It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 71

Episode Date: February 18, 2023

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or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I collect my roommate's toenails and was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko.

It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous strangers as a fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's very interesting. Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. around 8 a.m wednesday january 18th a forest defender who went by torteuita, sent out a text message that read, Morning Raid. Please help. Just minutes prior, a multi-agency coalition of heavily armed law enforcement officers, led by the Georgia State Patrol, began a raid on the Walani Forest in southeast Atlanta. Encampments have sprung up throughout the forest since November of 2021, in protest and militant opposition to a proposed militarized police training facility with a mock city to practice combating civil unrest in the wake of 2020. acres of the Wolani, or South River Forest, to construct this sprawling, state-of-the-art police compound, with a starting budget of $90 million for its first phase of construction.

The police raid on January 18th, 2023 started off pretty similar to previous raids that had taken place in the prior months. But for the Georgia State Patrol, seemingly it was their first time leading such a raid in the woods. Police shut down the parking lot at Entrenchment Creek Park and nearby streets before entering the tree line with guns drawn. Within the first hour, SWAT teams arrested two people in the woods and destroyed multiple tents. And then shortly after 9 a.m., forest defenders in the woods reported hearing a rapid sequence of about a dozen gunshots. Quickly, news spread that Georgia State Patrol officers shot and killed a protester in the woods who was defending the forest, and that a state trooper was being sent to Grady Hospital with a bullet wound.

that a state trooper was being sent to Grady Hospital with a bullet wound. After the gunshots rang in the air, police were quick to publicize a palatable sequence of events depicting an exchange of gunfire. Rather predictably, the police claimed that the deceased force defender had surprised the armored SWAT team and fired first. This is Peter, a force defender I talked with a few days after the shooting. So luckily I was in the woods on that day. Just on a whim, I decided to stay in town. The day of the shooting was really jarring. Trying to figure out who was safe and who was unaccounted for was like the main thing on my mind for most of the day. And by the afternoon, I realized that it was probably tort.

The last message that he sent was at 8 a.m. saying, morning raid, please help. And the shooting was at 9 a.m. It was a weird space to be in of knowing that it was likely tort a Gita that had died, but not being able to grieve yet because not really having confirmation. The only eyewitnesses were the police.

And then all the other witnesses just like heard noises. In contradiction to the exchange of gunfire narrative, activists on the ground reported hearing a single burst of gunfire and suspected that the injured trooper was hit by friendly fire and cautioned against taking police narrative as fact due to cops' track record of lying about police killings and covering for fellow officers. Here's Sam from the Atlanta Community Press Collective for more information about the sequence of events that day. We know from speaking to people who were in the area on that day that PD, on that day that PD, well, the various police agencies that were involved in the raid

began the operation around maybe 7.30 or 8. Records show that two people were arrested maybe 30 to 40 minutes before tort was shot. Tort was shot around 9 a.m um some of our our sources that were in the woods at the time say they only heard like one i guess you could call it a volley of gunfire followed by a large boom you can speculate a lot about those statements, but they were pretty independent. They were almost all identical and independent of each other.

We know that... Sorry, it's hard to talk about. Yeah. It wasn't until late into the night that people in the movement were able to confirm that the person killed by the Georgia State Patrol was Manuel Teran, also known by their forest name Tortuguita, which means little turtle. Afro-Venezuelan, 26-year-old forest defender, described by friends and loved ones as your friendly neighborhood anarchist, as a kind, earnest, fierce, welcoming, funny, exceedingly helpful, and brave person. They were an artist, an urban farmer, a trained street medic, and heavily involved in mutual aid all across the South.

This is It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis, or just Gare, and after checking in with friends and various people I know in the movement, I made my way down to Atlanta late Wednesday night. I've been reporting on and writing about the Defend the Forest and Stop Cop City movement since summer of 2021. Last year, in 2022, I put out around six hours of audio related to the forest encampments, protests, organizing, weeks of action, and the forgotten history of the prison farm that operated on the land Cop City is slated to be built on. Cop City is slated to be built on. But these new episodes serve as a follow-up to the two-part series from last May titled On the Ground at Defend the Atlanta Forest. But the various updates put out since then will certainly help fill in the gaps. This four-part series will feature interviews with forest defenders, audio clips from On the Ground in Atlanta, interviews with forest defenders, audio clips from on the ground in Atlanta, and accounts on what's changed the past few months. Episode one, which you're listening to right now, will largely cover the events around the shooting itself. Episode two will get into who Tortuguita was as

a person and the stories about them from friends and comrades. Episode 3 and 4 will cover protests in the wake of the police killing, state repression, and how the movement might evolve going forward. Due to increasing state repression, we will be using a mix of voice distortion and redubbed voice replacement for some of the interviews and discussions I had with forest defenders on the ground in Atlanta. Speaking of, the next forest defender you're going to hear from is Cricket, talking about their experiences the day of the shooting. I mean, I can obviously only speak for myself.

For me, it was terrifying. We had obviously already lived through the raid in December, but when we heard someone had been shot and killed, it was terrifying, in part because of the complete lack of information. We had so few details for so long, and it wasn't, at least for me, it wasn't until the following day that I found out that it was tort. And it was just devastating. I mean, there's not really words for it. It was like, it felt like the world stopped and then kept going, but it shouldn't have. Like, it felt like it should have stayed stopped. Like, it shouldn't have kept turning. After the deadly shooting in the morning,

the police continued their multi-agency raid of the Wolani Forest in a pretty regular fashion, with cops reportedly firing pepper balls at people up in tree houses and making arrests throughout the day, into the night, and even the next morning. I think a total of seven folks were arrested in the forest that day. It might have been six. Six arrested on the day Tort died, and then one person remained the last tree sitter. The last person arrested in the deadly police raid was up in the trees overnight and surrounded by police for about 20 hours straight. All seven people arrested in the forest were charged with criminal trespassing and domestic terrorism. There was one person who remained in a tree set

because we had some communication with them throughout the night. They were just like perched in their climbing rig in a tree for about 12 hours until a little after sunrise when DeKalb County SWAT moved in and took them into custody, I guess you could say, as they were trying to repel back up the tree. They had been in the tree pretty much the whole day and then all night. They ran out of food and water, I think sometime after nightfall. And then after dark, they were turning their phone on and off to conserve battery. So it was a little sporadic. They were

able to send us some pictures of two cops standing in the platform of like a truck you would use to work on a telephone pole. And they both had like the SWAT operator helmets on and one of them had a long gun. And then later on in the evening, four or five police cars just like backed up to the tree. And just like surrounded the tree and shown their spotlights up in the tree. And they didn't, the cops didn't, they were up there overnight. They didn't say anything. They were just waiting. They were just waiting for the sun to

come up so SWAT could move in. The night of the shooting, before we even knew who was killed, there was a small vigil turned to march in the Little Five Points neighborhood of Atlanta. The first 24 hours after the shooting were extremely hectic, as many people were not even sure who the police had killed. Obviously, the first thing on everyone's mind was who was killed. And by late Wednesday night, some folks that help us source our reporting came to us saying that they believed it was this person, that they believed it was tort. A lot of people's friend was just murdered by the police and folks wanted to get ahead of the police narrative. And as a community press collective, of course, we wanted to support the community in that. So we just immediately offered to post whatever Tort's family, and I believe their partner consented to.

That was the primary thing once the community had kind of definitively identified that it was Tort, was obtaining consent from those closest to tort to publish their name, any pictures, details. And we wanted to give people a way to help tell everyone who was about to be paying a lot of attention to the story who tort actually was and not who the police would like people to think tort was state agencies were swift in their attempts to control the narrative surrounding the deadly raid hours after the killing the georgia bureau of investigation set up a press conference as the raid was very much still ongoing. First, a GBI spokesperson explained the purpose of the raid. The operation's goal is to secure the site of the future City of Atlanta Public Safety Training Center. Next, GBI Director Mike Register gave his account of the day's events so far.

As you are aware, a few weeks ago, several individuals were arrested for domestic terrorism in the area around the future site of the public safety training facility. This morning, the GBI, with other local state law enforcement agencies, such as the Cal PD, Atlanta PD, the Georgia State Patrol, and Georgia DNRR conducted a planned clearing operation to remove individuals who were illegally occupying the area. At approximately 9 o'clock this morning as law enforcement was moving through various sectors of the property, an individual without warning shot a Georgia State Patrol trooper. Other law enforcement personnel returned fire and self-defense

and evacuated the trooper to a safe area. The individual who fired upon law enforcement and shot the trooper was killed in the exchange of gunfire. The GBI is working, the officer involved shooting, and the investigation is still active and fluid. The circumstances was an individual confronted law enforcement, and I don't think that he was seen until he fired. I'm not sure, right? Later that day, a GBI statement claimed that officers located Tort inside a tent in the woods and that they

did not comply with verbal commands from law enforcement officers. The day after the woods, and that they did not comply with verbal commands from law enforcement officers. The day after the shooting, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation also announced that there is no body cam footage of the incident. They also claimed that 25 campsites were located and removed Wednesday, and that, quote, mortar-style fireworks, edged weapons, pellet rifles, gas masks, and a blowtorch were recovered, unquote. After people pointed out that the list of recovered items was absent any firearms, the next day, the GBI released a photo of a nine millimeter handgun allegedly found at the scene of the shooting. It was the only firearm police claim they found in their extensive sweep of the forest. The GBI has been, as the independent agency investigating all of this,

has changed their story a little bit, which it was a breaking news story. I think they first went before the cameras at noon when it happened at 9 a.m., not to grant the police any kind of leeway at all, because fuck them. But it was a rapidly evolving situation, as they say. That said, the story changed kind of dramatically over the first few days. They released an initial list of, like, items that had recovered, but it didn't mention a gun. And then when the community kind of said, hey, you said torch shot this trooper, where's the gun? Then a gun was produced. Then when people still didn't believe it, the GBI said that they had a bill of sale for the gun. The GBI and Georgia State Patrol have also come out

and said that they won't release the identity of the trooper for concerns about their safety. Results from an independent autopsy were released on February 3rd. It found 13 gunshot wounds. Attached to the report was a statement from Tortuguita's family, of which I will read, quote, the GBI has claimed that Manny shot an officer and that the bullet matches the gun possessed by Manny. But even if that is true, there are still many unanswered questions. The GBI has selectively released information about Manny's death, says civil rights attorney Jeff Filipovitz. They claim Manny failed to follow orders. What orders? The GBI has not talked about the fact that Manny faced a firing squad, when those shots were fired, or who fired them. While the GBI has publicly stated there's no body camera footage of the shooting, it has not stated whether there is

any audio or other video from other sources, such as aerial drones or helicopters that were used during the time of the incident. The family has contacted the GBI and specifically requested that it released whatever audio and video exists of the incident or any other information that would shed light on what happened. Any evidence, even if it's only an audio recording, will help the family piece together what happened on the morning of January 18th. This information is critical, and it is being withheld, said Brian Spears, a civil rights attorney with nearly five decades of experience litigating police shootings. Unquote.

Whatever you believe about the exact series of events that led to Tort's death, personally, I doubt that we'll ever know what happened for sure. But regardless, the killing of a forced offender at the hands of police, coupled with the domestic terrorism charges, marks a significant escalation in the fight against Cop City. And even environmental activism in this country at large, as this seems to be the first killing of an environmental protester by U.S. law enforcement. As horrific as this escalation is, it's not out of the blue as one might think. All the way back in May of 2022, police were already talking on scanners about using deadly force against Stop Cop City protesters.

Oh, yeah, right? Told you, deadly force against Stop Cop City protesters. Oh, yeah, right? Told you. Deadly force encounter. So last time I was, like, in the woods for a decent amount of time was, like, last spring, last summer. What, how has, in what ways has, like, living in the woods changed since then? Like, what sort of developments, I guess, has there been? Well, one thing that's changed in the day-to-day life in the woods changed since then? Like what sort of developments, I guess, has there been? Well, one thing that's changed in the day-to-day life in the woods in the past several months is that the raids by the police have been more thorough. And so it's required a lot more

vigilance to live in the woods and a lot more being aware of places to run and hide and escape routes. The past few months, police raids have been increasingly violent and destructive, from the demolition of the gazebo in Wolani People's Park to the flattening of community gardens and the trashing of makeshift cafes and kitchens within the forest. Using consistently escalated violent tactics, police have routinely attacked protesters with chemical weapons and rubber bullets, have cut tree limbs and safety lines from under them, and reportedly threatened lethal force, often targeting just peaceful people who were sitting in trees or walking

through the public park. In an article for the Bitter Southerner, an unnamed tree sitter spoke about a police raid in September of 2022, where they described their interactions with law enforcement as such. Quote, they threatened to shoot me. They didn't draw their guns, but they talked about it. Several showed their sidearms while locking eyes with me. They very easily could have killed my friend in the other tree sit. It was fucking nuts. Unquote. And here's a bit from Peter again. of the encampments. It was just something that kept coming up into my mind as a possibility. I think before this happened, though, people were generally under the impression that the police wouldn't murder forest offenders because it would look bad for them. Just a month prior to the deadly January raid, another police raid took place a couple weeks before Christmas, which resulted in the first domestic terrorism charges being levied against people arrested near the forest. In the aftermath of this raid, a spokesperson for the Atlanta Solidarity Fund talked about the developing pattern of police escalation against the protest movement and warned that steadily increasing police repression would lead to protesters being killed.

And it's clear that if the public doesn't respond, if the public doesn't do something about this, that escalation is going to continue. Are we going to end up in a situation where the police are murdering protesters in order to advance not public safety, but their particular political agenda in building Cop City? The use of inflated charges like domestic terrorism not only make

life for the people charged a living hell, it also lays the narrative groundwork to justify extreme physical escalations of force and increasingly brutal crackdowns. Take it from the GBI director himself. As Director Miles said, I'm Director Mike Register of the GBI. And over the last several months, law enforcement and portions of our community have experienced growing criminal behavior and terroristic acts committed by individuals and groups concerning the building of Atlanta's new public safety training center. These individuals and groups have attempted to disguise their activities as being protests against the building of this facility. I'm going to read a short quote from an article for the Inhabit Territories newsletter

that sums this up nicely. Quote, the violent escalation which led to this murder comes during increased and coordinated repression against the movement to defend the Atlanta forest. Where the movement has built a diverse and welcoming community through years of organizing, the police have used every tactic to badmouth, harass, threaten, surveil, criminalize, and attack participants. Unquote. One of the forest offenders I spoke with, who goes by Noah, talked about coming to terms with something that everyone kind of knew was a possibility, but still had this element of shock and disbelief. I think it was really shocking.

I think any time you introduce police into a situation, you have the possibility of somebody dying. That's what cops do. They murder with impunity. So I think anybody who was out in the forest, anybody who spent time in and around activism against the police knows that this is a thing that can happen to people fighting against various types of state power. But it was really, really shocking. I think everyone was just kind of at a loss. Personally, I mean, it just kind of like... I don't know. I sat with it for a really long time. It was just kind of like... There was an area of disbelief to it, just kind of knowing that like

these were the people that we are fighting against, and this is the type of thing that they're capable of. But she's been very shocked and really scared that this is where we were, that the police were now killing activists, and, you know, in all likelihood going to get away with it was a really terrifying implication for the future of the movement and for the future of all social struggles in the U.S. Following news of the shooting, the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which provides bail and legal assistance to political prisoners, protesters, and activists, put out a statement saying,

quote, Georgia State Patrol's story is suspect. They've released few details. We are concerned a police cover-up could be underway. We are preparing a legal team to investigate and pursue a wrongful death suit. Unquote. Here's Cricket again talking about the trustworthiness of the official information being released about the shooting. And I mean, we still have so little information. And the information that we do have is so tainted. It's so untrustworthy that it doesn't actually feel like information at all. It doesn't feel like we can, it doesn't feel like information we can trust. That's sort of the long and short

of it. Last month, over 1300 climate justice and racial justice groups from across the United States joined Atlanta residents and community organizations in calling for an independent investigation into the killing of Tortiquita. In any police shooting, you'd like to see an independent investigation because how can you let the person who shot the gun investigate the crime, right? So it was a pretty easy thing to call for, but especially given the inconsistencies in everyone's story. You know, the GBI has said, has changed a couple times, like the sequence of events. And that first, like, tort surprised them.

Then they surprised tort. Then tort was in a tent. You know, the narrative has changed a couple times. GSP, Georgia State Patrol, also does not wear body cams. And that's just a day-to-day thing for them. I hate to say it, but that's not something they did specifically for this raid, just to screw the movement over. It's actually the pretty well-known issue in the state. They're refusing to wear body cams, considering how many people they kill every year.

It has come out that APD says that they have body cams after the incident. Yes. We know the raid was kind of a joint operation between Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Georgia State Patrol, Atlanta Police Department, DeKalb County Police Department, and some other state agencies. Georgia State Patrol seems to

have been the ones in the immediate area when it seems to have been a trooper that shot Tort. Atlanta Police first came out and said that there was no body cam footage, that they weren't there and it seems to be true that they weren't in the immediate area when the shot was fired, but they kind of later had to correct themselves and say, well, we have body cam of the incident, but we're not going to release it.

Like of the incident itself or like, like during the time of the incident. Yes. Of what their officers were doing in the part of the raid they were doing. They were enacting when Tork was shot. I have seen claims from both local media and law enforcement that the GBI investigation does qualify as independent, framing the GBI's investigation into the actions of the Georgia State Patrol as this separate, non-biased operation, despite the GBI being fellow participants in the deadly raid. As an interesting little side note, the Georgia State

Patrol and the Bureau of Investigation began in the late 1930s as two branches of the same agency, the Georgia Department of Public Safety. So the standard in the state, I'm sure a lot of places, when a person is shot by the police, you get a supposedly independent agency to review it. In Georgia, it's usually the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. But the GBI was a participant in the raid. The GBI has been involved in, the GBI has been present for several forest raids.

Open records requests show that they've been involved in emails and conversations about the forest for quite some time now. We know their agents were on scene, were probably in the woods when tort was shot. In addition to that, they're both state agencies. In addition to that, they're still police. Police are going to cover for each other. We know this by now. A day after the shooting, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation stated that there was no body cam footage of the incident, but open records requests were filed asking for body cam footage from the forest around the time of the incident, not only from the state patrol, but also from the

Atlanta and DeKalb County Police Departments. Two days after the police killing, an Atlanta PD spokesperson said that APD officers were not in the area of the shooting and that no footage from Wednesday's operation would be released, citing the ongoing investigation. And then a whole three weeks after the shooting on February 8th, the Atlanta Police Department released body cam footage from four officers who were in the woods at the time of the shooting. An officer in the group estimated that they were just 100 feet away. I'm not going to play audio of the gunshots or any use of police weapons, but I'll be including a few brief snippets of police chatter that I and others found relevant. Most of the clips will only be a few seconds long, so you can skip ahead if you want. I'll give you a heads up. At time of

recording, there are four videos released, and they show a self-described quote-unquote clearing operation being done by a single group of APD officers. Shortly after tearing apart and slicing up two tents with a pocket knife, suddenly four gunshots are heard nearby, followed a second and a half later by a large volume of gunfire. I estimate over 30 gunshots fired by multiple weapons. No verbal commands were picked up by the microphone. Two chest-mounted cameras were rolling before the shooting. 45 seconds after the gunfire, APD officers were told to turn on their body cams, and two more cameras began rolling at that point. Officer down started getting repeated over the radio,

but initially there were questions among officers about how much of the sounds heard were fireworks versus gunshots. Multiple officers identified hearing suppressed gunfire, meaning the use of a quote-unquote silencer. Here's two clips totaling around 15 seconds. No, that sounded like suppressed gunfire. Yeah, yeah. Just minutes after police opened fire and killed Tortuguita, an APD officer on the ground said this in response to the Georgia State Patrol trooper that was shot. You fucked your own officer up. You fucked your own officer up, possibly said in response to other officers noting that the gunshots sounded

suppressed. Confirmation spread on the ground that a state trooper was shot, but never once mentioning anything about a protester firing. Police continued advancing toward a nearby tent with guns drawn and officers yelling back and forth to check their crossfire. Watch the crossfire, guys. Crossfire. Watch the crossfire. Say your line. Say your line. As teams were organizing the evac of the injured trooper and warning about crossfire, police stated that they did not want to cause another incident. We just need to hold until we can get them out. Get the officer out first. We don't want to cause another incident. At this point, there was a great deal of intentional coordination of officer movement and a lot of effort being put into preventing police officers from being in each other's

line of fire. This next batch of audio will be a little bit longer, about a minute. Hey, watch crossfire over there. Watch crossfire. We're on the other side. Listen, listen, listen to what I'm saying. Everyone is back here, so we need to shift. Everyone is back here. So if y'all shoot from that side,

there's more officers over here, so we need to shift back to this side of the tent. Hey, Sergeant Hill, Potter, come this way. We're going to shift this way. Potter, come on. All right. Go around the trailer side. Go around? Okay, cool. We're going around the other side. Got you, got you, got you. Go around the channel side. Go around? Okay, cool. We're going around the other side.

