It Could Happen Here - Forest Defender Killed by Police in Atlanta: Update for StopCopCity

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

Robert asks Garrison about what’s been going down in Atlanta the past week, and the police killing of Tortuguita.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. 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. 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. 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. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast that is today about it happening here, or more particularly in Atlanta. So it's here if you happen to live in Atlanta, Georgia. Otherwise,

it is still happening there. And I don't actually know much about this because, like the rest of you, I have been watching from the sidelines since a forest defender was killed by the georgia state police uh but someone who has been in atlanta for most of the last week is garrison davis garrison hello hi hi how you doing it's been a long week yeah it sounds like it you uh had just gotten back from CES when all this happened and booked the next flight and flew out and were on the ground during some of the immediate protests that followed news about the death. Do you want to just kind of take it from here? Yeah. So we're going to be putting together kind of a more in-depth thing similar to my on the ground at defend the atlanta

forest episodes from last may that is that's that's gonna come out but you know it'll take a little bit because i'm doing a lot of interviews doing a lot of on the ground stuff here um but this is important enough that i feel like it's it's worth that it was worth mentioning something a bit sooner which is why we're recording here uh, just to kind of give a 101 on what's been going on ever since Wednesday. So Wednesday, January 18th, there was a raid on the Wallani Forest or the South River Forest in Atlanta, where people have been currently staying in encampments for the past year and a half in opposition of this upcoming proposed police training facility to be built on this same land. So Wednesday morning, there was this raid. There's a few things different about this raid. One, it seemed to be in some ways kind of led by the Georgia State Patrol. This is a state-run police that has not been in this forest before. Other raids

have been coordinated between the DeKalb County Police and Atlanta Police. So the SWAT team was unfamiliar with the forest. They had not been in there before. There was other police on site. This was an interagency thing. It does seem like there was Atlanta Police here as well. It does seem like there was Atlanta police here as well. But this started at around 8 a.m. And then at around 9 a.m., we got word that a forest defender was shot and killed by, it seems like, an estate patrol officer that they are not releasing the name of. Nor are they releasing the name of one other officer who was injured.

And Georgia State Patrol claims that they were shot during this rate as well. Police by the decision. Yeah. Yes. Police, police claim that they were shot by the person that the Georgia state patrol killed. There's very little information about this.

Um, no body cameras. Nope. They have said that there's no body cam which does seem consistent because georgia state patrol are not uh are not required to wear body cam so that obviously hit a lot of people pretty hard because this is um to our knowledge the first like you know environmentalist protester to be killed by police. It's the first fatality that we've had in this movement here in Atlanta. And for the record, it is still deeply unclear

what happened. It's certainly not impossible that this person fired first on the police officer, but it's also incredibly important to note that there is no evidence of this that's been presented. The only evidence that the police have presented is a photo of a pistol on the ground, and then they've made the very weaselly worded claim that ballistics testing has shown that the bullet that struck the officer was consistent with the gun that they're saying with the the individual they killed had and all that means is that it was nine millimeter that it was the same caliber right a caliber for which there are tens of millions of guns in this country um most ballistic science is in terms of like identifying bullets to guns is actually

nonsense there have been massive lawsuits about this the fbi um has as this is a bigger topic than than we can get into today but it's very shady and all that they actually said is the cop was shot with a nine millimeter and hey look we found a nine millimeter not interestingly enough we have confirmed that this gun was fired. Correct. So very anyway, so no one knows what's happened. It's it's it's shady. I mean, so I've I got I got here like less than 24 hours later. A lot of people on the ground have been kind of sharing their memories of the person that was killed. So the person was named their their forest name was Tortugita, which means little turtle.

