Week of Action to Stop Cop City: Full Compilation

It's a warm spring afternoon in Atlanta, Georgia. You and some of your friends are dancing in the sunlight at a music festival in South Atlanta. It's day two of the South River Music Festival. Last night, you stayed up till three am, alternating between moshing in the pit and laying down on a blanket looking up at the night sky, trying to see stars through the light pollution. After you had your fill of DM you called it a night and hastily set up a tent in the forest near

They got their land disturbance permit in late January, and the first phase of the land disturbance permit only allows for soil erosion control work, So to this point, essentially what they've done is they've cut some paths into the forest into the proposed site, and then around the exterior of the site they've clear cut a line in order to install silt fencing, so there isn't a large amount of infrastructure. They're not allowed to do a large amount

But not all of their construction equipment was removed, As everyone would soon find out, the deadly Jenny left the community in the morning and unsure of how the fight to stop copp City would evolve. With the use of lethal force and the loss of a friend, the Forest Defender's semi permanent occupation of the Wallani Forest ended after

Hoday, let's get started, all right.

I just want to make sure that everybody is in the right way. I came here to stop cop city.

What did you all come here to do? What did we come to do? What are we come to do? What have we come here to do?

All right?

I'm glad that everybody found the right address. Thank you everybody for joining us.

It's about two years ago.

In what was formerly known as Entrenchment Creek Park now known as Wolani People's Park, where a ragtag bunch of individuals gathered under a gazebo. That gazebo was illegally destroyed by Ryan Millsap and his henchmen in an attempt to break this movement, in an attempt to bury this movement. Yet every single time that they have tried to bury us,

Supporting this movement, and we still show up. We appreciate every single person that has come here to support us in spite of the terror that the state has right to instill in us. We must be very careful and understand the gravity of the situation that we are in, especially after we've lost a friend.

Okay, thank you for standing with us. And now there are many things that we do not agree on. But what did we all come here to do?

So let's remember what got us this far was a diversity of tactics, and now it's time for.

Us to double down.

The crowd gathered was a pretty diverse mix of people from a variety of backgrounds, beliefs, and preferred tactics. On this is Saturday morning, everyone felt pretty united, whether you were a kid running around with paint all over your body or an anarchist to dressed head to toe and camo. Next up, somebody read a statement from the Muscogee elder Miko Chabon.

Colonel, I'm here to read.

A statement from my Miko, Miko Shabbon.

Yeah, my name is Marty. I'm Muscoge on my father's side.

On my mother's side, I'm Atham both Acmel and Thana, and my dad's also Filipino. Miko asked me to read this statement. Band Strijaio mart At this time, I would like to express my gratitude to all who have conversed onto these ancestral territories of Muscogean ancestors and modern spiritual inhabitants of the earth that we now stand on today. We represent a vast society of peoples whose presence in the colonized named states of Georgia, Alabama, and.

Florida have existed for over thirteen thousand years.

We represent a way of life that strove to minimize the harm that humans can.

Do to the earth, to other species, and to each other.

Today, we continue this movement that begun many years ago, and we honor those who have taken footsteps to protect this forest and our relative who gave the greatest of sacrifices, just as ancestors existed on these very grounds and carried of faith and confidence in what our ancient ones passed on to us. May the hope of peaceful existence for

The right to exist.

Today, may our dreams for this forest and the surrounding community come true.

For those who can hear, let them hear.

The next speaker was from Community Movement Builders, a local black collectives that focuses on combating and gentrification and police violence.

I may be a little bit selfish, and my reason for being here I want to be free.

I want my children to be free.

I want my mother to be free.

I want my father, my brothers and sisters to be free. And I don't want to have to live a life in ten years when my babies, my nieces and my nephews come to me and ask, come, I see, where were you What were you doing when they destroyed our clean water, destroyed our clean air happened?

Why were you not around?

What were you doing when when my babies twenty ten years and they say, comasie, what were you doing when this country turned into a fascist dystopia?

What were you doing?

Where were you where you're around. I can't sit here best shit back and say I just sat home and watched this.

Whole world burn to hell.

I don't believe in the power.

I don't believe in the power of being periless.

I believe in the power of the people.

So I said to everyone today that during this week of action, I don't know where you will be. I don't know what you will be doing, but we standing behind you and we're staying with you. And we want to show the city of Atlanta. We want to show Mary Dickens that he is not fit to rule and he does not runing city way.

We want to show.

Them said, the ninety million dollars that they took to build this very warfare training facility will not cross our communities wheo. And we also want to show the city of that letter that again we are ready to stop really surviving to start living.

Finally, our last person Reverend Leo'she is a Baptist minister part of the Stop Copp City Clergy Coalition, which we'll talk a bit more about in the next episode.

And I believe my faith compels me and convicts me that in this moment, the work that has been.

Done, and the work that is to come to.

Defend this, our beloved family, this, our siblings.

The earth is a holy and righteous work.

It is a holy and righteous work that is grounded in a faithful rage, rage which has been boiling in the human family's blood for centuries and meets us care at this moment and asks us, what will you do to defend those who have no defense?

What will you do to protect those who have no shelter?

What will you do when the time comes to decide on whose side you are on? Will you stand for oppression or will you stand for the liberation of all people? My friends, I come with so good news if that's okay. And the good news is that God stands on the side of the oppress. God stands on the side of the forest defenders. Law stands on the side of the most marginalized. And let us make no mistake that in our protests and in our rage, we also have to cry out and lament. We cannot be silent as dou

After the speeches were finished, it was announced that the crowd, now nearing a thousand strong, would gather up together and march to Wilani People's Park to retake the forest. As everyone was getting ready to leave, you could see the care and solidarity people had for each other on full display. Bike scouts were checking to see if the path was clear, volunteer street medics ready to help anyone in need. Water bottles are being handed out to keep everyone hydrated, while

The bike path.

That's a I can't even see the end of where, of where, the of where the people's it's a long, long stretch of people marshing, hundreds and hundreds of feet. There's some banners in front of the march. One of them reads disarm, defund, dismantle, no cop city. There's one of the sun shining over a pink sky with a little blue turtle and their shell is the earth. Massive like ten person banner that reads defend the Forest. The energy of the march remained high as people chanted to

At one point, the entire crowd, seemingly the entire crowd was chanting if you build it, we will burn it, which seems.

Almost like a thousand people.

Yeah, and it was being chanted like, you know, looking around the crowd, you saw everyone for the most part, partaking in that.

So that was a very interesting.

Moment where it felt like there was that sort of solidarity amongst the varied groups that make up the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement.

As the march went on, the path was getting increasingly forested. About two thirds of the way to Allani People's Park, after turning a bend, the crowd noticed three deer frolicking alongside the march from further within the tree line. To quote the Atlanta Community Press Collectives right up of the march quote. The joyous mood shifted slightly as the protest closed in on the People's Park, passing over the remains of the bike path destroyed in December by film executive

Activists thought that there was going to be an issue. They were concerned about the police being in willani People's Park. So about halfway we saw that stack of makeshift shields made out of plastic rain barrels.

About two dozen of those five gatlandrum shields just mysteriously showed up along the bike path. We are arriving at Willannee People's Park, no cops.

But then when we got there there was no police whatsoever. From what the scanner people told us, there were police around, they were just kind of monitoring from afar, but no police ever entered the park. And it was I would say it was a really nice high point return to the.

Forest, banners and shields moving around Willane People's Park as hundreds and hundreds of more people still pour in from the bike path. As the back of the march finally arrived, the crowd gathered up one more time to all chant out a promise.

In unison, I will, I Will.

One of the activists I interviewed during the Week of Action was Matthew Johnson, the person who kicked off the rally at Gresham Park. We talked about the methodology of starting off this Week of Action with this big inclusive march and how that may have helped achieve the goal of retaking the forest that first day.

We wanted to be sure that we would be able to reoccupy the park and what that would entail is having a wide swath of the larger public involved with any efforts to enter into the park. And so we had the rally Aggresshiam Park and there was a march planned from that part to Wallani People's Park. There is violence that people have become accustomed to when it is people on the political fringes. That's just where we're at

After reaching Wolaanni People's Park, many of those who arrived from out of town for this week of action, myself included, stopped by the shrine for Tortigita just off of the tree line. People added new wildflowers and packs of fruit snacks. I'm going to walk over to the Torti Guita vigil site. Looks about the same as last time I was here.

I'm excited to.

Get back into the forest because it is so hot, and get back in the forest I did. One of the events that happened almost daily throughout the week was tours of the eastern side of the Wallani Forest. The walks through the woods were led by Joe Perry, a member of the South River Forest Coalition. I was able to attend the first tour during the Week of Action and got consent to record some of the forest walk.

All right, hey, y'all, welcome to the living room, so named because it's it's a very inviting and comfortable place.

Relax.

This is where a lot of the meetings happened during the previous Week of action. People gather and have different events here. Oftentimes it will be food available here campfires, silverware. So it's also just a very very comfortable place to relax because it's in this pine forest and so not really any undergrowth and just super comfortable. It's a really good place to have meetings and just kind of get to know each other and establish some calm.

We made our way from the living room to the Grandmother Tree, a large oak that is estimated to be a few hundred years old. On our way to Ryan Millsaps proposed a site for so called Michelle Obama Park, which is currently a forty acre mount of dirt about thirty feet high. We walked past to some old tents that were slashed apart during the January raid. Among the destroyed remains were little pink flowers growing out of the ground. Next,

I got involved with a group called the South River Forest Coalition. We are trying to help further the vision of the South River Forest that Ryan Gravelle and the Nature Conservancy came up with to try to interweave about thirty five hundred acres of forest with the other businesses and homes and lands around this area that are in the watershed of the South River forest. And the Entrenchment Creek, which we will see on this tour, is the main

As masses of people converged at Wallani People's Park Saturday afternoon, almost immediately a whole bunch of pop up infrastructure was set up to facilitate an encampment in the woods once again, really for the first time in any kind of large capacity since January and even December. The December raids decimated much of the camp infrastructure, which still had not been

One of the things that we saw on the march in was like eight cinder blocks right at the entrance to the living room, and then you and I went into the living room, we saw these huge water tanks. So later they moved those water tanks to those cinder blocks and they that has become or a watering point for everyone. So like twice a day a truck comes with a water tank on the back and then they go through the arduous process of filling that water. So that everybody in camp can have water, and they had

As encampments were being established, simultaneously, infrastructure for the South River Music Festival was being erected in the adjacent radio control field. Within a short amount of time, a full stage was constructed, complete with lights and speakers, lining the sides of the field, where various tables and booths. One side featured a large variety of refreshments, as well as a medic tent, and the other side was home to free hot food and freshly grilled burgers and hot dogs.

So well, there was an arapa table, and I'm very food motivated, so the arapas were delicious, and we had walked a bunch that day, so I needed sustenance. And then there was the burger table as well, but we I don't think. I don't know if you got a burger, but I did not get a burger.

I got I got one burger, but they were out of buns when I got a burger, so I had a lettuce burger. And then soon after they got the buns back, and I was kind of kind of bummed.

Yeah I did not at least you got something, but I had the arapis.

So I mean still hardworth to be fair, hundreds of people were they've fed for They've had five hundred people, you know, And at one point they made announcement that like they needed to do another food run just to go get more more food, and like a bunch of people volunteered and you know, only I think two or three went down to Walmart to get a bunch of more burgers and hot dogs, and it was just a really cool moment.

So I think by the end the end of the night when I was there, there were about five hundred people just enjoying the music and looking at the sky. It was just an immaculate vibe. There was a little fire pick off to the side. And yeah, you talked about the setting up the stage. You know, I didn't know what to expect walking in there is not expecting

It like nice like green and purple lighting.

Yeah, it was. It was great.

And then they had that green room tent back there, and then they had a separate tent for a quick like. It was a very well thought out festival in the middle of nowhere.

The South River Music Festival began early Saturday evening at five point thirty, kicking off two days of local musical artists playing shows free of charge. Before the lineup of live music began. Someone on stage read out a small flyer that was being passed around, detailing the reasoning for the festival and its place within the fight to defend the forest, and I got permission to share that reading.

In the limitless possibilities of the cosmos, in the mad flecks of events, reactions and anomalies of the past twelve billion years since the birth of our universe, it's a statistical impossibility.

That we would be here now, But here we are alive.

Together Such incredible circumstances have brought us here. Among them the incredible and innovative resistance to defend this place. From becoming a poet least training compound.

Magic mushrooms out.

This resistance, which brings us together the most cunning and resilient techniques of the radical environmentalist movement with the incredible courage and ferocity of the George Floyd Uprising, is not just about a small piece of land.

It's not about being fought.

Between police and their goons on one hand and some activists and their friends on the other. We are witnessing a collision of two competing ideas of happiness.

