It Could Happen Here - Defend the Atlanta Forest Interview

Episode Date: September 7, 2021

We talk with folks from the Defend the Atlanta Forest Coalition about the city’s ongoing efforts to tear down 300 acres of forest to build a massive police trading facility. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, this is It Could Happen Here Daily. I'm Garrison. And today we have a special emergency release episode. I know a lot of news has happened in the past week, and we will be covering that later on in this week, but this episode is going to relate to some current events happening today as of the release date of this episode and stuff that could be affected in the future. So I had the opportunity last

Thursday to interview some people working with the Defend the Atlanta Forest Coalition. It's a coalition of activists who are working to prevent the deforestation project going on in southeast Atlanta. Now, in the interview, they mentioned some actions on Friday that have already happened. As of recording, they did not happen. So they mentioned those as actions coming up. But there's also actions coming up on Tuesday, September 7th, because that's also the day that the city council is going to vote whether to continue with the Deforestation Project or not. So this Tuesday, there's going to be actions that if you're in Atlanta, you can be a part of that gets talked about in the episode.. So just a heads up for timelines in case that gets a little confusing. Anyways, that's enough of me talking. So here is the interview with people from the

Defend the Atlanta Forest Coalition. Hello and welcome. Today we are going to be interviewing some people who are working with and help with the Atlanta Forest Defense Project that is ongoing. If you're unfamiliar with this, we'll learn about it here in the interview. But first off, I have Chris here to help me today, and I'd like to introduce the people we're talking with. Jamal, do you want to start? Yeah, so actually, my name is Jamal. I'm working, I'm an organizer with Community Movement Builders. We do, our main goal is building self-sustainable black communities. We have a base, we're a place-based organization, at least for the Atlanta chapter in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Atlanta.

We do have different chapters across the country, all doing place-based work in their respective areas. We do have different chapters across the country, all doing place-based work in their respective areas. We've gotten onto this coalition with Atlanta Forest Defense, but particularly because with this particular area, while they're destroying 380 acres of land, the purpose of doing it is to build a mock cop city, right? It's a mock city of Atlanta in order to essentially practice militarized warfare on the Atlanta's residents. that's happening, the other layer of what we're dealing with is also an immediate threat to particularly the Black communities in Atlanta, the poor and working class Black communities here in Atlanta. Yeah, hey y'all, thanks for having me on. I'm Sheza. I am one of the hub coordinators of the

Atlanta chapter of the Sunrise Movement, which is a movement of young people working to stop climate change and create good jobs in the process. I think that Jamal said it really well and that this issue with forced defense, with stopping this facility from being built, it really is. It really does have two prongs. It's an issue very uniquely at the intersection of racial and environmental justice, because on one hand, it's an expansion of policing in a city that does not need more police. And on the other hand, it is a systematic of unfettered capitalism and greed and exploitation that causes all this environmental devastation. So I'm really excited. I think we have two really good prongs of a um of the of the conversation and the argument against this ordinance yeah and i think a lot of people don't realize how like what like usually when i

think of atlanta i don't think of as a as a very like forest dense city um but it it absolutely is um that's just not something that really gets highlighted a lot nationally is how how green atlanta really really is and um do you guys want to talk about i've so i've i've never been to atlanta uh do you guys want to talk about kind of how like the city is like laid out and all of like you know how how the forest intersects with with the city yeah absolutely so i mean yeah atlanta is essentially a city that was built in the middle of a forest. Like I live, I live in the Pittsburgh neighborhood in Atlanta. And literally, it's, you know, trees, green, greenery all over the place. I went, I come home, I'll see on my screen door, there's a frog that's just chilling there. So it's like it's not your typical like urban city in the sense of what a lot of people think of, like particularly when you think of like cities in the northeast. But it really is just a city in the middle of a forest.