Got you. Got you. Got you. Go around. Hold on. Hey, hold on. Hold on. Wait right there.

Wait right there. Wait right there. I got you. I got you. Wait right there. Check this semi-circle. I got you. This is the base of our semi-circle.

Everyone needs to switch back this way. Hey, keep coming this way. Keep coming back this way. You good? You got me? Anybody get in contact with anyone from either GSP or unit? Who is that right there? It's a sergeant.

Is that Chandler? They need who? Police started firing off flashbangs and prepping chemical weapons as they moved further into the woods near where the deadly police shooting just took place moments prior. Police! K-9, or you won't be picked! Fuck around and you're gonna find out! From another angle, you can hear a cop laugh in response to his fellow officer threatening, fuck around and find out, just minutes after police killed a protester.

Fuck around and you're gonna find out! If you listen carefully, you can hear an officer muttering about how large the police presence is, saying, we've got so many resources, we don't need to rush this shit. Stand by for one second. We've got so many resources, we don't need to rush this shit. Cops shot off quote-unquote less lethal pepper balls at an unoccupied green tent and only ended up gassing themselves as they had to walk through the peppered up trees on their way to the tent. Literally, there was over a minute and a half of just straight coughing. When they arrived at the tent, officers got into a brief conversation about the deadly shooting that just took place and the injured trooper.

Did they shoot their own man? Uh-huh. We don't know where he got shot by. Remember that just two hours after the shooting, even before the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's first press conference, the Defend the Force Twitter account said, quote, we have reason to believe the officer shot today was hit by friendly fire and not by the protester who was killed, unquote. In an extremely uncharacteristic move, the GBI put out a statement commenting on the evidence during their ongoing investigation, cautioning against quote-unquote speculation and that quote, memory and perception are fragile and a myriad of

factors can influence perception and memory, unquote. The morning after the body cam footage went public, a statement was released by Tortuguita's family, quote, the videos show the clearing of the forest was a paramilitary operation that set the stage for the excessive use of force, and also call into question previous reporting regarding the events leading up to the police shooting, unquote. Tort's own mother, who recently arrived in the United States on an emergency visa, said weeks ago in an interview for The Guardian, quote, I will go to the U.S. to defend Manuel's memory. I'm convinced that they were assassinated in cold blood, and I'm gonna clear Manuel's name. They killed them, like they tear down the trees in the forest. A forest Manuel loved with a passion, unquote.

the trees in the forest, a forest Manuel loved with a passion, unquote. There is an official GoFundMe for Torteguita managed by and for their family, with funds going to funeral expenses, plus travel, legal costs, and to support the family in general during this time of immense grief. The fundraiser will be linked in the show notes. This first episode has been a lot, tackling many of the most gruesome aspects of the struggle thus far. Cricket talked about one way of responding to this influx of anger and grief that everyone's been experiencing since the shooting. Yeah, I mean, there's just been so much grief and so much anger and so many people coming together and so many people trying to support one another.

There's been, at least among the folks I know, a lot of trying to think through, like, what would Tort do, WWTD? And, like, loving one another and supporting one another keeps being one of the first things on that list. We will hear more about Tortuguita in the next episode, memories and stories from friends, partners, and comrades based on conversations and moments from the vigil. But today I'll leave us with the words of Tortuguita, quote, the abolitionist mission isn't done until every prison is empty, when there are no more cops, when the land has been given back, that's when it's Music for this episode by The Narcissist Cookbook and Propaganda.

See you on the other side. The rain on leaves tickling, the earliest of instruments. and propaganda. See you on the other side. fragrance of her flowers it continued to invite us the medicine materials our vitamins our minerals and all that is essential which just grew right beside us enticed us started fighting over the gifts that she provide us scorching the very soil that all of us derive from and when empires learn and can't withstand fire we return to the land where our ancestors reigned dance we are all her creatures we still bear her features the one and only reason all living things is breathing The city's deceiving, leave, go see the dirt Young'll be among the lungs of Mother Earth

Before you found your voice, there was a chorus Before you take your throne, you must restore it Before your flesh and bone, there's what you build on Welcome, I'm Danny Trejo. 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. 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. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez

and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help 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. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show.

I live with my boyfriend, and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. A lot of things have changed in the woods since I visited last year.

changed in the woods since I visited last year. The Entrenchment Creek Park trailhead at Wolani People's Park is now basically a massive mud pit. The trees cut down and all the grass gone. Sidewalks and bike paths have all been turned into rubble. As we talked about in the last episode, the police have been increasingly destructive during their more and more frequent raids on the forest. In the past year, the cops have demolished dozens of treehouses and targeted protesters with escalatory tactics. The last 13 people who have been arrested near the forest have all been charged with domestic terrorism for their mere association with the Stop Cop City movement. As hard as the cops are making it to continue being in the woods, there is still something undeniably special about being in community in the forest, or else people wouldn't be risking life and legal consequences.

Living in the woods for me was like a dream. I came to the woods because I was homeless and unemployed and was actually living in different woods by myself. And Tort actually came to the woods for similar reasons. Tort lost their housing in Tallahassee and decided to give this place a try as a place to live. In the forest, there was always a, you know, over time just developed like, you know, over time just developed, like, you know, people built coffee shops and, like, a kitchen that people used and places for people to just, like, hang out

and do shit at. And that continued the whole time. That never stopped. People never stopped building. They never stopped making life out there as comfortable and as welcoming and as a community based as possible. That's really the best thing I feel like I could speak to on it, is that no matter what was going on,

people were always working to make the forest as welcoming of a space to as many people as possible as they could. The night of the December 13th police raid, Tortuguita went back to the camp in Wolani People's Park to start rebuilding after police tore down the encampments and protest infrastructure just hours prior. I've never experienced such emotional and material security as I have living in the Wolani Forest because there are a community of people that are dedicated to taking care of each other and making sure that we all have our needs met.

And that was something that Tort and I did for each other often, making sure that we had enough water and food and rides to places. It's really a wonderful place to live, and also deep in my relationship to the earth. Being there, like living with the same trees for over a year, is a really profound experience. And also, it's a really stressful place, and people are always butting heads in really interesting ways. But we're committed to remaining in relationship with each other. That's part of the magic, too, is that if you get into a fight with someone at camp, you don't just, you know, like move to a different apartment and stop talking to them. Like, they're still around, and they're still a comrade.

So we're committed to each other in a way that's rare to find in this society. Here is Cricket talking about the type of support everyone has for each other in the movement, and how tort really embodied that. I think one of the things I've seen in my experience at the movement is just the tremendous amount of care that everyone has for one another. You don't have to know one another. We don't have to be on a legal name basis, and that everyone has for one another. You don't have to know one another. We don't have to be on a legal name basis, and we still fight for one another.

We still protect one another. We still try to save one another. And that is something I saw tort embody regularly. And I'm grateful to everyone who has helped keep me safe. And I always, yeah, I'm always trying to keep everyone else safe in any capacity that I can. So we've done a lot of safety trainings. Something that TORT was a really big part of was medic trainings, making sure that people have access to life-saving techniques and skills that are often kept away from really vulnerable folks. So that is something we've been trying to

contribute and that we're trying to continue now that TORTA is no longer with us. We were supposed to meet yesterday to put together a curriculum of marginalized vulnerable people who face gun violence, both from the state and from right-wing neo-Nazi fascists, you name it. And we'll be continuing that work in their name. it. And we'll be continuing that work in their name. When spending time in the Wolani forest, and even for the many peripheral aspects of the movement, people will choose a forest name. It's like a nickname that helps hide your legal identity, a nom de plume. Many chose Tortuguita, which is Spanish for little turtle, but it wasn't just chosen for its cute animal association. I'll read from Bitter Southerner, quote, it was a nod to the colonial

era indigenous military commander of the same name who led Native American forces to one of their most decisive victories against the then nascent U.S. Army in 1791. Now, Tort was allegedly apprehensive to share the meaning behind their chosen name with a journalist who was interviewing them because, quote, that does not make us look like peaceful protesters. We are very peaceful people, I promise, unquote. There's a few other quotes attributed to Tort across various articles that seem to espouse a belief in nonviolence as a tactical strategy. Quote, it's incredibly important to continue having popular support. Cop City is incredibly unpopular already. We're very popular. We're cool. We get a lot of support from people who live here, Based on frequent phone calls with Tort about forced defense,

Tortogita's own mother has shared similar sentiments about Tort's politics, saying they, quote, carry no malice, unquote. I'm going to read one more quote from Tortuguita about this topic. The right kind of resistance is peaceful because that's where we win. We're not going to beat them at violence. They're very, very good at violence. We're not. We win through nonviolence. That's really the only way we can win. We don't want more people to die. We don't want Atlanta to turn into a war zone. During my time in Atlanta, I wanted to learn as much as possible about Tortugita, about who they were as a person, what kind of stuff they enjoyed doing, what they were to the movement, but mostly just listen to

people's stories and memories of Tort. Peter met Tort just shortly after they moved to Atlanta. So I met Tort in May of 2022, around the time when they first got to the forest from Tallahassee. I met them during that week of action and they were like insanely enthusiastic about being there. We met around a fire and talked about how our enthusiasm for life sometimes offended people. That was something that we had in common. They talked about their mom a lot. I won't say I was a close friend of Tort's, but I was a dear comrade to them, and being in relationship with them really sharpened my conflict skills. I was in a few different conflicts with Tort, and also on the sidelines for some conflicts that they had with other people, and I learned a lot about how to be more gentle with my comrades and how to

give people more grace in times of high stress. This is a snippet from my conversation with Cricket on what Tortuguita brought to the movement and how they really lived their politics. Tort was hilarious. They were someone who always brought fun to whatever they were doing. And I'm sure through the folks that you're seeing, the folks that people can see on social media with like the outpouring of support for tort, that they were involved in so many different groups, like so many different causes. And they were, they were an incredibly dedicated activist, but someone who really felt that resistance could be fun, could be joyful, could be celebratory. It was always an opportunity to meet new people, to hug new people. They were a big hugger.

They were someone who was always checking in on other people. They were someone who was always there to lend a hand, either literally or metaphorically. And they really inspired, I think, a lot of people. And I think that that was something huge that they contributed to the movement, not just as a person, but also bringing that joyfulness, bringing that energy, that passion and excitement, really inspired me and inspired a lot of people. It's funny. A lot of the people I've, I've talked to were like, have, have like mentioned just because of the different, like,

you know, affinity groups that they've been in and stuff. There's like a lot of people I've talked to have talked, have mentioned a lot, like that they would not like regularly, but like every once in a while, like get into conflicts with tort like there was there was someone who you would you would sometimes um who there would be just happen to be disagreements with but despite disagreements they were like one of the kindest people that they vet even when they're you know arguing about about something it's like they would go so far to make sure that other people knew that they were cared for and would go and just be very open towards everybody they meet. Yeah, I think they really tried to live into and walk the walk of abolition and non-carceral

conflict. Of it's okay to disagree and disagreement doesn't mean that you got to get kicked out. It does not mean that you're a bad person. They allowed for complexity and allowed for processes of working through things, of talking through things. And that's a huge gift. I mean, I think anyone, regardless of their level of activism can relate to the idea that it's hard to disagree. It's hard to be in conflict sometimes. But I do think that they were really committed to building relationships of trust where you could disagree, where you could have differing opinions, but that there was still so much love and still so much

care and that those things were not themselves in conflict. Those things were actually very, very much related and yeah, no, it was, they're special and yeah, I'm just I'm just, sorry. I'm just heartbroken. Tortuguita's partner and a close friend of theirs

recorded a video shortly after the shooting, just talking about who Tortuguita was and how they lived in community. I got permission from their partner to use clips from that video in this episode. Tort was always a very welcoming presence. They're always one of the greatest organizers we had out there. They took care of everyone who came through.

They always wanted to make sure everyone was taken care of. They were the ones who would welcome you into the forest, and they would make sure you have a sleeping bag, a sleeping pad, a tent, whatever you could possibly need, always making sure people are getting fed, and just kind of like the transparent you've never had. One of the people I spoke with, Noah, also talked about how Tortuguito was quick to welcome people into the movement. I knew Tort through various actions in and around the forest

and doing medical work with them. I think a lot of people have echoed this, but I remember them as being one of the kindest, most welcoming people that I ever met working out in the forest. Kind of whenever we had new people come in, Tort was very often one of the first people to greet them. I was always very open to letting people come and see and be a part of the community that had been established out in the woods. It was an extremely welcoming place, and they were a very welcoming person.

I was always willing to put down to help somebody out and to do the work it took to make sure that the community was safe out there and that it could continue. So much of the stuff around the forest, it's all about like the militants in the woods. And tort kind of fell into that category. You know, people who are wearing balaclavas camping out in the forest. Most of the people I've interviewed are also more on that side of things. But not everyone feels like they have the ability to put on a ski mask and live in the woods. One of the people I spoke with was a mother named Karen who started doing local neighborhood organizing after connecting with Tortuguita last summer. So I met Tort last summer, and there was like lots of things happening in the park. I met Tort last summer and there was like lots of things happening in the park.

And, you know, I'm a neighbor. And so I was the who really fought for, you know, tried to get the city council to vote against it. And so I was interested, you know, curious and interested about all of these events happening at the park. They were all like mostly at nighttime. And I have a toddler. And so I'm like boring and have a strict bedtime. And so I don't, you know, go out at nighttime and I have a toddler and so I'm like boring and have a strict bedtime and so I don't you know go out at nighttime um so I was like trying to find a place for me and like people like me and other boring you know parents and so I got connected um with tort and we start and I we started I guess going during the daytime and I'm taking my toddler over there to the park to explore.

And, you know, we, Tort and I talked a lot about, well, first they were really excited about all the, the idea like children being at the park. They really wanted it, the park to be for everyone. I'm very much like a neighborhood mom. I was new to activism and I didn't even know I was like, you know, I thought we were just like visiting a park. But you know, there's like a whole lot of different things about being in it that really kind of helped me navigate and showed me around. In my experience, it takes a special kind of person to onboard somebody new to this sort of thing. Some anarchists can come off as a bit pompous sometimes, or at least hesitant to welcome new people in. Karen spoke on how Tortuguita kind of showed them the ropes and helped educate on everything from

local organizing to security culture. Well, I didn't have Signal before. I was like, okay, I want to reach out to try and make my neighborhood aware. I made flyers and just like put like the environmental effects, you know, and I send it to tort and they were like, okay, yeah, this looks good. And then I was like, should it just be like anonymous or should I, you know, like make like Instagram or should I put my name on it? And, you know, all those things. Should I put my number on it? And they were like, okay, well get a Google voice number and you can set up like an email for it. Maybe use Proton. Then I was like, should I just like, I don't have to put any information on it, but like, what if, you know, there's people like me in the neighborhood?

I guess, like, how do you balance that? And they said, no, I think if you got to like organize a neighborhood group, it would be sick. So, yeah, you know, they were conscious of all those things, but also like knew where, when, and where it was like appropriate. And we just like bounced ideas back and forth. They really helped me like navigate that. I really think it just shows how inclusive they were, that they like how they were engaged with me. I'm like, you know, an older neighborhood mom, but they were really supportive and, you know, I guess made me feel valued, never made me feel embarrassed about anything. I think it was just like, if it wasn't about like the party or I don't know, like being

cool or anything, they just really wanted the forest to be for everyone and just how they were like willing to engage with the community. My conversations with Karen and others in Atlanta really showed Tort as a person who was always thinking about others and how to support the people around them. Not even just focusing on themselves while living in the forest, but working to expand that care outwards. So yeah, I made this flyer and twerk called a bunch of other, I don't even know if they were people that were living in the forest or just people and, you know, friends or whatever, but, um, and was like, hey, we're all going to go canvas. And I think they slept in that day. We met at the park, but me and a couple of neighbors met, like, you know, and I was,

I had zero expectations. And they texted me later and was like, I'm so sorry, but we'll do it again. But yeah, just that, you know, like they were willing to come put flyers door to door. And yeah, just like support me in that way. Karen has continued to do neighborhood organizing since meeting Tort last summer and is a great example of the variety of people involved in the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement. Based on the many local people she's spoken with, Karen says the Stop Cop City proposal is pretty unpopular in the area. So, yeah, we've just been like dropping flyers off and just letting them know the environmental effects. And everyone we've talked to, like, you know, no one wants it.

And I think lots of people, lots of them aren't called in, you know, to city council. But, yeah, I guess Tort and I and our kind of idea was like, if we can make a space, it's like, you know, they may not want to go to the forest, but if we can kind of create a space for them in the movement. Cricket talked about the many projects that Tort had a hand in and its willingness to just go out there and do things, not just sit around and wait for the world to get better. They lived anarchism in a very active way. I don't know if anyone mentioned the trans sanctuary

that Tort built and helped organize. I just wanted to uplift that as just another sort of amazing project that they were involved with. I remember hearing about it, Tort talked about it, and they were like, oh yeah, you about it, talked about it, and they were like, oh yeah, you know, we're going to have a volunteer day. And then two weeks later, we had like another little check-in and they were like, oh yeah, no, we like did it. And I was like, excuse me? Like, I just, I don't know. They were just like this Tasmanian devil of social justice.