Of life, of the future.

In this competition experiments with new types of free culture play a decisive role. This movement cannot be reduced to what is happening in city hall, on social media, or in meetings. For two years, we have descended on these woods, finding refuge from the high rents and predatory bookings fees of the corporate venues and bars. We have not come here to redecorate the actions of some activists as allies, lending our service to the drab and loveless militancy of

That is going to change.

Music is not like other forms of human culture. It is different from painting, drawing, poetry, literature, or film art. Politics, and symbolic culture in general represent the passions conjuring strong feelings from the shadows of reality, pulling them from the depths of the soul or the back of consciousness.

Music, on the other hand.

Is perhaps the only form of human creativity that contacts those feelings without any mediations. Music is physics, music is reality. The system we live in is at war with reality. The system is destroying forests, rivers, mountaintops, and oceans. It's destroying our imaginations, our bodies, and our world. To defend ourselves from certain annihilation, it will not be sufficient to strike the right notes at the right time. We will have to make recourse to other means, to more direct means,

I'm so lucky to be here with y'all. Thank you.

Across the middle of the field, hundreds of people laid out blankets on the grass and dirt. Concertgoers alternated between a dancing in front of the stage and relaxing and eating food on picnic blankets. As the night approached, over a thousand people were spread out across the RC field. Amoshe pit had formed directly in front of the stage. Musicians led stop Coopcity chants, and between sets, people spoke on mic about the movement.

Everybody say stop cop City, Stop cop City.

That's right, that's right.

Saturday Night was headlined by local Atlanta rapper Zach Fox. Zach told stories about how he and his friends used to hang out in this very forest as teenagers.

All Right, man, hey, i'm gonna say this, Fuck the mayor. I'm gonna say this, fuck the mayor, and fuck all this shit. And I love everybody for coming out to support this ship.

And you're really fucking.

When I tell you me, Archie.

Everybody used to walk back in these woods and drink red stripes and and walk our dogs and shoot guns and shiit. So I really don't want to see this shit happen. And I really appreciate Allia for coming out to do this shit.

Fuck cop City Chance erupted pretty regularly throughout the night.

And this is all I'm gonna tell the police. This is all I'm gonna tell the police. Okay, hold on, let me make sure I push the right button.

Say that ship. Let's go. Fucking run it. Fucking run it. Fucko, run it, fucking run it, fucking run it, fucking run it.

FUCKO, run it, Atlanta. I love y'all so much.

Man, Hell yeah, hey, man, let me say something real quick. Let me say something real quick before I get the fuck out saves. Let my hummies right this shit. I love y'all so much for supporting this shit I have. Let me tell you. Let me tell you something. I'm thirty two. A lot of niggas start getting old and they lose faith in the youth. I got so much faith in everybody in this motherfucking bitch. Wherever y'all going, I'm going, I truly believe that y'all gonna save this motherfucking world.

So I'm with y'all.

Fuck cop City, fuck cops in general, fuck twelve, fuck authoritarianism, fuck capitalism, fuck all that bullshit. I'm with y'all to the end. So I motherfucking die so let me hear y'all say this one more time.

Start bawow, start bobow. Stiit bob wow, side bobow.

Besides the domestic terrorism banner I mentioned in the opening of this episode, another banner was hung up beside the stage featuring turtles and butterflies, along with the Asada Shakur quote. Love is our sword, truth is our compass.

This kind of.

Music is about the Nazi to nature, filling the trees, feeling the ground, filling each other.

Look right up there, look.

At the fucking moon.

To quote a communicate from the Sonic Defense Committee quote. At this point, it was impossible to imagine a meaningful police intervention. The crowd was made up of elderly people, university students, rappers and did US activists, toddlers and newborns, skaters, people of all imaginable Atlanta demographics. The night ended around three thirty am to sounds of house techno and drum and bass without any notable incident.

Unquote.

Tents were set up all over the eastern side of the forest, with many people choosing to sleep under the tree canopy between the living room and the music festival for that first night. As the night went on, people carefully tended small campfires both in the festival field and in the middle of the living room. To quote the Press Collective, the movement was once again living in joyous

Like Sunday?

You know, Sunday started off really great, Like walking in the first thing you see when you walked back onto the festival grounds was this amazing bouncy house that they had written some guidelines up there that it did seem like everyone followed. You could fit six adults, which like for a bouncy house, that's pretty large.

It was a big bouncy house.

It was like six of dollars through twelve kids or something like that. So, yeah, you see bouncy house and like when you see that the first thing, but I think that visually sets the entire expectation, like that is a statement in and of itself of like what they were going for that first.

Day, Day two of the music festival started around noon. Right in the middle of the RC field was this large rainbow colored bouncy castle adorned with a stop Copcity banner. People slowly trickled in all over the course of the afternoon, culminating in about a thousand people scattered across the field by four pm. Just like the night before, people enjoyed free food, Defend the Forest related literature, and a bustling

So I think the bouncy Castle set the tone, and everything was really lighthearted for the first few hours. I spent most of that day walking around watching the autonomous infrastructure in the forest kind of pop up on its own. It's like everywhere I went, you know, to the parking lot, you saw trains of people carrying like water and supplies deep into the forest. Everyone seemed to just be trying to find a place to fit in and to work and to really participate in the week of Action.

As the day went on, rumors started to circulate about inaction happening later that afternoon. Word quickly spread that people would meet up in the RC field at five pm. Eventually, a flyer was posted to social media, and sure enough, come five o'clock, a group of a few hundred people made up of individuals and affinity groups, gathered behind the bouncy Castle, most of whom were masked up and a

That was quite the visual like this, this crowd of Camo and black block and like some people wearing normal clothes who I don't think quite knew what they were about to do next to this massive bouncy castle. And I think that that the visual of it kind of represents like two aspects of the movement, right, like the militant aspect and the joyful aspect, and I think they're both very central to what you know, the movement is.

Yeah, it's a pretty good encapsulation of the diversity present around the Defend the Forest and Stop cup City movement.

There's a few.

Hundred people in Camo Block walking down, I believe is a constitution, a lot of people addressed in Black Block, mix of legal observers here, police shoppers overhead are Currently people are marching west in the direction of the old Atlanta prison farm, the slate of the forest that cop City is planned to be built on. There has not really been a mass convergence of people like this in the forest in a long long time. I cannot remember

Popped as still overhead. I'm sure you can hear it.

To get a clear picture of what actually happened that day. It's useful to understand the geography of the Wilauni Forest, especially since the police have tried to make it sound like the individuals who were arrested later that night were apprehended at this scene of the crime, which is not actually the case.

The entire area that the defenders are trying to defend, the entire Weilani Forest, the contiguous part of it is surrounded in sort of a triangle by three different roads, Constitution, Key and Bouldercrest. All the way to the east is Wilani People's Park, and like just to the west of that is the RC Field where the music festival was happening, where the bouncy castle is and where our group that we're following here starts to gather. And then all the way to the west is the proposed site of copp

And if you're crossing through the woods, you also have to like jump over Entrenchment Creek, which is not the easiest creek to cross over.

It's not the easiest and it's not the cleanest something you want to step in.

I'm at the back of the march.

Now everyone's kind of tightened up into one larger, larger group. They've paused briefly and are retrieving some tires that have been found near the ditch on the road here, dozens and dozens of tires are blocking are blocking the road. They're getting moved out pretty quick and the march is moving on. Oh, and looks like people arrived at the power line cut. This massive clearing for power lines to run north south. People are now marching on the green

Pretty condensed.

Large group of people up there, lots of fireworks. Like I said, some individuals chose to focus their efforts on pelling the nearby police, giving the opportunity for others to set their sights on various targets. The large number of people in the block together allowed for individuals to feel more safe and capable of taking action. The APDs put a call out to get any available units down here by the old line of prison farm property and a

So the excavator there was a utility train vehicle, which is what the police have been using to sort of move in and around the woods, and sort of motorized move in and around the woods. And then the office space and the storage space.

We're all torched.

I think that that comprised like everything that was over.

There, and then the police surveillance tower, which has been taken down a few times.

Surveillance towers in that area, they have this tendency.

To fall over.

The fire has gotten a lot lot bigger. Police scanner audio is saying officer needs help, calling for all available units to converge on the spot. Wow O, the fire is getting so much brighter, smoke is incredibly thick. It looks like some people are starting to move out of the area back into the woods.

But wow, that is.

A huge fire. It was at least two separate things lit on fire. There were, in fact, more than two things on fire. Looks like crowd is going to be starting to move because a lot of police is about to show up. Unsure what the response will be for people at the music festival or at a Wolani People's park who are camping out for the Week of Action. But this is a pretty pretty big action for Week of Action Day two. Wow, this smoke plume is massive.

Those two fires took place.

One indication that this night was far from over was that the police helicopter seemed to be moving toward the festival. The chopper has moved from being near the power line cut to the music festival and Wailani People's Park. Vibe

That is what's currently going on.

People still still seem to be coming like to and from the festival. Sure enough, within minutes, an increasingly large number of police started to stage by the entrance to the RC field. Doesn't the police cars are now stationed outside the entrance to the RC field where the music festival is taking place. There's a lot of police here, some with rifles. They're getting their zip ti cuffs ready.

So when the police came running up onto the tarmac at Rcy Field where the bouncy castle was, of course they had to point a rifle at the bouncy castle. And if that doesn't show that police are not here to have fun and have joy, I don't know what is. I don't know if anyone was in it at the time. I don't think so. I think they were literally just pointing a gun at an empty bouncy castle, which they have they destroyed, And I think we have to take a moment to mourn that.

Lots of police running into the music festival.

They're running someone down, chasing down a few people, Cops approaching for multiple sides. Instead of immediately trying to confront the hundreds of music festival attendees head on, the still extremely outnumbered cops ran to the opposite side of the music festival and started to indiscriminately go after isolated stragglers

Looks like an NLG person's on the ground.

Eventually, the certain goers realized what was happening, and a little over one hundred people mobilized to pressure the cops out of the field.

People from the.

Music festival are now running behind the police that have rushed into the RC field, cops being flanked by hundreds of people.

So the first thing that happened was a few officers entered the RC field, which is where the music festival was happening, and made a few quick arrests.

Yeah, like five or six, I would say.

And I would assume, seeing like the crowd and realizing that a small force of officers is easily overwhelmed, kind of pulled back with their arrests. And then just after that, over in Wielani People's Park, that's when the CAB came in with their SWAT teams. There was a group that was meeting in the gazebo and they report like dozens of police officers running by. One of them stood up to record, and an officer with an ar fifteen and yelled at them and told them to sit the fuck

And then the third.

Wave, I would say, came in on the back of a armored police vehicle with an L RAD, good old DJ L rad.

It brings it brings back all the memories.

And so from there they sort of launched into the forest, launching tear.

Gas again also brings back all of the memories. Police are starting to come back into the music festival. Fireworks are happening in the woods near the living room.

It looks like.

The police that entered via the RC field advanced up to join another group of cops who came in from Wolani People's Park and were already in the woods. What I first assumed were just fireworks were actually in exchange of munitions, with cops firing explosive tear gas canisters into the forest and people trying to hold the cops off with fireworks.

Tear gas is in the woods. Fucked, it's hard. I can't get any I didn't I didn't bring my gas masks because this was a music festival.

It's just the woods are completely caked and gas everyone who's inside. I don't know how they're gonna get out. Cops have the place surrounded. It's so gassed up in there.

Police raided.

They tear gased a section of the woods close to the RCA field, kind of blocking off the RCA Field from from the Wanni People's Park parking lot and the camp sits nearby, So you couldn't like really get away or run through that area because your breathing would stop, as mine temporarily did as I tried, as I tried to run through there, and then policer just took over this entire section of southeast Atlanta, just this entire section of the woods, all the intersections in this.

Area, except for the very small space at the music festival was still going on during this entire time.

The section like right in front of the stage where people continued to have the music festival for the next few hours. As police were as like, I kid you not, Like over five hundred police officers were in this surrounding area. There was the most amount of police I've ever seen respond to anything ever, it was wild.

I am currently heading out.

I will try to loop back around to a lot of People's Park because there's just no way through it right now with all the tear gas. But a cop van has pulled into the rc Field Music Festival. People, some of them are study by the stage, others are kind of dispersing. Night's getting pretty hectic. Cops fully surrounding a lot of People's Park and the music festival on

I was around the festival at that time. I even saw the police tackle someone at the festival and tackle and tase an indigenous person at the festival. And initially the police officer Georgia State Patrol and these are the folks that were responsible for killing Tortigita and making up a lie about it. They started running and there were

Go figure, the.