And I think it also ties in like, again, talking about environmental racism intersecting with, you know, talking about environmental racism, period. Right. And deforestation. What we see is that because it's in the middle of a forest, and what does the forest do? It protects us from flooding, it protects us from all these different natural disasters that we're seeing across the world, across the country right now, for example, but even locally, which I landed and get hit very hard by the, you know, the hurricanes. But anytime it rains, my like my block floods. Right. Because this because, you know, the forest has been removed to be able to to make way for, you know, different types of infrastructure being built. From my perspective, it's been like a lot of changes to Atlanta's kind of whole economy in a, in a lot of ways that past like 10, 15 years, um, specifically with the film industry moving into, uh, in,

into Georgia and Atlanta specifically in the past, like 20. And this, this does intersect with, with what's going on. Does any, does anyone want to speak on that? I would say that, um, you know, it's really good to note that Atlanta has the most amount of tree coverage out of any major metropolitan area in the United States. Oh, wow. I didn't know that either. Now, when we say city in a forest, we mean city in a forest. Yeah, that's definitely true. And we

have green space. We want to preserve it. But the forest defense has also been highlighting like the ties between policing and corporate elites and corporate CEOs and people who want to move in and push development projects and something similar is happening. the expansion of like the media industry and all of that into Atlanta, it leads to gentrification of communities. Really, really recently, Atlanta just became just very, I think like in the last like few weeks, we just got the data that said that Atlanta isn't a majority Black city anymore. And that's because Black lawmakers and lawmakers in the city have been making these decisions in conjunction with corporations and developers that push people out of their homes, into the streets, and out of the city. So it's a really big problem. And our demographics have changed a lot in the last 10, 15 years because of that. And Gop City, like, this development project is very reminiscent of all of this and just to piggyback

off of that i think it's extremely important for us to recognize the connections between all of these things right is this like cop city is a perfect blend of um environmental justice issues uh just flat out racism uh police brutality and also gent gentrification, right? It's not a mistake that they're building this cop city right at this moment when Atlanta is also becoming, for the first time in I don't know how many decades, no longer a majority Black city because neighborhoods like Pittsburgh, where we're located out of, and all across Southwest and West Atlanta, have becoming more, like the black people have been being displaced from the, from our communities. Right. Um, so a perfect example is that with my

organization, community movement builders, we, uh, purchased, we've been, we've been doing work in the Pittsburgh neighborhood for a while, but we purchased a community house in the neighborhood about six years ago. Right. At that point, we purchased the house for $50,000, right? Pittsburgh has been historically a poor and working class community. It was founded as a Black community, which is different from a lot of other neighborhoods in Atlanta. It was founded as a Black community from freed Africans who were trying to escape some of the more rural areas of the South and found work in Haven in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Atlanta. And it's been a poor and working class black community ever since. But now because of the gentrification has been going on,

how a house just sold maybe about a month and a half ago for $750,000. So we purchased a house at $50,000, six years ago, a house just sold just a few blocks away from that house for $750,000. Now, it's not like every house is selling for that amount, but that just shows you the rate of gentrification that's happening. And then we know that cops are a necessary part of being able to further displace people from gentrifying communities. They play an integral role within gentrification. people from gentrifying communities. They play an integral role within gentrification.

Yeah, I'm just wondering, does any of you have any, like, even, like, anecdotal experience with, like, basically Marvel and tons of other industries, like, invading Atlanta? How is that, like, affected specifically? Like, you already talked about how, you know, increasing the film industry and other things has, you know, has made more gentrification, but, like, how has that even affected just, like other types of stuff including like like policing like has has this type of like growth um affected people or people you know in in other ways yeah absolutely so i think a lot of this kind of got i won't say it got started but a lot of it went even uh you know escalated when tyler perry studio opened up in east point um and a lot of people you know were praising is like oh look at this uh you know it's a black man that was able to move down and be able

to start this thing within hollywood but no it's all that is one of the things that also spurred the gentrification in east point which is you might not be familiar with atlanta but east point is like literally right next to atlanta so it's a lot it's it's really close proximity and so that also spurs over to the gentrification here in the city as well um property values have gone up since that point even more um even my tax bill has gone up a thousand dollars a year per a year um for the past like three years right um so it's yeah it's it's definitely we definitely see the effects and you know and just talking to uh you know we do we do do a lot of work around gentrification um and i think this is in tandem with you know because we have covid19 out here now with the eviction moratorium which has now been you know denied um by the supreme court um but even when there wasn't

eviction moratorium there were still people that were getting evicted from their homes and i think all of this in tandem when atlanta specifically has already been going through a gentrification crisis and um with covid19 where people have been losing jobs left and right or not been able to go to their jobs that they've had, and having salaries cut, people have been hurting. And the response from the city has not been to provide more resources to people, it's been to fund Cop City, to be able to get more police out who are the ones that execute the actual evictions themselves. And I think it all is connected in that type of way. Yeah, I mean, if people don't know,

the reason why so many filming projects have moved to Georgia in the past decade and a half is because basically Georgia instituted a pretty substantial tax cut for production companies to film in Georgia. So they would not even just get a tax cut, but also a tax credit. You would actually get money for filming in Georgia.