Like I felt like they were just constantly on the move, getting stuff done, supporting people. It's just, it was, I don't know, like that's just another memory that I keep revisiting of just being like, oh my God, they are not paralyzed. Like they are living. They were living day to day, right? Like they knew that tomorrow could bring another raid. Like they, yeah, they weren't stupid. They were really actually brilliant and they could just, they just lived every day so fully and brought everything they had. A friend of Tortuguita's that goes by the name Levitate the Pentagon, which is definitely in the top three forest names that I've heard, but they gave a statement to Rolling Stone where they said, quote, Tortuguita was a proud and fierce anarchist. The struggle for total liberation

came as their first commitment in life. We must honor that commitment. From a lot of the medical trains that we did together and times out there, they were just really funny. They liked to make people laugh, be a very calming presence

during stressful times. They could make a joke related to joke really out of, like, any situation. But I remember, like, a lot of conversations just about what we were doing in the forest and their, like, reasons for being out there. And they're, you know, just kind of echoing these ideas of combating the state and then the state's push for destroying the forest, for the effects that that would have on the climate, for the increasing ability of the police to militarize and to suppress

not just people in Atlanta, but law enforcement agencies from across the country coming to try and help this facility to better clamp down on uprisings. Yeah, they were just, they were really kind, very tenacious. That's like the two things I can always kind of come back to, obviously, as a person. Tort's capacity for wit under high-stress situations is something I heard from a lot of different people, including Tortorts' friends and their partner. Just really, really, like, always, like, had a joke, had, like, a really, like, good, sharp commentary,

or would, like, give you, like, a cigarette. Professional shit poster. Yeah, yeah. I mean, their meme game. On point. On point. Yeah, and... yeah i mean their meme game on point on point um yeah and just always like doing a lot of things and so they were running around a lot like getting things for people and then handing it off to them and so like yeah i think a lot of the times when we would run into, like, oftentimes we'd run into each other,

it'd be like, oh, hey, hi, hi, okay, we're doing a thing. And then, like, okay, gotta go, bye. You know, and there's always, like, dee! Like, yeah. Signature. They were super into that. Oh, that smile. Yeah.

They loved fruit snacks, loved them, couldn't get enough of them. And they always helped do the dishes. Can I just say, like, that's a big deal? Yeah, like, no one likes doing the dishes. It's like they were always there doing the dishes. They were like, oh, my God, running water, hot water. Like, I'm in, like, they're like, oh, my God.

And just like, yeah, that's what I want people to know, fruit snacks and dishes. Fruit snacks have come up a lot throughout my conversations with people. Tortiquita's partner and friend also talked about how Tort tried to balance helping other people with their own self-care. They were always so passionate because they wanted to help people so bad that they would put their all into it. It took a toll on them in a lot of ways. But they always were so fucking strong and took on so much more than I ever could. They were an inspiration to us all. They also knew to, like, disappear for, like, hours or days at a time and just, like, recharge.

They read a lot. Oh, yeah. I remember one of the, like, one of the things. They'd just be sitting in their hammock in their tent, near their tent, and just be reading, doing whatever it was they were doing. Shitpost and whatever they could to de-stress. and whatever they could to de-stress. They were good about taking care of themselves, but they did get into some conundrums where they'd get stressed out and then you'd just see them go off on their own

and then come back in a few days and then they're all good again. Happy-go-lucky. I've heard them described as kind, and they definitely were. I think the word that comes to mind the most is earnest. They were just like incredibly earnest. I think like the earnestness I'm talking about is like they truly live their politics. Like anyone can talk about like inclusivity and love and fighting for the future. But they actually, you know, just in how they carried themselves and interacted with me, they really did that.

you know just in how they carried themselves and interacted with me they really did that and lots of people might be like cynical about it or maybe call them like optimistic or naive but they actually lived i feel like love sounds corny but yeah just like a love for people and nature in the forest what was that piece we were talking about? Revolutionary Death? Yes. Yeah, they read that this last summer, and it really had a strong impact upon them. And they, I think you were sharing as well that they had spoken about how they knew it was very possible that they were going to have this revolutionary death. And that... Back to them kind of giving their all. They were prepared and they unfortunately paid the ultimate price. As sad as we all are, I'm sure Torch Kita, wherever they are now,

is happy to know that they gave their all all the way until the end. They were always, they were a true revolutionary and gave their all to this movement. And I think now it's our job to take up that banner and carry on his name, their name.

In multiple ways, escalatory actions of police last December led to the current fatal scenario. Not just with the domestic terror framing as a pretext for using increased force, but also the physical destruction of treehouses, resulting in people being out in more vulnerable positions. They were very calculated in their risks, and they would never have had to be put in this situation if their home in the trees hadn't been destroyed. They lived in a treehouse, and the treehouse that they were really holding down and staying in was bulldozed in the mid-December raids. On November 21st, 2006, undercover Atlanta Police Department officers executed a no-knock warrant on the home of 92-year-old Catherine Johnston in the Bankhead neighborhood of Atlanta. Police claimed to have evidence that crack cocaine

was being sold out of the house. Officers in plainclothes cut off the burglar bars to Johnston's home of 17 years and broke down her door. According to the police, the 92-year-old woman shot several officers. Multiple cops were treated for gunshot wounds. Katherine Johnston was shot and killed by the police in her own home, where police then claimed to have found marijuana, thanks to an informant who said that they bought drugs at the house. Except every single thing the police claimed was a lie. Earlier that day, an officer had found bags of marijuana in the woods. The drugs were planted on a suspected dealer who didn't have any drugs on him. The officer threatened to arrest the suspected dealer

if he didn't give up information leading to an arrest. The man gave the police an address on Neal Street and a fake name to buy cocaine with. The APD claimed the police were raiding the house because an informant had bought crack at Johnston's home. It turns out all of the injuries to officers came from friendly fire. They fucked up their own guys. The cops fired a total of 39 shots, five or six of which hit Johnston. As a 92-year-old woman living alone, she owned a rusty revolver for self-defense. As these unannounced strangers in plain clothes kicked down her door, Johnston did fire once and missed. Three police officers in Atlanta executed Catherine Johnston as they shot each other with

friendly fire. To cover this up, they lied and planted evidence, they ran a smear campaign against Johnston, further victimizing the old woman that they killed, and who the cops knew was innocent. The police in Atlanta have a track record of shooting each other, killing civilians, and lying about it. With that history in mind, this next part might get a little complicated, but I think it's important. A lot of the people who knew Tort have talked about how they often advocated for nonviolence in direct action. Many have said the sequence of events put forth by police just doesn't sound like something Tort would do. And I very much understand this reaction. Police lie all the time, especially when it comes to people the cops have killed. It is very likely that tort really was just

murdered by the cops. But I also think there's part of this reaction that's almost like a self-preservation mechanism, stemming from a worry that if a certain Pandora's box gets opened, what that would mean for the movement and for the struggle against militarized police and ecological collapse more broadly. There's also many scenarios that can lead to a brief exchange of gunfire, especially with the Georgia State Patrol's relative inexperience conducting raids in the forest. You can spend days just thinking of various possibilities for what could have happened, as I'm sure many people in Atlanta have. The recently released body cam makes some things more clear, but also opened up many possibilities to endlessly ruminate about, especially with on-the-ground chatter indicating cops shot each other.

This next person is one of the original forest defenders I interviewed for my previous Defend the Atlanta Forest series from last May. The turret, as their partner stated, as its friend stated, had spoken about being moved by a piece called Revolutionary Death, they did not shy away from the idea that they could die for the things that they believe in.

They did not shy away from the idea that they could be murdered for the ideas that they believe in and the life they want to live. We should dismiss the possibility and reality that people can and maybe even should look at this world, Look at the police murdering three or four people a day. Of the climate catastrophe that we live in. Of the rising tide of fascism. Of the absolute fucking hell that we fucking live in. And think, this can't go on. And I'm willing to do anything and pay anything to make it stop. We can't dismiss that that is a very real, possible grievance.

That is a very real and possible state of mind. And that, if that was towards, if that was toward Kibbitz, if that was Kibbitz, if that was Tord's, if that was Tord Taguita's, if that was Kamele's, if that was its position, that it is not alone, that it and I undoubtedly are not one of that in our willingness to die for what we believe in. Torta Gita, both privately and publicly, talked about an appreciation for nonviolence as a long-term strategy. And the flip side of that is, tort has also been described to me as somebody who acts with intention,

acts with great thought, and if they did decide to do something, they would have had a good reason to, and they would not have chosen to do something if it had the potential to put fellow force defenders in unnecessary danger. Based on some of my conversations, while Tort advocated for the potential of nonviolence as a political strategy, they itself were not solely nonviolent. The Atlanta Police Foundation have lied about every single aspect of this project's development since the start. The GBI said that there was no body cam footage, and the police have spent the last year fine-tuning their propaganda to frame the Defend the Forest movement as a criminal enterprise and anyone protesting against Cop City as a dangerous terrorist and threat to public safety. But there is a difference between mindlessly believing the police narrative and trying to not retroactively take away

somebody's agency, especially if they did make a decision that they thought was the right choice, given the circumstance. Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about the discourse around the ideas. I think a lot of people have been talking a lot about trying to, you know, there's narrative flaws in the police's story about what happened on that raid. There's inconsistencies. We just now got photos of the gun that they're alleging was used just like a couple of days ago, and it was days after the GPI's initial evidence found report. It does all look

suspicious, but I think the thing that's bothered me is that I would never want to take away agency from someone who cannot speak for themselves for an act that they may have committed. If tort shot that cop, that was a shot fired in liberation against the state that murders thousands of people and destroys millions more through the carceral system, the same state that seeks to help the South River flood and to make the soil 20 degrees hotter and to make Atlanta's air quality go down. I would never want to take agency away from my comrade to have done that when they cannot speak for themselves,

and I don't think anybody should try and make it seem like it would have been an unjustified act. A shot fired at the police in defense of the forest is a shot fired in self-defense. Cops shoot each other all the time. I mean, actually, they're terrible with firearms. They're just not good at their jobs. GSP, I think, as a specific agency, is something that needs to be focused on more here. I've seen a lot of people kind of wrap up GSP and APD

and, like, the cab PD as these, like, very, like, just as one agency. GSP, as Georgia State Patrol, is under the direct command of our governor and do not wear body cams as an agency policy. They're the governor's stormtroopers. When he wants something done violently and without accountability, that is who he sends. And, you know, my reaction to all of this, whether or not what the events transpired is that our comrade is dead, our comrade was murdered by the state, whether or not they allegedly fired on an officer, I think the solidarity and rage that people should show should be the same either way. If it were to come out that that officer was in fact shot, I would be so disheartened if people turned their back on our comrade who was slain by the police for what I see as an act of self-defense.

With all of the unknown around what happened the day of the shooting, what we do know for sure I've heard boiled down to two simple points. Tort was killed defending the forest, and they died doing what it loved. The first event-type thing I went to in Atlanta was a noise demo outside a DeKalb County jail Thursday night for the seven people arrested as a part of the deadly raid, all seven of whom are now facing domestic terrorism charges for being in the forest. The next day, Friday the 20th, there was a large public vigil in Wolani People's Park. Last time I was there, it was for the Muskogee Creek Summit near the end of last spring. It was

sunny, I was hanging out in the gazebo listening to ecological presentations, there was a large tent kitchen in the grass, and I got to sit around a table and eat food with people. When I arrived Friday evening for the vigil, the first thing I saw was the destroyed remains of the gazebo, almost on display by the entrance of the torn-up parking lot. It was such a clear visual indicator for how things have changed since the start of last summer. Near the tree line, a few hundred people were gathered around a sort of outdoor shrine. A few large stone slabs overturned, candles, flowers, forest plants, little turtles, pictures, art, cigarettes, and yes, fruit snacks, forming an orange glowing mound. People gathered and shared memories of Tortuguita. Many spoke of its kindness and solidarity with struggles across the South, from the defense of drag shows in Tennessee to mutual aid work in Florida, where they helped build housing in low-income communities hit hardest by hurricanes.

I feel like Portuguita's compassion was something that really shifted the culture in the forest and touched all of the lives of the people that they met. the forest and touched all of the lives of the people that they met um they lived what they believed which is something that i hope we can all be inspired by um there are so many stories of people who were just mentioning to tort like oh i'm in this situation or this happened to my friend and they would just immediately be thinking of ways that community could help them or that they could help them and someone just shared a story with me that the last time that they saw tort they were telling them about how uh the unhoused folks in their community were getting their tents and sleeping bags like swept and then tort gave them 200 to um like replace

the sleeping bags and tents. And I feel like they were just, they had such a sense of kinship with people, even people that they didn't know. They were so connected to like the ways that we are all a part of this web of life. Um, and so committed to living in a way that can bring us all into a better community with each other, whether it be us and our fellow human beings or us and our forests. And they loved these woods. And I feel like the fact that these woods were where they departed from this realm into the next

just makes it that much more important that we protect them and that we make sure that this forest remains intact. I know that that's what Tort would have wanted. That's what they died doing. And I think that in all of the chaos and desperation and devastation that this loss is bringing our community, I think that one of the things that has been keeping me going is remembering the love that tort had for people and for all living beings and just feeling really connected to their compassion um and i hope that that's something i know that that's something that is touching has touched all of us and the ripples

of it are continuing the love that tort brought to this world is still here and is continuing to grow so i think that they're i think that they continuing to grow. So I think that they're here with us. And I think that they always will be because they brought so much joy and goodness and love into this world. And that's something that never goes away. It only grows. I've gotten permission from a few of the people that spoke that night to share some of their stories of Torta Gita. One of the small things that stuck with me was how someone described Tort as possessing a playful, rebellious energy. Tort and I watched this Yugoslav film together called My Father the Socialist Pulak, which was this joyful Yugoslavian film from the 80s about the transition after

World War II in Yugoslavia to autonomous self-rule and breaking apart with the Soviet sphere. And in it, early on in the film, they're changing their social customs. early on in the film they're changing their social customs. They've adopted a new way of greeting each other in Yugoslavia where they say, Good morning, death to fascism! And from that time, when I would see tort, always they would, Death to fascism, comrade!

Death to fascism! And Tor, when I first met them, invited me to teach Aikido in the forest, which is called, it's a martial art that's called the Art of Peace. And so while we train as warriors, we train as peaceful warriors. But as many people have said, we, for instance, did defenses of drag shows in Tennessee from assemblies of Nazis and Proud Boys who showed up in body armor with assault rifles. And tort was militant but joyful. TORT took all of the, that brought, you know, a half a dozen people, was always rallying people, brought people to the drag defense, brought people to the trainings, brought people to my Aikido class, maybe brought two dozen different

people through over the course of several dozen classes. They were a peaceful warrior and they were my squad mate and they got shot dead. And I'd like to lead a chant in that spirit to honor some of Tort's warrior spirit tonight. And I know one that they liked is a anti-capitalista. And we can start together, slow and quiet, and build together a powerful voice, and pierce the night. Ah, anti-capitalista. Ah, anti-capitalista. Ah, anti-capitalist! Thank you.

Throughout the night, many songs were sung alongside screams of rage. Tortuguita actually left a tag with a little red sharpie on the guitar being played at the vigil. It's a little doodle of a cat face next to the words, all cats are beautiful. Somebody at the vigil read out a few of the messages sent in to the remembertortatpr protonmail.com email address, many of which you can now find collected at stopcop.city. That's stopcop.city. One of the things about Tort that was really inspirational is that they weren't just against capitalism. They weren't just against the police. They made abolition about what they were fighting for. And on the We Remember Tort proton mail, a lot of people have been sending in stories about how they contributed so much to each community that they were in.

And I want to read this one that came in from someone in Tallahassee. Everyone in Tallahassee knew Manny. I'm not even exaggerating. They were a part of almost every single organization they could get their hands on in town. Food Not Bombs, The Plant, Live Oak Radical Ecology, International Workers of the World, Tallahassee Community Action Committee, Free Dan Baker, Stopping HB1, ETC. With every person who was lucky enough to be graced with their presence, they felt safe and free to do whatever

they could for the community. They ran a cold night shelter for the homeless practically on their own when the Kearney Center couldn't do it. They helped do grocery deliveries for those in the south side of town for free. They showed up to almost every single meal share that F&B hosted, and this is only a fraction of the work that they did for the Bond community here in Tallahassee and beyond. Manny, I always watched you from the periphery with awe. I always wanted to be your close friend. I wish you could have seen the vigil that we had. You would have been proud. The large overturned stone by the flowers, candles, and fruit snacks at the Wolani Vigil had a message written on it that I read when I returned to the park a few days later.

The Big Boulder reads, Erected in memory of all whose lives were lived and unjustly lost in Wolani Forest. You live on in the trees and are remembered by the land. You will never be forgotten. Until every prison is empty, until every slave is free, until all live without fear, until earth has healed, our work is not done. If it's okay, I'll share another of the messages that I sent. Manny was a close friend, comrade, and above all, constant fighter for working people.

I knew them in Tallahassee through the IWW, Food Not Bombs, and Live Oak Radical Ecology, and I will never cease to be amazed by their tireless activism, their extreme empathy, and their ability to make everyone feel welcomed in radical spaces. They died as they lived, fighting for a better world and defending the forest from destruction in the name of a fascist militarized police force. I hope their name will not be forgotten and that their killer is brought to justice. But more than anything, I hope the cause that they fought for is victorious. Now we mourn this great loss to the Tallahassee and Atlanta communities, but tomorrow we will fight back twice as hard against capitalism in the state so that Tortuguita did not die in vain.

This is another one. They were kind and fierce. They were sweet, extraordinarily funny, conscientious, tender, silly, loving, and one of the most generous people I have met. And that contagious smile and laugh, three exclamation points. I went to bed last night hearing their laughter in my head, loud and beautiful. They somehow were still there to add levity and joy as I screamed, cried, and choked on my own spit all night. And they killed you. You are gone, comrade. I missed you. I miss you. They had a deep understanding of solidarity and struggle. When the cops swept an encampment in my neighborhood without hesitation, they shared their forest funds to get more tents and sleeping bags, because they knew that these are not individual battles, but that these struggles

are inherently tied to one another, that they are part of the same struggle. This is a lesson for the movement that must be carried forward. For them, for all of us, for the strength of the fight to stop Cop City, I will miss how we greeted one another and our meager attempts to make it a thing. Death to fascism, liberation to all people. One of the people playing the Tortugita-tagged guitar at the vigil played a version of Bella Ciao. And I'm just going to read out the way that they described the song. Bella Ciao means goodbye beautiful in Italian.

The song was originally about an Italian partisan who goes out to fight the fascists in the mountains during World War II. And I'd like to dedicate this version to somebody who laid their life down to fight against fascism, militarism, and against the expansion of the police and against the destruction of nature. Somebody who lifted up all of the people they were around, knew so many people, was involved in so many communities, and was just so funny, so loving, so friendly.

And they laid their life down for their community, and to stop Cop City, and to stop militarism and the destruction of nature. They really believed in what they were doing and the way we can honor them is by continuing their fight. Death to fascism. See you on the other side. Outside my window Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao Drags my senses into the sunlight For there are things that I must do Wish me luck now

I have to leave you Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao With my friends now in the forest We're gonna shake the gates of hell And we will tell them, yeah we will tell them Yeah Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao That we Lonnies's not for the franchise.

And wish the bastards dropped and dead. Next time you see me, I may be smiling. Oh, Bella, ciao, Bella, ciao, Bella, ciao, ciao, ciao. I'll be in prison or on the TV. I'll say the forest called me here The world is waking I sign my window Bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao Drive my senses into the sunlight For there are things that I must do

Wish me luck now, I have to leave you Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao With my friends not in the forest We're gonna shake the gates of hell And we will tell them, yeah we will tell them Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao That we lotties, not for the franchise Wish the bastards dropped down dead

Next time you see me, I may be smiling Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao I'll be in prison or on the TV I'll say the forest called me here The world is waking, outside my window A bell a chow, bell a chow, bell a chow, chow, chow Drive my senses into the sunlight For there are things that I must do Oh, wish me luck now, I gotta leave you

Oh, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao With my friends out in the forest We're gonna shake the gates of hell And we will tell them, we will tell them Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao, that we Lonnie's not for the franchise and wish the bastards dropped and dead. Next time you see me, I might be smiling. Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao, I'll be smiling. Bella, ciao, Bella, ciao, Bella, ciao, ciao, ciao. I'll be in prison or on the TV.