Georgia State Patrol veered to the right and then tased

So they're tear gassing the forest and again, you know, grabbing from reports anyone who's who's running, anyone who who you know rightfully runs from a police officer running at them with an AR fifteen, which you know, we've been around police all week, and like the instinct to run, you know, even even now, is still pretty high.

No, absolutely, and if you've never been chased by police before. Your first instinct isn't to like let them get you. Like I've had police just charge at me for filming police brutality before, and yeah, you generally want to move away.

It is your immediate reaction.

Yeah, anyone running at you with a gun is caused for fear and a police officer even more so.

Okay, I am out of the area.

Police have surrounded on basically every side of the line People's Park, the section of the four people are camping out of the music festival, All entrances and exits are stage, a whole bunch of intersections.

This police stage.

They're letting some people go, obviously they're arresting a whole bunch of other people. No clear indication on who they're arresting or why. It's pretty chaotic right now.

They put out this officer needs help. Call that expanded beyond just APD. But the first thing they did was was calling every available APD officer. Fulton County Sheriff's Office joint to cab County started to mount up, and then of course the Georgia State Patrol definitely had to get in on this action. So jurisdictionally wide or this multi jurisdiction wide force of police amassed on Key Road with the cab kind of coming in on the other side.

I passed through at least five hundred individual police officers. Yeah, that like that would check out because I walked a decent a decent, decent ways, I passed by many an intersection with at least fifty to one hundred cops was stationed at like each intersection.

Oh and we can't forget the Sandy Springs Police Department also ends way down from outside the premier.

Multiple swat teams. There was like I think three different bearcats. After I evacuated the area, I was still in shock about how many police officers mobilized to raid the festival. This is the biggest police response I've seen to anything in Atlanta in the time that I've been here. This is bigger than the police response is to most of like Portland actions compared to like twenty twenty, massive, massive amount of cops from multiple agencies taking over a huge

So the music festival continues unhindered until dusk, and about then is when DJ l Rad comes up and officers get out and call over like five people from the crowd. And so at this point I think there's like somewhere between one hundred seventy five to one hundred people still at the music fest, watching the music, and people are calling out from the stage like we have a legal right to be here, this is public property.

We had we had dueling loud speakers trying to two people having a regular conversation across a field via opposing loud speakers.

Very Scott Pilgrim versus the world right, like.

You know, as the police are trying to shut down a concert, and there's like punks screaming into the bike and police officers using the yell red to scream back.

It's just amazing. I mean, the visuals of this whole day I think are kind of really easy to imagine, even if you're not there.

Yeah, Roughly after two hours of hunting down and detaining stragglers from the festival, dozens of swat in riot gear with high end rifles and armored vehicles slowly moved in towards the stage. Police told festival goers that they had three minutes to leave the festival under threat of arrest for domestic terrorism, to which festivalgoers responded by shouting no. In front of the stage. The crowd linked arms and

About half the crowd has cars parked in the rc field, and the police allow them to go to their cars and leave, leaving like somewhere between you know, three dozen somewhere around three dozen people without cars still remaining at the festival, And this whole time they're also chanting, we have kids, let us go, and like it's this very big moment of solidarity that I've been told from like people who were there that you could tell that everybody

Yeah, it was weird because police, definitely they were letting some people walk away and leave a place, some people drive away, arresting others not really with no clear indication for why they're letting some go and not letting others go. But then this crowd of people around the stage were eventually allowed to leave the music festival in big rent of vans. The police then id'd the people who rented the vans and were driving the vans, but everyone was

Got breaking news out of Atlanta over night. Dozens arrested after what's being described as a coordinated criminal attack. It happened at the future site of a police training center. And this is Blaine Alexander's on the story for US Blaine Good.

Officials say protesters burned construction vehicles and a trailer and set off fireworks toward officers stationed nearby.

And this wasn't about a public safety training center.

This was about anarchy, and this was about the attempt to destabilize.

Police point to a group of what they call outside agitators, saying they left an event nearby, changed into black clothing, and mounted a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers.

To quote a statement from the Sonic Defense Committee. Quote, the indiscriminate brutalization and arrest of festivalgoers suggests that law enforcement agencies will go to great lengths to paint the movement to stop Copcity and Defend the Atlanta Forest as a criminal organization. It is, in fact, a broad, decentralized movement with no ideological or organizational unity, only of shared goal.

I think to talk about what happened, we kind of do have to go back to put it in context and going back to January that was the end of the occupation or the you know, continuous encampments in Wilani and then flash uh fast forward to to late January, they get the LDP and so all of these people who have been protecting the forest for so long are now watching construction equipment roll in and they're watching clear

There had not been an action like this in the woods for a long time. Bulldozers and equipment had not been damaged in quite a while, but on Sunday, people were able to use the safety in numbers that comes with a week of action to feel more empowered to take direct action against the actual machinery that is destroying the forest and building cop City. Sunday's action can be seen as a demonstration of the pent up righteous anger

The day before, there was this chant that was taken up by the entire crowd, and I think we talked about this and.

Earlier.

If you build it, we will burn it. And that was something that if you looked all throughout the crowd, like they were chanting everybody, everybody, like not just people wearing camera or black block, like.

A thousand people, everybody, Yeah, a thousand people watching from Gresham Park.

And I think that this is that promise come true.

Sunday's action was itself a pretty unique moment in the recent history of environmental and anti police struggles. Watching hundreds of people go on the offensive. To participate in a mass coordinated sabotage in defense of both the forest and targets of police of Islands felt like an unprecedented moment in our modern paradigm of resistance in the United States.

We always in with the asslogan.

We're with the words of our.

Love or assonas schoor because we have a judy.

There's been so much blessed built here.

Repeat up to me, give us our duty, the flag for our freedom.

It's our judy to wed.

Does not each other, irons at each other. I'm not gonna lose flaun Change.

I'm not gonna loose Balanche.

I'm not annose, but godzizea.

Music festival audio courtesy of Unicorn Riot. Come Monday morning, basically no one was in the forest. The police raid the night prior pushed out most of the people gathered for the music festival and week of action, and it was still unclear how the rest of the week would now proceed. This Monday happened to be the Jewish holiday Perham. Initially there were plans to have a Perham celebration in the forest that evening, but it was unknown if people

We are the faith Coalition against Cop City, and we are here so again raise our voices so that Mayor Andre Dickens and the members of the City Council of Atlanta know that we will not stand for the atrocities that have been occurring. I will not stand for cop City to go forward. The community came out and made public comment for over seventeen hours when given an opportunity, and said emphatically, no, we don't want your cop City.

We don't want more repression of black people.

We don't want more polluted air, we don't want less green space in our community. We don't want more policing and terrorizing of black, brown, indigenous bodies in our community.

Reverend Jones gave her own perspective as a local Atlanta with deep ties to the city.

So we are here as faith leaders today and we are here to say, Mayor Dickens, if you didn't hear us the first time, we are here once again to let you know that we don't want cop City. This is our community, this is our land. I am a daughter of East Atlanta. I still live in East Atlanta. I don't want cop City. My granny owns a home that she's been in for almost fifty years in the heart of East Atlanta village. She does not want cop City. My neighbor across the street does not want Cop City.

She also addressed the outside agitators narrative that police and media have continued to craft against force defenders, including by only arresting and charging people thought to be from out of town at the music festival that previous night.

So we're here today to make sure that we ring the alarm and dispel the false narrative that it's outside agitators who don't want this. We know that this is the rhetoric that's been going on ever since abolition began, that it's outside agitators. They said slaves didn't want to be free, but it was white people from the North who wanted it.

That's the lie.

They said that black people in the South didn't want civil rights, but it was white people from the North. That's a lie. Today they are claiming that the black people love Cop City. It's outside agitators from elsewhere, and that again is a lie. Simply because the police have chosen to systematically arrest people from out of state doesn't mean that what they're saying is the truth.

Reverend Leoshe addressed to other faith leaders and ask them to join in their calls to stop the cop City project.

We local Atlanta clergy and religious leaders representing diverse communities call on clergy, religious leaders and people of faith in moral conscience across this nation and in solidarity with local Atlanta leaders to stop cop City, stop the swap, and defend the Atlanta forests.

Wilani People's part.

Today, we're gathered for this press conference and we will be delivering a letter to Atlanta City Council. But we invite you to continue in this faithful work that we are doing and contribute wherever you find.

Your space in this growing movement.

We call on clergy religious leaders, who are a moral authority in our society, to use your power in support of the forest protectors.

We are deeply.

Concerned for the greater Atlantic community and the implications for the future of public safety in the United States if Kopsudy moves forward.

At the press conference, the coalition presented a letter to the City Council signed by over two hundred clergy members. Reverend Leoshe also read it aloud.

Despite a record breaking amount of public comment opposing the facility, Atlanta City councils still pass legislation to build cop City. We are troubled by leadership that stops acting on the will of the people and aligns itself instead with corporate

Yes, and may I add that in the face.

Of the violent raid that took place last night, as city residents gathered in solidarity to defend this forest, that is an example of the militarization that we are calling out. Through violence and greed, these lands have been subjected to centuries of abuse, from the forced removal of indigenous communities, to serving as a plantation for enslaved African labor, to the site of the old Atlanta prison farm in the twentieth century that produced immense profits for the prison system.

Today, the sounds of berg.

Song from the forest canopy live alongside the sound of gunfire and the adjacent APD firing range.

We are troubled.

By the commodification of community, land, water, and air on which all of us depend. We are profoundly troubled by the use of military tactics and escalated legal charges on members of our community, suppressing legitimate resistance, while at the same time clearcutting the forest trees despite not having the appropriate permits. The lands and the people of Atlanta have suffered violence for too long.

We say no more.

We declare with faith, commitment and hope that this land will be a part of healing and repair. We Atlanta clergy, religious leaders, and all of those across the nation and world who are in agreement join our voices with calling for the following, a complete stop of the cop City project and cancelation of the Atlanta Police Foundation's lease, dropping all charges against forest defenders and protesters. We demand an

The Muscogee elder Miko Chabbon, Colonel spoke at the press conference and called for land back and for the Muscogee people to return and remtreat the Wailani Forest in community with the black and brown residents of the area.

Our ancestors lived here for over thirteen thousand years, and if you're to do the math correctly, this country that we now call the United States is somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred and forty just over nearly two years ago.

I came here to the Launi Forest.

I came here with my own family, my own children, with some of my elders, to just share a little bit about how this territoryiness land feels to us as Muskogee people, because, let it be known today, it was not our choice to leave here. We did go to war to protect these areas. We did go through much burden to protect these areas, only to be forced to leave here under military occupation, but also to be forced to leave here after treachery, after illegally lands were taken from us.

This is our homeland.

My ancestors for generation upon generation, for millennia are buried on the very ground that you walk on every day. And I think we have a say and how we should live as a society in this day and time.

Regardless of what we think.

We're dependent on this earth Mother, and she has been faithful in taking care of us. It's us that has not been faithful and respecting her. Our hope is that this earth is not destroyed before we even have a chance to come back, that lives aren't destroyed before we have a chance to come back. So today, in whatever way, I come here to join the choruses of voices that you hear all around you saying what is going on

That's the prayer that I carry today.

Reverend Darcy Jarrett joined in the call for a stewardship of the Wallani Forest to be returned to the Muscogee people.

City Schools of Decatur has a of solidarity an acknowledgment of harms to cab County and the City of Atlanta. We call on you to make good on these words, to give the land back to our indigenous siblings, so that they, as they have stated and will do and always have done, work in collaboration with the black and brown community right there near where the site is outside of the Wilawni Forest. The City of Atlanta is ready to lease this land at just ten dollars an acre. Instead,

Finally, Matthew Johnson spoke about the worrying amount of police repression and violence the movement has already seen.

We're projecting by the end of the day, there will be forty people that have domestic terrorism charges, many of which just for being in a parking lot. I don't know how anybody can accept this when you have a projected forty people that are committed of domestic terrorism, not one dead body. Meanwhile, we can't even show the bruise on the police officer that was allegedly shut at but our friend's ashes. We have the ashes of a friend that we will spread. We can no longer accept this

Both myself and Matt from the Atlanta Community Press Collective were at the press conference and we met up after to discuss the events of the day. During the press conference, some of the media's line of questioning was very much like aligned with the types of narratives being put out by police in relation to the events that previous night,

Yeah, and we've seen that all throughout the week. Every chance that the media is trying to throw somebody to like call cause dissension or a divide, amongst the movement has been really handily deflected by anyone who's come across it, and the clergy did not just a good job of like not falling into that trap, but of actually pointing out how that line of thinking was like missing the point and where the true violence was coming from this.

And so why are there a majority of people engaging some funds coming from other states.