And theoretically, this can be good things. This could strengthen local film industry and hire people who are already in Georgia. But in a lot of cases, they are hiring a lot of out-of-state workers to come in and do these big productions, including Marvel and various other film studios. I think just looking at something like it was in about in 2016,

they were supposed to have around like 85,000 jobs created, but only 25,000 of those went to people actually living in Georgia. So there is job creation, but it's a lot of people moving in from people getting flown in from like New York, from California to then, but both are taking the jobs in the city, but also they have to like live there. So they're also eating up housing. And this housing is getting paid for by big corporations,

which is making prices go up and up. And it's this kind of cascading problem, which is now, you know, even led to this deforestation project. You've mentioned what the deforestation project is is and you've called it like a cop city um and i think this is this is an extremely fascinating um and horrifying like dystopian like idea of don't explain like what they're actually trying to do with this with this section of forest and what they're trying to build? I do want to take a second and just kind of make a point really quickly that I think is important. The Atlanta Police Foundation, which is basically the PR machine that works with the Atlanta Police

Department, if you look at their website, if you look at their goals, if you look at their objectives, they always say and purport that like, hey, we're looking to protect the city, we're looking to do all of these things. And I think it's really interesting, because they're also looking to expand their police force, as this cop city plan would allow, which would take about five years to develop, but is still going to be a massive expansion of policing if it were to be passed. You have these people, you have these police who are saying that we are looking to expand the work that we do. We're looking to hire more officers. We're looking to put more people on the streets. And at the same time, you have an eviction

moratorium that is putting people on the streets. And it's just really interesting that their jobs and their livelihood rely on the existence of poverty and the existence of crime. In order to have a need for more police, you need more people on the streets. In order to have a need for more police, you need more people whose doors need to be knocked on to be told, hey, you're getting evicted, you're getting pushed out of your home. So I think that is very reminiscent of the fact that police do not protect us because the existence of their jobs rely on our poverty. Yeah, they're not actually trying to help regular people who are living in Atlanta. They're trying to make other people happy who have a lot more money and who have other things at stake. Yeah, absolutely. And that definitely intersects with a lot of this stuff. the CEO of Chick-fil-A, the CEO of Home Depot, all of these, the major corporations, the Fortune 500, Fortune 100 for most of them, corporations that run the city of Atlanta,

the corporate elite are the ones that are sitting, that are on the board of the Atlanta Police Foundation, who are the ones that are building this and are funding this project so that they can protect their property and so that they can protect their property. And so that they can expand the police force that, and what we know is that police doesn't put, don't protect people. They protect property and they protect the corporate elite. So I think all of those things are, you know, it comes full circle as a great microcosm of racial capitalism that is exploiting poor and working class black folks in particular. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill.

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Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, and if people are unfamiliar, does anyone want to explain what the project that the police are trying to build is? And I know they're teaming up with different prison firms and stuff as well. What is the actual project? in unincorporated DeKalb County. This land was once the old Atlanta prison farm. Before that,

it was key plantation. And before that, it belonged to the Muskogee Nation and it was stolen from them and then folks were enslaved on it and then forced into unpaid labor for prison work on it as well. So it's a land with a very scarred history. What the APF wants to do essentially is, um, bulldoze a great deal of it and then build this, um, training facility and mock city. Um, it's going to, the, the plans currently include plans for explosives testing and, uh, weapons testing and like all of that stuff. And then, um, I think this is a good point to make is that there have been a lot of attempts to kind of placate the public on the facility. So they say, oh, we're not going to destroy all of the land. We're going to do 150 acres or we're going to get it where we're going to cut it down to 120 acres or we'll leave this part or we'll create some green space as well and we'll have like a food farm as well but um there was this really great environmental impact report that was done that kind of showed that um a lot of the impacts that this would actually have in terms of um the runoff from all of those explosives testing and things like that would um end up polluting the south river and would pollute the very urban farm that they proposed