Their name that has been released is Manuel. I'm just going to call them Tortugita or Tort. Sure. People have spent a lot of the past few days talking about Tort, remembering Tort, the types of things that they advocated for, the types of things that they would talk about. of things that that they they advocated for the types of things that they would talk about so we'll we'll get into some of the more kind of specifics of that of that of that later um but yeah a number of other journalists have talked about their conversations with uh with tort including um the fact that they evinced a pretty principled and extensive commitment to nonviolence,

at least in interviews. This is something they had been quoted on by other journalists a number of times. And this is something I've heard a lot of people bring up, is that Tort was a believer in nonviolence and would talk about and advocate that. The other kind of angle to this this and i'm not taking a position one way or another here but this is something that i think is important to mention is that i also don't want to remove the agency of a person if they did decide to do if i if i did if they did decide to do this because the other thing i've heard a lot about tort is that they always made thoughtful decisions, meaning that they put thought into everything they did. They acted strategically. They did not put people in unnecessary danger.

They would not do something if they thought it would endanger other people. They always acted with thought. And that could include if you feel like your life is under immediate threat. What actually happened Wednesday morning, we will probably never know. We will never know the exact series of events. And in some ways, we should respect tort either way. Like that's we can we should respect tort either way because they made a decision that they thought that was right in the moment or they were just flat out murdered by police. So that's that's kind of the gist of what happened Wednesday morning throughout the rest of the day their police continued their raid on the forest the

the last the last tree sitter was eventually taken down like 20 hours later after the raids that someone was stuck up in a tree for over 20 hours no food or water um police agitating them the entire time and many uh all of all other people arrested i think a total of around seven, got charged with domestic terrorism, among other charges. So that's pretty significant. And we will circle back to this point a little bit later. So that is what happened on Wednesday. The first few hours after the shooting, people were unsure of who actually got killed. It was hard to say.

Other force defenders who were in the area did report from that what they heard. There was a pretty quick single firing of guns, multiple guns going off in a pretty quick succession. There was no, like, one shot. And then seconds later, a bunch of other shots. It was all kind of one event. This is reports from people on the ground. This is what this is what they've said. A lot of a lot of people speculate that this could have been friendly fire. If this if this if this if this other patrol officer was was, you know, got shot, they they went to the hospital so yeah it does it does appear that a police officer had got a bullet inside of them yes um but obviously there's a number of ways in which that could have occurred and and i i don't find it i certainly i don't think it's conspiratorial at all to conspiratorial at all to say they have not presented evidence it is certainly possible

that a bunch of cops wandering through the forest, somebody would have a negligent discharge, you know, somebody would just pant, you know, there's enough. And again, as you've stated, we just, we probably will never know precisely what happened. Yeah. And that's the feeling on the ground. A lot of people coming to terms with the fact that we will never know. A lot of people, you know, thinking that it, you know, very likely chance it was friendly fire. Other people trying to emphasize the fact that we will never know.

We cannot say one way or another. But it's also important not to minimize someone's autonomy, especially since they're no longer around to advocate for themselves or their actions. Let's have an ad break and then we'll kind of continue on to what happened in the in the days after welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter nocturnal tales from the, presented by iHeart and Sonorum.

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 it. 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

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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 tech's 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, or wherever

else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. We're back. Garrison, please continue to take it away. So the day of the shooting, there was a vigil. Before we found out who it was, there was a vigil set up at little five points in atlanta and then the next two days there was uh there was a vigil space created at entrenchment creek park or walani people's park uh this is an area of the forest that's to that's on like the eastern side and this is the section that is currently um being sought as a a place to expand black hole movie studios so this is this is separate from the actual cop city element of this but it's still part of the defend the atlanta forest side of this because this is all the same

forest they're just kind of split um down the middle by this uh by this power line cut. So this section of the park is on a section of land that's contestedly owned by Ryan Millsap, the guy who runs Black Hole Studios. I first arrived at Wolani People's Park on Friday for the more public-facing vigil. And I just kind of... I want to talk a bit about the park because this is such a i think

it's such a solid encapsulation of what's changed since last time i've been in atlanta so last time i was in atlanta there was um the muskogee creek people were traveling from i believe oklahoma to atlanta well what what is now atlanta what what used to be Muskogee Land. And they were giving talks and presentations about the forest inside the section of forest that the Defend the Atlanta Forest stuff is about. And I went to one of those events at Entrenchment Creek Park. It was green, trees all around. There was a nice gazebo. There was a piano inside the gazebo, people handing out food.