The reality of it is that the ones who are engaging in violence are the police, and they're from right here in Atlanta, Georgia. You got APD, you got Georgia State Police, you got GBI, you got Georgia State troopers, you got everybody except the mart of police who are engaging in violence and terrorism against the people who are

Because we don't know what they're doing.

But what we do know is what we're doing and what we see from them that we know. I know when I get hit by an officer. I know when I see a mother with a child begging to be let up off the ground because her children are with her. I know when I see officers pointing a rifle inside a bouncy house.

If I could just say, I'd like to just bring up a story. Initially, the colonizers that came onto this land attempted to use the indigenous folks as their slaves. However, the indigenous folks knew the land so they could get away. Now, when you ask me about why is it that you keep catching people that aren't from here that might not reflect the people that are actually involved in the resistance.

God, bless you, thank you.

After the press conference, people from the Clergy Coalition marched to the front door and entered City Hall before making it upstairs to sign up for public comment during the city council meeting.

Hie, we shall not be moved. Fine for read now, we shall not be moved.

Just like the street collided by the wall, We shall not.

The large group of the clergy and the people gathered for the interfaith Coalition are now moving through City Hall. There's a whole bunch of cops here that looks relatively nervous about the easily sized group of people. The scary Christians are now invading City Hall lookout.

So usually in city Hall there there are several APD officers who you know, just kind of hang out. But while the clergy are walking up to city Hall, you can look out and there is APD on every corner. And then you enter into city Hall and there are clusters of APD. There are I think four floors to City Hall. There are clusters of APD on three sides of every floor of City Hall.

After an unexpectedly long awards and proclamations ceremony, the public comment section of the city council meeting finally began.

I'm standing here today with the Faith Coalition.

We are clergy and faith leaders.

We are citizens, and we are protectors of the land that doesn't belong to us, but belongs to God. We are deeply concerned for our community members, for ourselves, and the implications for the future of public safety in the United States if this cop city development goes forward. We are asking for all people of faith, those of you who sit on council, regardless of your tradition or background, and those who stand with moral conscience, to stop the

A community process.

Let us come together with moral imagination to envision how the Wilani River forests can be the heart and lungs of community wellness and healing, not more militarization of police. We want a process that centers the voice and needs of Muskokee leaders and community members, our Indigenous siblings, incarcerated folks and surrounding prisons, families and neighbors who live in cross proximity to the firing range and under police surveillance.

We want holistic.

Community safety, clean water, tree canopies, a future for every single one of our children. May it be so.

Someone from the Muscogee Creek Reservation in Oklahoma spoke about the desire to return to their homeland.

The Miko of our Hellbi ceremonial grounds back home in Oklahoma has come here where our original fire was started, and then it was taken all the way to Oklahoma, and now we want to bring it back to our land and we want to start those fires again. Well, when we come back. We need a land to come back to. This is my first time coming back to visit my homelands. I wanted to visit here where my ancestors are, as a spiritual and personal journey. I didn't want to come here to try to fight the violence

I turned seventy last week and I've lived in Atlanta my whole life. I'm not an outsider, and I am here to say to you that I find cop City to be an abomination. My husband is a pastor of a church a couple of miles from here, and he could not be here today. He's out of town, but he stands with me with these comments. But people who have spoken before me have said the things I would say.

And if you heart in your heart, be reminded of the story of another pharaoh who had a very hard heart, who would not free the people of God, who would not lead them to their land. You know what happened in that story. Don't think that you will not suffer the same fate. Don't think that the infrastructure of this so called Black Mecca will not come toppling over, because it will.

There are a couple like things to note about how City Council public comment works. City Council doesn't tend to pay attention to them. Essensibly, the only one who pays attention is City Council President Doug Shipman, because it is his job to call time and to call up the next person. But you know, city councilors will like step in and out of the room, get something to eat. During the seventeen hours of public comment for cop City, like one of them held a press conference.

There are two council members notoriously bad at paying attention to public comment. Dustin Hillis who is the committee chair for the Public Safety Legal Administration Committee. Basically he's in charge of police. And the other is Mary Norwood, who represents Buckhead and has what I would describe as ontologically evil vibes. Buckheed is the northern, primarily white neighborhood in Atlanta that is wanted to secede from the city, which

There any firefighter or police city employee entries yesterday's event.

Because memory there was not. We're very fortunate that that was the outcome. We're fortunate that there was no injuries.

If this continues, do we have the ability to deploy even greater force to quill this. You know, the millions of damage, millions of dollars of damage to public and private properties.

We will make adjustments as those that used various tactics.

Yesterday was an escalation.

We had not seen this large number of individuals engaged in this activity, and the aggressive manner in which the officers were attacked was a significant change from what we had seen before when it generally had been setting property on fire. We'd seen police cars set on fire, win those buses, but this was started as an attack against individuals, men and women who are employees of this city, So

To testimony, it was interesting the degree to which the Chief framed Sunday's direct action as primarily being targeted against officers and not the destruction of equipment and machinery at

People returned to the forest. Yeah, this was the.

First time that people like returned to the forest in mass since Sunday, and he started to kind of feel people's energy get reinvigorated. The woods became a place again that people were able to like be in and like they were able to be in community in the woods again.

And that is in keeping with sort of how this movement is always responded to what we I guess could call a loss, right.

Like twenty three people getting arrested in charged is is a great loss.

Yeah, and the bounce back period is pretty quick. Like the resiliency is continual and always strengthening every time that, you know, the repression grows, like it does seem like the resiliency grows with it.

People were not scared away from the woods. People still still were like, no, this is something I care about. I am still going to be in the woods. I'm

They entered the lobby and it's a very small group, but like I think half of it was.

It was like five people and another five like press people.

Yeah.

So they enter and they read aloud a letter to Alan Shaw, the CEO of Norfolk Southern, calling forward investment from of Norfolk Southern from copsody, and immediately they are met with uh a security guard screaming like go you get out of the hobby. You're you're being criminally trust you're being trespassed. You have to leave. One of the other security guards runs around with cell phone camera and like shoves it in everybody's faces, reaching rather rudely over you to get my face, and.

They got very close to me entering the Norfolk Southern building.

Please this letter.

Explaining a horrible role in the city, can you please?

And so the whole thing lasts like less than five minutes, maybe ride about five minutes when they finished reading the letter, Like all they asked was that the letter go to the CEO.

YEP.

While people were inside the headquarters, security called ns Police, which is the Norfolk Southern Police, who are legally allowed to arrest people.

Anyone you can see.

For your building.

But nobody was arrested at that non violent direct action. The whole thing was over pretty quickly, and you know, as we were walking out, we saw like the the a force of Norfolk Southern Police like swarm kind of the exterior of the campus and like keep an eye out on things.

And then we moved over to Woodriff Park, which was the meeting place for these non violent direct actions that happened about every every day at noon starting on starting on Tuesday. It's Tuesday, March seventh, around noon, there's about fifty or so people gathered in Woodriff Park who are heading out and marching to go stop by two of the Atlanta Police Foundation corporate funders.

We roll up and I think at that point they were like twenty ish protesters.

It was.

It started off very small. There was no police, like no real visible police presence. They were like maybe a cruiser or two like kind of around and actually start to gather and kind of talk about like what their plan is for the day, which was just to march around to three different sites. They wanted the EIGHTE and T Building, the Georgia Pacific Building, and GSU Georgia State University.

They are they are now leaving Woodriff Park. They got to Georgia Pacific, one of the cop City financial backers. Without much incident and without much in terms of visible police presence, people called on Mayor Dickens, who is the chair of the board of directors for Georgie Pacific, to cancel the Atlanta Police Foundation lease of the land that copp City is slated to be built on.

Mayor Diggis, we want you to cancel this leak. We know that you have the authority to do so.

They finished up that Georgia Pacific, they set up a little vigil for Torti Guita.

And from Georgia Pacific they began their trek to the AT and T building.

They left a little vigil for Torti Ghita in front of the Georgia Pacific Center and the group of like more than fifty people are continuing to march north. Police eight to ten police officers are directly behind them, and the whole bunch of police cars are blocking Peachtree along the path to AT and T. Was the APF's headquarters just across the street, and as the crowd approached this intersection, the amount of police ballooned massively in the block around

The number keeps growing.

As we start walking down different sidewalks and different streets, you just see more officers that are already stationed.

There are fifty activists and what certainly over one hundreds some were probably between one hundred, one hundred and twenty police officers started marching not like behind, not in front, but directly beside the march, sort of pinning the march to the wall and like essentially kettling the march.

There was police station in front, there was police station behind, and police stationed on the side. It was surrounding the surrounding like these fifty people who were simply walking on the sidewalk stumbling upon a new group of officers.

Got to be about one hundred officers in this area right now.

At one point, a police vehicle was just parked on the sidewalk, completely blocking it. During this entire time, police were blocking all of the traffic in these intersections and roads.

Driving wrong way up a one way like just you know, doing police things.

Yeah, a Doorida State University canine unit. This blocking off the entire sidewalk next to a Fulton County Sheriff's vehicle. They're trying to make it impossible for people to actually move on the sidewalk.

But for the most part, if.

People have been able to move around the police and keep their movement going instead of just stalling in one spot or like trying to physically confront what is now like hundreds and hundreds of law enforcement officers from Fulton County Sheriffs and Atlanta Police Department and even like Georgia State University Police.

So the group is split up in.

Between two streets right now because people are trying to follow the follow the crossing signals because otherwise police are going to tackle and violently assault people. No one was arrested, People marched to their perspective locations.

People very pointedly kept to laws. There was a couple of times when like the crosswalk changed and the group kind of had to split. They would stay and wait until the crosswalk went back to walk, and then crossover and join it's.

So funny that the cops are so insistent if you stepped on the street, you're going to get arrested, and make sure people stay on the side of walks.

But the result of that.

Is that all the cops are standing in the street and they're blocking off like miles of traffic downtown Right now, people just arrived at the fifty one Peachtree Center Avenue AT and T Building in downtown Atlanta. Police were already stationed in front of the AT and T building, so there wasn't much to do. After a brief speech talking about AT and T's contributions to the Police Foundation and

With a small line of officers in front of GSU. They gave their last round of speeches and sort of dispersed for the day before.

We wrap today and gave these clouds something else to go do.

We will be out here.

We won't be out here for the rest.

Of the week, for the rest of the hunt, for the rest of that year.

We won't fight.

That's here we wait.

Some of the police are now grouping up and opening up the sidewalk so people can actually It seems officers were in fact instructed to make arrests during this action, but for some reason did not follow through on those orders. According to scanner audio from Atlanta Police Department's SWAT team.

That's about of them.

The problem is they've been telling them to make a risk, but also is not taking a risk.

I guess they weren't supposed to. I don't know.

But un lit with that, we'll just hold what we got at fawn as leaders.

Extensive police activity continued later that night. At around five thirty to six pm, police started staging around the forest in a way that usually indicates that a raid is forthcoming. Word spread around the recovering encampment that police could be preparing for a raid.

So the initial reports were like that there were fifty police officers staged at Key Road and ready to go, and then the Decab County Swat starts to roll up at the fire station, and I would say a fair amount of like panic starts to set it at camp.

Multiple multiple police copters are are getting flown overhead, multiple different SWAT teams are being brought in. At least like three or four different agencies are stationing officers around the woods. I believe it's estimated that at least one hundred and twenty police officers were being staged in the area directly surrounding the forest and in the area by the power line cut on Key Road.

And it should be said that you know, up until this point, the police have never brought in that many resources to any protest action that I'm aware of, and not come in and engaged. So I was with a group offsite who like immediately began to fear, like you know, for they wouldn't be able to get back to their camp size, they wouldn't be able to get their gear, They wouldn't be able to get their medication, and that, from what I understand, was the general vibe around. But nothing happened.

Nothing seemed to happen, and then at around seven police started to almost like express confusion on what was going on, and then everyone else expressed confusion for why the police were confused. And we think we've kind of put together what may have happened. So Clark, what is suspected of going down here?

So the one thing that police don't understand and probably will never understand, is humor. Now, they become the butt of the joke often, but they don't understand comedy. So at seven o'clock that evening was scheduled Comedy in the Forest. And from what we've gathered, the police thought that the Comedy in the Forest event was going to be a cover for another Sunday night like action.

So this event was scheduled on the public Defend the Atlanta Forest calendar that anyone can look at online is this Comedy in the Woods event for people to tell jokes around a campfire. And I guess they thought it was like it was like this event that was like a red herring so that people could then go do

And part of what I've heard go on since then was you know, some very generative conversations about how they're going to take into account like this, this new paradigm that developed that night, And I think that again speaks to sort of just how the movement continues to develop and grow and like you know, handle new new challenges and shifts.

So with the forest camp is still intact, the week of action continued on as planned, with another downtown nonviolent direct action that next morning.