to exist on the land itself. So that food, that those fish, all of that would become destroyed. And it's really, really, I think, helpful to just point this out as a really specific instance of environmental racism, because the people who are going to be affected by that are people who live there. And of course, this is being lived there. This is being built near marginalized communities. So that's kind of what's happening. I live on Georgia Tech campus, just to give an example. And this facility would be larger than that or about the size of that. This facility would be about the size of Disneyland

in California. It is huge. It's a huge project. Yeah, and I'm guessing they're not going to be building their explosives and military testing facility next to where all the rich people live. They're not going to be testing out bombs where all of the upper class people are. Of course not. Yeah, people keep saying

Buckhead wants the facility, but they don't want it in Buckhead. They wouldn't do it there. Of course not. It's not a mistake that all of like, and even with, so, you know, with city council people who've gotten a little bit scared and nervous about our past and our current efforts again, to be able to raise awareness about this, because the other part of this is that isn't that it should be highlighted is that you know city council talks about how they're trying to make

this a more uh you know they're getting the input of people all this was done before organizers exposed it without anybody knowing right there was no advertisement there's no like no calls made or no in public input about any of this happening um until organizers start you know blowing it up and that's what's gotten them scared at this point but even and now that people do are aware of it some a few certain uh city council members are saying okay we're gonna backtrack a little bit maybe you don't want it to be here um because of this forest we want we might want to put it in a different location but it's important that all those proposed locations one i think it's pretty much bullshit they're gonna build it there at that location they've already had the plans for it

but even if they were to move all those other proposed locations are all south of i-20 anywhere anybody that lives or is from atlanta um knows that south of i-20 is where all of the black people live basically and so and all of the poor and working class people of atlanta uh in the city live so this is so it's it's a so yes they like just just like sheza was saying right um buckhead wants this midtown wants this um the richest areas of the city want this but they don't want it for them yeah they want it to uh to police poor and working class people. Yeah. I mean, like, even beyond the disastrous environmental problems with gentrification just like the further

militarization of the police is i mean like this isn't like a niche problem that gets talked about anymore like this is like a widely on this is generally you think it's something that's that gets talked about a lot is how militarization of police is bad um you know even for like more like softer liberals is something that even they can like you know say that they agree with yet they're building this giant compound to make their police like some like super like SWAT team military tactical training unit um and yeah i think another point is that even wherever it's built anywhere like it shouldn't be built like we don't you don't need this in the first place at all.

Beyond the forest being torn down, which is horrible, you don't need this built anywhere, right? So in organizing against this, is it kind of split up in between protecting the forest and organizing against the facility? Or are these things kind of just so combined that these struggles are so linked that there's really no difference between the two? on the environmental side of things we have folks uh that were more so on the uh police brutality side and um and the uh police abolition side of things um however i think all of us have in some way or another you know we have interest in all the all these issues are all overlaying

right so the coalition formed because even while we might have our specialized interests in um different, this particular project is one that was a microcosm of so many different things that we can unite behind all of these things to be able to find a coalition to fight against it. Right. And I think to your point, Christopher, I think one thing that's also really significant is that, so my city council person for is District 12, Joyce Shepard. District 12 is where Pittsburgh is, where Summerhill is, where several of poor and black working class neighborhoods of Atlanta are located they're also the areas where they're the most uh gentrifying areas of the city as well and it's in in city council district 12 joy shepherd she is the person who

brought this proposal forward right she is over the quote-unquote public safety um you know they ain't keeping shit safe uh quote-unquote public safety um you know commission and um she brought this forward and she has been uh since she's been in office she has been a uh even uh she's been a champion of gentrification right she's been a champion of over policing as well um and i think it's a it's a tie between even our city council or even our representation has in their interest of being able of of gentrifying the city because that gives them more tax dollars it gives them a way to be able to say that they are decreasing their crime rates etc and all those all these different types of

things when it's really just deep deep placing poor folks um and so i think that's an important uh about talking about how this kind so i think that's an important uh about talking about how this kind of was established that's an important topic to be able to address is that even and she's a black woman right so even um you know even how like when people when people might you think they might be representing your interests um when they get to be in these positions we have to recognize that they are not necessarily for the people. Yeah, we had this in Chicago too with Lightfoot. And just Lightfoot gets elected and then immediately,

she starts putting cops on the subways and SWAT teams are shooting people and it's a disaster. Yeah, and I would just add to that, in terms of the question about the coalition and how these organizers and how these organizations came together,'s it's been a little it's been really interesting because there's like like Jamal said there's been so many groups that have come from all of these different interests whether it's environmental or abolitionists or um talking about um you know reimagining public safety and divesting resources from policing. You have all these people from all these different groups.

