some future events planned.
We will see how that plays out in these next few days.
It certainly seemed like police wanted to make some show of force early on in the week to stifle the week of action. The threat of array the very first tonight was indeed disruptive to the logistics for the week, but ultimately people were able to band together to keep
each other safe and cared for. During this current general sense of directionlessness, there were a lot of questions on how the movement will change during this turning point, With little in the way of obvious answers or new paths of resistance, The following Sunday and Monday of the week continued to be mostly low key. People used those days to facilitate workshops and discussions to work through the shift
the movement was going through. At the end of the week, I sat down with Matt in East Atlanta Village to talk about the week as a whole and compare notes. Here's a bit of our conversation talking about the discussions that started happening during those first few days. This was a week of discussions, like it was, it really was.
There was a lot of meetings. There was a lot of discussions happening, people figuring out what do we do, like if we actually want to stop cop City and it's going to get built in these next few months, like now.
Is the time to figure out what the fuck to do next.
So people have been having those discussions this week, and if anything, the Week of Action has been useful in this in this sense that it's brought a lot of people together so they can have these generative conversations. And there was a lot more conversations during this week than
last week. There was one on like what the state of the movement is now, especially with the referendum taking up more visibility, how are like radical is going to navigate this space and this movement with a lot of things in flux, And I think that that was definitely my first read. Even even on the Cookoff rally, I felt like there's a lot of people like not sure what to do, is very directionless. People were asking a lot of questions and more questions were being asked all
throughout the week. There's a lot of discussions, a lot of meetings about like what do we do now, Like if construction is going to start in the next two months, like, what is this movement going to do? Like that people can chant if you build it, we will burn it.
But chanting it and doing it two different things. And the movement is it's going to go through a period of evolution and in these next few months, and with all those questions being asked, I feel like the answer to those quiesequestions is going to be the actions people do take in these next few months. In the aftermath of the clear cutting, it felt like in some ways that the window of possibility for this movement was closing
as options seemed to be getting smaller. More people started pursuing the referendum as a potential means of stopping Copcity, but those in the more militant anarchist wing of the movement were left questioning, after two years of employing a diversity of tactics largely led by direct action, if it's the right and move to switch to an electoral strategy now when the situation is approaching its most dire but since it is happening whether they like it or not,
anarchists were wondering, what can people do so that the referendum doesn't completely dominate the narrative of the movement or
disincentivize other evolutions of the struggle. Now, obviously, a group of people pursuing a referendum does not prohibit other people from engaging in direct action, but there still were worries that the referendum could become a sort of release mechanism for the movement, both in terms of new people's involvement being pushed toward this more liberalized electoral strategy instead of radical action, or if the petition or even potential ballot
vote fails, then that being used as an indicator that most people in the city actually do want copcity. But through all this, what anarchists can do, and what they typically do, is to encourage radical autonomy and self determination regardless of electoral strategies or outcomes. Whether or not a petition gets sixty some thousand signatures does not affect a
burning construction vehicle. Just as these sort of discussions were happening, It's kind of fitting that on Monday, June twenty sixth, we saw the first communication in months claiming responsibility for
equipment sabotage. After the last week of action in March and subsequent police raids on the forest, increased security, the rapid clear cutting and big push for city council public comment followed by the start of the referendum wrote that series of events, there really hadn't been much in the way of nocturnal direct action sabotage happening in Atlanta or across the country in solidarity once a core component of this movement was seriously lacking in the months leading up
to this summer, and then suddenly, after the June week of action's mostly uneventful start, a post went up on the sketchu web site scene stott no blogs dot org claiming that a group of anonymous individuals snuck into a subcontractor's machine storage lot and poured hydrochloric acid into the oil tanks of three vehicles. The target was Brent Scarborough Company, a Georgia based subcontractor who was hired to clear cut the Waalani forest and was currently engaged in mass land
grading on the site. I drove by the site on Monday and I saw like over twenty machines like actively working on the land.