So Wednesday and noon is a lot smaller of direct action than the day before.

It starts with like a dozen people. It slowly grows to like a few dozen, but yeah, it started extremely, extremely small. So this was one difference from Tuesday is that when we arrived, police already had a visible presence in downtown, stationed around Woodriff Park. So a group of people just launched from Woodriff Park, they kind of split off in different different little sub subgroups. Lots of people are just stationed outside of Marta Stops handing out flyers,

And they decided to split into groups and engage in like just some typical outreach activity that you would see, you know, from any group, like just passing out flyers and pamphlets and attempting, from what I saw, to have like one on one conversations with anyone who wanted to.

So, this this group that it broke off into these smaller subgroups. The group that we kind of accompanied stationed themselves around some Marta stops around I believe it was like the it was the Peachtree Lata station prep. Yeah, so they stationed at the like the three different exits or entrances for that, just just handing out flyers, handing out leaflets, trying to talk to anybody who walks by.

The group that we followed had its own police presence follow it, and then when they split into three more groups, each group had its own police presence follow it, and police stuck to the protesters the entire time. And of course, like there's white transport vans that are full of cops kind of driving by.

Thin white van full of police officers just showed up across the street. Army green tan SWAT vehicle just parked a block away from the Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters. There was an Atlanta SWAT vehicle parked outside of the Hooters.

Totally normal response, totally normals. And so the leafleting goes on for you know, like forty five minutes, and then all of the groups start to gather together conveniently with the group that like we had embedded with.

All right, there's actually a pretty decent number of people gathered here for the flywering event today. You know, normal police responds to people handing out flyers. Just fifty officers in the SWAT team. But yeah, there's probably at this point, like two or three dozen people that have kind of all converged together. It started off very small, people were very very spread out. They splintered off into little smaller groups, but now they've all kind of coalesced together back again.

This area is like the business district, so in the middle of the day, it's like really busy. It's a fairly like good spot to pass out leaflets.

So they are passing out these leaflets. Pedestrians are still able to like walk through the side walks. It's pretty it's pretty chill. And then APD approaches the crowd, like the APD has already been around this area. There's there's this vehicle across the street watching people hand out flyers. But then Lieutenant Neil Welch approaches the crowd and gives them a dispersal order.

Okay, can I read it this first order?

All right?

So I'm Lieutenant Neil Welch, a police officer, City of Atlanta. I hereby declare that, being on this sidewalk, you are obstructing or repeating the normal and reasonable movement a pedestrian traffic and violation of Atlanta City ordinates. Okay, and the name of the people is Saya, Georgia. I hereby command that all present in the sidewalk, all present here in the sidewalk immediately exit the street or the roadway or sidewalk. If you do not do so, you may be detained

Cops threatened arrest and detainment.

They claimed that people were blocking the sidewalk, which they absolutely were not. I was walking freely, as was all of like downtown pedestrian traffic. They were not blocking anything. This is this is pretty silly, utterly, utterly ridiculous response to people handing out flyers. So they were told they cannot be on the sidewalk. Obviously they can't be on the street. Where are you allowed to protest if not the sidewalk or the street. Seemed like very like flimsy

Right in front of the mall. So it's it's it's it's meant to like have a bunch of people passed by it.

So people continue to hand out flyers.

While this is happening.

Uh, there's another group who comes in to the side of Petree Center Mall and enters the mall to find Mayor Andre Dickens. There are a couple of boards in Atlanta that stipulate the mayor is like the head of the board, and this is one of them, and it meets in Peatree Center Mall as one does.

So the mayor is having a meeting in the mall.

Office space is you know, sort of above the mall, and this group of.

People from the Muscogie Nation enter and try to meet up with the mayor to hand off a letter.

Objection to objection, we have a letter being delivered from the Creek Nation on behalf of Muscogee Creek Spiritual Leadership, and.

I came all the way on the trial of tears to deliver this letter to you folks. We want you to know that the contemporary Muscogee people are now making their journey back to our homelands, and hereby give notice to Mayor Andrew Dickens, the Atlanta City Council, the Atlanta Police Department, the Atlanta Police Foundation, the Dakob County Sheriff's Office, and so called copp City that you must immediately vacate Muscogee homelands and cease violence and policing of Indigenous and

A Muskogee Cree people.

Three indigenous an activists along with Kamal Franklin arrive and they find the mayor. They enter the board meeting and they begin to read this letter from the Muscoge Nation aloud. And in the letter it essentially says that Atlanta is being evicted out of the Wui Laanni forest and the most Scogi people are going to return and reclaim their

The Atlanta Police Department APEX Swatch team was called to the mall, and right as the activists were able to exit, the special police units rushed into the building, finding no one. By now, the police repression during this week of action far exceeded police activity during any of the prior weeks of action, and this trend would continue as the week

The big event Thursday night was a six o'clock rally that met at the Martin Luther King National Historic Site.

There was police stationed at King Center before anyone got there, we saw like dozens and dozens of police cars going by.

All around the site are various quick response forces and riot cops just ready.

To move in.

Large police response in the area already, as has been expected for the past few days. Multiple Sandy Springs police buses were driving by. There was multiple unmarked white vans full of officers. The areas crawling with police cars and now there's a small detail of officers across the street from the people gathering here in the park.

We are currently surrounded on every side by groups of police officers in riodegear. The crowd started off like actually fairly decently sized, maybe like fifty people, and then continued as well as the speeches progressed to I would say like two hundred two hundred fifty, maybe even a little bit more. They were passing out signs, so like anyone who came, like they had a sign ready for you. Andre Dickins is a sellout of course, as a very

Defend the forest signs and banners and being handed out throughout the crowd. Other people are passing around the Jail Support number and Jill Support contact information.

People are starting to get ready.

So it meets it at six o'clock and for about an hour and a half we listened to a series of speeches as the crowd begins to swell.

So we are here in solidarity together today to make it clear to the mayor that he's not gonna keep lying on our names. They'll literally be building the mock city of Atlanta practice how to repress life.

They kill.

We find it.

Ridiculous, we find it disgusting.

We find it embarrassing that a mayor Andre Tickets would fix this, not to say that black people what if we killed by.

The woolie that black people walk clock city.

Yeah, the mayor must have for guy in that our ancestors will literally fighting abolition since they were brutally brought to this country. They were fighting for freedom, fighting the original police right, the slave patrols that captured black bodies to take them back to their white masters.

He's talking to the same.

Black people whose elders were fighting here in the same streets in the sixties.

And the seventies to stop police occupation of our communities.

That's right.

Resistance to police, resistance to state violence is literally in our blood as black people.

It is in our DNA.

They're lying on our name because they want money from the same white corporations that are funding Cop City, Home Depot, Chick fil A, Coca Cola, Norfolk, Southern.

At and t.

COT enterprises who own say ajac and this is a fight that we will win, that we are committed to winning. And so when we talk about winning, it's important to say what do we mean when we say that we'll win.

We mean no Cop City anywhere.

Now in South Atlanta, not into cab not in North Atlanta, nowhere. When we say that we will win, we are meaning that this fight does not stop with Cop City. This is a fight for the liberation of all oppressed people here and abroad.

That's right.

And now, client's disgusting that the mayor and that these corporations will talk about outside agitators. Okay, the reason that there are people coming from all over the world to support this fight is because this is a fight that affects.

All of us.

That's right.

The Atlanta Police Foundation admitted that percent of the cops being trained at that facility will not be in Georgia.

So when people came from.

Tennessee, from New York, from California, it's because they know that their local police might learn how to kill them better.

Here, that's right.

And when people come from abroad, they know that currently the Atlanta Police Department trains with the Israeli police. So the same techniques being used to brutalize black people are being used to practice genocide on the Palestinian people. And the same tactics being used to practice genofide on the Palestinian people are being used to brutilize black people right here. So when people came from all over the world to

All as the rain picked up, Tortihita's mother, Belquise Taran spoke next on the.

Cards the friend that I called them, I called them to come here to support us on the people from different religions come here and help us.

This is a matter of the earth. You're talking a.

Mountain's saying, right need.

Our love, The earth needs our attention, and we are we have conscience.

We know that this is not right. Don't go by yourself when we go to activities, stay together, don't go outside by yourself.

Don't We need to.

Make understand that this is the right thing to do. We we are the correct people. We are right because we are driving by love, by carry and concern, and.

We love all of I love you and I know that you love me.

A speaker from Black Votes Matter addressed to the crowd next, starting off by talking about the importance of mass action.

I just want to explain something because sometimes people get confused, they get it twisted.

They say, oh, y'all, look like vote.

It's better all y'all do is talk about voting.

Be clear, we understand that the way that we get to liberation is not going to come.

Just through a vote.

That's never been how it's worked for our people in this country. Sister Harry didn't get a chance to vote for liberations. She didn't get a chance to vote to take our people off the plantation right. So we are very clear that what we have got to be. In fact, we just celebrated, commemorated the anniversary of Selma and the marks of Montgomery. But be clear, the people of Selma didn't vote for a Voting Rights Act. They had to

So yes, hot it.

I believe.

I believe in the power of the vote, but I also believe in the power of mass action.

He then talked about the intersection of Copcity and efforts to further restrict the democratic process in Georgia.

The same corporations that are that are funding cop City are the same ones that are funding the bonus questions, the same ones we've did our whole campaign a couple of years ago in Georgia, says that bonus prison bill. And we called out Home Depot and Coca Cola and tell them many of the other corporations that give money to the people, that are that are taken away our.

Rights to vote.

And then if you don't have a government that reflects the people, then what you need. You need a police force to enforce the fact that you don't have a government that reflects the people. And so our message from Mary Dickets, our message for the City Council is that If you don't respond to the people, you want to lose those chile you want to lose your job.

Because we've got that power.

We've got the power to make that happen.

Students from the Atlanta University Center consortium of four black colleges in Atlanta, where some of the last people to give speeches before the march.

We have attempted to reform our police force, add de el escalation training, add civil rights history training, and give more money to our police, but we continue to see black bodies across social media platforms, television, and other media platforms being displayed being murdered. The victims have received no justice. And when we say no justice, what do we say?

No justice, no justice, no justice.

The building of the Atlanta Public Training Center is an insult and an act of the utmost disrespect from our city leaders.

We have a duty to fight for the change that we seek.

As an active member of this community, I refuse to sit.

By and be idle and just let things happen.

This city has been my home ever since I was born.

I have been to.

Various events here.

I have seen the sights and have lived through some of the most important events here in this City. This is my home. This is your home, This is our home. This is the home of Black excellence. This is the home of doctor Martin Luther King Junior. This is the home of John Lewis. This is the home of Joseph Evelyn and Joseph E.

Lowy. This is the home of civil rights. This is the home of CT.

Gibon.

This is the home of great blackness itself.

This is the home of every single black person here in America. This city, this house, this place of Black excellence says no to Cop City.

My Afro pessimist friends and revolutionaries both agree we are at war. The police in the city have said as much loudly with their words and their actions. It feels obvious to me that we need warriors weapons, and I know that fact may give some of us trepidation, but I want to assure you that we need so much more than soldiers to win this fight. Whatever it is that you do, whatever skill you bring, I just ask

If you're an artist, where my artist at.

You got a lot of them out here.

Let every painting reveal the truth, including the joy and freedom that abolition calls us to. Let us make songs that inspire revolution. If you're a healer, get ready, we need you.

Much will be lost in this struggle.

Let us not forget.

If you're a teacher, well, we got a lot to learn about this war we're fighting and how police practice urban warfare. If you're a lawyer, guide us when they say that any fighter.

Is a criminal.

If you're a digital organizer, to keep your finger on the pulse and tell our stories far and wide. And if you're a community organizer, we need to tend to our relationships, not just use them. We need real solidarity which goes beyond unity. We need pluralism, making space for many strategies to coexist, and ultimately we need to practice democracy. If we plan to build one cop city, is the police in the establishment preparing for domestic war right here

It will.

We all must fight for the democracy we've never seen before.

What are you willing to do?

Thank you?

So, after about an hour of speeches, people are now finally getting ready to move.

They announced on the.

Loudspeaker where we are going. We are marching to the Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters on Peachtree, the same location that had the front windows broken on the protest following the killing of Tortighita that Saturday. So people leave, they stick onto the sidewalk because there's cops staring at them, and cops that definitely had had had indicated that if if people step on to the street, they would be arrested.

Makes sense stretch out really long.

But the cops have been pretty pretty adamant that if anyone steps onto the street, they're going to get arrested. That is a banner being carried across that says what you water grows fund our future, Stop cop city, defend the forest. People with the stop cop City signs in the Coca Cola font signs that read Atlanta versus cop City,

Visuals is definitely a strength of the movement.