And there was like, there have been like different coalitions and different groups of people working together and like co-sponsoring each other on events. And I have just seen that number grow so rapidly. And just, and I think that comes from a fundamental understanding that we're not fighting different fights. All of this is intertwined. This environmental justice is intersectional to racial justice, which is intersectional to economic justice, which is just all indicative of the fight against unfettered greed and exploitation and all of these things. I think that, and I, and I would say that to an extent, there are more like, quote unquote, like moderate groups that I've seen like do things, or there have been groups who's kind of, whose hands have been tied a little bit and kind of have been approaching the issue through an environmental angle only to kind of avoid talking about polarizing topics like policing. But I think that hopefully by having coalitions

like this one, and by having conversations like this one, we are getting people closer and closer to the understanding that these are intersectional issues. These are issues that we should all tackle together. And in the future, when stuff like this happens, we're so much stronger when we work together. Like I can list like 15 or 20 different organizations off the top of my head who are involved in this fight in some way. And that wouldn't be possible if it was just the abolitionists or just the environmentalists, because it's, it all ties together. And as we do this, as we're in this process, we learn from each other and learn that these things are true. I wasn't, and I wasn't the

like most well-versed on gentrification and how it works in the city of Atlanta because I just moved here pretty recently. And being able to have these conversations and going out and canvassing and talking to people and seeing what the streets look like and seeing what different districts look like has vastly expanded my own knowledge of how all of this works. And it's made me a better it's, it's made me a better organizer, and a more caring community member. So it's been really cool to see all these people from all these different backgrounds come together. And I think that, yeah, it's just been really great. Yeah, because the effort to the effort to save the forest, and prevent the construction of the facility, because it is

such a coalition effort, it's multiple groups working together, how is the process of taking multiple organizations and having them all work together on the same project? Because I know that can, in my experience watching this happen in other cities, it can be very difficult as getting different organizations to work together. happen in other cities that can be very difficult as getting different organizations to work together. How have people managed to take all these different organizations with different backgrounds and get them to team up for this shared cause? I think it has been difficult, and there have been a lot of lessons and experiences here. Because, I mean, community movement builders, for example, and while you can speak to this much better than I can, is a Black-led, Black-run group that operates in Atlanta.

other people who are working on this who maybe aren't as well versed as we need to be and honestly an element of that is learning from each other and learning to respect like who should be speaking on these issues and when they should be speaking on these issues and what role each of us has to play um I think one thing that I would have liked to seen more is including you know the lower Muscogee Creek tribe and indigenous groups in this effort a little bit more. And I know like we've been moving on like one hell of a timeline and it's been development after development. But I think that just like when we work in coalition, when we work on groups who have different theories of change, when we work on groups who have different ideologies and different ways that they approach things, it's a really good chance for those groups to kind of come together and do what they do best, play to their strengths,

but also challenge their own ideologies and their own perceptions of the world. And I've seen a lot of that in this space. And I feel like Jamal can speak to this really well too, probably better than I can in some places. No, I'll just say plus one to all of that. I think that it's definitely a learning curve and any kind of coalition work and working with other organizations is definitely a learning curve. And we are learning from each other to be able to build. But I think it's also important that having that coalition is important because we pull from even from like we talk about public input, right? Or we talk about a rally that we're having. We're pulling from several different communities. We're pulling from several different areas of people who have different interests, who can all make the event, the central event that much better and that much stronger.

