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 Porum. Initially there were plans to have a Perum celebration in the forest that evening, but it was unknown if people would feel comfortable returning to the woods.
Welcome back to it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. This is episode three of my mini series covering the March twenty twenty three Week of Action to defend the Atlanta Forest. Monday, March sixth also happened to be the day of an Atlanta City Council meeting, and the Stopcop City Clergy coalition held a well attended press conference at noon outside City Hall. Reverend on To Jones opened up at the press conference by making the Clergy's position clear.
We are the Faith Coalition against Cop City, and we are here to 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. We 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.
Referend To Jones gave her own perspective as a local atlant 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.
The teachers at my daughter's school do not want Cop City.
She also addressed the outside agitator's 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 a 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 asked them to join in their calls to stop the Cop City project.
We local Atlantic clergy and religious leaders representing diverse communities call on clergy, religious leaders and people of faith and 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 Atlanta community and the implications for the future of public safety in the United States if Copsuity 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 passed legislation to build Copcity. We are troubled by leadership that stops acting on the will of the people and aligns itself instead with corporate money
and the dominant power structure. Urged on by the message of peace and compassion in all our faiths, we deplore escalating militarization by city and state government, most recently since the police killing of Rayshard Brooks here in twenty twenty by the Atlanta Police Department and Tortugita January eighteenth of this year by Georgia Patrol. We applaud the rising consciousness and the need to protect humans and the more than
human by resisting police violence everywhere. 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 honor 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
independent investigation into the uses of domestic terrorism charges. We demand an independent investigation into the killing of Manuel Tehran Tortugita. We speak their name, for which recently release video footage of the event suggests there was lying and deceit surrounding the incident. On part of law enforcement in their initial reporting of the incident.
The Muskogee elder Miko Chabbon, Colonel spoke at the press conference and called for a land back and for the Muskogee people to return and remtreat the Wilani 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 Rilawni Forest. I came here with my own family, my own children were 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 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 in how we should live as a society in this
day and time. And so in this moment, our hope is to be able to come back, to rematriate, to take our lives back and to the intimacy that we once had with everything that grows here in what you now call the state of Georgia, because no matter who we are and where we come from, we have to have air, we have to have water, we have to have the elements of this earth to take care of us. Regardless of what we think. We're dependent on this Earth's mother, and she has been faithful in taking care of us.
It's us that has not been faithful in respecting her. 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 now is a violence against all of creation. What is going on now bringing death and harm and hurt is a violence against all of creation, and we
stand in solidarity as Muskogee people. I stand in solidarity with the voices that we hear of those tenets, those persons who live in the land now. But my hope is now, at this moment in time, that somehow we can change the trajectory of our species and go into a direction where we can value each other, and we can stop the criminalizing of descent. We should be able to say no, the increasing of the militarized forces out there does not ever create peace. It only creates harm,
and it only harms those that are most vulnerable. That's the prayer that I carry today.
Reverend Darcy Jarrett joined in the call for stewardship of the Wallani Forest to be returned to the Muscogee people.
City Schools of Decatur has a statement 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,
give this land and to the native inhabitants. Repatriate this land to the people to whom is their sacred call, to defend and work a community with the black and brown communities that are there. We call on you, Atlanta City Council, to be the moral compass and to not just halt the building of this structure, but to repatriate the land to the sovereign Muscogee Nation, the sacred keepers of this land. May it be so amen.
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 terrorists and 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 shot at, but our friends' ashes. We have the ashes of a friend that we will spread. We can no longer accept
this as a people as at lanterns. If we can't figure out a way to fix public safety without lacking tons of black kids up in the blackest city in America, every person in that building needs to step down. If we can't do it here, we can't do it anywhere.
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,
the Sunday Direct Action and Music festival. I think it's also worth noting that the people at the clergy event did not openly like demonize the actions that people chose to take on Sunday, and it was it was very much like the media definitely gives them opportunities to try to throw people under the bus, and that did not happen.
Yeah all, And we've seen that all throughout the week. Every every chance that the media is trying to throw somebody to like cause dissension or or divide amongst the movement has been really handily deflected by anyone who 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 and why Victorian people engaging and from other states.
The reality of it is that the ones who are engaged 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 martyr police who are engaging in violence and terrorism against the people who are standing
against this illegal land swap. So I would suggest that the next time you decide that you are going to bring up your police rhetoric that you get from whichever police source, you go ahead and discuss that with them, 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 their 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 mole.
Just like the street pleased by wall, we shall not.
Ev 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 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 you 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 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 cop city project. My faith convicts me and tells all of us that there is a better way. We have a prophetic, moral imagination and opportunity here to do something different in Atlanta, to do something different for the South. Finally,
we're asking for a community process. A community process. Let us come together with moral imagination to envision how the Lani 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 Muskoge 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 Hellobi 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 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 that I'm hearing. What I'm hearing is from the residence is they need investments in housing and public spaces, and not investment in further militarized policing. They want investment in the well being of incarcerated and not further violent incarceration, but the well being of the community members. Thank you, Moto Chichatis.