There's this police riot helmet that has a tree growing underneath it and breaking apart of the helmet. It says, trees give life, police take it. We got a police riot line set up a few blocks ahead of the people marching on the street right next to the building with these with the stop cop City stuff projected onto the side. Rather than let the police do an escalatory show of violence, people opted to move back onto the

We have like twelve regular police.

Cars, the two white vans full of riot cops and lots of them cops the stage in places I cannot currently see. All right, We're marching north along Peachtree Street, heading heading to the Atlantic Police Foundation got the two the two bus Max rent of buses full of riot cops right right beside the march. Cops really out of it about not letting anybody march in the street. It's funny because a few days ago they wouldn't let people

Yeah, the police were ready to mass rest the entire time.

This is this is kind of a wild sighte.

We have hundreds of people staring down about three dozen officers from the Atlanta Police Department on their fifteen's, obviously all of their handguns from hundreds of hundred, hundreds of people holding signs staring down the police. You can you can feel the kind of you can feel the temperature.

Rising a little bit here. The cops look very nervous as one.

Hundreds of people who are chanting at them, and I'm not very happy are facing them down. They're so they're so close together, we're they're just sandwiched in. This is such a tense situation right now. No one in the crowd has any visible weapons of any kind. Of course, they're holding big signs. Cops have some zipcuffs ready, cops have all of their all their guns ready. I was able to see inside the building via a small slit

Chanting and given speeches.

If you look, there's a small section of the FF building where there's still a tiny, tiny, tiny sliver of glass by one of the doors, and you can see lots of lots of cops stationed inside with riot shields. But I do not believe this crowd is gonna be busting down any doors. Camu Franklin, the founder of Community Movement Builders, was the last person to speak in front of the Atlanta Police Foundation.

No cops, it's nothing but a chry go over. Please think our communities. We know a cop city. There's nothing but a strategy to stop our movements.

And what movements are those?

The moments against police follans and terrorism in our community. It is in twenty twenty one that they introduced this idea to stop, to put cop city out here to stop our movements. When people were talking about the fund the police, abolish the police, find our turn it is the public safety, they.

Said, hell no, we.

Want more police.

And I put that idea out there, and the movement was born to stop cop city. This movement is two years old and it doesn't look like.

It's going to stop.

To me.

By the end, you got this sense that this march did exactly what it wanted to. There were three hundred people standing like a foot away from two dozen cops, starring them down, giving speeches chanting. If people wanted to other things could have happened. This rally could have resulted in many ways, many of them probably very ugly and carrying a very high cost.

The reason we did in march like this today was to say to all the na saves. Black folks don't want cop City. In people don't want cop City. White folks don't want cop City. At Lantis don't want cop City. Folks from outside Atlanta don't want cop City. Don't body in the United States wants cop City because Ronestitians.

Don't work Cops City.

So people in Latin America.

Don't want cop City.

Don't were in.

This world don't we.

Work cop City.

We wanted to make sure that we came in safety and we leave in safety. We wanted to make sure that we don't have any more political prisoners today. That we wanted this to be a march about our unity and our safety in numbers, and as we wrap up today, that's what we want. It's not like we gotta give them an excuse. When you are around the cop the same way when you're around the wild animal.

What do you gotta do.

You gotta be cautious, you gotta be careful. You gotta move a certain way, you gotta know which way to go because you're looking to protect your safety. And right now I'm looking to protect our safety. So as we depart here today, we are departing in unit, We are departing together. We are gonna walk back in close quarters

Here gig the fight.

There was this sense that the people there wanted to show that if they wanted to do things, they could have, but they knew that this was not This was not the right time nor the right place.

Restraint and and understanding of what like practice I would say in that situation is.

And I mean in the speeches that happened beforehand, there was people from community movement builders, from Black Votes Matter, a whole bunch of other black led groups in the city. And similarly, like like like what happened at the Clergy event, there was not a single whiff of condemnation of militant tactics, of of of property, destruction of actions that people take this. They people there who gave speeches recognized that such tactics

We got a group of people. It's being able to leave right now.

There has been a prison transport vehicle called in and cops have like blocked off intersections around the area. No one's allowed to get close. People are not allowed to return to their cars. People are not allowed to return to their private property. Since Sunday night, the land was being used as a medic hub and provided a secondary place to camp for those who didn't feel safe staying

We just goat through their police lines and we're gonna, yeah, huddle up and get to a safe place. We were woken up by helicopters. There had been helicopters doing rounds all evening and I don't even know what time. Seven something, we heard loud speakers saying that they had a warrant to search the property private property, and that was very disorienting. Obviously I was in the middle of sleeping. We came out with our hands open, our hands up. We had

To address the raid, activists scheduled a press conference for later that day after a youth rally to defend the forest was to take place in East Village. And I think you can hear said youths in the background, so excuse their joyous young screams.

We thought that it was important for us to not only amplify the wonderful children's march that happened here today, the community in East Atlanta, this community where they are proposing to build cop City, came out this morning overwhelmingly to say that they don't want cop City.

So we had parents, we.

Had children, we had other neighbors and community stakeholders who gathered right here in Brownwood Park today in East Atlanta to say that we are East Atlanta and cop City is not a part of what we imagine an envision for this community. Also this morning, unfortunately, there is a place that was held as a commune for campers who wanted to stand in solidarity during this week of action.

During the raid, up to forty officers swarmed the property, ransacking the infrastructure set up at the Leaf Encampment site. Cops slashed aparts two medical supply tents, disrupting metical operations, broke windows of a camper van parked on the site, and ripped apart a greenhouse. Police took pictures of the people detained at Leaf and collected their ideas, but after being held for several hours, the police let all but

Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Marlon Kautz.

I'm an organizer with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, where civil liberties and anti repression organization that exists to make sure that people who participate in social movements have the right to protest and don't suffer from repression. So the reason I'm here is because, as we've all heard previously, there

City movement, a movement to defend the forest.

This is very concerning, especially when taken in context. Of course, it's very likely that police are going to report that this was part of a routine investigation, a law enforcement matter that they had every right to conduct. The other thing that police are likely to claim is that they made an arrest on scene, and our understanding is that they did make an arrest due to somebody who was there having an old traffic ticket from a long time ago.

To abuse.

Every justification that they can.

To raid spaces, to make arrests, and to hold people in jail.

So before the police come out and say we raided this place where all of these outside aggressors were and we picked up some violent offenders, we want you to know that our brothers and sisters who were standing with us in solidarity just saying hey, we want to camp here, since we don't feel safe camping in the people's park that's been overrun with police repression and aggression.

They raided that place.

They snatched people up, some people were sleeping, They took pictures of people, They took their IDs, and they searched and searched, found nothing else, never to warrant, and only one person was arrested because of an outstanding parking ticking.

About a week after the raid, the Guardian obtained evidence of the search warrant. The warrant stated that there was probable cause for believing that evidence of quote conspiracy to commit domestic terrorism unquote could be found at the Lakewood location. Listed in the warrant were objects officers sought, which included quote, cameras, radios, boxes of nails, lighters, tents, camping equipment, spray paint, black clothing, and literature related to defend the forest. These were the

Our organization has gotten many reports of pretext stops of political protesters or people who are suspected of being political protesters because of bumper stickers on their car or the

Throughout this time, police have been watching or monitoring one of the off site locations in the forest. They've parked in front of this site and kept up surveillance on it. And then leading all the way up into Friday, there was a journalist pulled over leaving the final non violent direct action from Woodruff Park. They were pulled over with two other people in the car and like detained briefly, ostensibly to you know, continue to identify and connect people.

A big part of the story for this week of Act is the excess of the police response to quite typical acts of quote unquote nonviolent protest, the sort that the government and even the police loved to claim that they actually protect. With every single action downtown this week, virtually no laws were being broken, not even any civil disobedience.

We should highlight that. That is the apparent goal of these protests was to show that even when they are doing things the right way, this is how the state reacts to dissent.

It reacts in this militarized fashion where you like it's it's I think a big part of what's happened in these types of protests that have happened the past week is demonstrating why people are campaigning to stop cop City because the sheer amount of resources that the police already have in the city. To to be deploying hundreds and hundreds of officers every single day to respond to people handing out flyers, it's like to respond to people who

On Thursday night, we held a very peaceful and successful march in downtown Atlanta, starting at the King Center.

We had someone who.

Was stopped by the police and asked if he was picking up protesters taking out of the vehicle, handcuffed for no reason. They couldn't find a reason to detain him any longer, so they had to let him go. But Atlanta, this is why we're standing against cop City, because if cop City is built, you can guarantee that you won't even be able to go to the grocery store without being harassed by the police for no reason at all.

When I spoke with Matthew Johnson, he brought up a similar point.

With the resources that the police had to respond in the way that they did.

The assertion that.

They need more training in a militarized facility or they need more resources is crazy because you had them literally out numbering protesters kettling them, and we have credible sources that say that there were swat forces who had instructed the officers to arrest nonviolent protesters, and there were actually police officers that refused to take that order, which I think is another fascinating dynamic that is worth exploring and

So that's where we're at.

This week of action has shown a lot about how the police are operating post the twenty twenty Uprising, how they will respond to people exercising their First Amendment right, and the indiscriminate way that police will respond to any active protest. One of the main takeaways from this week is that their response to protest is deployed against people without target or focus. They care very little if you are breaking a window or if you're marching on the sidewalk,

The police presence has been pretty unprecedented. I haven't seen shit like that here since twenty twenty, not downtown at least. I mean shit, I don't think we had seen gas in Atlanta in a minute, and then they gassed the forest. It'd been a while, but yeah, I mean they're punching out, especially like Tuesday, they were putting out one hundred and

The twenty three people arrested on Sunday, March fifth were not arrested as anyone was torching equipment. They were not arrested at the power line cut. It was people who were attending a music festival. Arrests were not widely targeted against people who police knew were engaged in property destruction. They were targeted against anyone the cops could grab. Same was the case at the January twenty first action, where

I think one thing that's been lost in all of this, too, is all of the lighthearted events that have continued to go on through the week, and like the joy of the movement that was represented in the Bouncy Castle rip.

But that joy is continuing in the woods, like people have still continued to camp in the woods. People still having dinner in the woods, people are still having camp fires, people are still talking the woods. It is still a place that people are gathering at and are enjoying each other. This company in now are enjoying the woods, and it is a place that the morale has never been fully crushed.

The moral has never been fully crushed.

And like the participatory acts of the Week of Action are continuing like none of that has been quashed.

An example of the joyful, continuous resistance during the Week of Action can be found at the youth rally that happened on Saturday the eleventh.

All right, So I'm at the youth rally Saturday.

After the warrant was served on the meetup spot in Southeast Atlanta. There's around two hundred people marching through East Village in Atlanta. Pretty pretty joyous group here actually, and they're actually like on the streets.

This is the first time we've had a large march like this.

Take to the streets because every action that was in downtown or midtown Atlanta was just so heavily surveilled by police who were not letting anyone get near the street at all.

But there's no police here.

They were busy doing the search war and so this group is actually is actually able to take to the streets. It's like everyone everyone kind of in this area of Atlanta is pretty pretty pro pro this little protest here. There's like workers from the little shops and stores nodding along Bullden County.

Shares just walked by the march like on there, just you know, off shift workout routine, wearing Fulden County gear.

That's pretty funny.

People dancing in the streets, Families walking with their kids through the streets all right, walking around the park that the youth rally started at, and the press conference about the raid this morning just ended at there's as you can probably hear kids playing in the park.

People are handing out food.

It's a massive, massive amount of food just in the middle of the park with all these tables set up. Overall, this is kind of one of the more joyous events that we've had since the initial Saturday rally at Gresham Park, just with the amount of food, the amount of kids just running around and playing, all the information tables that are handing out literature and giving you know, making connections with people. Yeah, when I was down here in January,

And I think that that is kind of why the non violent direct actions have become like that have moved to the floor. Right when you think that you're going to lose and you have nothing to lose, you engage in these incredibly radical actions because what else are you going to do. And then when you have this belief that no, we can win, we just have to find that pathway.

And that is a part of the diversity of tactics is using both of those and almost every ecological movement that's been successful has demonstrated that the pathway to success is often paved with a diversity of tactics, with people doing non violent action at noon, which will pull a massive militarized police response as people are doing regular ass shit.

And now we can have lots of questions about tactics and cost benefit analysis about that action, which I did not think it would be wise, especially being so visible for me to have to be anywhere near on that day. We can have questions about that. But what was for certain was that the way in which the police responded was absurd and predictably so.

Now with the destruction that I saw, etc.

It cost them less than a million dollars and maybe like two weeks actually of construction that they were.

Pushed back max. These are like max numbers.