So we can make, so we can push, for example, a postponement of the vote for three weeks, which has been unprecedented in Atlanta, particularly for something that has to do with policing, right? So I think that there was lessons learned within a coalition building. There are always going to be challenges, but I think the other, and I think that what we also learned is that it's important that, you know, we come into this work in a particular lane of this work, right? You know, community movement builders

might have had particular, have a lot of experience working with anti-police violence, right? We don't have a whole lot of experience with environmental justice or environmental issues or advocacy in that same type of way. So we might not be tapped in or even equipped to be able to have those types of conversations with people. But we also know, but we're also a place-based organization in an area so that we also have a lot of experience talking to people in our community, knowing the people, the issues that are in our community and being able to make folks or have folks be aware of what's term, staying in their lane for what it is that their expertise is so that they can contribute their expertise to the coalition to be able to keep on building that out. Right. Yeah. What has the fight looked like so far? Like what type of organizing has been done with this goal in mind the past few months or even longer? A lot of things, actually. We are doing a lot of things this weekend in

particular. CMB is holding a rally in front of Coca-Cola headquarters on Friday. Sunrise is doing a People's March on Freedom Park Trail just to kind of attract pedestrian attention. There are going to be banner drops around the city and the art has played a critical role in all of this work. Metro Atlanta DSA has been running canvases every weekend for the last three months. we held a really powerful people's town hall where basically we actually invited people up to the mic and said, you have two minutes. Tell us what your opinion is on Cop City and your community and how you feel about it because city council, the APF, they're not doing it.

So we're going to give you the space to do that. And that was live streamed and made available. We had the Spanish-speaking community participated through an organization called Poder Latinx, who did a bilingual panel with captioning to kind of educate folks on the issue. So a lot of it has just been going and just physically talking to people, having conversations, and then just taking action in all these really powerful ways. And a lot of that is culminating, I feel, this weekend feel this weekend but yeah absolutely and I think all of that has been like the the main focus of all of this and all that has been built off of just talking to people at the end of the

day um organizing to me is recognizing power structures talk and but building people power and building uh uh ways for bringing the fight back to the masses right um so even like right before this call uh cmb was out flyering um at martyr stations at the um the auc um and other locations to make sure that people are aware that like this is happening um and because that's the other thing a lot of people um a lot more people know about it now but particularly when it first was coming out in the end um even now some people don't aren't even aware of what's going on but um like it's been their biggest defense has been uh people not knowing about this about this ordinance trying to be passed and trying to do it in under

the veil of darkness. And the more we're able to expose them, the more we're able to get it, the higher likelihood we are able to stop it. Um, and so, um, I think, yeah, it's extremely important that when we're, when we're talking about any type of organizing, we have to bring it back to the people and, sure that we're uh you know you know really living up to the words like all power to the people welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters,

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, pela películas and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game if you love hearing real conversations with your favorite latin celebrities artists and culture shifters this is the podcast for you we're talking real conversations with our latin stars from actors and artists to musicians and creators sharing their stories struggles and successes you know it's going to be filled with

chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love each week we'll explore everything from music and pop Thank you. podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be

digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his

mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez.

At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation.

Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you seen any effect so far from the organ? I know it's always difficult to gauge the effectiveness of any activism um but have you seen any changes either in like i know you mentioned like perception and people being aware of this project but have you seen anything else happen um whether on like whether you know through the like legislative process or just through uh like coverage yeah

like what what is going to be affecting so far the major the major win is the is the postponement in the vote like this was supposed to be voted and passed it was going to be passed three weeks ago yeah right and for for them to delay it and frankly they even said it they delayed it because they were like we're getting too much negative pressure we want to get we want to do more public opinion basically they want to put more propaganda out there for the police um and try to have another vote when we think that we can get more people on our side because this is election season for atlanta too so a lot of them are worried about their seats and they know that we've made a lot of noise about it and they've got a lot of news coverage about it we got a lot of people talking

about this and so at this stage they're afraid you know, they couldn't do this under the veil of darkness. And so now people know about it and are upset about it. So I think that in of itself, again, this is the first time this has happened in the city of Atlanta, period, where the city council has been scared based off of community-based organizing, particularly when it has to come to anything that has to do with policing atlanta is the most surveilled city in the country right um our police force people talk about it being the black mecca people talk about it being you know a black haven for a black hollywood a black haven for black folks it is the most surveilled place in the in the in the country and city in the country. And it's also and we are nowhere close to being a stranger to police brutality and police killings. And we've seen that, you know, I can name a list of names just like that, you know, have been murdered by the police just in the past three years. Right. So.

years right so yeah I think that I mean I think an organizer joke or an organizer question at this point for people who have been working on this is like where were you August 16th where were you when it happened when the vote was actually pushed because that demonstrated a huge win for the people it was like like, you know, organizers in Atlanta and this community and this like these outcries and these like just these conversations and this anger, it all culminated in this beautiful moment where they said, like, we can't pass this right now. Like, we just actually can't do it. For me, I was at a book club meeting and I saw it on Twitter and my brain was fuzzy for the next hour because that had never happened before. And it was just it was beautiful. And yeah.