A little kitchen was set up. Pretty picturesque. It was pretty great. Then when I pulled up to this same spot a few days ago, it was apocalyptic. The gazebo has been completely torn down and is laying in shambles in the front of the parking lot for everyone to see the destroyed remains.

All of the concrete sidewalks and stuff have all been torn up and it's just scattered everywhere. It's just a massive mud pit. It's such a different place. And when you get there for a vigil, the mood's not cheery, obviously. There was people sharing stories of torrents, singing songs, and building this almost like a vigil shrine. So that was the first big thing friday night um so a lot of people talked about their memories of tort and you know the different

things they they contributed to not just to defend the atlanta forest stuff but stuff across the entire south they did mutual aid work um and stuff to secure housing for people in Florida. They helped defend drag shows in Tennessee. They did stuff all across the south. And they had allies and accomplices from across the south talking about how great Tort was to work with and the types of solidarity that Tort would show to many, many different people. So that was Friday. And everyone was kind of... You could kind of feel the almost calm before the storm.

In some ways, people didn't really know what was going to happen in the coming days, but there was a sense of eerie quietness. And then Saturday happens. Saturday, there is this protest planned meeting in Underground Atlanta, which is a spot in downtown Atlanta, kind of on the south side. I got there for this protest. Initially, there was people from this socialist organization called PSL. They tried to lead the march one way.

The crowd rejected their authority and was like, no, we're not going to go to the federal district. We're not going to go to the CNN Center, which are places notorious for getting kettled at. center uh which are places notorious for getting kettled at um and they and people autonomously redirected the crowd um north towards the and and north is also just so happens to be the direction of the atlanta police foundation headquarters the pseudo union lobbying group that is that is behind the big push for for cop city um before this march started there was similarly you know people giving speeches about tort people not speeches like people just sharing memories of

tort so people so that tort can like live on um in some way so people can you know know about them now that they're no longer around you know people from a local medic collective talking about, you know, Tord's involvement in that and how much Tord cared about, you know, helping other people. So this march starts up. It was funny. There was a few blocks away from this march location. There just so happened to be like a single police car in the street but like parked on the wrong side of the road and this police car sees this march coming and it's like kind of freaking out it doesn't know what to do it drives in reverse for like like two blocks

trying to find a spot to turn around as the march is like increasingly getting closer like you could just you could just feel you could feel the the anxiety of the cop inside this car he they they do not want to get surrounded by a crowd um eventually they're able to back up enough to turn around and they they get out they are they are zooming away they do not want to be anywhere near this and short shortly after uh people arrive at the atlanta police foundation headquarters windows spontaneously shatter um as as is expected a few bank windows also get um get get broken uh wells fargo being one of them r.i.p yes r.i.p bank windows uh wells fargo being one of them. RIP. Yes, RIP Bank Windows. Wells Fargo being another one. Wells Fargo is a major contributor to the Atlanta Police Foundation.

So this happens. Two cop cars that are just blocks away that are sitting completely empty get their windows smashed. There's fireworks going off around the crowd um there's there's this one clip that i that i saw from some some uh some group that was live streaming um that there was there was a few a few officers like stationed beside the atlanta police foundation and as soon as they as soon as they heard fireworks, they again similarly just ran away

as fast as they could. They were not equipped to deal with fireworks were the main thing they seemed to be scared of. Two cop cars get their windows smashed, fireworks going around. March

continues. Goes for about a few more blocks and then a corker's notice police are starting to come. um fireworks going around march continues goes for about a few more blocks and uh then uh corkers notice police police are starting to come uh police are approaching the approaching the crowd head-on police start rushing towards the crowd um one they they tackle tackle a few people holding a banner um I think people scatter. Most of the crowd gets away. The crowd splits up into two groups. The largest chunk is able to move away from police presence.

There's people chanting, be water, all of the stuff. So most people do successfully get away. The smaller section of people split off in another direction. Cops follow. They are able to tackle and arrest a few more people in this group. In the end, it looks like there was six people arrested. Most people got away. After all these arrests are happening,

people start noticing something. In the background, a few blocks previous to where people were marching uh it looked there looks to be a glowing police car uh so we we look back and sure enough in a police car is up in flames um complete completely completely glowing huge huge flames so so as that happens more and more cops show up this is where like the cops now are like taking over downtown um you know cops with with ar-15 or ar style rifles are going around starting starting to do patrols so this is like the night the night is over at this point uh now it's time for like to scatter and leave, which is what people did. The aftermath of this is super fascinating.