Very avatar much Yeah.
Yes, y or FORER and Gully the superior film, but no, like it's like the site's being very actively worked on, like I've never seen that many machines doing active work like all moving at the same time. Early Monday morning, the Stop Cop City Referendum put out a strong statement of solidarity with quote all tactics on the road to collective liberation unquote and openly rejected the state's framing of
quote unquote violent and nonviolent resistance. To briefly quote a few of the last sentences of the statement, quote, the Cop City Vote Referendum campaign is grounded in the values of abolitionist organizing and racial and environmental justice. We also recognize our chosen tactic is a single intervention in a
wide rainbow of fighting state repression. We seek to use the Cop City Referendum to leverage local power, educate and activate our communities, and build networks that can strengthen our city and future mobilizations. The referendum is one piece of a vibrant, multi faceted movement, one that defies respectable categorization
as well as its state violence and repression. The Cop City Vote Referendum Coalition stands in solidarity and full support of the Stop Cop City Week of Action, The larger movement and abolitionist organizers and activists across this city.
Unintentionally, these two things coincided. There was the release of the scenes like the first sabotage in months, and then the referendum released that same day, the solidarity statement for all yes actions taken to stop Cop City. No, I just think that needs the statement itself needs to be highlighted, and yeah, I think it seems like they're going to stick to that.
The solidarity statement was widely applauded and seen as a good sign regarding the referendum's place in the larger fight against Cop City and how it was not intending to take space away from other aspects of the movement. Tuesday morning, there was a small protest outside the Cab County Border Commisson's building to call for the reopening of Entrenchment Creek Park. The park was a common gathering spot for the movement, at where many people camped during previous weeks of action.
An executive order from DCAB CEO Michael Thurmond closed the park late last March as the police geared up to fortify Bolauni and speed run all of the tree felling.
So I sat in the Board of Commissioner's meeting and it's it's different than a city council meeting, where like anybody who signs up to do public comment can do public comment. They only a lot thirty minutes of public comment, so about that amounts to ten speakers, and I think about six of them were actually there for, you know, to talk about opening the park. And then the rally, I think it was something like thirty thirty people. Was a student organized rally and they did a couple speakers
and then that was that was it. Not much from the CAB, Like the CAB only came out to make sure that they weren't blocking a pathway and it was kind of hands off.
I did get a parking ticket, that was my fault, you did.
Yeah, I let my parking expire for twelve minutes.
A legalist mascot at the ACPC wow.
H And yeah the minute I do something illegal, I get a trapping ticket.
Previously in June that a CAB CEO proposed a one point eight million dollar construction plan necessary to reopen the park, but no clear date on when that would happen. One County commissioner has been trying to fast track reopening the park, but their resolution has repeatedly been deferred by the County Board. The soonest it will be reconsidered is October tenth. Meanwhile, the park will remain indefinitely closed. Throughout the first few days of the Week of action. There was something kind
of looming over everyone's heads. There was a march planned from Gresham Park towards Malawney that was to take place on the evening of Wednesday, June twenty eighth. The police response to this action was primed to be the most intense out of the week. The path to Entrenchment Creek Park is a pretty closed in bike path with a tunnel going under an overpass where police have been staging to prevent people from entering the forest.
No.
I definitely felt like on Monday and Tuesday, everyone was still like thinking about what would happen on Wednesday, What would happen on the march from Gresham Park. That was the big unknown, That was the big danger.
Like very palpable. Yeah, concern about how that was going to play out. Yeah, that probably, I mean all the way back to Saturday, that was probably like playing through people's minds and causing some of that like, yeah, uncertainty.
Police were setting up perimeters around the forest in an increased capacity than the usual detail. Pretty early on in the day, there was a DACAB County SWAT mobile command center posted up in a school parking lot next to the tunnel and bike path leading from Gresham to Wolani. Kind Of as expected, this entire section of South Atlanta was crawling with police before people even gathered at Gresham Park.