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. The people who have spoken before me have said the things I would say, but I would like to say that I pretty much agree with every single thing they have said about this insanity that you all are calling a police safety training facility. So I think you need to just cancel it, start having some real conversations with the people of this city to solve the real problems in a way that will actually be effective. And this facility is not going to
be it. And the mayor's proposed task force is just one more way to try to propagandize us to believe that this is good for us, when we're not stupid and we know it's just lipstick.
On a pig.
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 so for 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 from the city, which in
Atlanta has very uncomfortable segregation and redlining parallels. But despite not paying attention during public comment, these two in particular, both paid extra attention after public comment when police Chief Darren Scherbaum gave testimony on what happened the night previous.
Were there any firefighter or police Citty employee entries yesterday's event.
Because mamerhillis 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. In the aggressive manner in which the officers were attacked was a significant change from what we'd seen before when it generally had been setting properly on fire. We'd seen police cars set on fire when those busters, but this was started as an attack against individuals, men and women who are employees
of this city, so that was an escalation. Council Member hillis that we have already made adjustments for both within our capability as well as with our partners.
Throughout to Sheerbaum's 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 the North Gate. From the videos that APD themselves released of the incident, it's clear that engagement with the police was limited to keeping officers at bay as construction equipment was targeted, and despite the continued referring of fireworks as quote unquote mortars or explosives, as the chief himself admitted, no officers were harmed during the direct action.
In a later episode, we'll hear more of Chief Sheerbaum's explanation of Sunday Night's events, as it gives insight into the police's own surveillance capabilities and their ability to respond quickly to direct actions. But until then, back to the events of Monday, March sixth. After the city council meeting, I dressed up in the gayest little outfit that I had with me and went back to the woods for
the first time since Sunday night for Perhum. Initially, people were very cautious when entering the woods again, but as the night went on, more and more people started to pour into the forest, with some choosing to return to their camp. Later that night, I enjoyed an experimental noise show in the living room, probably to the detriment of people trying to sleep in the area. I went to the Perham in the woods. I got to share my memory of the Veggietail's ester story starring the tickle monsters.
I got to bond with a few exangelicals about that, so that was fine. Then there was an experimental noise show in the forest, and really I think it actually is worth talking about because this was the first time.
People return 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 feel like they were able to be in community in the woods again.
And that is in keeping with sort of how this movement has always responded to what we I guess could call a loss, right.
Like twenty three people getting arrested in charge 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
still going to defend these woods. And you kind of have like there's always this essence of like fear kind of kind of underlying whenever you're like in the Wollani Forest because you know, people have been arrested and charged for laying in a hammock like that with another defendant, with another defendant, and like so you know that it is it is fundamentally a risky place to be, but people think the potential cost is worth it, Like they will they continue to be here because they know this
is a winnable fight and they know that it is worth it to defend these woods. Early Tuesday morning, a few stop Coop City banner drops happened throughout this city. Two people were detained by police during one of these banner drops, but were later released with a traffic citation after being interrogated separately and extensively photographed by law enforcement officials only identified as quote Georgia Police and home Land
Security unquote. Tuesday was the start of a series of non violent direct actions that were being launched around downtown and midtown. Tuesday morning, I followed a small group that went to the headquarters of Norfolk Southern, one of the Atlanta Police Foundation's financial contributors and noted enemy of Ohio.
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 of Norfolk Southern from Copcity, and immediately they are met with a security guard screaming like go you're get out of the lobby. Leave, you're being criminally or 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 building.
Please this letter, it's playing a horrible in the city. Can pave the building.
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.
While people were inside the headquarters, security called n S Police, which is the Norfolk Southern Police, who are legally allowed to arrest people.
Anyone, 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 is protesters.
It was.
It started off very small. There was no police, like no real visible police presence. There 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 too march around to three different sites. They wanted the eight and T Building, the Georgia Pacific Building, and GSU.
Georgia State University City. They're 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 Georgia Pacific, to cancel the Atlanta Police Foundation lease of the land that cop city is slated to be built on.
Mayor Dickens, we want you to cancel this leaks.
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 Peach Tree 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 Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters. There's got to be about thirty to forty officers stationed walking off the entrance to the APF and also just like following the crowd around as they're as they're marching through the sidewalks. There's definitely over god, there's I think around seventy five
officers to play in this area right now. 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, and we're probably between hundred and hondred 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 one way like just you know, doing police things.
Yeah, a door to 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, 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 particually confront what is now like hundreds one 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 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 streets, 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 aff new 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 Cop City, the crowd moved on. Now people are turning west in the opposite direction from the AT and T headquarters, heading back into the Woodruff Park area where this march began. Police with long guns here. Finally, the crowd stopped at Georgia State University and talked about GSU's connections to the Atlanta
Police Foundation. What is of note for this action, and really all of the actions that happened the next few days, is not what the protesters did. It's the police's disproportionate response to just fifty people walking on the sidewalk, chanting and giving short speeches outside of businesses tied to APF.
With a small line of officers in front of GSU. They gave their last round of speeches and sort of just first for.
The day before we wrap today and give 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 month, for the year.
We won't fight us here.
We wait.