And unfortunate, if not unexpected. You know, there's been very little statements about the police killing of Tortuguita, of an environmental activist, forest offender. Very little statements addressing this matter at all. A huge flood of statements, however, seeming to be

extremely concerned that a few windows were broken and that a cop car got torched. Terrorism. This is less than a week after Martin Luther King Day. This is... The big quote was that the police chief a few hours later declared that breaking windows and starting fires is terrorism,

which is a wild thing for a police chief to say as the mayor stands behind nodding in agreement. It's one of the most fascist things that we've, that has, that has occurred in the United States. You cannot understate like the severity of, yeah, like this,

the severity of this, of this change in the types of framing by the state to describe civil disobedience, to describe property destruction, to describe vandalism as a form of domestic terrorism is appalling. I mean, if this holds up, then in states where this is done, there is effectively no longer any right to protest. Yeah. And I mean, we'll get into some of the details of this in a bit, even in this episode. And I think the other side of this is that this is something that I've heard people talk about here on the ground, is that if breaking windows is terrorism, right? If, if, if, if the destruction of inanimate objects is terrorism, what, what exactly is destroying an entire forest? Like, this is, this is like the juxtaposition that people are dealing with on the ground right now. So the end, the result of this is that we got six people

who not six people who were to be clear arrested completely at random this this was very clear police were tackling anyone they could get their hands on they were not doing targeted arrests they were not going after specific individuals who they suspected of of like actually doing crimes um they were they were tackling random people, as is kind of usual for these sorts of things. But they have gotten a series of ridiculous charges. Riot, arson, interfering with government property, and also domestic terrorism.

So this is domestic terrorism, not even for people that are in the forest, just people protesting out on the street um yeah getting the street when windows were broken when windows were broken there's no evidence of this uh the bail hearings were uh today as being recorded this is this is monday but bail hearings were today the judge the judge for the hearings specifically said that these hearings are not to litigate the facts of the issue what actually happened doesn't matter there's there's obviously no evidence to support that any of the people arrested did any crimes there is there's no

evidence that that shows that the specific people arrested did anything but beyond marching in the street and that does not matter that that that simply does not matter the the brutality is the point in this case um two two people have had their bail set at three hundred and fifty five thousand dollars each so that's over seven hundred thousand dollars for just two people's bail the other four people arrested were deemed to be from out of state by the judge and then thus a flight risk, including people that are just

less than 90 minutes away in Tennessee. And again, this is where people are born. There's this sense that people no longer have freedom to choose where they live, that people no longer have any freedom of movement, that they no longer have the autonomy choose where they live, that people no longer have any freedom of movement, that they no longer have the autonomy to go to different places.

This is in line with the outside agitator angle that's been being pushed by governments and media, especially since 2020. This is in line with that sort of stuff. But because these people were deemed non-local or a flight risk, these people are not getting any bond at all these people are going to be held in jail indefinitely indefinitely detention it could this this could literally be years the legal system is so slow and like being held in prison or in jail for for years with no evidence presented that you did literally anything wrong.

I've talked with a lot of people, people from Solidarity Fund, which I'll mention here at the end, and just people around. People are getting arrested with no evidence and getting indefinite time in prison, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to be released. Like the obvious abuse of power by the state, the sheer audacity and the extreme danger that if these are able to stick and hold is is incredibly frightening for any kind of future... It's meant to be. Any future civil rights movement at all. You might say that it's the strategic use of terror in order to achieve a political end. One might say that.