Was that worth twenty three people being arrested and quaching what could have been a larger occupation and wider participation and wider buying in the movement. Instead, by the time we got to Monday, the clergy was having to do clean up rather than like cast division of what the world could be, And so these are trade offs right where even though we have to be very clear about what a diversity of tactics means and also a separation

In the lead up to the Week of Action, nighttime sabotage actions decreased around Atlanta in favor of these big public demos during daylight. That seems to result in more people getting arrested. And one of the results of Sunday's action happening in such close proximity to the festival and the encampments is that the people at the festival and in the woods who did not consent to participating in a high profile direct action got disproportionately hit with the

Yeah, in terms of the actions done Sunday, in reference to a group of people assaulting a like police position, driving them out with force, and then burning their shit, that was all good, and we should not denounce that A step away from it. It only harms the movement to back away from radical action and act like there are definitions of good or bad protesters, because eventually the logical conclusion of that is snitching, and that only furthers

To riot, so they retaliated at a music festival that was happening nearby.

Yes, and that's the fault of nobody but the police. That's not the fault of the people who went and

On Thursday, when I was in front of the APF building, I could like hear some of the supervisors and coordinators talking about being scared of ambushes or like being scared of splinter groups, like being staged to attack officers. It's it's bizarre how fearful they are. Of the types of people who are opposing the cop city project, they're.

The most afraid of the people who are willing to go do physical violence to them, and not even physical violence, but people who are just willing to like throw a rock at them or like a firework. Once they realize that they haven't paralyzed somebody with fear, once they realize that they have not made you so afraid of taking action, they become such cowards.

In the aftermath of the police killing forest defender Tortigita, law enforcement agencies tried to claim that Tortigita shot at the first leaving one officer injured, but recently released findings from multiple autopsies have cast more doubt on the state's version of events. On the afternoon of Friday, March tenth, Towards the end of the week of action, the family of Tortighita released the findings of an independent autopsy done

Instant.

Reports obtained via public records requests also revealed that GSP fired a quote unquote, a Leslie Thual pepperball gun at d Tortighita's tent as SWAT initially approached, once again contradicting the claims made by GBI officials in the months since the killing. As the week came to a close on Sunday, March eleventh, a memorial service for Tortighita was held in the Malani Forest, where Tort's family spread their ashes in the forest it died to protect. I attended the Sunday

I think that.

We have to hold space for very real grief. We lost a friend, and at the same time, just two days ago, on a Friday, what we always knew to be true was found to clearly be true. Tortigita was murdered, and we have to bear the burner of that pain. And all the people in power lied and even gave their condolences to a state trooper that seemed.

As if he was shot by a state trooper.

And did not say a mumbling word to even acknowledge our friend's existence and the value of their life. And this morning was beautiful. I had been able to meet Bilkis Tortugita's mother previously, and she really does have a beautiful spirit. I've really grown appreciation for that family, and just to see just how large these gatherings were like throughout the week, even in spite of the hoopla and

I just.

And like that like got me through the first week after their passing. Yeah, but I've grown a great appreciation for that family because in so many ways, tord Ti Gita is their hero. And just learn how consistent they were as like such a welcoming and loving and caring person just meant so much. I mean to know that this wasn't something new that they had stumbled upon. They had lived this whole life of caring and making space for others.

Some of Toward's friends have raised concerns that a side effect of toward unwittingly becoming the face of the movement, is that the details around their death have eclipsed some of what they died fighting for in doing so, stripping toward of their individuality and removing their own agency to turn them into this perfect liberal, friendly avatar of the movement to simply be used as a political tool and add to a list of demands.

There's a thing that's been happening more and more recently that I've been bothered by, which is when organizations, specifically more liberal organizations, are invoking towards name actions, they're misgendering the hell out of them, and it's alienating a lot of people. And I understand that Sunday's action alienated a lot of liberal orgs. This is a problem with the week of Action type strategy, with the diversity of tactics all being forced under one roof. But we cannot stand

That will wrap up our day to day coverage of the entire week of action, but much has happened in the intervening two months, so in the next episode we'll cover where the movement is now, discuss the future of the fight to stop Cop City, and offer a more critical retrospective on the fifth week of action. See you on the other side, welcome back to it could happen here. This is a bonus fifth episode following my coverage of the Stop Coop City Week of Action in.

March of twenty twenty three.

This will be a more critical retrospective on the week as a whole and offer a glimpse into what the movement might look like in the next few months as we are rapidly approaching summer. In the last episode, we talked about the police repression of protests and demonstrations as they happen, but we have yet to mention the various methods of state repression the movement is facing.

Day to day.

Repression for the Week of Action started well before the kickoff rally in Gresham Park. Emails from early February obtained via public records requests found that the Atlanta Police Foundation and its contractors were waiting for quote indictments to the leaders unquote of the Stopcob City and Defend the Atlanta

The domestic terrorism charges go back to the middle of December, that's when the first of them happened, and up until the week of action, there have been a total of nineteen arrest or individuals who have been charged with domestic terrorism and then of those people, anyone who did not have either a Georgia license or could not prove like Georgia residency, they were all initially denied bond, but everyone

That's the most people that have been arrested and held in one day. It really is in relation to the movement so far.

Yeah, this is the largest mass arrest of the movement, So it's kind of inconceivable for twenty three people to be held without bond. So we get to the bail hearing.

Yes, this isn't this isn't a real this isn't a real bond. Here at the press conference after the leaf raid, Kamal Franklin from the Community Movement Builders spoke about it the years of state repression against people fighting to stop Cop City.

This movement has been repressed by the states, by the city since its very beginnings. When we first started organizing in twenty twenty one, where we had rallies in demonstration, we would have police break them up, throw people to the ground, pepper spray them, and arrest them. We had over twenty arrest in our first years of rallying and demonstrating against Cop City.

At the time, those.

Folks were charged with resisting arrests, obstruction of governmental administration, and then the police decided to step up their tactics, and they started to form a task force, a task force that included at the Atlanta Police so, the Cab County Police, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Georgia State Troopers, the Federal Bureau of Investigation at Homeland Security, where they began to talk about bringing charges of domestic terrorism against

And then the judge kept saying like, I'm not here to hear anything on evidentiary claims and I'm not here to engage with the domestic terrorism statute. Like both of those were I think very valid things that defense attorneys kept bringing up, because.

Yeah, they're problematic.

Yeah, one of the defense attorneys mentioned that the way people are being charged with domestic terrorism right now doesn't really have any legal basis in the state of Georgia because the terrorism law works as like an enhancement for other folonial charges, and these people aren't being charged with anything besides domestic terrorism. There's no evidence these people committed any actual crimes. So they're just being charged with terrorism.

When you and I were coming in on Saturday and along with the march, we passed by a bunch of shields, right and they were kind of placed near the end of the path, like in anticipation that there might be police presents. And I took pictures of the shields and they are evidently plastic shields. There's no way of mistaking them for anything other than plastic.

The plastic five gallon shields that you see almost every protest in every city across the country. The cops know what these things are. That the fact that they claimed that people were arrested carrying metal shields is so ludicrous because there was not There was not a single metal shield at this music festival. And there's a lot of footage of these arrests. I don't there's I've not seen evidence that every that any person was arrested that was carrying a shield, let alone a metal one.

There's this weird thing where so typically when you do these these bail hearings, the the defense attorneys waive the reading of the warrant typically because they have already gone over that with their client, and you know, everybody's aware, and it just kind of speeds up the process. And it was like really notable that these attorneys weren't doing it, and once you started to listen to them, you notice

Like every single person all the way downline. During the first hearing, only one person was let out on bail, and they were an NLG legal observer and lawyer at the Southern Poverty Law Center. After the week of action, on March twenty third, there were a second set of bail hearings for ten of the people arrested on March

And yeah, so if you've ever been to a music festival, standing around for a very long period of time really annoying, people like to sit down. So I like, my feet were caked in mud, and I sat down a few times.

I'm I'm my docker partons are still caked in mud.

Not to mention the parking lot completely torn up, covered in mud, and as I mentioned earlier, the you know the person having like fill in mud all along the trails with gravel, So there's mud everywhere, and it is an inescapable fact of just being in both the forest and the festival.

At the time of the bail hearings, they've very clearly had no evidence linking individuals to crimes, so the best they could come up with was metal shields and mud, two things things that are completely nonsense. There was no metal shields and oh wow, you have mud on your You have mud on your clothing. This is why you're

Of the twenty three who were charged. Only two had the Georgia licenses, the person from Athens and the legal deserver. The rest were out of state and two were out of country. So at one point during the proceedings the bail proceedings, one of the lawyers says that from what they understand, the twelve individuals who were let go Sunday

Prosecutor Cross responded to claims that detained local Atlantans were let go by saying that the people released were interviewed, did not have the jail support number on their arm, and quote unquote knew little about the movement. At a press conference, Marlin from the Solidarity Fund talked about how repression has taken form and concerns of what other tactics the state may try to employ.

No evidence has besially presented to support any of these claims of domestic terrorism, including on the other eighteen people who've been given this charge previously. In this movement, police some prosecutors are not involved in a law enforcement effort they're involved in a political campaign to suppress a political movement which they find objectionable because as the police, they have a vested interest in the construction of cop City.

Charges against organizers.

Because RICO is understood as a way of suppressing organizations, and the narrative that we've seen coming from police and prosecutors is their belief that the broad and diverse stop Cop City movement is in fact a criminal conspiracy whose members conspire to commit acts of terrorism.

This could not be further from the truth.

This is like a clear misrepresentation of a broad movement that encompasses all of society. But this is the narrative that prosecutors are trying to promulgate to make it easier to target activists.

In the intervening month and a half, five more people were led out on bond. Then, on May third, a series of preliminary hearings took place for the last three people being held into Cab County Jail from amongst the twenty three individuals arrested at the music festival and charged with domestic terrorism. Before the changes to the law in twenty seventeen, the State of Georgia required ten or more people to be killed for domestic terrorism charges to even

Individuals were seeing changing out of the clothes that they were wearing at the concert and were now dressing themselves in all black with backpacks with items fensive nature approaching. What we saw is this group moved rather quickly to the site for the proposed public safety trading center. They move quickly on the group of officers that were assembled there. These officers had been stationary at the site protecting the location.

There will be generators.

That are will be destroyed, other pieces of equipment that's being destroyed. There you see more accelerant being thrown onto the vehicle that is being set on fire.

And what you see here, ladies.

And gentlemen, is as some of the individuals that had just previously attacked the worksite returned back into the woods. They start changing back into the clothes that they were just wearing moments before, as they were portraying themselves to be attendees of the event that was occurring in the music.

As well as the Georgia State Patrol.

Those officers entered into the woods as individuals were attempting to flee, hide the weapons they had just used, as well as to change their clothing, and we begin to make a number of arrest.

I spoke with the unnamed Forest defender about the surveillance capabilities of the state on full display during the week of Action.

I find that the thermal helicopter video fascinating for a variety of reasons. One, it's interesting to look at the surveillance capacity of the state. It's, to my memory, the first time the APD has ever posted their own thermal chopper footage. It's a very similar camera to the type you would see on a birector on some kind of

You know.

I think the Portland Police Bureau just got a new spy plane and new Sessna loaded up with surveillance equipment and shit like that. All that stuff does so much more to fuck you up than just like a riot team does. You can throw mortars at a riot team. Sorry, I shouldn't say mortars. Fireworks that are called mortars.

My bad.

Don't want to lean into the explosives narratives. Honestly, they're fucking weird about fireworks. But you know, those surveillance capacities are one of the hardest things to counter.

One term that's already come up during our coverage of Stop Coop City is Fuco's boomerang, And while that still applies here, we're now also kind of getting into some panaptocon territory, as shown by this type of surveillance capacity, specifically at actions. And one of the biggest reasons why the panopticon works is that people are scared of it. It scares you away from even taking action in the first place.

And like, as soon as you overcome that paralyzing fear, the cops become really afraid of you. That's why we say that, like the biggest weapon that the state has is fear, because like the cops go from these big, fucking tough guys to like whining cowards the second you just become not afraid. You don't even have to beat them, you don't have to overcome the actual physical weapons. But once you get out of that headspace, that paralyzing fear, once you let it pass over you and through you,

As state repression against the stop cop City movement continues, the coalition against the police training facility only continues to grow. Last month, Angela Davis returned an award proclamation given to her by the Atlanta City Council in protest of cop City.

If the attempts by the Atlanta Police to build the largest police training grounds in the country are successful, this will represent a major setback for the movement for radical democratic futures, not only throughout the US, but globally as well as a person who has participated in campaigns against prisons and police for far longer than a half century.

Angela Davis made it clear that she stood in solidarity with force defenders facing repression from the police and the city of Atlanta, and joined in calls to halt the construction of this facility, which will only serve as a tool to advance what she called militarized police rights and repression.