The day began with an unfortunately rocky start and the first arrest of the week outside Cadence Bank in Midtown. The protest was calling on the bank to cancel their twenty million dollar construction loan given to the Atlanta Police Foundation.
So there was this action at Cadence Bank that they specifically didn't want media and so none of us were there. Yeah, and that was early in the morning. I don't I think we found out about it after renoon or something, so after I woke up. Yeah, I think it was like they said, thirty people, kind of like we saw the other day Friday. Yeah, on Friday. But as they were walking away, somebody gets well multiple they try or rest multiple people.
Please start chasing people.
Someone gets grabbed and arrested, another person gets detained and then let go. Seemed like a pretty chaotic scene. That's not a great way to start off the day where you have your most stressful action plan for later. You wake up, you get chased by cops, and you're expecting to go do a march in a few hours in
the most heavily police area of Atlanta right now. The march was to take place on the same bike path from Gresham Park to Intrenchment Creek Park that people took during the kickoff rally at the last week of Action, but much has changed on the ground since then. As people started to gather at Gresham Park on Wednesday evening,
the numbers were quite small. As I progressed, around one hundred and fifty people eventually amassed, but it was still a small fraction of the number of people at the previous Gresham Park march and with a much greater police presence. The exact plan for the night was heavily dependent on a lot of factors that it was impossible to explicitly know beforehand, like how many people would show up and what they would feel comfortable doing based on the police response.
All right, this is.
Wednesday, June twenty eighth.
Me and Matt from the Community.
Press Collective are gathered at Gresham Park. Overhead you can hear the Tacab helicopter circle at favorite sound, our favorite sound. Yes, there's about I don't know, maybe seventy five or more, close to one hundred, close to one hundred people gathered here in Gresham Park and people have plans to march towards Wolani or at least to the tunnel, and then
what happens after that's kind of a big mystery. Definitely very different than the last time we were gathered in Gresham Park with a crowd of people.
We're missing the music, We're missing the duwali like paint clouds, We're missing the kids, We're missing maybe the vibes. Just in general.
Another eight hundred people or so, but I mean people are setting out science and some banners. Police have a decent presence around the around like the tunnel or like the overpass over the tunnel, and around Wilani.
Right now, all around the Wilanni triangle there's there APD and the Cab County Police just hanging out more than usual. And at the fire station there was more cops than I've seen since.
March fifth, since the last week of action. Yeah, earlier this morning, I saw a da KEB County swat nobile command unit at the school next to the tunnel overpass, but I do not know where that is now. It was it was not parked there last time we drove by about half an hour ago. So yeah, just that is. That is the update as of as of six thirty. So I'm guessing this crowd will start moving the next
thirty minutes to forty minutes, probably have hour. Yeah, all right, Right, as the crowd was about to set off, someone made an announcement that due to small numbers and large police presence, there was to be a change of plans. Instead of going all the way to Entrenchment Creek Park or even the tunnel, they were going to march one third of
the way and stop on the bike path. All right, it's around seven to twenty pm, about one hundred and fifty people are leaving Gresham Park and they announced they're going to be going to hold a small vigil near one of one of the felled trees on the bike path. For a little while, the march was getting along fine, there was music and chanting, when suddenly police made an early appearance. Okay, so it's what seven seven forty seven fifty seven forty one on Wednesday, June twenty eighth.
We are walking on the bike path and staged.
Twenty five minutes into the walk and here we come on our first police presence of the day along our path. So too thinking to cap County, Yeah, two to cab County SuDS part side by side along the path. But they're not out of their vehicles.
No, so.
I think the crowd searsal order.
They might try to give it a spursal order because there's too many people. Yeah. I didn't think they would try to fuck with it this soon.
I thought they would wait to the tunnel.