We're in Atlanta. The streets they're marching on, there's banners of Martin Luther King hanging above us. Like, it's incredibly frustrating. The Solidarity Fund, which we interviewed on the show literally days before, well, the episode released days before the killing of Tortuguita. both legal support and bail for people arrested for political actions. The previous amount needed to bail out people was over $100,000, which is a lot of money. And now, just for two people, it's $700,000 more. So the Atlanta Solidarity Fund desperately needs funds to continue supporting people and to continue resisting state repression. We'll talk about this more once I have my deep-dive episodes out on this topic. right to protest to people's ability to resist state violence then it's

absolutely crucial that people support the solidarity fund right now just today I went to another kind of vigil at Emory College here in Atlanta more people were sharing stories of tort.

One person was reading out a letter that they sent to their comrades in Italy who are setting up a vigil as well. There's been a good amount of international support. I've seen vigils from Germany, from Italy. There's been events, demos, rallies, direct actions and vigils all across the United States about to defend the Atlanta forest and about the killing of Tortugita. People here absolutely do appreciate the solidarity.

And the other thing people are saying is that, I mean, all of these tactics are meant to scare people away from the idea of protesting and yeah people are still needed on the ground here this fight is not this fight is not over um this is this is not this is not the end you know tactics may have to change tactics may have to shift people may have to approach things from from um you know different angles but it's not over. And people have said that there's still a need for support roles for people on the ground, for people to be in Atlanta, because it's not done. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Would 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. 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, peliculas, 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 culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a 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, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

I think there's a lot of sentiment on the left that what's happening in the Atlanta forest defense is probably the most important radical action going on in the country right now. And I think there's a few reasons for that. Not just the fact that the forest that is going to be torn down for Cop City is a crucial part of the city of Atlanta's tree cover and that all of this ties into both the impossibility of actually combating climate change under the present system and the complicity of the police in making it impossible to combat that or even to mitigate it in many cases. But I think what you've gotten to is probably the most directly frightening thing about what's going on in Atlanta and the thing that's most relevant to the future of terrorism has a special place in American law and that crimes that are deemed to be terrorism open up the ability of the government to act in ways that they normally are not supposed to be able to act. Like that is going to be, it's not going to be just forest offenders that gets used on.

It's going to be anyone who ever carries out any kind of act of protest that has a chance of upsetting the balance of power in this country. Like that's where this is headed. And yeah, it's a bummer. Do you want to talk a little bit about the role of the media in this? Because that is something that is, I'm certain going to be

of a, we just had a thing today where some weirdo lefties on the True and On subreddit decided, and someone on Twitter decided to accuse me of getting a bunch of people in Atlanta arrested for terrorism because I interviewed them on camera. I've never interviewed anyone in Atlanta. I simply have never worked there. I'm not sure where the rumors started, but it's reigniting this kind of debate about... It seems like tanky stuff. It's nonsense, but it has reignited. And I saw this on the It Could Happen Here subreddit, people talking about like, obviously, this is nonsense, but it is looking at these terrorism charges. It's a simple fact that activists should never talk to press. And obviously, a lot of these arrests had nothing to do with anyone talking to the media.

Like folks were present at a riot and the cops were tackling folks. That's nobody but the cops' fault. But there's a conversation to be had about what is the smart balance in terms of getting PR and getting press coverage and getting word of mouth about a radical movement and the fact that doing that will inevitably ramp up pressure. Like that is a reality that when radical activists get attention from the media, the state cracks down. Now, does that mean that the media is responsible for the movement getting cracked down or does it simply mean that the cops judge whether or not something's a threat by the amount of press that it's getting

you know the the this is this is an ongoing like thing people are going to be talking about in a lot of ways it's a continuation of conversations people were having in 2020 but i'm interested in because when you went over there, we had a little, a few hours of debate after it became clear that the cops had killed a forest offender over like, okay, what's the right thing to do? Should Garrison head over to Atlanta? Should we have some boots on the ground for this because you'd been covering it for so long? And one of the things you pointed out is that there was a call for media coverage from people who were on the ground in Atlanta. Yes. This is something I will get more into when I go in depth with this for an upcoming episode. Probably a two-parter. This is a conversation that people are constantly having in Atlanta. This is a conversation I've been having with people nonstop ever since coming here, ever since before coming here.