And just like having these conversations is just another impact. The story went national. There was an article written for The Intercept having conversations like this one. having conversations like this one and just like and just being able to tie this to like like I've said a few times during this during this conversation just the that culture of that culture that that like okayness with extraction and exploitation of land and resources and people and being able to like take this story national and take this story to other places and say, this is what happens in communities. Look into your own and see if it's happening there. That is so inspiring.

That's what builds movements. So that was a really powerful win. Yeah, I think something like having that result is incredibly rare for something like this, right? Like that's not something that happens often and that should be celebrated based on what you've been able to do so far. What is the fight going to look like going forward

in the next few weeks? Is there a date that they're planning to vote again already or is that still kind of up in the air? Yeah, so they're voting it on Tuesday, right? So that's why, you know, we're still fighting all the way up to the end. I think that at the end of the day, we have to recognize that, you know, pressure campaigns like this are important. We have to be able to do them. But we also have to be able to put our bodies on the line to be able to just if if the city council, because, again, this isn't up to a vote of the people.

This is a vote of corporate interests that are and city council members who are tied to corporate interests. So they ultimately can still vote, even the people for it, even if the people don't want this to happen. Right. And so I think it also has to be even after the vote, that fight does. Let's say if it does pass right we're hoping that doesn't but if it does pass that means the fight doesn't end at that point that means that our that the onus is then on the people for us to organize even more because that means we need bodies on the line that means that we have to be able to physically say y'all not building this shit period um and that's the next step in the campaign i'm speaking this is speaking for you

know myself at this point. I can't speak for the whole coalition on this pace, but I think a lot of us are in the same boat that like after this vote, we still are in this fight, whether, whatever, regardless of what the outcome is. Yeah, and there's a lot of different avenues in terms of like direct action and land defense and working more with indigenous communities on the issue

and lawsuits on the issue and lawsuits on the environmental angle and even just the city council angle of just voting out everybody who voted yes and there's there's a lot of different ways to take action after this just depends on the results of the vote that is happening on tuesday yeah yeah that will be yeah that's it's it's as you guys said that it was going to be uh a very serious turning point in figuring out what to do next um let's let's for a change let's be optimistic uh as just a fun practice that might um as what if um magically or not magically because you put in a lot of hard work, but what if they do vote no

and they don't build this project, do you see any future for the coalition? Having all these groups work together, do you see taking up any other kind of projects? Because getting a network like this is very useful and unique. And is, you know, at times, at times, very difficult. Do you see any

other kind of organizing potential for having this interconnected kind of group of people? I honestly can't see a world where we don't continue to have these conversations and we don't continue to work together and we don't continue to tap into this like beautiful system of collective care because honestly we've it's felt like rushing to the finish for the last three months but like after we're like focused on a particular campaign or a particular issue there's going to be other things to worry about but also I'm really hoping, that we're going to be able to take some time to slow down and process and have conversations and talk about what does supporting each other actually mean? What does supporting people in like a localized, substantive, intersectional

manner actually look like? So my hope and my wish and my goal is absolutely yes. I hope that we'll continue to work together in lots of different ways on lots of different projects because we don't really know what, at least for Sunrise, we don't really know what we're going to focus on next, but there's definitely a lot of work to do. And I think just like what's really been powerful about this many people coming together and this like demonstration of people power is that we're starting to shift the narrative, the narrative that protection and control equals safety and understanding what safety actually means. DSA and like a couple of environmental groups, it's groups that have been doing mutual aid work, groups that have been directly on the ground, like, and groups that have been, you know, working and fighting in all of these like tangible ways to just get people access to food and water and transportation and the things that we actually need. So I think that in terms of like actually shifting the narrative

and diverting resources to where they need to be diverted, coalitions are a powerful tool and I hope we'll continue to use them. Yeah, second to all of that. I mean, I think that while we each have our respective work, I speak for CMB, we are a Black radical organization that's dedicated to the liberated zone theory. Right now, our focus is organizing within the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Atlanta. But even as you can see with this issue, right, with Cop City, you know, Cop City isn't necessarily in the neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