Some of the police are now grouping up and opening up the sidewalk so people can actually leave. 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 the of them. The problem is they've been telling them to make a risk, but also is not making a risk. I guess they weren't supposed to.
I don't know, but I'm with that.
We'll just hold what we got and Fawn is needed.
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. Words 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 Dacab 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 getting flown overhead, multiple different SWAT teams are being brought in. At least like three or four different agencies are our stationing officers around the woods. I believe it's estimated that at least one hundred and twenty police officers were or 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 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 is 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
violent militancy in around the woods. So when seven o'clock came and went like police were expecting people to arrive at the woods or something, and that just didn't happen because turns out, a few minutes before seven o'clock, this comedy event was canceled for like unrelated reasons. The organizer had had things come up, So this event just didn't happen. But there still was comedy in the woods. It just was that the police wasted probably over one hundred thousand
dollars mobilizing over one hundred officers. And I mean, obviously, I think some people in the woods were you know, had some frustration that that that you know, they experienced this fear of this possibly incoming ray that then resulted in there being nothing. I think it's always important to when people are relaying information, they relay information that is
known without like unadue speculation. So like it is a fact to say that there's over a hundred cops stationing by the woods, and they've never had that many cops there before without doing some sort of raid or some sort of some sort of like activity in the forest.
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 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 still intact, the week of action continued on as planned, with another downtown nonviolent direct action that next morning.
So Wednesday 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 launch 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 that is what people are doing right now. Police seem relatively confused and are trying to like mobilized to different areas where they feel like something might happen, but it's just people handing out flyers.
And they decided to split into groups and engage in like just some typical outreache 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 them, it was the Peachtree Lata station. Yeah, so they stationed at the at the like the three different exits or entrances for that, just just handing out flyers, handing out leaflets, trying to you know, talk to anybody
who walks by. Another group of people standing outside of a public transit spot handing out flyers, probably like I don't know, four or five other small, small groups doing similar things throughout downtown, which means police have a lot more places to be as opposed to just following one big group.
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.
Big white van with 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 normal response. 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 flyering event today. You know, normal police response to people handing out flyers, just fifty officers and a swat team. But yeah, there's probably a point like two or three dozen people that have kind of all converged together. They started off very small, people were very very spread out. They they splintered off into little, little, smaller groups. But now they've all kind of coalesced together
back again. So all the little subgroups kind of meet up on Andrew Jung and Peach Tree, right next to the Hooters and the Hard Rock Cafe.
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 sidewalks. 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, alright, so I'm out of Neil Welch, Police Officers, City of Atlanta. I hereby declare that being on this sidewalk, you are obstructing or repeating the normal and reasonable movement of pedestrian traffic and violation of Atlanta City Ordinance. Okay, in the name of the people, is say to 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 or arrested. Should you fail to exit the sidewalk in accordance with this lawful command, you shall be in violation of Section one five zero two six six substructing pedestrian traffic, which prohibits standing or being on any street, roadway, or sidewalk in a manner to obstruct or impede the normal or reasonable pedestrian traffic.
Cops threatened arrest and detainment. They claimed that people were blocking the sidewalk, which they absolutely weren't. I was walking freely, as was all of like downtown pedestrian traffic. They were not blocking anything.
This is uh, 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 legal footing. But obviously they police can rest anyone they want at any time, for
any reason. So people decide to move, They cross over the street, they walk like a block north, they cross the street again, and they move on to this part of the sidewalk that is like really large, like a massive, massive open open section that right.
In front of the mall, so 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, there's another group who comes in to the side of p Street Center mall and enters the mall. You find Mayor Andre Dickens. There are a couple 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.
The office spaces, 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, objection.
We have a letter being delivered from the Muscogee Creek Nation on behalf of Muscogee Creek spiritual leadership and opposition to copsidy.
I came all the way on the trail 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 found the Dacob County Sheriff's Office and so called copp City, that you must immediately vacate Muscogee homelands and cease violence and policing of Indigenous
and Black people and Muscogee lands. We lived as stewards and in relationship to this land for more than thirteen thousand years until the illegitimate State of Georgia negotiated with the Tyrant Andrew Jackson for the militarized for the militarized force removal of Muscogee and Cherokee relatives to Indian territories. Mayor Dickens, can I give this letter to you? He got one, Mayor, we want to talk to you about our homeland, the Muskogee Creek people.
Three indigenous 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 Muscogi Nation allowed and in the letter, it essentially says that Atlanta is being evicted out of the Louis Lanni Forest and the most Scogee people are going to return and reclaim their
ancestral land. Mayor Dickens, in true mayor fashion, bolts away from this, running through an exit door, which is then like blocked by a guard which I think that has its own set of legal issues, essentially just ignoring them over his shoulder. He calls out, I've got a copy of the letter and hides just completely trying to escape what is not a good look for him.
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
entered its last few days. The next episode will wrap up our coverage for the week, as well as contain a bit more analysis of the police repression and the fallout of Sunday's direct action. But then there will be a fifth bonus episode that gives an overview of what's happened in the Malani Forest in the intervening two months. See You on the Other Side Music Festival audio courtesy of Unicorn Riot. It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.