This is something I don't want to just parachute into someone else's city. I had conversations with multiple people before coming over. There's a few aspects to this. The amount of people doing stuff and how many people are in the forest, not a giant number of people. There's not hundreds of people living in the woods. There's not number of people. There's not hundreds of people living in the woods. There's not tons of people. An intentional media strategy has been a part of this movement since the beginning. Even among the insurrectionary anarchists who are here.

This has been something that people have been working on as a part of a decentralized movement, having conversations about. There's been a lot of – there's been coverage in the Rolling Stone that people here seem to be pretty happy with. Yeah, it was very – and The Guardian also published an extreme – People have been pretty happy with – Very good article. People have been pretty happy with coverage from The Guardian. People have been pretty happy with some stuff from AJ+. People have been decently happy with the work that I've done on this,

based on dozens and dozens of conversations I've had with people here. dozens and dozens of conversations i have i've had with people here um ultimately i don't for what for what cops are doing in the forest i don't think there seems to be a clear correlation between media coverage happening of stuff of of you know the movement and cops response to the forest there doesn't there does there's no linked timeline there cops are doing stuff in the forest because they want the forest cleared so they can build their police training or their police training facility. From what I've talked with people, the amount of pressure that has been caused by media covering the forest has not only elongated the construction process and elongated the,

the amount that stuff that they're, that they're able to do. It's, it is, it has, it has made it harder because this is not a very popular proposal. Even before the encampments started, it was estimated that 70% of people in Atlanta were not for the construction of this facility.

So I think people make a lot of intentional media choices. That's not to say that there isn't also intentionally harmful actors who are trying to frame this as Atlanta burning down, Atlanta in disorder, Antifa taking over sections of Atlanta. That is absolutely another part of it. But there is a very...

People here have a very clear distinction between bad actors, between people who are you know providing accurate fair coverage of what's going on um and then you know people who are just out to profit which is you know like a lot of like local tv channels um there's there i think uh stuff that happened on the protest on saturdays is a good example there's this far right account that i'm not going to name, at least not yet.

I might talk about it in the future, who tries to collect information on protesters. They have someone on the ground who films. They also have a really good aggregate of random people's Instagram and TikToks or Snapchats of filming people

from unfortunate angles. Local TV, like the local Fox News station, tries to get as much sensational footage of crimes as possible. And people, to the best of their ability, will try to block that off with umbrellas if they see that happening. But it's meh. There's definitely a clear intention that people in the movement do not want the media narratives around this

to solely be decided by the state and be decided against people who are in clear opposition to them. That is absolutely something that people are putting attention in. Because that creates a lot of really, really harmful scenarios thing that people are putting in putting attention in uh they they just that's because that that creates a lot of uh really really harmful scenarios because there's the state itself is already a pretty powerful propaganda machine already a lot of local news just regurgitates state talking points right this is the idea of the fourth estate there is does seem to be a pretty a distinction between stuff like the fourth estate than stuff like the derivative idea of the fifth estate of being more of like the people's voice for, for, for,

for these, for these sorts of movements. Also in that vein, there's stuff like the Atlanta People's Press, which is a decentralized media collective, um, run by a lot of like rad people who who who help to coordinate media coverage who help to coordinate um stuff with i mean they have they have worked with people they've worked with us on our on the uh on the uh history of the old atlanta prison farm so i would say there's a lot of thought put into media strategy um and not like in like a libby like optics way but like actual effective media strategy that will improve material conditions and will help push the goals of the movement forward the goal being that the construction of cop city does does not continue so there's a lot of thought going into that, and that is viewed as another wing of the effort.

There's stuff like the encampments. There's stuff like sabotage. There's stuff like protests. There's stuff like very above-board stuff that very above-ground organizations will do, like, you know, writing campaigns, calling campaigns. And media strategy is another angle of this because to completely give up the public perception of what's going on to the state is seen as a bad thing. So, but this is absolutely a contentious topic.