A small number of police were posted up right before the first bridge on the bike path, roughly about halfway to the tunnel. If they wanted to, the crowd could have marched past the police as they were not blocking the path. The two cop cars couldn't even follow behind because there was big metal bulgards preventing vehicles from going on the Wooden bridge, but the visible police caused the group to pause.
There was that one speech that we need to touch on from that night, and that was the speaker said, in order to win, we have to let go of the idea of losing while looking good. Yeah, and that I think is going to inform whatever the direct action side of things are for the next this next phase of the movement.
While paused in front of the police cruisers, the crowd deliberated on what they wanted to do and what they thought they could accomplish. After a few minutes of discussion, they decided that they were not prepared to unnecessarily sacrifice themselves. One of the people from the crowd spoke briefly not only on this decision, but also how it fits into the difficult situation the movement has found itself in. Right now, I'm going to quote a little bit from this impromptu
speech quote. We shouldn't come away from this feeling demoralized. We should feel clarity because we believe we set out to participate in a movement to obstruct the construction of a police militarization site, but that is not being allowed to happen. The people we're fighting against believe we are a domestic insurgency. They are treating us like an insurgency.
The state is using militaristic language like denying anarchists operating space, and so we're going to great lengths to be safe, to play it safe, and to go slow, and to proceed rationally and defend one another. But we're coming under constant attack. Everything we do, we're under attack unquote. Just earlier that morning, people were attacked by the state and arrested as they stood on the sidewalk outside of a bank. Those who work to bail activists out of jail are attacked.
People doing on the ground jail support are physically attacked and face police intimidation.
Quote.
We don't want to be engaged in a failing struggle. Our enemy is treating us like terrorists. That's what they're calling us, and that's what they believe we are. It's not just a rhetorical trick. That's how they're treating the movement. And so we have to figure out how we're going to win, because we intend to win. But you can't just only defend yourself. The safest thing for us to
do is to never go to a protest about this movement. Again, if our top priority is safety, everyone who is not currently facing charges should move away, should not go to events or actions. But if we have a higher priority than safety alone, we're going to have to figure out what we're going to do to achieve that, which is going to require going on the offense when we're able
and how we're able. This movement has been very creative, and we're going to have to continue to be more and more creative, and we're going to have to continue to deploy all available means in order to have this kind of offensive, victorious, and strong movement that we all deserve when we fight, when we attack the enemy, when we have our offensive actions, we have to follow through with them. We have to go all the way with them. We have to be willing to believe in ourselves to
believe that we can win. And so I believe that we are going to win this movement, and I think you guys believe that we're going to win this movement. But that's going to require us to abandon the idea of looking good while losing. We can't look good losing. So are we look good losing or are we going to win?
All right?
It is eight o'clock.
The crowd sat in the middle of the trail behind the first bridge, where two.
Decap County vehicles were parked.
They deliberated for a little bit, and then a few people spoke and now the crowd has turned around at a marching back to Greshiam.
Park, marching back, no arrests. We do have two helicopters now hanging over us. That's my favorite thing in the world.
Part and a lot of other decav on the ground in other parts of the bike path, in the trails.
Yeah, they would have walked directly into what looked like a full swat team above the bridge. So they made the right choice, is.
What it seems like to me.
Yeah, And they talked about their intentionality of the decision, and it's how it's important to not just keep losing while trying to look cool and throw yourself out a line of police.
Yeah, and that hopefully, I mean, what what does that look like in practice? I guess we'll see you over the next few months, three.
Days, three days to two months, yeah, three.
Days, several months. But it does sound like there's some attempt now a directionality that wasn't I wasn't sing yeah until this is.
The exact same march people tried to do back in March, and they did it, and they're trying to do it here again in June.
And it doesn't work. It didn't It doesn't work the first time.
It doesn't work.
It worked the first time, it does' wanke second time. So now it's time to change something exact.
Yeah.