Atlanta activists are on the front lines of the abolitionist movement, at its crucial intersection with movements to save our forests, indeed to save our planet. The attempt to build a massive militarized police training facility is a dangerous and ominous development that we have to oppose with all our might, and so I want to join those who are standing strong in defense of the forest against the construction of

After Angelie Davis's announcement, the Walter Rodney Foundation released a statement reporting Davis's decision and against the construction of Cop City.

It's interesting to see their more mainline sort of center or center left like organizations that have begun to come on board. Even with what happened Sunday and especially the Thursday march and rally, had it necessitated a response from the city. So Friday morning there was actually an organization concerned Black Clergy who had a press conference like calling out Cop City protesters, and so you had this like very state run. One of the city council members, Antonio Lewis,

One way that the city has been working to advocate for the further development of the Cop City project is by launching a website of their own for the Public Safety Training Center full of videos of the mayor and police chief walking through South Atlanta trying to convince neighbors that the project is a good idea. In the past few months. The city has also been turning the official City of Atlanta Twitter account into a hilarious copp City

People are angry, you know, like their friend, our friend was murdered. You can just feel however you want about this, but like a lot of people and I guess myself included, are just really angry. There's this kind of blinding rage that comes with it of just like eye for an eye, blood for blood. You know that the police killed our friend and that they need to hurt for that one, and they need to hurt for all the people that they've murdered and all the things they're trying to do.

The bounds of the forest is not the only location actions take place. Just about a week after the park closure and when some of the clearcutting began, a report back was posted online that read quote, on the night of Wednesday, April fifth, we set fire to three excavators owned by Brent Scarborough Company on a site across from the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta. Brent Scarborough is the company and individual responsible for clearcutting the Willani Forest. Copcity will

I think that we have to be very clear in assessing what has worked installing the project and what will work to stop the project, because those aren't necessarily the same things. I think there are nuances in particular strategies. There is a difference between especially in our particular context.

Nobody gets touched. What we have to look at with.

The actions at the music festival were it exposed a lot of people because and this is once again because the police acted so heavy handedly. But we also know that the police act heavy handedly, which is why we're here. So that gets kind of dicey because that's like kind of like urban guerrilla warfare where you have the gorillas just shooting paw pa pal and then like running into.

Somebody's grandma's house.

People do not fuck with the people that just running grandma's house for cover, right, And that's where things get a little bit dicey, because in many ways, a lot of us were looking at means to open up the movement with this week of action, and that was what was widely in stood for a lot of people. And nevertheless, when you just come in with the boomstick from the beginning, that dictates the tone of the rest of the week and then where you could, you know, for instance, operate

Well, what are the police supposed to think? Right?

I mean, we have to realize that there are several like mental resistances that have been taught to people for them to try to discredit us. And I just I think there's some important context. Right when Martin Luther King Junior was doing like the nonviolent direct action, at a certain point, they had to make a calculated decision to include women and children in the marches because they had assessed in America had become too desensitized to seeing black

Right.

So there are like calculations that people have to make and assessions that they have to make based on the information that we're.

Dealing with through talking with forced defenders. I've heard a variety of internal critiques of the Week of Action format because it is such a concentrated time period. The week of Action can give police a very concentrated time to over police and over surveil and for activists. It can open up an expenditure of energy during the week, which then can lead to a lack of energy leading up to what's been called the week of repression in the past.

So the week of repression is always the week that comes after the week of Action, where the cops are like, Okay, the bulk of your reserve, if you're out of state supporter is gone. We're going to come fuck you up. Now they are less of you. Now you're less ready

Ultimately, it's up to the autonomous actors that make up this so called movement and how their choices will determine how the fight to stop Cop City will grow and evolve. As I'm writing this, just thirty minutes ago we found out that the clearcutting at the Cop City construction site has essentially been completed. The overhead photos are devastating. Where there were young, growing trees just weeks ago is now a flattened mound of red clay and dirt, as if

I think it'd be worth thinking of this movement as an almost two year old movement that's outgrown the week of action. You know, why limit ourselves to seven days? Fuck it, do a summer, you know, do three months of like we're doing three months of action in Atlanta. Come to Atlanta whenever you want, and then go home and do shit at home. There wills fargos where you live. There are Chase banks where you live. There are Atlas

But you know.

Hopefully when people go home they feel inspired to like understand that they can do just as much hitting those companies where they live as they can here, because the money's all going to the same place. The CEO at the top doesn't care if you hit their businesses in Georgia or in fucking Illinois, or in Oregon or Washington or whatever. The money's all the same.

A phrase I've been hearing a lot lately is cop city is everywhere to quota communicate, posted on scenes, dot no, blogs, dot org.

Quote.

We will keep winning, not just here in so called Atlanta, but we must attack all across these so called states. The money and power that seek to kill us and a Destroyablanni are nationwide, and so our movement must be nationwide. A net of resistance, too vast to comprehend and too resilient to suppress. Reality is the battlefield, but so called America,

We have been seeing over the last number of months, crimes that have been occurring in other cities focused towards the public safety training center. So we have seen arsons and cities outside of Atlanta. We've seen the destruction of property outside of Atlanta, and we've seen the harassment of.

Private sector employees outside of Atlanta.

So that is the next is where the Federal Pure of Investigation has been assisting in this administigation.

Like I said in the second episode, the stakes of the movement may soon exceed the bounds of the forest and cop City, and in fact that process it may have already begun. We are seeing stop Coop City turn into a new mode of insurgency and resistance to modern policing in general, not simply limited to the construction of this one a training center, as the police are trying to build a training center to practice quelling future civil unrest.

Everywhere Atlanta once again because of the Atlanta Police Foundation is the most surveiled city in the country because of twenty seventeen's Operation Shield program where they put tons of cameras all throughout the city and essentially made it a surveillance state once again. Crime has continued to go up during this time, and that would have significantly more to do with the disparity of wealth and opportunities of Black

And so.

The wealth is just so disproportionately spread, and so much of the labor intensive economy is predicated on it that black people are pigeonholed into service economy jobs and they have very few opportunities here. Now, that type of inequality breeds discontent and people looking for other opportunities, and the police are ready to catch them at every turn for arresting the juvenile in the point system that they have

The credit that they want.

So, just to put that in context, you get twenty times the credit in Atlanta's point quota system for arresting a juvenile then going where people actually wanted police to show up, and we're supposed to be convinced that this system is made to keep us safe.

Right.

The City of Atlanta and the Police Foundation wants Copcity to be a national training center for police to come and practice militaristic counterinsurgency for export across the country. They murdered someone to further this goal. All eyes must be on Atlanta.

Cop City is a symbol of police repression. Cop City is a symbol of the oppression of the people of Atlanta. I want you to look around and see the families here in this part today.

These are people who came because.

They're concerned for their children.

These are people who are concerned because they don't want their city overrun by militarization.

The level of repression the movement is face is a sign that the state feels like this movement is a threat and the state feels like this movement has the possibility of actually succeeding, so in response, they're increasing repression. And on the flip side of that, during this past week of action, I saw a lot of affirmation that this is going to be successful and that people believe

We can get everything we want for this city. We can stop cop City. We got the power.

We believe y'all.

There's gonna be a lot of people tell us about what we can't do, about what these organizers are here can't do.

Tell them what it tells about what we we we can't do. I'm to tell you all of us out here, we're organizers. We are in a business.

I've taken that which other people say it is impossible, we make it possible.

As long as we believe I say we are.

Believe, I believe that we will win.

This is interesting to me because in my experience, a lot of leftists and anarchists approach much of their practice with the concept of them expecting to not succeed, but they're going to do it anyway, which there is a kind of fated beauty to that in a certain way. And part of that is taking action even if you don't think it will lead to a decisive victory. But also I think fe that being in that mindset might

If you're being prepared to fail, you won't take the radical action that it takes to win. Winning's hard, and winning means doing things that are scary and uncomfortable, and doing things that put you in danger, and doing things that are new and unknown and different and taking new strategies and doing new things, and we in the US and a lot of other places, but this is US

Do you believe that copsity will be actually stopped?

We got to and here's what I mean by that. This is the line. Right we have.

Environmental racism, police militarization and brutality, and police and racism, and it's all coming to a head right here in this particular movement. We have to win because what they're doing now is to build capacity to make sure that we can't win, right and so why people are pushing so hard is that, as we've seen over the past couple of weeks, the police have plenty of like tanks

The clear cuts in the Malaune forest at this stage serve a threefold per one. It obviously gets them closer to construction and the mass land grading that is scheduled to start on May twenty third two. It's a ploy by the APF to secure additional needed funds from Copcity investors. And finally, it's to demoralize the people who spent years of their life working to stop this project.

Everything that police have done is essentially always a reprisal, right, the movement does something and the police clamp down in a reprisal to try to repress the movement.

Police always escalate, but they have always been like in response to something.

And their goal, of course is to quiet and chill free speech and end the movement. But every time this happens, the opposite effect is what comes out of it. And from the domestic terrorism rest in December, like really, that's when this even larger groundswell of national support happened and people started to take notice because this was an extreme measure.

And then with the killing of Tortighita in January, that changed so much about the movement, including people's personal connection to this struggle, where no longer are people doing this

The city Council will in fact have to vote on whether or not to allocate thirty three million taxpayer dollars to the construction of cop City in the very near future. Additionally, the Atlanta Police Foundation budget documents show that current construction plans have been scaled back from what was originally promised. This indicates a failure by the foundation to raise the promise sixty million.

Dollars in private funds.

Should the city vote down this funding package of thirty three million. It is difficult to see a path forward for the Atlanta Police Foundation's effort to begin construction on Cop City anytime in the near future.

The City Council has actually not yet voted to approve the allocation of millions of dollars in city funds to the Cop City project.

Through an open records request, we were able to get our hands on emails between the Atlanta Police Foundation and Atlanta's Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Leachandra Berts. In this email exchange, the Police found expressed a need for the city to provide thirty three point five million dollars in funding for the project. Bergs responded by mentioning the need for legislative

It's expected that as soon as May fifteenth, a member of the City Council will introduce legislation to allocate public funds to the Atlanta Police Foundation to build COP City, and a final vote could happen as soon as June fifth. One thing that the movement to stop Cop City has shown us is that no matter what police do, people continue to show up despite what happens, and the movement keeps expanding. As the unnamed forest defender told.

Me, infrastructure wise, this week of Action was the biggest infrastructure I've seen doing a week of action. I thought that the infrastructure we put together for week one was pretty big, but I mean it doesn't even compare. It's not the same ballpark as what happened for Week five, just from how the medics were set up and how food was handled. There was a shuttle bus program, there was a welcome table at a church at one point,

It's just grown.

It's gotten more logistically intense. There are more and more people filling those roles. There's more and more stuff coming in. Like the amount of supplies that we just got sent in or people brought with them from out of state has just so vastly expanded since the first week of action. It's just gotten more i don't know, like not professional, but more polished. It's become a much more polished setup system.

Just last month, another Week of Action was called for June twenty fourth to July first, directly leading into what's being called the Wollawni Summer, with locals in Atlanta calling on supporters and forced defenders everywhere to come to Atlanta for the week and stay for the summer. With Entrenchment Creek Park still closed and they're being ongoing efforts to have it be reopened. What the week and following summer will look like is it still very unknown.

We always are going to need more people. People are our most important resource.

Always.

The way that we limit burnout is by having more and more people so that the burden falls less and less heavy on small groups of people, and so that people can take breaks. And that's another problem I have with like the Week of Action as a strategy is you're just going non fucking stop.

For a week.

If you had three months, you're like, ah, I'm going to chill for a couple of weeks. I'll be back, you know, because I have all this time, and it frees up people from out of state to come in, have times to work it out in their schedule more.

There will be more information put out in the coming weeks. You can keep up to date by following stop Coop City on Instagram, Defend atl Forest on Twitter, or by checking out stopcopcitysolidarity dot org. Ideally with a VPM and tour slash a Brave browser.

If you were at the music festival and you're just a normal person, you weren't involved with the movement before this, and you were at the music festival and you kind of saw why we're fighting for this. You saw that space and then you saw the type of violence that the police were willing to output to do it. Let that move you to get involved further. You don't have to join an organization, you know, I don't want to

People.

You want to be medics, go join a medic collective like find what everything calls to you and just go and do it. Because we need people and there's no barrier of entry to join the movement. There's no test you have to take. You just have to show up.

I will end this Week of Action retrospective with a promise from a forest defenders. See you on the other side.

We well Barn.

We well Burn, we well.

Burn Music Festival. Audio courtesy of Unicorn Riot.

It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.

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Thanks for listening.