But it was the same APD officers that killed Rayshard Brooks in our neighborhood last year. Right. So these all issues are fall under the umbrella of uh capitalism and racial capitalism which affects all of us so when it comes to these types of issues we have to work in coalitions because that's what's going to be able to make us be that much stronger because we all are affected by these uh these these intersectional systems so um i definitely think that um you know you know, while it might not be on every single project that we work on with each other on, but because we all have our specialties and our, our niches of areas of work, um, when it comes to intersectional issues like

this that are big and that are, that affect all of us in different ways, um, I could definitely, I definitely see us being able to work within coalitions and continuing that, uh, momentum and work that we've built off with this Cop City effort. Is there anything you want to say to people who are outside of Atlanta, any way they can show support? I think one thing that I can add that maybe is a little bit more generalized is I know that there's a lot of fear right now and there's a lot of anger right now and there's a lot of hurt right now. And there's a lot of anger right now. And there's a lot of hurt right now. And it feels like our rights are being attacked on every front with, you know, Roe v. Wade in Texas and issues like cop city and militarization and expansion of policing and the eviction moratorium and all of these things. And I know that it can seem very daunting. And I guess my thing that I want to say to people is, this is not the time to disengage.

Everybody who supports and seeks to promote and who is protected by the status quo wants you to disengage. Don't do it. Come fight with us. In your community, in our community, anywhere. We need you. Yeah. Absolutely. I will double down on that point to say yeah we could uh say that

again and again uh that it's a point that always needs to be reiterated reiterated more often yeah is there any is is there any place um people can do any financial support from from far away that people can uh assist either through legal funds or various other means? Yes. So I can do a few. I know for Community Movement Builders, we have a donate page. If you go to our website, communitymovementbuilders.org, there's a donate tab. You can donate directly through there. You can also donate to our cash app.

That's dollar sign CMBORG, C-M-B-O-R-G. But also Atlanta Bail also is always an important resource um if folks are taking arrests at different direct actions at different protests um i've had several comrades who have um gone to who have taken arrests for very variety for a variety of uh actions and uh we do rely on that as a source uh for us to be able to make sure that we're still, you know, able to, you know, live and breathe and survive another day in this capitalist, racist-ass country that we live within. I want to plug donating to and supporting the Atlanta Homeless Union, which formed this summer and has been doing incredible critical work. I also want

to plug Mainline Zine on Instagram and Twitter. And they have been critical in actual like anti-fascist news coverage and just kind of telling the truth on a lot of these issues. coverage and just kind of telling the truth on a lot of these issues. Fantastic. And I want to thank you two so much for coming on to talk about what you'll have been working on. Yeah, it's very important. I'm happy that more people can know about it in the future. And thinking less optimistic, if they do vote to continue, I'm hoping that we can get some people down to Atlanta to help with whatever direct action

organizing is going to be happening to prevent this physically. No matter the result, there's always going to be more struggle. There's always going to be more stuff to do. Yeah. And just thank thank you guys for talking about this. Absolutely. Thank you for having us on. And with that, that wraps up our talk with the wonderful folks from the Defend the Atlanta Forest Coalition.

They had their plugs there that you can, I recommend you following. If you want to keep track on the movement specifically and what's going on, you can also check out their social medias. You can check Defend ATL Forest on Twitter. You can also check out the community movement builders at CommunityMVvt on Twitter.

And you can find Sunrise Atlanta at sunrisemvmtatl. So that is the discussion. Stay tuned for more news on the Atlanta Forest and the Cop City Project. We'll be covering this in the next few, you know, in the next few episodes, probably in the next few weeks. And if they vote yes to continue it, I'm sure we'll be reporting there in person at some point. Thanks for listening. And we have three-ish more episodes coming up this week. So stay tuned for that. Goodbye. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.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.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of riot. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to

take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. or wherever you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast,

and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran

with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from.