I'll say the forest called me here. Next time you see me, I may be smiling. Bella, ciao, Bella, ciao, Bella, ciao, ciao, ciao. I'll be in prison or on the TV. I'll say the forest called me here. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnal, Tales from the Shadows,

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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. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and

try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one

with the green before the storm. Nobody knew exactly what was going to happen at the weekend protest in downtown Atlanta, but there was a sense that something would. Shortly after the Wednesday shooting, a flyer went out calling for a gathering at Underground Atlanta on Saturday, January 21st, and to wear black clothes in mourning. This is It Could Happen Here, I'm Garrison Davis, and I arrived at Underground Atlanta just a bit before 5 p.m. The crowd was still slowly growing, and a bunch of big news cameras were filling up the central area.

As more people filtered in, some who knew Tort went up in front of everyone to share memories of Tortuguita and talk about the continuing fight to defend the forest. Obviously we're all here because Tort was an amazing person and their life meant a lot. But Tort also shared something in common with all of us and that was the values and things that they were fighting for. And all of us are fighting for a great cause and we all have it in common, but it makes us all targets. They will always target us because they don't believe in the things that we believe in,

and they will always be after us. And we all have to stand here and stay together and stay resilient to fight for what we believe in and never let TORC's memory go without honor. If they would kill an innocent person like Tork, someone who loved their community, they won't stop to kill us. They won't stop to kill everyone in that forest. They won't stop to kill anyone who defies them. And that is pretty much all I have to say. That's right! That's right! That's right! That's right!

A few people from the Atlanta Resistance Medics, a local street medic group dedicated to the liberation of medicine and providing medical resources for underprivileged and marginalized people, spoke about Tortuguit they were somebody who protected the people around them. Who went through the training along with the rest of us to be able to provide medical resources to the people that were around them that may not have access to those. No matter what else the news says about tort, they were a protector. Everything

they did was out of love. Everything they did was out of hope for a better world. And I don't care what the police say. I don't care what the media says. I don't care what anybody says. Torb was out here working for a better world. They may want to smear them as an extremist. They were not.

They were out here protecting their fellow people. And that's what we want everybody to remember about them, is that they were out here trying to build a better world, no matter what anybody else says. All right, I'd love y'all to repeat after me. Tortuga vive! Tortuga vive! Tortuga vive! La lucha sigue! La lucha sigue!

Tortuga vive! Tortuga vive! La lucha sigue! La lucha sigue! Tortuguita was a medic in our collective. They were a forest defender. They were a friend. They our collective. They were a forest defender. They were a friend. They were funny.

They were kind. Puerto Guita was constantly thinking of others. They were constantly trying to protect other people, trying to protect the forest, trying to protect everyone who was marginalized. They centered voices who were on the margins and brought them into the center. They recognized that our struggles are interconnected. They recognized that Cop City will never be built.

They died defending that forest. The memory of Tortuguita that I keep returning to is after the police destroyed the gazebo at Wilani People's Park in the parking lot. They were at a meeting and they said, yeah, so the cops think they can destroy our morale? They can't. can't. Y'all, Tartu Hita was one of the most resilient, strongest people I know. They hugged everyone. They were so kind and so giving. And even as the state tries to assassinate their character in addition to their body, they were a freedom fighter. They were a person that I was, I am honored to have known, that I'm honored to have called a friend. About 400 people eventually gathered around underground Atlanta.

It seemed like slightly more people than were at the vigil the previous night. Everything in modern life serves to atomize you, to make you feel like you are an individual divorced from any sense of collective identity, divorced from any sense that you have a purpose and that there is good in the world. The fact that you're here means that you're fighting against that. Don't let go of that. That is powerful. And that's why Cobb City isn't going to be built. It's because we have love for ourselves and for the people around us. Alright, so I'm sure all of you are fairly upset about this. I am.

Tort was a friend of mine. They were a friend of the community. Their death, their death will not be in vain. Fuck Cop City! Fuck cop city! Fuck it all! By 5.30, about half the crowd gathered at Underground Atlanta were in Black Block, and the rest were a variety of activists, organizers, and random people who decided that it was important to be at this event.

After some speeches, chants, and stories of tort, the gathering of people turned into a march and took to the streets. A march is starting just left underground Atlanta. Around 300 people, maybe more, are marching down the street. There's a mix of people in block. There's medics here. People just kind of in regular clothes holding signs. There's a banner in the front that reads

they can't kill us all. No justice! No peace! No killers! No peace! Firework. Stop Cops City! Stop Cops City! Banner at the front that says, trees give life, police take it. After just a minute of marching down one street, the crowd suddenly stopped. Looks like the march is turning around, going to the other side.

Drop, drop, drop the side. Drop the charges! Some more small fireworks being launched in the sky. Banners getting moved to the front. Looks like the march is now heading north into downtown. Organizers from the Party for Socialism and Liberation attempted to take control of the march and lead the group south in the direction of the state capitol building or possibly looping around to the CNN center. But autonomous activists in the crowd turned the march around and the group, 400 strong, headed north. It sounds like the PSL people who were gathered at the underground

tried to lead the march in one direction, and everyone was like, no, we don't want to go that way. The PSL people were going to lead everyone into the federal building section of downtown, going south, and very quickly they turned around. Well, other people turned around and were like, no, and very quickly they turned around. Well, other people turned around and was like, no, we're not going that way. They're taking a right down Peachtree, heading north into downtown, right beside the Coca-Cola sign on Marietta.

The march entered the commercial district, a section of the city completely gutted out by years of the Atlanta way neoliberal policies that we talked about in the Defend the Forest episodes from last May. The area is populated almost exclusively by business people, university students, and unhoused citizens, and was a common site for Atlanta's 2020 BLM protests. Now that the march is moving, it's easier to see everyone in black. All of the people in block. It's looking more just like a large mass of people in block now. Have not seen much police presence downtown yet. Besides just a few patrol cars. It's really unclear how Atlanta police are going to respond to this.

Got some flares, a lot more of those smoke fireworks. Smoke grenade things. It's not a grenade, it's like a cardboard tube shooting smoke out. The block continued to travel north. Road flares and fireworks lit the path in the darkening evening. Graffiti quickly sprung up on walls with phrases like R.I.P. Little Turtle and Stop Cop City. The march is now approaching an Atlanta police vehicle who's trying to back up. The cop just not want to, the cop car is right in the middle of where the march is going to go. They're like less than 100 feet away. Just one single cop car that happens to be in the path.

They are trying to back out of the street. The march has the Trees Give Life, Police Take It banner. There's a big cardboard cutout of A tree right behind it Police have their lights turned on now We are all War is Defender We are all War is Defender

Looks like the cop car is turning around War is Defender Yeah, and the cop car Is leaving rather quickly. The sun was just starting to set as the block arrived at the main goal of the night, the Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters at 191 Peachtree Street. The Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters at 191 Peachtree Street. They've stopped in front of Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters.

People are throwing stuff at the windows and doors. Broken windows at the Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters. The people funding Cop City. Firework thrown. Umbrellas moved in to block local news cameras as windows shattered. Rocks emerged from backpacks and smashed into the front of the building. Hammers met the glass entrance as fireworks lit up the scene. Another firework at the Atlanta Police Foundation. The march is tightening up a decent bit. March is definitely tightening up. A lot of people just in block now.

Shouts of, be water, kept the mass moving forward, as bank windows received a similar pelting of rocks and hammers. People chanting to move like water. A few Atlanta police cars right beside the march. I'm guessing they're going to pull in behind the march. Two Atlanta police cars right there. People hitting Chase Bank, another stuff being dragged into the street. Like a prop two barricade. Chase Bank's head of regional investment banking,

John Richard, serves on the board of the Atlanta Police Foundation. Police officers exited the two cop cars that were trailing the march and quickly ran away from the crowd, leaving their vehicles abandoned. Corpers trying to keep track of where the police are in relation to the march. Looks like I got some cars pulling up behind. Workers trying to keep track of where the police are in relation to the march. Looks like I got some cars pulling up behind. Let's go! A police car pulled up behind the march. Just got their windows broken, firework thrown under. One, two, three, four, two, three, four!

One, two, three, four, two, three, four! Another firework. Another Atlanta police vehicle had their windows smashed. So there's two. The two that was behind the march. The two Atlanta police officer cars that were behind the march just got hit. Wells Fargo, one of the main cop city funders, received special love and attention from the block. of the main cop city funders, received special love and attention from the block. The Atlanta area president for Wells Fargo, Mitch Grawl, is also on the board of trustees for the Atlanta

Police Foundation. A few other banks head around this area. Wells Fargo, one of the contributors to the Atlanta Police Foundation, one of their big funders and backers. A lot of the media here are very, very thirsty to get stuff of, you know, footage of people breaking windows and shit. It was kind of surprising that the crowd made it this far without any real police response. Time almost stretches during these brief moments of uprising. About seven minutes after the first window shattered, Atlanta police finally arrived and made their move. Police are in front of the march now. Police are in front of the march.

People might be turning around. They want to do a float like water type thing. Yeah, multiple cop cars are approaching the march from the front. Unclear what the crowd is going to do. Well, Atlanta PD is now approaching the march.

They're getting closer. They're going after one of the banners. Dragging somebody down. Pulling someone to the ground. They're chasing people. One person's being arrested. Marches splitting in two different directions. Officers started randomly tackling and arresting anyone they could get their hands on.

More police arrived from the south and chased down a small section of the march that branched off. A line of police coming from behind as well. So we've got a line of police on both sides. Not many officers, though. Just a few officers. Looks like the majority of the march went... Out of the street! Get the fuck out of the street! Get out! Out of the street!

Out of the street! Keep moving! Disperse! Disperse! Disperse! Get out of the street! Out in the street! Out in the street! Keep moving! Disperse! Disperse! Disperse! Get out of the room! Get out of the room! Get out of the room! Get out of the room! Police getting more aggressive, pushing a lot of people.

Footage and audio of these violent arrests were shared by the Defend the Forest account, Unicorn Riot, and myself. I hear screams coming from multiple directions large looks like the march kind of split in two get out of the street out of the street I've seen a lot of arrests Looks like the march kind of split in two. Seen a lot of arrests. The individuals targeted likely committed no crime other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The majority of the march split away in a different direction from the cops. So I stayed where the cops were. Most of the march. I was able to get away by going through a different direction. We have it looks like an Atlanta PD

vehicle is on fire. Boom boom. Atlanta PD vehicle burning in the street. Burning cop car. Police with AR-style rifles. So I feel like most of the march headed down that way. I saw a mass over there.

It seems one of the cop cars that got smashed also spontaneously lit on fire. When the police first confronted the march, most of the block was able to peel off and disappear into the night. Affinity groups reconnected, block was shed, and protesters evacuated out of downtown as the police flooded the mile-long stretch of Peachtree Street that the crowd marched on. of Peachtree Street that the crowd marched on. After a fire truck put out the burning cop car, police taped off the area, and as they were pushing people out, I recorded an officer saying this amazing line. Bombs or discount New Year's Eve fireworks? You choose. All in all, the actions that night only took about an hour, and crews made it home in time for dinner. Six people were arrested at the protest Saturday night. Five were tackled and pinned down as the crowd initially scattered, and one other person was

chased by a cop car. Sam from the Atlantic Community Press Collective has more on that. A protester who was subsequently arrested was, witnesses state they were basically followed through the streets by an Atlanta police vehicle before witnesses say that they were hit by the same vehicle and they were then taken to jail. So Unicorn Riot released that video and we were able to speak with a few witnesses because as i'm sure everyone saw on social media this weekend the arrests were a familiar brutal a familiar brutal sight before we continue i do want to play two short clips that were circulating the night of the protest first is police scanner audio of the cop whose car spontaneously combusted. You want to cough? Yeah, we out here with these protesters. They blew my damn car up.

I ain't able to go get nothing to eat. I'm hungry. You know, I was just, I don't have any good chance. This next one is from live news coverage of the march, and this clip became an instant meme. So they're now saying GBI suck my dick. GBI is the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Mayor Andre Dickens and the chief of police gave a press conference hours later, which gave us a look at how the state was going to try and frame the protest

and acts of targeted vandalism. My message is simple to those who seek to continue this type of criminal behavior. We will find you and we will arrest you and you will be held accountable. We have arrested several of them this evening and Chief Sherbaum will give you the details on that. And some of them were found with explosives on them. You heard that correctly, explosives. And that has led to a police officer's car being set on fire. During the press conference, the chief of police clarified that no law enforcement officers were injured as a result of the protest,

and neither were any bystanders. Which means the only violence against people was done by the cops who randomly tackled any protester that they could chase down. And so it doesn't take a rocket scientist or an attorney to tell you that breaking windows and setting fires, not protest, that is terrorism. And that they will be charged accordingly. And they will find that this police department and the partnership is equally committed to stop that activity. We already have prosecutors in the room as we speak, and we're reviewing everything. We have a lot of evidence to still go through.

So even charges you see tonight, those can easily be upgraded, and they will be upgraded if appropriate. I brought up the police chief's comments to a few of the forest defenders that I spoke with. After the protest on Saturday in downtown, police chief Schneierbaum Chief Schneierbaum? Schneierbaum? None of us know. It's hard.

I've read it before on online. None of us know and none of us care. Anyway, the Atlanta police chief said that breaking windows and setting fires is terrorism. I'm curious to get everyone's thoughts on that. So I think the police and Andre Dickens are doing what

a lot of city governments have done especially during 2020 which was do things like call property destruction terrorism which like it's not you can call it whatever you want you can call it property destruction terrorism is a very specific political strategy that exists, I

think the right wing does it a lot, and it would be worth calling that, like, you know, because Defend the Forest doesn't have a body count, the police have only murdered an activist for Defend the Forest, whereas Defend the Forest has not struck out violently against anybody except in defense against the police. You cannot do violence to property. You cannot be violent towards a police car. It's the same way that Andre Dickens is now getting on TV

and claiming fireworks, explosives. It's like, yes, there are objects that explode, but this is very clearly being done in bad faith, because it is, it is, it justifies, it is the same way like the, the DOD and the FBI does a lot of other shit, you call something terrorism, the money just pours out, you get funding, you get justification to do things like that, and you can arrest people and charge them with domestic terrorism, that makes continuing a movement incredibly hard. That's a really dangerous implication that any act in dissidence to the state could be called domestic terrorism,

should really scare the shit out of everybody, not just here, but around the country, and should not be allowed to stand and should be combated against on every front. allowed to stand and should be combated against on every front. I talked with Peter about how if the police are viewing vandalism or destruction of inanimate objects as domestic terrorism, if breaking a window is terrorism, that begs the question, what exactly is destroying a forest? That juxtaposition of what the police consider violence and what what sort of like destruction of objects is violence to me this demonstrates what they see like as valuable and also this demonstrates the police state and the corporation's inability to to understand the aliveness of all things and how sacred the earth

is it shows that what they consider sacred what they hold as sacred is property and specifically their property. I think they fear the woods in part because it moves in ways that they can't comprehend. It moves in non-linear ways. Cricket also had something to say on this topic. Well, and what is destroying a forest? What is destroying a person? They're more upset about the destruction of property than the destruction of a person, a whole human being who was 26 years old. They were young. They had just started. And that does not seem to measure up against some glass panes. That doesn't seem to register. And what about the terror they inspire in the forest? What about the, I mean, obviously there are these rhetorical questions when I'm

preaching to the choir, but I mean, God, no, it's just, it's just infuriating. There's no, I long for the day when the line is not drawn at, well, you can do anything except touch private property. Noah mentioned the juxtaposition of broken windows being terrorism, but violent actions that actually hurt people seemingly not mattering nearly as much, at least compared to a cracked window. Right. So it's a clear double standard. And in the same way that like, you know, during 2020, people setting fire to police precincts was insurrection and anarchy and all these things. But when the National Guard would shoot people, it was a tragic error, or a justified shooting, right

when vigilantes would drive cars in the crowds and, you know, and pour them through pipe bombs at protests. It does not get treated with the same levity because the powers that be can never, will never, will obviously never hold themselves to the same standards that they will call us as their enemies. The meaning of words does not matter to them. What matters is being able to get good soundbites to put on Antifa watch and shit and make themselves. Because the city has decided that they can't back down from the pro-cop people,

that they're not willing to back down on that front, that this is where they're going to stick their flag and try to hold it out. From the start of the movement, the police have aggressively arrested and persecuted protesters associated with the struggle to stop Cop City, starting all the way back with the first arrest of 11 peaceful protesters snatched off the sidewalk during the city council's vote to approve Cop City. As corporations and the state move to push Cop City's development forward, despite all public opposition, repression has increased dramatically over the last few months. Since December, everyone arrested in connection with the movement against Cop City has been charged with domestic terrorism.

It's not a huge surprise. Terms like terrorism and eco-terrorism have been coming up, I mean, in private conversations probably since the beginning. But we can trace it back to at least last summer and some emails we've obtained through open records requests where a city council member at the police foundation were just kind of pejoratively throwing around the term terrorists in response to, I think it was graffiti or something like, I hope they catch these terrorists soon. The terrorists who graffitied a building. It has also shown up in a couple different public meetings that are about the training center. You know, committee members who are pro-public safety training center, anti-anyone being opposed to it, have also used the term eco-terrorism.