I think people in Atlanta have a lot of nuanced conversations about this. And media stuff is handled with a lot more intention here than it has been in the Pacific Northwest. That is my subjective opinion. But based on – I mean it's a smaller community, so I think maybe it's easier. It does seem like there's more solidarity within the community and more of a shared vision i would say that's true there is the community is forced to reinforce itself it is small enough that it cannot treat people as disposable um it needs to maintain the people that it has and so people work through problems people work through conflicts and ways to actually resolve

it and keep going to build everyone up and make them stronger there is a shared community space which i've i've been to a few times um and i think even just something like that is is so is so useful in being able to actually keep something that resembles a community you see a lot of like anarchists um talk about how like community isn't a real thing there There isn't actually community, you know, and in a lot of places I would say that's, that's true. A lot of places are just click driven,

you know, a scene drama. It, it, it honestly gets towards or like interesting conflict if you don't want to use the word drama. Whereas circular firing squad type shit. Yeah.

Whereas here there is such a feeling of actual community. Like that, that actually is a thing here because people are forced to foster it. We're in the South. We're surrounded. You know, you're, you're surrounded by a lot of people who want to hurt you.

Atlanta is the most surveilled city. There's so many different police forces. There's a police force for Fulton County. It's police force for DeKalb County. there's a police force for Atlanta, there's the Georgia State Patrol, there's the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, there's the Georgia Department of Homeland Security. So many agencies are involved in this. There's so much outwards threats to people that you really are forced to keep people, uh, keep people close and, and trust the people around you because the consequences are quite dire. Um, so people take things very

seriously and they put a lot of thought into, into a lot of, into a lot of things. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, that, that also gels with my own experience in the South, right? I mean, that also gels with my own experience in the South, right? It's easier to find communities of people who are doing anything kind of radical because there's that bunker mentality, right? You're under siege. You're surrounded on all sides. That's very different when you go to a place where there's kind of more like what would be in other places deviancy is more the norm. And yeah, I guess that that is probably has a lot to do with the fact that this forest defense has so far been so successful in delaying the construction of this facility. Which it has. Construction deadlines continue to have been passed

and been passed and been passed. It has at the very least showed that stuff like this can be resisted and significantly delayed. And at this point, they're projecting construction won't be complete for about four more years. And again, these deadlines keep getting pushed back and back. And that is really what the movement is trying to do. Keep these deadlines getting pushed back and back until they just give

up on the project or try to put it somewhere else. And if they try to put it somewhere else, then the forest was defended, but then there's still the stop cop city aspect of being like, yeah, it can go somewhere else, but we don't want it there at all. And then at that point, the movement would change very significantly. But in terms of the defend the Atlanta forest aspect of this, the whole goal is to make this as unenticing as possible. And there's a multitude of strategies involved in that, including stuff like propaganda, agitprop, media strategy, sabotage, direct action call-in campaigns, stuff about pressuring the construction agencies, all those sort of things. That's so much more, because what you're talking about is what we call in sort of conflict

studies, a strategy of friction, right? And so much, there's always so much focus on kind of these, like we had in Portland in 2020, these like grand moments that are are very visually spectacular of resistance but what actually what actually wins because the state has the ability to take a lot of hits it is a it is a durable force and if you're going up against a durable force the only way to win victories is to be durable yourself and to wear away at them. It's friction. And I think that's still the winning play, is to keep up pressure. It's just the kinds of pressure, especially now that they've cleared out the tree sitters and

stuff, and now that we've seen what they're going to do to people who are arrested at demonstrations, the kinds of friction that can be applied have to change. Otherwise, the movement's going to get worn down before the state does in this fight. Something that Tortuguita has said is that the state is very good at doing violence. We cannot beat the state at violence. The, the state's good. The state will probably win that game. That's,

that's, that's the entire point of the state that it like the state has a monopoly on violence. That is the entire point. They will win that. but there, but there are other ways where we can see successes and we have seen successes before.

Um, so it's not over it will probably grow and change um what actually happens will remain to be seen but i am um just i'm prepping to go through a whole bunch of my audio files and uh yeah welcome to that hell. And pieced together kind of a pretty succinct deep dive that is a true successor to the original On the Ground at the Defend the Atlanta Forest episodes that I did last May. Well, I look forward to that.

I'm sure I know everyone else is as well. Thank you for going over there and being in the thick of it. And yeah, we'll continue to cover this story as best we can, whatever comes in the future. All right. I think that's an episode. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com,

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