On the walk back to Grushiam Park, we got clear photos of the amount of riot police waiting for us at the tunnel and it was a great many.
Oh yeah, there is a lot.
That's a lot of of a riot.
Yeah.
And that was when of the vans posted above the tunnel.
Yeah, so that a trailer. Yeah, that's what they bring all their riot shields in. Okay.
Yeah, that that would have sucked.
That would not have been fun.
No, that would have gone very poorly.
Would have been tear gas though, and I do miss being tear gas.
I can like spray with pepper spray if you want.
It's not the same as tear gas.
I can spray right now if you want.
Matt ultimately declined to be pepper sprayed. Torti Guita's mother, Belkise Tearan, came to Gresham Park to also join the march.
So what we had was one hundred and fifty people in Belkis Tarran and I think that that, yeah, plays a role in how this goes on.
Nov Having bell Keise.
Very like visibly present, like walking up to everybody there and greeting them. Just having her presence there affects what people want to do, and it reminds you of what's actually like the actual stakes at hand, so you're caring for everyone around you in a much more like conscious capacity. Belcise spoke, a few other people spoke, and then they turned around and headed back to Greshia and that was the decision that was made and no no one was hurt,
no one was arrested. People got back to Gresham Park. Some people had ice cream.
Two people in particular had ice cream and they were very happy about it. It definitely wasn't maybe it was us.
Other people also had ice cream.
Other people did have ice cream. I don't think they were quite as excited.
It's like the overpriced ice.
Throughout the week, you could tell that people were really wanting to be back in the forest and Wilani People's Park. People made do gathering at Brownwood Park, but it wasn't the same. There was an undeniable distance between where people were gathered this week of action and the sight of all the previous battles in the Wilani. The fact that so much of the forest had already been destroyed loomed heavily over the week, and that's something that people are
still processing and are still comprehending. Another big aspect of the week, like this is this is the first week of action where people haven't gone in the gone in the willani Like.
Yeah, there's no action, which feels weird. Well, we should say in the triangle because you know, the forest is obviously, but.
Like the site, like this is the first time that people haven't been like in the forest, and that's a new thing to navigate, that's a new feeling to navigate, Like there's there's a different there's a different.
Sense multiple chance.
There's multiple chance being like not one lead, don't cut down the trees and like the trees are gone, like it's the site's been cleared, and I think people are still catching up to that and like rel Like it's still something that people are processing and they're gonna have to process that if they want to like continue, like they have to like look at the situation being like this is we have to accept what has happened.
Then we can choose what's to do, because you can't act as.
You can't deny what the reality is.
No, and you can't act as if the trees are still there, because that's going to change the type of the types of like actions you do. Like you can't trace it in the in the trees. It's it's changing the actual actions people are going to take to try to stop copsitting. I think the Wednesday action almost needed to happen. So many people still dream about what if
we could reoccupy Wollane. People are still caught in that headspace because they got so used to that over the course of almost two years, so inevitably there was going to be an attempt where a few hundred people try to re enter Willane People's park. They're almost needed to be an attempt just to see what would happen, And
we saw what would happen. And now people can use that action as reference when making future plans and decisions about actions, because you can point back to this and demonstrate what the police response will be when people march to Wolani. Massive amounts of SWAT riot police waiting for you, SWAT mobile command centers, heavily armed police estanged on roads, overpasses, entrances,
and all around the forest. Specifically waiting for people to try to cross over or through the tunnel, so now people know what will happen if they try and do the same thing again. In some ways, it kind of needed to not just be theoretical speculation, but actually happen so that people can now truly allow themselves to evolve, so that you don't have this question in the back of your head, because now that question has been answered, you would be throwing yourself at a wall of swat
and riot gear. And now everyone can let themselves evolve and start figuring out what new things can be fostered and imagined. We'll hear more about those evolutions and conclude my coverage of the week of Action in the next episode. See you on the other side. 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 coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.