The dangerous escalation of protest suppression is not limited to people engaging in passive resistance or direct action. to people engaging in passive resistance or direct action. Some of our open records requests have even shown that since last fall, for several months now, anyone who participates in like a write-in or a call-in campaign, sometimes those very simple emails of, hey, I don't think your company should be participating in this project, will get forwarded up to the chief of police. You know, people's names, emails, just very, very simple call-in campaign type stuff. The most innocuous stuff gets forwarded as part of, you know, security alert. This is the anti-democratic chilling effect in action. Politicians and police are trying to create a political climate where

people are too scared to exercise their right to protest, organize, and take action. Georgia's Republican governor Brian Kemp has bolstered this alarming escalation of violence and repression against political speech by blaming out-of-state rioters and a, quote, network of militant activists who have committed similar acts of domestic terrorism across the country, unquote. Rhetoric that has been mirrored by liberal politicians in the city of Atlanta. The broad labeling of environmental and racial justice movements as, quote-unquote, terrorism, and those who get associated with such movements as domestic terrorists, is an extremely dangerous precedent, designed to stifle public opposition

and scare anyone concerned about police militarization and climate change away from protesting. It's a crude attempt to use as powerful tools as possible to crush opposition and remove the protest from public spotlight while creating cover for intense suppression of protest movements. Police are making an example out of people by trying to pin the actions of autonomous individuals in a decentralized movement on anyone that was unlucky enough to cross paths with the police

by threatening 35 years in prison. Let's talk a bit about the role of the domestic terrorism charges and how they are being applied. Because they're not even being applied to people that are like tied to specific acts like you specifically we have evidence that you burned down an escape like it like a like a construction equipment that's not that's not that's not how

they're being used not even being used for like we saw you we we saw you break this window that's not even how they're being used like the people restaurant saturday all six of them got the same exact charges yes how how can all six people have done all the exact same thing so they're obviously not being used for any type of like factual evidence-based way it's all about like us trying to turn the movement itself into a criminal association yeah yeah apd has even said that themselves in in a public meeting that's supposed to kind of like provide advice on like how the public wants this project built. You know, they in the December meeting, which I think took place a day after after those raids, they bragged about pulling someone over illegally for filming

the police. They said they were very proud of themselves for taking that person to jail. And then they just blatantly said that anyone arrested for this in connection with this movement will get a domestic terrorism charge, which creates an equivalency that being opposed to this project is domestic terrorism. You know, the chief of police, Darren Shearbaum, went before cameras on Saturday and I think pretty much verbatim said, breaking a glass window, that is terrorism. A lot of people have opinions about how to protest, right? But what people have conveyed to us is that even those who are, you know,

kind of horrified by property damage, it's just not domestic terrorism. It's just not. Being opposed to the police, wanting the police to do something differently, is not terrorism. The Atlanta Solidarity Fund said of the six people charged after Saturday's protest, protest, even disobedient protest, is not terrorism. It's tragic that we're at a point where this even needs to be said, but that makes it all the more important that the public speak out against this divisive and

dangerous rhetoric. We have reason to believe these activists were arrested at random during the march. All six face the same blanket charges. They are being held responsible for committing the same crime by virtue of simply being present at a protest where property damage occurred, unquote. Twenty people have been charged with felonies under Georgia's domestic terrorism laws since last December. Police affidavits have detailed the alleged acts of so-called terror, which include, quote, criminally trespassing on posted land, sleeping in a forest, sleeping in a hammock with another defendant, being known members of a prison abolitionist movement, unquote, and aligning themselves with Defend the Atlanta Forest by,

quote, occupying a treehouse while wearing a gas mask and camouflage clothing, unquote. A review of the 20 arrests showed that none of those arrested and slapped with terrorism charges are accused of seriously injuring anyone. Nine are alleged to have committed no specific illegal acts beyond misdemeanor trespassing. Instead, mere association with a group committed to defending the forest appears to be the foundation for declaring them terrorists. The seven people arrested during the police raid where the Georgia State Patrol shot and killed Tortuguita were given a bond amount totaling $117,000. Escalating repression is taking form as egregious bail amounts for protesters, inflated charges, and, as last

month saw, the killing of an activist. The environmental justice attorney Stephen Donziger said, for weeks, these people were called terrorists, which is a complete misuse of the word. The police have been conditioned to believe these people are terrorists. And what do you do with terrorists? In the United States, you kill them. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, unquote. A whole bunch of bail information just got released for the six people arrested at the protest in downtown Atlanta on Saturday, January 21st. And it's pretty high uh it's the highest bail for a protest that i've ever seen two people that are uh slightly more local to the area were granted 355 000 each for their bonds that's

over 700 000 um with ankle monitoring and a 24-hour curfew so that's a lot of four other people who were arrested were determined to be from too far out of town and deemed flight risks by the judge and they were completely denied bond so they're going to be held in jail in perpetuity until both further legal challenges like this is going to get, you know, pushed up to a higher level judge. But who knows how long they're going to be in pretrial detention now for pretty ridiculous charges. I think like this arson, riot, like felony jaywalking, essentially, like pedestrian. Yeah, pedestrian right away.

And the 4th Assembly, I believe, was one of them. Domestic terrorism. Yes, domestic terrorism was across the board. When they're going over the bail hearing, there was, there was, they were talking about how, like, this hearing is not for going over evidence. This isn't for actually... We don't have any time to litigate facts.

They're not interested in dealing with what the facts actually were because there's no evidence that any of the people arrested did anything wrong besides march in a street, which has been a staple of the history of Atlanta for almost like almost a century.

There's absolutely no evidence, but that doesn't matter, and that's not really the point either. The point is that this is a brutal form of punishment and a deterrent for other people to save it. If you're going to go to a protest, if you're going to go to a march, you don't need to do anything at all,

and we'll give you bond that's worth almost $400,000 per person, or we'll just hold you until this case gets litigated. Yeah, so if you want to come from out of town to just go to a march, you could do nothing else and get arrested for a pet-right-of-way slap with a domestic terrorism add-on, and then they decide that because you're from,

I don't know, like an hour and a half away and just happen to be across the state line that you're now at flight risk and are going to be held indefinitely on pretrial. Which means with the Atlanta court system that this could be, we could be talking years. They used 18 months before trial. If people are wanted, right?

Obviously they want people to just plead guilty and not have to go to trial, which is nonsense because there's no evidence. No, that's right. But if it does get carried out all the way to trial, that could take over a year. That could be just being held for things that you clearly didn't do.

But because the police and prosecutors have decided to use these intense charges as a deterrent, it's just extremely blatant. Abuse of the legal system, abuse of power. But I say abuse, but this is the way it's, you know, I say abuse, but, like, this is the way it's also designed. Like, this is the purpose of prosecutors. This is the purpose of police. They're doing their job as it's

supposed to be. They just, like, make it unfeasible for people to participate in this event, and to make it so any, like, any chance at getting bail for people is made so near impossible. I think for most people, looking at an amount like $355,000,

it's just an impossible amount of money to come up with. It's so out of the realm of what is possible for so many normal, everyday people who are participating in acts of protest, then it's just designed to hold people for as long as possible. It's not even people who, like, this would be, in many ways, just as horrific if these charges were from people who were in the forest.

These are people in a downtown marching. Yeah. Downtown marching where the most serious thing that happened was that a car spontaneously caught fire. Like... That downtown marching where, like, the most serious thing that happened was that a car spontaneously caught fire.

Like, that is... That is it. It was... And there's no evidence that any of these people had been involved in that. It was even noted inside, um...

during these hearings that many of these people were arrested before the car even caught fire. Like... And the judges just decided

that again they were not ready to litigate facts of any kind that this was not and making it so obvious that the point of this is not to in any way treat this with uh any realms like reality or what happened but just to make sure that we are that the people are as punished as possible for any actions taken by a group that they were intentionally just even in the vicinity of downtown. Affidavits for the seven people arrested at the deadly police raid on January 18th, in which Tortuguito was killed, begin by alleging that the defendants were, quote, participating in actions as a part of the Defend the Atlanta Forest group,

a group classified by the United States Department of Homeland Security as domestic violent extremists, unquote. But a DHS spokesperson has responded to media inquiries by saying, quote, the Department of Homeland Security does not classify or designate any groups as domestic violent extremists, unquote. The Atlanta Solidarity Fund responded to this news by saying, quote, when police brought terrorism charges against Stop Cop City protesters, they justified it by claiming that Defend the Atlanta Forest had been designated a domestic violent extremist organization. This was a lie. DHS has never designated any movement-aligned organization in this way. What does this mean? It suggests that police and prosecutors have been lying not just to the public,

but to judges in an effort to justify outrageous, sensational charges against activists. This cannot be tolerated in a free society. The public has a long process ahead of unraveling the tangle of lies, distortions, and cover-ups that the police, prosecutors, and their private backers have woven to suppress the right to protest. We are determined to follow that thread to its end. Injustice cannot go unchallenged. To date, the Atlanta Solidarity Fund has supported over 60 people arrested for protesting the proposed Cop City development. Just a few days before the killing of Tortuguita, It Could Happen Here released an interview with people from the Solidarity Fund and Anti-Repression Committee if you want to learn more about those organizations. continue supporting protesters in Atlanta. But with the unprecedented $700,000 bail for just two people, they need help to continue supporting activists with bail and legal counsel, while they are also supporting civil litigation against unjust arrests and police violence, including

an independent investigation into the death of Tortuguita. In a statement released after the bail hearing, the Atlanta Solidarity Fund said, The arrested protesters and all other future protesters targeted for political activity in Atlanta need your help. Please host fundraisers, reach out to your networks, and donate to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. We especially encourage you to consider becoming a recurring donor. Solidarity means all of us supporting each other for the long haul until we are all free, unquote. If the state is successful in creating this precedent of domestic terrorism, protesters across the country could be facing

similar speech-chilling charges. Activists and civil rights lawyers have called for everyone to strongly reject this extreme level of repression here and now before it becomes the norm for activists in every movement. What happens here will have legal implications for the whole nation. It creates, and it creates fear. It creates a chilling effect. It was after the December raids, a lot of folks in the community were really questioning what was next. And it is scary to think about, but it's been really heartening how people have seen through the bullshit, right? Atlanta has an incredible resilience, and so does this movement, even with domestic terrorism in mind peter also

mentioned how the increased charges have inadvertently shown just how strong the community is after domestic terrorism charges first uh first got laid out in december what was people's reaction to that because that's a pretty substantial, like legal state repression effort. Once you're in the woods, you hear that your friends are now getting these ridiculous charges. Like, how does that change what's on the ground? Yeah, I think the terrorism charges. Well, I'll say I was out of town when the terrorism charges happened. And hearing about those was actually what motivated me to come back to Atlanta and move back into the woods, because I knew that the terrorism charges were a scare tactic to try and discourage people from participating in the woods and the movement at large. As the repression

has intensified, and especially since the terrorism charges started coming in, the resolve and the strength of this community has intensified even more, and the increased repression has shown me the strength of this community, and also how deeply committed people are to being a part of this fight, no matter what. You can go to at jail underscore support on Twitter for information on how to write to incarcerated protesters in Atlanta. The terrorism charges being brought against Stop Cop City protesters stem from a 2017 law passed in Georgia in the wake of the Dillon Roof massacre. This law, allegedly created in response to a white supremacist mass shooting targeting Black people,

is being used for the first time as a bludgeon against anti-racist protesters who are fighting against the expansion and further militarization of police facilities. simplifies our issues, for example, with far-right mass shootings in this country into just a gun problem, to take away the abilities for marginalized people to defend themselves by oversimplifying it into a non-ideological issue. And it's so, like, there's such a clear pattern of who is perpetrating these things. It's all, like, the state at any moment it can grab at power. It will do so, and that looks better sometimes because it might be a law, like, going after somebody like Dylann Roof, but it gets turned around later and used by them to murder, you know, activists trying to defend the forest and make sure that people cannot make bail.

And guys, if we're doing nothing more than asking the city to not do something that a vast majority of people in Atlanta do not want to happen. Laws that are put into effect to stop far-right violence will inevitably be used to repress left-wing movements. Any expansion of state power will always come down the hardest on people who are actually pushing back on the power structures of the state, like the police. And now this domestic terrorism law is being used against force defenders for mere affiliation with Stop Cop City. The way the state is using these domestic terrorism charges is relatively unprecedented within the United States.

But this stuff is not completely unheard of. It's new for white Americans who are protesting. It's new in a very specific context, but it's not new for many other people who've experienced state repression and have experienced state repression in other countries around the world. You know, it's very similar to the way that like the US would, you know, we had a lot of people who over the years during the global war on terror locking up thousands of people who, you know, so many of them were just, the US army rolls into a country and it's like all of these people are terrorists. They do not have time to litigate the facts.

They are looking at people as flight risks with no evidence, with unsubstantiated claims about affiliations to whatever the hell it is. And then they, you know, like the most extreme examples, end up detained in Guantanamo for the next 20 years. So we're in, you know, bringing back to like the connection to all of this, to the IDF, it's the similar ways that the IDF persecutes their warrants of Palestinian peoples, of waging a war on a population, and then taking as much, like, using as much force against the people who choose to fight that state power, and then

just arresting huge numbers of people for claiming that they're, like, affiliated with Hamas or something for living in the same neighborhood and just throwing the key away. This is very similar to tactics that we've seen used across the world, specifically during the global war on terror, just to lock up huge numbers of people with impunity without the ability for people to get proper legal representation or for there ever to be a moment to litigate the facts of what happened. And it's a really troubling development to have happening here. This has been so destructive in other countries all across the world, and we should all be extremely concerned that this is happening anywhere. Not just that it's touched the U.S.

now, but this type of legal system should not find comfort anywhere in the world. One of the topics of the original It Could Happen Here series was Foucault's boomerang. The idea was also brought up during multiple conversations I had in Atlanta. It's about how the types of imperialist and colonialist violence that are done in other countries don't just go away, they get transported back to the homeland. This boomerang effect resulted in a whole series of colonial models being brought back to the quote-unquote west so that it could endlessly practice something resembling colonialism or an internal colonialism on itself. The forces of extreme gentrification can be seen as one of these front lines. In that way, it only makes sense that this is happening in Atlanta to such an extreme degree.

So, like, the idea of, like, when it comes to frupos boomerang, is that any strategies, tactics, equipment, the U.S. is the best example where there has been tactics and equipment thus far, that are used overseas in a country's colonial wars, imperial wars, will one day find their way returned to the core of said empire to subjugate their own dissidents and their own people. The best example of this in the U.S. was militarized policing. Cop City is a huge example of this. We've seen a return of weapons and equipment from the DOD to U.S. police. Just days ago, we saw a man murdering his trailer by a SWAT team using night vision goggles and equipment that looks like it came off of Armyangers in 2014. It is a return, like the tactics and the equipment and the strategy and the mindset of an occupying army

come back to the center of the empire and are used to subjugate its people. And in this case, Cop City is a huge expansion of this because of what it's designed to train people to do, which is urban combat, and even more so,

the legal system that the U.S. has used overseas to prosecute thousands of people with no evidence as a well-being return to prosecute those defending the forest. The man shot by SWAT in a trailer last month did end up surviving. But what Noah is talking about is that there is no true other. There is no true awayness. This new military urbanism that seems to be necessary to sustain hyper-capitalist gentrification is providing zones of experimentation through which the state is able to try out and hone their techniques of oppression. In my conversation with Cricket, they talked about this phenomenon. It comes back or it starts here and we're the

training ground and then they export it. I mean, there it's, and I think you're absolutely right that there is no true other, right? Like that is a construct to keep us out of solidarity with one another. That is a strategy to keep us out of alliance at the same table and demanding more.

I mean, it's something that I remember. I think it was, I think it was maybe something Buttigieg or I don't know, some other politician talked about in the wake of 2020, you know, saying like, uh, military weapons should not be used against like, like should not be used in our streets or something like that. It's like, okay. But the logical extension of that is that they should be in other people's streets. Like, Hey, those are also civilians. Like those are also people's streets. Like, those are also civilians. Like, those are also people's towns and cities and homes. Like, why are we deciding that it's okay for them to be there and not here? And

obviously, we're not actually deciding that they're not okay to be here. But I feel like even the sort of attempts to try and address the insane militarization of the police still rely on that other, as if this is not a global issue, as if this is not something that affects everyone. The Solidarity Fund has said, quote, invoking terrorism is a dog whistle calling for more police violence. Ever since 9-11, American policy has been to hunt and kill terrorists by any means. Applying this same terrorism label to activists in our communities is prompting police to approach protests as war zones, prepared to kill at any time. This can be seen in the way

GSP stormed the Atlanta forest with militarized equipment and killed Tortuguita. And God, I think there's also this tendency to think of the assassination of environmental activists as something that happens elsewhere. Like this is something that happens in Central America. This is something that happens in the Amazon. Like this is not something that happens in the US and it absolutely is something that happens in the US. And I think just sort of to the name of your podcast, right? Like it happens here. It's not and it could be any of us. I think that that's another sort of possible strategy or idea behind this. Like, oh, they're outside agitators thing of trying to create this scary stranger danger and trying to make people think that the person who was murdered couldn't be them

because they're from here. Like, oh, like I'm local. Like I wouldn't have been murdered. No, like, no, absolutely not. Like they will murder with impunity and it's reallyunity and it's really scary and it's really enraging. Like I, I think it is both to me inspiring and because if they're going to kill us no matter what, then why not cause as much good trouble as we can.

On Thursday, January 26th, Governor Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency in response to protests Saturday night sparked by Tortuguita's death. Under that order, 1,000 National Guard troops were mobilized to quell protests and police the streets of Atlanta. Once again, I'll end with the words of Tortuguita, Dear Comrades, We are in the trenches of the class war. The capitalists would rather see us Now that the war We need people on the front lines and robust supply networks. We need to love and support each other. Unquote. Now that the war is here, how are we going to fight it? Before the sapiens chanted under the stars Camped under a canopy, she sang her own song And she was far from silent, no virus or violence But the fragrance of her flowers, it continued to invite us

Her medicine, materials, our vitamins, our minerals And all that is essential, it just grew right beside us And Tysa started fighting over the gifts that she'd provide us Scorching the very soil that all of us derived from And when empires learn and can't withstand fire, we return to the land where our ancestors reigned in. We are all but creatures. We still bear her features.

The one and only reason all living things is breathing. The cities deceive and leave. Go see the dirt. Young will be among the lungs of Mother Earth. Before you found your voice, there was a chorus. Before you take your throne, you must restore it. Before your flesh and bone, before you build a home. Before they chopped them down, there was a forest.

Before they chopped them down, there was a forest. Before they chopped them down, there was a forest. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, 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 you. 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. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast,

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help 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. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions

correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake

gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It's the one with the green guy on it. In the early morning of January 31st, news started to proliferate that the city of Atlanta, the Atlanta Police Foundation, and DeKalb County reached a quote-unquote compromise regarding the future of Cop City. Word spread that city officials in Atlanta were about to announce a major scaling back of the Cop City project, that the project's size would be dramatically reduced and focus more on fire department and first responder resources, as opposed to the original plans for the militarized police campus. Many were skeptical about this news and saw this simply as an empty promise masquerading as a compromise, in a savvy PR move. But even some who were pessimistic at least saw this as a sign that the movement is having a substantial impact. Activists rallied outside City Hall, holding Stop Cop City signs and Defend the Forest banners.

Some reporters were denied entry into the press conference, and protesters stood outside Mayor Andre Dickens' office and chanted. At the press conference that afternoon, the mayor of Atlanta and representatives of DeKalb County announced an agreement to allow the previously announced 85-acre Cop City project to proceed as planned, with land disturbance permits to be issued. The rest of the land parcel of forest leased to the police foundation will be allegedly set for preservation, a claim that was already previously promised by officials involved with the project. DeKalb County and the city of Atlanta released a memorandum of understanding for the building of the site containing a quote statement of principles, commitments, and intentions, unquote. a, quote, statement of principles, commitments, and intentions, unquote. Mayor Dickens framed the facility as an answer to demands for police training reform during 2020's George Floyd

uprising, saying, quote, this training needs space, and that's exactly what this training center is going to offer, unquote. The mayor also responded to environmental concerns by claiming the area of forest slated for destruction contains only, quote, invasive species, softwoods, and weeds, unquote. Officials said the so-called compromise agreement would contain provisions for preserving parts of the South River Forest. When asked how the environment would be protected, Mayor Dickens mentioned that it's a 385-acre set of land. Cop City is 85 acres. The rest is green space, and that, quote, the environment will be protected in that way, unquote. With no indication given on how it would be protected or by whom. or by whom, among the few environmental promises are, quote, replacing any removed or impacted specimen trees with 100 new hardwood plantings on the site or elsewhere, as well as one specimen

tree for any invasive species tree that was removed, unquote. It's unknown if they have even counted how many trees have been felled so far. Activists called this a ploy to hastily push through a sequence of land disturbance permits. The most up-to-date site plans has the Public Safety Training Center spread out over a parcel of 171 acres, with about 87 of those acres slated for disturbance. acres, with about 87 of those acres slated for disturbance. There is nothing in the lease agreement that restricts the police foundation from building outside of those 171 acres, though they promise it will be protected green space. This compromise PR stunt is not even a new tactic. In August of 2021, after initial protests against the project delayed the city council vote, the Atlanta Police Foundation claimed a similar quote-unquote

compromise. Instead of clearing the 380-so acres that they are leased by the city of Atlanta, they would reduce the footprint of buildings and disturbed surfaces to only 90 acres, while more of the land would be cleared and turned into turf fields, shooting ranges, and horse stables labeled quote-unquote green space. And wouldn't you know, that sounds almost exactly identical to this new plan for compromise unveiled at the end of last month. Upon such rhetoric and empty promises, the movement didn't falter, but continued to demand and fight for the full cancellation of the project, whether in the Wallani Forest or elsewhere. After the January 31st press conference, organizers in Atlanta called for a week of solidarity actions starting February 19th through the 26th. Quote, calling on all people, wherever you are,

to take action in solidarity with the movement to stop Cop City. Protest. Sit in. Call and email the contractors building Cop City. Every action has an impact. Unquote. At stopcopcitysolidarity.org, there are guides for various actions people can take, from calling cop city contractors or investors, to posting flyers around town, or planning direct action using

the interactive target map. If you do go on any movement-related website, it's strongly recommended to use a VPN and a Tor-compatible browser like Brave. The national spotlight on the movement has certainly increased a great deal in the past month, both with an influx of scrutiny and support from across the country and even the world. The Press Collective has always had kind of a hybrid role, both of reporting on the movement and researching the movement, researching the prison farm. Reporting on the movement and researching the movement, researching the prison farm. But a lot of media outlets don't quite understand the autonomous nature of the struggle. So we have kind of found ourselves in a role of kind of liaisoning between media and the rest of the movement.

But thankfully, it's not just us doing it because boy is everyone interested all of a sudden no one was talking about the movement at the beginning so we were like all right we'll talk about it ourselves we've been able to use our platform to publicize a lot of solidarity events again not just share memorials and what people want others to know about tort, but, you know, publicize these things across the nation and across the world. Statements in solidarity have come in from radicals in Italy, Germany, France, and Rojava. After the killing of Tortugita, vigils happened in cities all across the United States. vigils happened in cities all across the United States. A wave of targeted vandalism and direct action against cop city investors and contractors happened across the country in response to Tort's death. In Atlanta, there's a concerted effort to not cede perception of the movement to the state. People have an intentional, collaborative way to affect how the movement is seen externally.

This media strategy is simply one prong of the fight, along with the encampments, sabotage, vandalism, pressure campaigns, and canvassing. I think it's really representative of the type of people that are dedicated to the struggle in general. The way that anyone and everyone has come together to handle the influx of media requests, to make smart decisions about it, to make sure that decisions are made with the consent of those involved, be it sharing the stories of people who were arrested that day, sharing the stories of TORT's family and TORT'sorts partners and making sure to respect their boundaries in space. Despite the diverse nature of requests, there always seems to be somebody in the movement

who's able to speak on whatever aspect of the struggle is needed. You need someone who's got a master's in environmental engineering. There's someone in the movement that can talk to you for 45 minutes about the good environmental reasons to stop Cop City. You can talk to you for 45 minutes about the good environmental reasons to stop cop city you need someone to talk for three hours about the history of the place there's someone for that too um you need someone to talk about how the project is a pretty good example of why the the black mecca is a myth the movement has people who can speak to that too there's been a tremendous amount of attention paid to the movement all of a sudden and again The black mecca is a myth. The movement has people who can speak to that too.

There's been a tremendous amount of attention paid to the movement all of a sudden. And again, the way folks have just stepped up and come together to handle it, I think speaks to the communal nature of the movement. It is dedicated to building. It's not just about saving the forest. It's about saving the forest for the community. When I spoke with Karen, the neighborhood mom who started canvassing and organizing in her community, she mentioned how even her older family, who are longtime Georgia residents, haven't totally bought the state's talking points. I can say, you know, my mom and my mother-in-law and like, you know, family, they

know that I care about this and, you know, they're boomers, but I've been surprised how there's a lot of, there's a lot of skepticism in the police narrative, which I found really interesting. You know, normally when something like this happens, it's just a hundred percent police narrative. Mayor Dickens, the day Tort died, put out a pretty infamous tweet that just expressed their condolences to the family of the trooper that was injured, and

not one single word about the person that died. And in most fatal incidents with police, you at least get some kind of boilerplate language about, oh, we're sorry that someone died. And a lot of the initial statements from government and large organizations just said nothing. But the media, even local news, in pretty much every single report, there's at least a line or two,

if not a pretty decent chunk of, you know, whatever 5 p.m. news story it is that say protesters have questions, people have questions about Torts' death. Atlanta media in particular has covered the defend the forest movement. The fact that even those outlets have to respond to the overwhelming amount of folks speaking out about how what happened doesn't make sense, about what kind of person tort was, about how none of this had to happen in the first place. I'd love to say that as someone who pays attention to how the media covers this, that I could have predicted that would happen. Three members of Congress, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, and Senator Ed Markey have joined in calling for an independent investigation into Tortuguita's death. Like I saw a screenshot from NBC News this morning, NBC News, and like the chyron was protesters still have questions about towards death. Like that's from this morning, even after after the riot, quote unquote, after the arson and property it was like almost a month after George Floyd died before folks really, before it really got national attention with when Rayshard was killed here in Atlanta.

It was a little more immediate because of a lot of things. While people were speaking in front of the dozen or so news cameras, someone talked about how there are still people in town that are just learning about Cop City and the fight to prevent it from being built. Today at work, I had four different conversations about the Walani Forest in regards to everything that's going on, with four different people who were unaware of what was happening. As big as this seems right now, a lot of people are still unaware. And as long as we keep being loud,

as long as we make sure that Cop City will never be fucking built, we just got to keep talking about it. Mayor Dickens, Ryan Millsap, you have blood on your hands. Fuck Cop City. I think we're about to really see how the national media is going to pick up on the domestic terrorism. And frankly, the fact that they're talking to us at all, or the fact that they're talking to the movement at all,

I think speaks to the strength of the movement and the simple truth of it, which is that Tort didn't have to die. And this is a very wide ranging movement with a lot of people who have some very good reasons for being opposed to the project. And I think those reasons are so compelling that I don't want to say it's easy to see past the noise, but it's not that hard. I remember one conversation with tort where I was like, this might just be like a egotistical or something. But I really think this is like a lot bigger than you, you know, just a little neighborhood struggle. And yeah, we talked about we're like, yeah, no, people don't know it yet. But it's the intersection of so many things. And, you know, if more people realize that it would be huge. And it's, you know, really heartbreaking that I think they were they

were right. You know, they didn't get to see it. One of the main talking points the state has been trying to push through to the media is condemning cop city protesters and force defenders as outside agitators. There's a good Crimethink zine titled The Making of Outside Agitators that focuses on the use of the term as related to the 2014 Ferguson uprising that gave birth to the modern Black Lives Matter movement. For this next section, I'll paraphrase a little bit from that zine. The state and media's invocation of the term in Atlanta has been accelerating rapidly since the raids last December, using it alongside notions of terrorism to justify the police's violent escalation of protest suppression. For example, this clip from the Cop City Community Stakeholders Advisory

Committee meeting held days after the December raid that introduced the domestic terrorism charges. Speaking is the assistant chief for the Atlanta Police Department. And so one of the things we charged them with to include criminal trespass was domestic terrorism charges that we put on them. So going forward, that is one of the charges we'll be using because that's exactly what they are. None of those people live here. They do not have a vested interest in this property. And we show that time and time again. Why is an individual from Los Angeles, California concerned about a training facility being built in the state of Georgia? And that is why we consider that domestic terrorism.

There's a darkly prophetic sentence from that Crimethinkazine I mentioned. Quote, when we hear them say, outside agitators, we know the authorities are getting ready to spill blood. A pretty consistent talking point by the police foundation police the state in general has been that a lot of the people they've arrested for incidents related to defend the forest have had out-of-state licenses out-of-state addresses and what they describe as no connection to Georgia. They have been sent here to stir up trouble, right? They aren't from here. They're just here to, because they don't like the cops, right? They have no stake in the struggle. So there's some pretty obvious problems with that. And

there's some pretty lengthy historic racism tied to the term outside agitators that makes it, you know, especially heinous to use in the South. The term outside agitators was used to describe the Freedom Riders. So it's got a little bit of got a little bit of history there. Got a little bit of history there. Governor Brian Kemp declaring a state of emergency so that the National Guard can be on standby to occupy Atlanta sure seems like outside agitation. But even the Atlanta Police Department's use of the term carries with it a great deal of hypocrisy. APD has, since 2020, really made a big deal out of stepping up its recruitment efforts. And if you go back and look at those presentations to the media, to city council,

they consistently talk about, oh, we went to New York for three days. We went to Miami for a week. I believe it was, would have been September, just after Darren Shearbaum was officially installed as chief of police. He went before the city council and talked about how he was so proud to have personally recruited someone from Detroit per basically a part of their loan application because they're applying for a loan to finance part of Cop City. By their own numbers, 43% of recruits that will be trained at this facility will come from out of state. They are 43% from outside the state of Georgia. Again, in APD's own statements about the facility, this facility is built to bring in people from out of state. From out of the country, even.

from out of the country even, because Atlanta participates in the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange, which is basically an exchange program with the IDF, with the Israeli military, where we go there, they come here, we teach each other. News articles claiming that a majority of those arrested are residents from other states might sound like convincing evidence to middle-class readers, but anyone who has been poor and precarious knows that the permanent address you give when you're arrested may not be the same as the place you actually live. You might give a different address because you aren't sure your current housing will last, because your landlord doesn't know your place has more people in it than are named on the lease, or simply because you don't want local vigilantes to know where you live.

Instead, you might give a more reliable, long-term address, perhaps from another state. I mean, on a human level, like, how many times have you moved somewhere and not changed your address? How many times have you... Going to the DMV sucks. Yes, going to the dmv sucks yes going to the tmv sucks so a lot of people don't have the privilege to be able to go to the dmv or don't have a permanent home address a lot of people are dealing with housing instability like this there's so many aspects of this that makes it pretty egregious and not only of course, is this a struggle that is deeply compelling regardless of where you call home, it just doesn't match up to the facts of life. It's a little bit bizarre, their insistence that the local populace couldn't possibly be that opposed to it when grab any one person in the movement who's from Georgia and they know 10 people who's opposed to it.

That person knows 10 people. And also you have statistics like during the what? 17 hours of public comment, 70% of people who called in were opposed to it. Basically the only people who weren't were people who self-identified as police officers, firefighters, and those who lived in Buckhead. And it's not that simple, but it's pretty clear that maybe you'd be okay with building the facility somewhere else. Maybe you're an abolitionist. Maybe this, that, and the other, but Atlanta doesn't want this. Atlanta doesn't want this here.

Let's imagine that some of these arrestees who gave out-of-town addresses are in Atlanta for the very first time. Would that make them outside agitators? Maybe, if the issue was specific to Atlanta alone and they had no stake in the cause. They had no stake in the cause. Cop City would be a place that police agencies from all around the country and world come to to train and practice urban militarism. Climate collapse and the destruction of forests is similarly a worldwide issue and one of apocalyptic magnitude. It's a false narrative in one sense because climate change affects everybody. Cutting down a forest would make climate change worse. Like that's a very, very,

very obvious talking point. If environment, if protecting the environment is important to you, it is obvious that this is a very key struggle right now, especially in the context of Atlanta being a growing and also gentrifying city. And this being in a largely black and brown, middle to low income neighborhood, and this being such a vast green space in those communities that don't have the manicured Piedmont Park in their backyards. When people are suffering the same forms of oppression everywhere, it makes sense for us to come into each other's assistance. This is not outside agitation. This is solidarity. Solidarity has always been the most important tool of the oppressed. has always been the most important tool of the oppressed. This is why authorities go to such lengths to demonize anybody who has the courage to take risks to support others. Cricket spoke at length about the outside agitator narrative that the state has been employing.

I think one thing that comes to mind is something that I've heard a lot is that the people in this movement are not from here, quote unquote, that they're outside agitators, that they're not from this community. They're not, you know, and it seems to me very clear to be an attempt to sort of discredit what is a very clear majority of the community that does not want this forest destroyed, does not want Cop City built, you know, 70%. And that argument infuriates me because, I mean, first of all, the US military is the biggest like outside agitator in the world. And I just, I find that irony sort of unbearable. And then I think there's this question we can get into, questions of what does it mean to be from somewhere? And what I think is a more helpful question is how are you somewhere? How are you in

relation to a place? And I think Tort was someone who was always trying to be in the right relation with the land and in right relation with their neighbors and right relation with the communities here. One story that I keep revisiting of them is when we were checking in and people were asking them, you know what, what do folks in the forest need? What can we get them? Do they need food? What, you know, what do they need? And Tort was like, oh no, actually, you know, we have everything we need, but it would be great if people could start, we could make sure they're giving food to the poor folks in their own communities. Like make sure you're giving food to the people in your neighborhoods. Are you checking in with

the unhoused communities in your neighborhood? Like they were just, I think, constantly seeking to be in right relation. And I think regardless of where all of us are from, if we can claim to be from somewhere, I mean, arguably, if we're not Muskogee Creek, none of us is from here. But I think it's a more helpful direction to think about what are we doing once we're here? How are we trying to be here? And yeah, I mean, that specific argument really, it really frustrates me. Because I think it really obfuscates, uh, how much this is a local movement and also having solidarity from across state lines

from across national lines speaks to the intersection of our, the intersections of our oppressions, the intersections of our movements. It doesn't speak to the fact that this is co-opted or it doesn't indicate, uh, anything other than that none of us is free and to all of us are free. The ultimate goal of the police is not so much to brutalize and pacify specific individuals as it is to extract rebelliousness itself from the social fabric. They seek to externalize agitation so anyone who stands up for themselves will be seen as an outsider, as deviant and antisocial. Noah mentioned how the outside agitator narrative is rooted in stripping people of their own autonomy. and the freedom to decide that you would like to go and support other issues

as if with the empathy of the Minajonen to show solidarity with other people, as well as just deciding that if you are living here but from out of town, that that somehow makes you a flight risker, that makes you in some ways more dangerous than if you were, I guess, an official resident in some way. It's all complete bullshit. I mean, and even some of the people who are out of town, they're not even two hours away from where the prosecutors are claiming where they're from. The outside agitator's narrative only works if we have this sense of otherness that we talked about in the last

episode. This disconnect and separation from neighboring struggles. As if lines on a map change the morality of actions. Keeping people in pre-trial jail for an unknown amount of time could be literally over a year because they are deemed non-local, so the judge thought they were a quote-unquote flight risk. Beyond the charges themselves, which are innately kind of absurd and the brutality is the point, the sheer audacity of keeping people with no evidence in cages for years for going to a protest is just... it's not surprising, but it still is incredibly upsetting.

No, and it would be completely decried if it were happening in any other country, right? And a massive human rights violation. If those were happening in China because of the U.S.-China relations, like absolutely not there. There'd be an entire, I don't know, national outcry. But because it's people who are resisting this government in this state, then yeah, it doesn't get the same kind of empathy. It doesn't get the same outcry. When I talked with Karen, she spoke about how thankful she is that there are people from across the country, people like Tort, who care about the South River Forest enough to travel to Atlanta to defend it. care about the South River Forest enough to travel to Atlanta to defend it. In terms of the narrative of like outside agitators, you know, I'm really grateful that people are coming to like protect the forest in my backyard. Like I am. I have like so much

gratitude. It is so, it is so meaningful. Yeah. And yeah, I think I, um, I think after the first raid, I told Tort that, and I'm glad I did. But yeah, it really is, like, just so much gratitude. The framing of outside agitators is meant to keep people away and stifle solidarity, just like the domestic terrorism charges are meant to. The state is trying out every tactic to scare people away from participating in the movement. So it feels like just the past month there's been such an intense increase

in the level of state repression and state violence. How do you see things evolving in the next few weeks and months months and or like even days at this point like just with how both like physical violence is definitely increasing with the raids and now like you know killing somebody um and then the types of like you know judicial abuse of power giving people seven hundred thousand,000 bail, keeping many others just in jail in perpetuity for who knows how long. Yeah. I mean, I think it's clear looking at this movement that the state, the cops, police have always been the first to escalate and have now murdered someone,

have now assassinated someone and are the ones who are constantly sort of making, putting other people's lives in danger. They're really the people who are making folks unsafe. And Tort was a street medic. Tort was someone who went through street medic training, was someone who was passionate about protecting their community. And in street medic training, one of the things that is taught, there's a whole section on police weapons and state weapons.

And sure, we cover tear gas, we cover bullets, we cover all anything that you can sort of commonly see protests or in raids. And one of the biggest weapons that we always cover is fear. And that is really what I see happening with this escalation is that, yes, there's a sort of increase of literal weapons of arms, of just everything that we've heard about in the forest. But I think when you take that in combination with the ludicrous charges, what they're really trying to weaponize is our own fear, as our own emotions making us think that it's too dangerous to be in the forest, that it's not worth it, that it's too risky. Making us think that the forest itself is somehow an unsafe place,

making us think that the people who protect it are unsafe. And I think that's the sort of trend that I'm seeing. I think in terms of what's coming next, I think they're going to keep leaning into the weapon of fear. I think it's not ha-ha funny that they accuse protesters and the people who've been charged with domestic terrorism of intimidation when clearly they're using those charges to intimidate people. But the people who are charged with it and anyone who might consider themselves an ally or a friend of the forest and a friend of the forest defenders. So what I see moving forward in terms of carrying TORT's legacy forward in terms of carrying this movement forward is not buying into that bullshit. of carrying tort's legacy forward in terms of carrying this movement forward is not buying into that bullshit like very much being fear walking and not trying to say people shouldn't be scared or not have those feelings but one of the memories of tort that i have is them

very clearly refusing intimidation whether it was cops whether it was you know whoever the sort of representative of the state was they never gave into that And I think that's what I'm trying to carry forward. A lot of us are trying to carry forward. Noah spoke similarly about fear being a powerful weapon of the state and a very insidious one because it doesn't punish people for actions they may or may not have done,

but instead works to prevent people from taking action in the first place. Fear is the number one tool that the state brings to bear. All of their toys and their guns and shit do not have the reach and do not have the capacity to stop acts of liberation as fear does, making people afraid of the idea of revolting, of the idea of dissidence is extremely powerful, and it's something that we all have to combat in our own

ways. It's something we all have to resist in our own ways, because obviously the state is capable of murdering and of putting people in prison for a very long time, and that is scary, and that is a valid thing to be afraid of. But we stand to lose so much if we do not combat that fear to face off with them that it's just something that I've found I have to manage. I have to manage. It's something that, because we, I'm so much more afraid of what we all lose if we don't stop them here than I am of myself being harmed or going to prison. We all stand to lose, tens of millions of people stand to lose everything if we allow climate apocalypse to bear, if we allow the powers that be to get significantly more effective at combating dissidents in the streets from, you know, that goes

not just for in the United States but for Cop City, this is an international struggle, I mean, this is the same police department that does cross-train with the IDF if you think the IDF wouldn't be coming to this facility to train better how to, you know, kill Palestinian dissidents, I don't know, you're joking with yourself.

Like, this will mean something to every foreign military, to every foreign police force, and every police force in the U.S. There's a quote from Tortugita talking about how to deal with fear. to deal with fear. What I'm about to read also demonstrates, as their partner said, that Tort was very aware of the risks inherent to resisting the state, especially as a non-white forest defender. But with an understanding of that risk and the fear associated with said risk, they chose it was worth it to keep on fighting. Quote, Am I scared of the state? Pretty silly not to be. I'm a brown person. I might be killed by the police for existing in certain spaces.

Fear is the mind killer. That's a quote I think about often. I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is a little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I am permitted to pass over me and through me. To continue what Tort said, quote, I am scared, but you can't let the fear stop you from doing things, from living, from existing, from resisting, unquote. In the early 1960s, Atlanta was dubbed

the city too busy to hate. The phrase can be traced back to a civil rights era marketing slogan attributed to Mayor Ivan Allen, who spent millions of dollars in the 1960s to promote Atlanta as a business-oriented city, a city moving forward from its racial past and into a hopeful new future. This was the beginning of the Atlanta way. Still today, you can find the city too busy to hate everywhere, on murals, posters, and t-shirts. It's become part of Atlanta's identity, or at least Atlanta tries to tell itself that. Within the slogan lies this admission of the belief that racism and oppression can be beaten by hyper-capitalism. Meaning the first and foremost goal of the city

is economic progress. Equality and racial justice must take a back seat because the city is just too busy. There's few better examples of this in action than the black neighborhoods that were demolished to build infrastructure for the 1996 Olympics and later the Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Since then, the Beltline's original vision of public transit, green space, and affordable housing has been abandoned in favor of developing luxury apartments and gentrified retail joints. As Foucault's boomerang brings the internal colonization of gentrification and increasing police militarization to Atlanta, it only makes sense that Cop City and the battle to stop it is happening here. Tort died two days right after Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Day. We're in Atlanta.

There's this whole section of the Delta Airport in Atlanta dedicated to John Lewis. You can hear his voice on a loop saying, good trouble. And yet, as soon as the festivities are over, as soon as the fundraising is over, when someone is shot resisting the state in a peaceful, nonviolent, direct action, they're labeled a terrorist. I don't understand how someone can possibly reconcile those two things. They seem to me to be grotesque. I mean, it's disgusting, but I don't see that reflected in any mainstream narrative. Noah, talk with me about how he first got involved in the Stop Cop City movement. talk with me about how he first got involved in the Stop Cop City movement. Yeah, so my introduction to Cop City started where most people in Atlanta did when it got first leaked that this was a thing that the city was planning. I remember having just a very like,

oh my god, what the fuck reaction to realizing they're going to destroy the largest urban canopy in the country to build a big fake city for them to practice doing urban combat in. That's, like, parody, dystopian. And very quickly, people were organizing in various different ways to stop that and to make their voices heard that this was not something that Atlanta was okay with. This was not something we were okay with having in our communities, this was not something that anybody wanted. That took a lot of different fronts for me, I mean that went from working, whether that be on the streets to just doing food distros and medical trainings to, you know, scampering around the woods with my friends, like that took many different forms,

just as all forms of resistance do. And over time that has changed and evolved, but I still think it's something that I work in on a lot of different fronts to be as effective as a person as possible when it comes to resisting this. The sheer resiliency we've seen in Atlanta post-2020 has been incredibly impressive and inspiring. After 2020, the radical communities in a lot of cities dealt with pretty extreme burnout due to such a grueling summer. And ever since then, people seem to be recovering and anticipating the next cycle of mass uprising. As news spread of Memphis police's brutal beating of Tyree Nichols, which resulted in his death, there was renewed discussion if it was going to spark the quote-unquote next 2020. But Atlanta is one of the few cities where things really haven't halted since 2020.

Defend the Forest stuff has been going pretty hard ever since 2021. And it's been a very impressive amount of resiliency. Can you kind of talk on that aspect of how people have been able to do that? Yeah, I think it comes down to having a really good support network of people people who are willing to um be support activists who are jailed support activists medically financially like who are able to make this possible and it also comes down to that the defend the the Forest movement is so, it is so important to anybody, or should be so important to anybody who looked at 2020 as a strike back

against police violence. What cop city means for all of us is a world in which it is much harder to resist police, especially in cities. And for a lot of activists who came out of 2020, Defend the Forest became an extension of that fight. It became its own fight to protect the forest and an extension of the battle against the violence of the state and against the ability of the police to further militarize. And I think that kept a lot of people going. But it certainly happens. I mean, it can be really exhausting work. It can be really defeating at times. And it's been really important, I think, for people everywhere and here to have, you know, friends and things that they can do to decompress and take time off

when needed to stay, to keep the ability to keep doing this and to not burn out completely and to be able to keep going against what feels like all odds at times. Also just activists here are pretty fucking resilient. I'm continually so impressed by the people I see

just continuing to go out day after day and working behind the scenes, doing everything possible to make sure that we can keep going. The Solidarity Fund has a couple of things. I'm getting money on people's commissaries, and in the past has done letter-writing campaigns for political prisoners across the country, which is certainly a thing that we're looking at,

potentially people being held very long-term. That's absolutely going to be something in the coming weeks that I hope people spring to do. Like, obviously, these people who are incarcerated need our support in every way we can possibly do that. If the people currently incarcerated are granted bond during the appeal process, and it's set to the same amount as the last two individuals, process, and it's set to the same amount as the last two individuals, that would be $355,000 per person for at least five more people. That included with like the previous bond amounts that were set for previous raids. I mean, we're approaching $3 million in potential bonds, which is just designed to drain people as much as possible and make the idea of protest as

seem impossible. And again, this is just another, their tactic, this is how they perpetuate power, is through fear and making it seem as impossible to protest and making it seem like if you were to get arrested that you would never get out because that's terrifying. And that's the number one tool that they bring to bear. There have been a few semi-distinct stages in the struggle against Cop City. In summer of 2021, the initial stage was trying to get the city council to vote no on the project. There was a lot of canvassing, calling representatives, involvement from large above-ground organizations like the DSA and

Sunrise, you know, people trying to quote-unquote campaign the right way to get the project shut down before it even started. And then, even despite 70% of the local people who called in not wanting this, the city council voted for it anyway. And then starting two months after the vote, and for over a year now, we've had this forest occupation or encampment stage. People going into the woods and having their continuous physical presence there itself be a deterrent for construction. Concurrently, there have been random acts of sabotage, with construction equipment spontaneously bursting into flames, alongside pressure campaigns targeting subcontractors and cop city investors. With the past few police raids having been increasingly violent,

the last one resulting in the death of a forced offender, I asked the people I spoke with if they saw any forthcoming new stage of the movement, considering the cops are trying really hard to make it very dangerous to camp in the woods right now. What's your sense from on the ground how stuff might, you know, with these increasing charges, increasing amounts of bail funds, increasing use of force, what's some kind of ways that you feel stuff might start changing on the ground? Like, do you think just the encampment style will continue or will it kind of evolve in a new kind of unexpected direction?

It remains to be seen how the approach to living in the woods will adapt to these changes. The DeKalb County Police Department has claimed that they're going to increase their surveillance and patrol of the neighborhood that the woods is in. It remains to be seen what that will mean for the encampment and how active they're going to be in, you know, repressing people in a day-to-day sort of thing. And also, I think one change is reconsidering what on-the-ground means and what the bounds of the forest are.

There's more woods that Blackhall plans to develop on nearby. So reconsidering what on-the-ground is, you know, Brassfield and Gorey construction sites could be considered an on-the-ground site, you know, for actions. And, you know, I think there's a lot of room to grow in that direction as well. Like, do you see this moment as, like, a substantial turning point? I think so. I mean, I don't think it couldn't be a turning point. I think every escalation of violence that has happened has been perpetrated by law enforcement. There's never been a moment

in which the people combating law enforcement have been the ones to escalate of violence that has happened has been perpetrated by law enforcement. There's never been a moment in which the people combating law enforcement have been the ones to escalate the violence. And I think that this marks a willingness of the government here in the city government that this is the hill that they're willing to die on. This is where they're going to stand their ground and where they are proving to us that they are committed and so committed to the idea of building cap city that they are willing to kill people. And I think that that is a turning point in how we as a movement have to be willing to respond to the state and how we have to be willing to look at them not just as this entity

that we are facing down in the courts and doing phone blasts, because that clearly doesn't work, they are just going to murder us, but as a force that is a, you know, like, offensive, militarized force coming after us, I think that is a, that it marks a really big, just, shift in, overall, in looking at what the city government here is willing to do to get this done. I mean, I think that a variety of tactics will always be in play. People are always going to have different ways that they feel comfortable and safe and responding. But I do think that what we saw on Saturday was a response to that, on Saturday was a response to that, that people showed up and they made it very clear that we were not going to take this lying down, that people weren't going to be willing to let the state go unanswered, and that they weren't going to let the police go unanswered

for this act. And I think from now on and going forward, I think we will, I think, I hope at least that we see more and more people taking up acts of physical resistance to law enforcement and to the state to prevent them from building Cop City and prevent them from committing further acts of violence against their comrades. So far, the forced occupation has proved effective in delaying the construction of Cop City. In the past, barricades have inhibited the movement of construction equipment, machinery left in the woods has been sabotaged, and during attempts to

fell trees, force defenders have put their own bodies on the line by climbing into the treetops to prevent them from being cut down. Other prongs of the movement have similarly produced successes. Pressure campaigns focused on getting contractors and businesses to divest or pull out of the project resulted last April in Reeves Young Construction, the initial contractor for Cop City, severing ties with the project after months of pressure. And just this month, Quality Glass Company announced that they would not be working on Cop City, as well as no longer doing business with Brasfield & Gorey, the current contractor for the facility. These pressure campaigns can

include protests at company offices, phone calls imploring them to drop the contract, or actions more along the lines of vandalism at job sites or visits to the neighborhoods of company executives, even to simply drop off flyers or banners. I don't think this was ever a fight that we were going to win on one front. The amount of people that we were able to put in the encampment in the forest was really beautiful to see, but the state was always going to be able to put out enough manpower to shut that down.

This is a battle that we win on multiple fronts. to shut that down. This is a battle that we win on multiple fronts. And that includes having physical presence in the forest and preventing machinery from coming in. But that also includes acts of sabotage. Making sure that contractors who are signed on to COP City do not feel comfortable and do not feel safe signing on to this project and making this economically impossible for the city to continue doing. As far as it being a new strategy, I don't know if it would be new as we've already seen

equipment spontaneously combust and such things, but I do think this marks a point and potentially the frequency of these things happening and also a necessary, I think, evaluating of where we are now and thinking realistically about what our next steps are to make this an untenable situation for the city to continue prosecuting. Well, one evolution that I see happening is a consensus amongst long-term organizers in Atlanta that we want as many people coming here to participate as possible. And also that I think OneChange is being less picky in who we invite to participate and encouraging liberals and moderates to be a part of this. They've always been a part of it, but really emphasizing that side of the movement more. Back in the Defend the Atlanta Forest episodes from last May, I talked about the shack model, the aim of which is to make construction economically

untenable by maintaining a presence in the forest, sabotaging work, and targeting specific subcontractors locally and elsewhere. In addition to contractors, corporate funders affiliated with the APF can also be targeted to disincentivize affiliation with the project. Solidarity actions targeting Atlanta Police Foundation contributors have been happening nationwide. As mentioned at the top of the episode, a week of solidarity is coming up on February 19th, and stopcopcitysolidarity.org has many resources. In the past, actions have included everything from office protests, divestment campaigns, vandalism, and actions by workers within these companies to pressure them into cutting ties. No action is too small or too ambitious.

An analysis on Tactics, published recently on It's Going Down, said this regarding the targeting of cop city investors. In other campaigns, banks like Wells Fargo have been forced to divest from police and prison expansion. But these efforts often take years and lots of resources. Atlanta Police Foundation supporters like public universities, Georgia State University, Georgia Tech, or Emory University, could be lower-hanging fruit. Comrades should identify which cop city funders are most vulnerable to pressure, where potential allies like student groups and unions are positioned, Unquote. Bureaucratic red tape can also be effective in delaying progress. Ongoing zoning appeals could result in an official stop work order, but it remains unseen if such an order will even be followed,

as currently laws around zoning appeals are being ignored by the contractors and the Atlanta Police Foundation. Tortuguita had spoken of a theory of theirs concerning the potential for intense police repression and how the aftermath of that might play out. Quote, they could come in and completely destroy the place, raise it, arrest everybody they could find, kill anybody who resists arrest. They could do that, and then days later, there would be a shitload of people back here.

For every head they cut off, there would be more who would come back to avenge the arrested, to avenge the... tort did not finish that sentence, but resuming. What I'm saying is, if they do a huge crackdown and completely try to crush the movement, they'll succeed at hurting some people, they'll succeed at destroying some infrastructure, but they're not going to succeed at stopping the movement. That's just going to strengthen the movement. It will draw a lot of attention to the movement. If enough people decide to do this with nonviolent action, you can overwhelm the infrastructure of the state. That's something they fear more than violence in the streets. Because violence in the streets, they'll win. They have the guns for it. We don't. Unquote.

No matter how the movement continues, the weight of Tort's absence will be felt as long as this fight carries on. It's such a huge loss. But as we keep thinking about, you know, WWTD, what would Tort do? It's continued to support those projects. it's continued to uplift the spaces and groups that are supporting the most vulnerable amongst us and uplifting their voices uplifting their safety and there are going to continue to

be trainings offered uh training specifically for folks who are marginalized and afraid of gun violence and want to know how to be able to protect themselves and protect their friends uh this came about specifically in the wake of the shooting at the gay bar, I guess a few months ago now, Jesus. And that was something that tort was helping to organize. So yeah, we're going to keep doing that work. How do you think you're going to continue on without tort there now? You know, I think they, they set me up the hardest

thing to navigate, like, okay, what can I do? Where can I fit in? Like, um, short of, you know, living in the forest. Um, and I think with just like the canvassing, I feel like I've really figured out the ways I can, you know, my place in it, enough to keep me busy. Was tort kind of very instrumental to having you help figure out like your role in this? I mean, honestly, I would just like spitball, an idea and they'd be like, yeah, you should do that. Or we were like, yeah, that'd be sick. or we were like, yeah, that'd be sick. And that gave me the confidence to be like, okay.

And also like, I think this movement is interesting because it's totally different from any other organization or anything I've done in that. Like if you want to volunteer in any other thing, like, you know, you make a graphic and you check it and you send it to someone and get it approved, you know? And just like the kind of deconstructing that thinking was like, I mean, tort was really instrumental in that. And it can be like difficult to navigate, but really just walking all that back and being like, if you want to like, you know, canvas your neighbors, like you just do it. The Stop Cop City movement has called for a fifth week of action

to be held on March 4th through March 11th in Atlanta, Georgia. They are asking all those opposed to Cop City to come participate in a variety of events and actions both in and out of the forest, and if you're able to, bring a tent. If you're unable to travel, there's still calls to support people in your own community who might be able to do so. This week of action will be a key moment in the next phase of the fight to defend the forest. I want people to know that being in the woods, even if just for a few days, will transform you in unexpected and delightful ways. And that's something that we witnessed with Tort.

Tort lived in the woods for less than a year, and they transformed and blossomed into their purpose in unexpected and beautiful ways. And so if you have the opportunity to come and spend any amount of time in these woods, I encourage you to do so, because I think that you'll find that it will nourish you and aid in your growth as a human. The police have not succeeded in scaring everybody out of the forest. Wolani People's Park is still legally required to operate as a public park. Last month, I saw regular people jogging the trails. People still come every day. The movement has only grown despite the repression, and now force defenders

in Atlanta are urging people everywhere to organize for the upcoming mass convergence. A large list of resources and movement websites I'll be putting in the description for people to learn more and stay up to date with putting in the description for people to learn more and stay up to date with information regarding the Week of Action. I'll end this series by reading from a Defend the Forest poster that I saw around Atlanta. Quote, It is your mission to stop Cop City by all of the means at your disposal. Without hesitation, defend the forest from destruction, the city from commercialization, the future from ruin, the imagination from conquest, and the heart from resignation. Do not wait for further instruction. Reality is the battlefield. fight us. Our medicine materials, our vitamins, our minerals, and all that is essential. Witches grew right beside us. Enticed us, started fighting over the gifts that she'd provide us.

Scorching the very soil that all of us derived from. And when empires learn and can't withstand fire, we return to the land where our ancestors reigned in. We are all her creatures. We still bear her features. The one and only reason all living things is breathing The city's deceiving Leave, go see the dirt Young'll be among the lungs of Mother Earth Before you found your voice There was a chorus Before you take your throne

You must restore it Before your flesh and bone Before you build a home 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. haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of Michael Duda Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help 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. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly.

I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents.

Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head search for therapy gecko on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts it's the one with the green guy on it god fucking damn it i just got another fucking message about the gold ads. Leave me alone. All right, and this is It Could Happen Here, Sophie. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about the incredible investment vehicle that is gold. Now, look, people, if you aren't currently putting all of your money into gold, and I mean all of your money, then you're just leaving cash on the table.

Gold is such a good investment vehicle that if you had bought $10,000 worth of gold 20 years ago, you would have roughly the same amount of money. Can you beat gold? No, you can't. I've replaced most of my teeth with gold, and I have roughly the same amount of teeth, so it's a win-win. Wow, wow can't. I've replaced most of my teeth with gold, and I have roughly the same amount of teeth, so it's a win-win. Wow, wow, incredible. Gold is perfect for a number of reasons.

Look, if you're worried about instability, obviously, if society collapses, gold is the thing that you want to have, because, of course, you'll still be able to trade what is fundamentally a useless rock for goods and services in the event that there's no civilization that that just makes complete sense don't stock up on ammunition stock up on gold what about gold ammunition robot oh now see that's what if you want to kill super vampires

that's what you want is gold bullets you You know, there is something like, maybe it's like survival of the fittest. I'm allergic to gold. So if I touch it, it gives me a rash. So I can't survive in a world of gold. I love you. That's not me. Well, if you need to take out Shireen in the apocalypse, make a gold spear or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just gift her jewelry. Look, it's a good idea. According to one of my friends who has read much more Marx than I do, Marx predicted that we would go back to the gold standard. So, yeah. Wow. It's going to be great.

The immortal science wins again. Can't argue with Carl. This is actually, today we are talking about collapse, but not the collapse of the economy, because the economy is kind of always collapsing. That's part of what makes it the economy. Instead, we're talking about the fact that the market for eggs has gotten insane. People are paying crazy prices for huevos these days. Beautiful.

And there's no good reason for it, obviously. Like, it's the, you know, egg production in some places was, like, impacted by the bird flu, but that is not why eggs have gotten more expensive. It's pure corporate greed. But regardless of that, people are finding themselves thinking about, like, wow, eggs are expensive as hell. Should I maybe get some chickens?

And today we have several chicken owners on the podcast, myself and James Stout, and several people who don't have chickens, but are chicken curious. So we're going to talk about having chickens. James. Hi. Yeah, I do. I've been training for this my whole life. So yeah, this was your idea. So yeah, this is very much my baby. So if you guys want to sit back and learn about chickens, I'd be happy to. Your baby, James, or your egg? Well, that's the thing, isn't it, Robert?

One could be the other if given enough time. Yeah, people have talked about this, I've heard. Yeah, it's been a discussion for some time in the chicken community. All right, let's talk about chickens. So I want to start out with, like, if you're thinking about getting chickens, and I have written a script for this, thank you. Oh, good.

Good, yeah, I'm ready to roll. So the most important thing, obviously, when you're getting animals, you're getting any animals, is that you're responsible for a living thing and you have to take care of it and you have to be kind to it and you have to treat it well

and make sure that if you're not able to look after it, like if you travel a lot for work and someone else can. Right. And yes, I think chickens are particularly useless or they're useful and they're very nice, but they're not like the most practical of animals. Like if you if you leave them alone, they will die. If it gets too hot, they will die. If it gets too cold, they will die. Like you do have to look after them they're not like a wild animal that comes in sometimes and lays eggs like they're an extremely domesticated animal that's been domesticated for i don't know probably thousands of years so it's a responsibility i guess um i'm just gonna i'm gonna go through some of my stuff if you guys have any questions as we like move along please feel free to ask them i want to start

out with the breeds of chickens which i think are a good idea and so when you're looking at chickens the first thing you're going to want to look at is your space right like how much space do i have and there are websites where you can calculate like you're working with your acreage or or how many yards you have how many chickens are appropriate james the level of prep in this dock is beautiful. I'm like so happy. Very organized. I will note, be careful about getting too many. When I got the place that I got, I inherited 14 chickens. And that is a tremendous quantity of chickens.

And there was especially, chickens make, you know, kind of in their prime, egg laying can make one. Sometimes some chickens will do two a day. So there were weeks where I was getting like close to 100 eggs, which is far more eggs than a human being can possibly consume. Rubber doesn't poop. You can consume. I can consume 100 eggs. Yeah. Well.

Then they will consume you. I will mail you eggs. Yeah. I always need more eggs. Eggs are like eight. I walked into a grocery store. Okay, I'm now doing the bit. I walked into the grocery store and the eggs were $8.50,

and I was like, what the fuck is going on here? Man, I'm going to make a fucking bank. I have like literally 60 eggs sitting in my kitchen right now. Robert's going to sell eggs on the dark web. You're goddamn right. This is how I fucking leave this damn podcasting bullshit behind. I'm gonna become the Eggman.

Cuckoo Cachoo, bitches! Finally, a use for cryptocurrency. Egg coin. It's tied to the value of eggs since he owned the cryptocurrency. That's completely collapsed. egg coin it's actually it's tied to the value of x it's the only cryptocurrency that's completely collapsed um yeah don't don't over chicken yourself like starting out but also don't get too few you do want at least three yeah uh or they'll be sad or um they won't get along

and if you if you're like a normal, three is probably a great number of chickens. Like you will probably be quite happy with three to four chickens. Yeah, you'll get like if you estimate like six eggs per chicken per week, it's like a fair kind of estimate. Yeah. They'll take some time off during the year or when the seasons change, they'll molt and stuff. So 18 eggs, like, yeah, you're going pretty hard in a normal household if you're eating that many. So I i think if you start people like to think that they should get bantams to start off with do we know what bantams are non-chicken understanders i have a lot of chickens but i don't know anything about the kinds of chickens so we've had a few bantams uh they're not great

to be honest like bantams are mostly showing birds so it's a smaller chicken think of it as like a half-sized chicken right um and if you've seen like a really fancy and you can go ahead and google some bantams um oh yeah yeah they're really pretty there's two i like large chickens now look i don't engage in cock fighting i think it's immoral but I like to know theoretically if they had to, my chickens could handle themselves in a fight. Did anybody ever think Robert would be like,

yeah, I'm a big chicken guy. Like, what? Sufferable. Yeah, you want big chickens. Some breeds to look for are Orpingtons, like buff Orpingtons. You can remember they're big because they're buff. Hell yeah. Jacked-ass chickens.

Yeah, get a yoked Orpington. Get a hench Rhode Island red. People in America don't say hench, do they? But look how cute the bantam is. No, but that's amazing. Oh yeah, we used to have a couple of those. So beautiful. So one of the things about bantams, we used to have a couple of those. So beautiful. So one of the things about bantams is you can't get them point of lay.

So point of lay is when they've been sexed, right? So you know that they're girls and they come to you just when they're about to lay, right? And you don't generally, you get bantams younger and you don't get them sexed. So in our case, we had one, she crowed a lot so we thought she's a rooster she wasn't and the other one was a rooster um so yeah that's gonna be my question do you need to get a rooster also no no uh you don't so the chicken's gonna lay regardless i can't i don't understand how that works okay so the chickens are gonna lay regardless right that's just why how they just do that's that's the eggs aren't fertilized, right?

Yeah. That's true. So they won't make chickens? They won't be baby chickens. Oh, it's like if I get like, okay, I get it. It's, I get it. Yeah. That's like a human doing it.

Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like their equivalent of menstruation effectively. Yeah, I understand. Yeah, I know that now. Everything's coming back to me as far as like vegan talking points go chickens by the way because chickens are as james said these these are animals and you have to take good care of them that is your responsibility you do low-key realize the longer you have them that they're monsters like oh yeah their favorite food is

their own kind they have a section about this each. They're cannibals? They are tiny fucking dinosaurs. Don't go outside with your chickens. The other day I was cutting down some bushes and I had my shorts, I had a little cut from the thorn. And when they see blood, they are just like fucking exocet missiles. What? Does that affect the egg like yeah i mean what you feed them so yeah yeah yeah we we butchered a deer last year and we wound up with a lot of like deer fat and kind of like meat that you gave it to the

chickens well yeah we had some stuff because the deer had been hit by a car there was some meat we couldn't eat so i wound up giving several pounds of meat to the chickens. And those eggs fucking ruled. Wow. Okay. It's not advised to feed them deer. But yeah, so you want to stuff actually if you so they do bleed. There's a stuff called purple spray.

I'm sure it's not what it's actually called, but it's purple and it's a spray. And you can we already called it purple spray. You can spray it on them and it just stops it looking like blood it's i'm sure it's like an antibiotic um or maybe a antiseptic but um yeah you could spray that on the chicken so like one of mine she's just got this little thing on her wing that opens up every now and again and i just make sure i spray that um and that stops her from the other ones from pecking her right yeah so yeah you have to be dinosaurs we had a last year some kind of animal i think it was probably a uh like a like a possum or something i don't really know some kind

of animal got into the coop and attacked my chickens and we had i had one chicken we called it the anarchist chicken because it could always escape it like never was in the cage um and when when they got attacked the anarchist chicken leapt to defend the rest of the flock and fought off whatever it was it attacked but she wound up with a hole in her side and so i like took her and i dressed the wound and i put her back in the cage and they all immediately tried to eat her you want to have a separation yeah yeah yeah i that was the lesson that i learned i had to take her out because yeah we have a tiny cage. Yeah, that was the lesson that I learned. I had to take her out because... Yeah, we have a tiny rabbit hutch that we use.

It's called the Merrill Peep Memorial Chicken Hospital because Merrill Peep is one of our chickens who died. And you just put them in that for a few days until they're better, and then they can reintegrate just fine. So we've made very little progress on my script. Okay, so you want to get Buff Orpington's, Rhode Island Reds are good, Plymouth Rocks,

Americanas are nice. Have you guys seen those? No. I don't know anything about what you're talking about. Everything you're saying sounds like a different language. What do they teach you in school? So they're called Easter Eggers sometimes. They lay different color eggs, like pastel color eggs,

like blue and green eggs. No. Have you not been exposed to this at all? No. I mean, I grew up next to a cornfield, but also I... I guess I was around a farm, but we didn't interact with the chickens because you don't... I don't know.

They were like, here, deal with cows instead. I was like... Yeah, chickens are good. Don't go dive straight into cattle if you're getting know getting into animal husbandry uh but yeah americanas are fun because they're ladies colored eggs uh one of my friend's dads had them when i was a kid and he made bank selling them around easter so yeah if you're looking to get into a chicken hustle and then uh leghorns are like really good they're like hardy chickens but they are loud so if you live near people um i would consider not.

You should also check your local laws. Like, where I live, you can't have a rooster. You can have up to five chickens within city limits. You can't have a rooster. You don't really want a rooster unless you're allowed to have chicks. No, and one of the things roosters can do is, like, peck at your chickens and effectively, like, wear holes in their, like, yeah, they wind up, like wear holes in there like yeah they wind up like that little bastard parts yeah they're little sons of bitches we are we harvested ours as soon

as i got the place and uh harvested yeah yeah that's that's the term this this leads into a question that i've been wanting to ask which is that okay it is my under is my firm belief that i could defeat a chicken in single combat. It would send me to the hospital. But apparently this is a thing you need to do with your chickens. So how practical is it to defeat a chicken in single combat if you have to extract another chicken or something? I've never actually had any kind of aggression from my chickens.

When I'm bleeding, they'll peck my leg. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How is that not aggression? For a while, we hadn't realized that like they so a thing that you want when you get chickens is a rodent proof feeder right so you don't want to just put the food in a bowl uh if you have an issue with rodents you want to have the thing so like basically she comes up she stands on a step and that opens up the feeder and she can peck and eat right and this you want to get a rodent proof feeder you can just buy them

a tractor supply but uh ours gummed up with rain and we didn't realize and the chickens were obviously not getting food they were upset with this so they would attack me every time i came outside like they'd attack me and i'd be like go away so i'd give them treats right i'd give them like worms and apples a kitten has arrived uh oh i have to She was wanting to hold Or to be held I'm holding my cat for anyone that's like What's happening She just wanted to be snuggled

That's okay She's giving you a kiss Yeah so the mine would attack me for a while And I just gave them Mealworms when they would attack me So unconsciously I was reinforcing the attacking behaviour And so they would attack me. So unconsciously I was reinforcing the attacking behavior. And so they would attack me for a while, but I think you could take them.

Just keep swinging. You don't have to. Most of the time, at least mine, I hand feed them. So a nice treat for them is I'll cut a melon in half and I'll chase Shireen because she's allergic to melons. I am. That I am. And then you just hold it out and they'll come shireen because she's allergic to melons i am that i am uh and then you just hold it out and they'll come and eat it um and they they love scraps like that's often like what i do with basically all of my food waste is is give it to the chickens and they they tend to be

very happy with that yeah it's very it's a very sustainable um thing let's get on to space because i want to talk about... Wait, hold on. Before we get into this, speaking of sustainability, do you know who else is incredibly sustainable? Oh, wow. I don't think we can say that. Capitalism? Yes, inherently so. Shiny stuff.

It will last a thousand years. All right. We're back. Buy some gold. Buy some gold. Want to reinforce that. that because gold when you're starving will be more useful than chickens because it's shiny that's right that's right it'll it'll make you forget that you're slowly starving to death it's the foundation of all of this shit

it's shiny okay um yeah so talking of shiny things i want to talk about chicken coops uh because yeah um there's a shiny thing section we'll get. I love a good coop. I do love a good, I love to make a coop. I love to buy a coop. I love to help my friends buy coops. It's a great conversation area. Anyway, so they do need a coop.

They need a place where they can go at night and you want it to be shut off from predators, right? So you don't want like your possum, your raccoon, your fox, fox your stoat your weasel ferret whatever whatever you're dealing with snake um so once you get above three chickens you might have more than one nesting box in there um but like this doesn't necessarily mean that you need to go out and buy like you can buy them on amazon now but they're quite expensive and they're often quite shit like the um the pre-made chicken coops are very poor quality like if you have a shed or a kennel or something like that you can pretty

easily make it into a coop and you can just put a drop down door on the front so you can close them in at night and let them out in the morning um or i've seen people use like drawers you know like like dresses just open those and use them as nesting boxes. You want to put down some straw in your nesting box. Yeah. I have, I think, four for the chickens that I have now, which is about, I think we've got about 11. Yeah. And they are, two of them are large enough for two at a time,

and then two of them are smaller. Although chickens will, and sometimes, one of the things you have to do occasionally is come in and like take them out of the, some of them out of the nesting boxes. Some of them get like stuck in a loop where they get broody. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And, and so you just, I just like take them out and set them down where there's like some stuff to peck at. And they seem to, it kind of resets their little chicken brains. Silky bantams,

which are one of the like show bantams, get broody as fuck. And it's like, I've had friends who have had them and they will not eat and not drink because they're just like, no, I'm sitting on this egg.

Like, you can't stop me. And you have to like lock them out of there. There's not even an egg there, chicken. What's wrong with you? Yeah. Well, they'll take another chicken's egg.

Yeah. Or even like silky. That's cute. Look them up. They're real real they're floofers they're very cute um so you want to build them a run too right a place where they can safely run around have their food have their water and i would suggest uh using construction netting when you build a run bro that people call chicken wire which is like maybe one inch size holes but like a lot of stuff can get through that you'd be amazed like rats mice snakes can all get through that and if you use construction netting which is like maybe i'm not very good at inches but like about one centimeter size

a lot less is going to get through it um and you might want to bury it down to like a foot or two below the run if you're building something permanent just because things can dig underneath right like we had a fox dig underneath uh when i was a kid and don't it's preferable to do that to putting on the floor of your run because they don't like the little wire on the little feet and yeah no no definitely not on the you want them to have access to dirt and ideally sometimes grass too one thing that they because i i will let them out sometimes during the day and i have a barn that has like a like it's kind of dust in there like not dust um almost like almost like sandy dry dirt and one of their favorite things especially during the summer is to just kind of like sit down and rub yeah that dirt all up in the like and they they kind of need to be able to

do some version of that in order to be like healthy otherwise they yeah it's it's good for them it's good for their skin it's good for them existing yeah it's good for their mental health i think they're like people keep kicking the terrible conditions commercially but it doesn't mean you have an excuse to so oh when when I got these chickens, they had been, the people who'd had them before, I don't know what the fuck was wrong with them. They had a sizable outside run, but whoever, the folks who had them

had covered the entire bottom in stone. So they were just like living on stone. Yeah, they don't like that. No, they were in horrible shape. And when we harvested the rooster, his gizzard was full of automotive glass. Like, yeah,

it was fucked up. It was, I spent, cause they all had, they all had huge patches of them that like were bald. Um, I mean, we,

we, we dealt with that partially by getting rid of the rooster and partially by making sure we gave them, I, I was, I still do mix in, um, uh,

oyster shell bits with with the uh the yeah the calcium's good for them yeah so you'll know if they need that like they start coming um and it's actually really dangerous like an egg can rupture inside if they're laying it and that can be fatal so you want to make sure um if we just we can cover food quickly i guess um so they do like to grub for worms and stuff like that, right? Look for insects and they love to have scraps. But for a laying chicken, you want to make sure it's getting a decent base diet of layers pellets, which should be like somewhere between 60 and 18% protein. Wait, sorry, what kind of pellets?

Layer pellets. Yeah. There's a number of brands of it, but yeah, they're called layer pellets. Yeah. Some of them will already have oyster shell and grit and like robert said they do need those if not you can augment them but um it's probably just gonna be easier just get one sack uh and just dump it all in um they do need access to water as well uh that they can get out all day uh i think it's better to use like a nipple type drinker which is

a um you can take a bucket any bucket right fill it up and then you put these little nipples and they just they're red and again they like to peck at red stuff so they'll peck at them and then they get when that stops like you know they can't put their feet in the water and get their shit from their feet in the water and get sick like they're not clean animals so uh just if you do that and then i like to put a little bit it's hot where i live in san diego so i put a little bit of electrolyte stuff in there for them and they don't seem to mind and it just seems to help um and then yeah like it's good to uh you can feed them kitchen straps but you don't want to overload them especially on carby stuff like they do need enough protein um to keep up their laying and they definitely need enough

calcium um one thing i will say if you're if you're gonna buy something if you're gonna buy a chicken coop uh there's a company called eggloo um which is like igloo but egg uh they make some really nice prefab coops that are pretty good um and you can buy an attachment which puts a little door on it that uh it uses a solar panel i guess to charge itself and then it will open at daylight and close at sunset and so if you're the sort of person who knows that you'll forget to bring your chickens in obviously they're you know they're at risk at night from predation and things and they uh they they become completely fucking useless at night like when they go to sleep you can pick them up and turn them upside down and stuff they're just like yeah interior, the interior of my coop has, it's really cute.

It's basically like a ladder, like a very wide ladder going up the side of the building. And they just all stand on, like, it's like a group of 20, like at different levels of the ladder. And they just sit there as they sleep at night. Yeah, they need a pair to sleep on, actually. That's a good reminder. Yeah, you can't just on the floor yeah they don't like just being in the dirt no and then like something to entertain them so a good thing to entertain them is uh like an old if you have cds still uh young listeners may not

remember having cd collections but uh if you do have cds or you know you can find cds um you can just hang those and then they'll packet them and stuff because they're kind of shiny and they move around so it's a good thing to do with your alanis morissette yeah they also really like i mean one of the things that so i just tore out my what was left of my front lawn in order to grow more stuff and i just tossed all of the um the chunks of like soil and and grass in there they love pecking at that shit it's like one of their favorite things in the world yeah we put them on i have some planters out back and uh they're like fenced off the chickens can't get in and then when we turn them over when we like

replant them we'll put them in there and they just go ham and they find these huge worms so i have no idea how they got in there no um but yeah they love that stuff yeah and I let them out into the yard periodically and it's always whenever I have to like walk them back in because you kind of just like loop around them to like guide the flock as they move because they'll kind of instinctively go away from you if you're walking towards them

one of my hobbies is to like pretend to be an old oh what's going on I feel like we should stop this immediately One of my hobbies is to pretend to be an old. Ah, let's go to that break. I feel like we should stop this immediately. Buy some gold. Okay.

Sometimes I pretend it's the Shawshank Redemption, which is why I'm giving my chickens a boat by the coast for when they escape. Robert's gonna to go and show us why he cut the hole in his bed sheet. All of us love having health insurance. Please stop. It's true. Can I ask a question about space? So like

how much physical room do they need? Like how much line do you have to have? So you can look up, there are pretty good like calculators online where you can look up how many square yards or whatever you have but i'm terrible at estimating size but you know my i don't have very big garden you know we've we've had up to six uh chickens but you do want to just look it up and and it's not like the the square yardage you have isn't as important as the access they have to stuff right yeah can they get Can they get sunlight? Can they be, like, out in the dirt?

Like, something that feels like, you know, where a chicken would want to be? This is, like, not something you could burn from in an apartment, right? No. No, no. They need to be outside. Yeah. If you live in an apartment that, like,

has a yard or something that's shared, you potentially could. But no, you do need, like, some amount of dirt and grass essentially if you maybe have like a community garden you could talk to people about doing it there like um so mine just go all around my yard all day and like uh you guys have noticed also come into my office um and then they'll put themselves to bed at night they know where their home is so they'll just go themselves to bed at night. They know where their home is, so they'll just go back to bed at night. I want to talk a little bit about health because there are definitely some chicken health things,

and it's very expensive to take chickens to the vet, actually, because you have to go to an exotic and avian vet, and they're quite rare. A what vet? Exotic and avian vet. Okay. Yeah. You could take them to a regular vet but most of the time

so actually if your chickens get sick in most states there's a state-run helpline you can call and it's free and they'll put you on to a vet right away yeah and they're very very helpful um and that's the reason because of the danger of different avian flus like infecting large numbers of of animals yeah does does something similar to pet insurance exist for farm farm animals or not really it does but i don't think on it you probably wouldn't want to be investing in that for your chickens like if you're breeding livestock right and that's the thing you can have um and you know one of the things you do have to keep in mind is that at some point you will have to kill them, you know, because they will get old enough or sick enough.

And some form of euthanasia will wind up being kinder than continuing to, like, let them be. Like, that's just that's true of any kind of livestock. Right. At some point you have to if you don't just want to let it die naturally which again in a lot of cases will be prolonging its suffering you you do have to be willing to take care of that one way or the other yeah like you can give them the best life you can give them and look after them for as long as you can but oftentimes yeah they will or they'll get hurt right like if some yes they'll get injured species gets in there well i think that's a good reality to remind people of that it's like it's actually like a serious thing to have a chicken and then be responsible for its life and death

and also like the egg comes out of their butthole right so it's covered yes well it's their cloaca well i'm just saying it's not just like cartoon chicken laying you know what i mean like i think yeah yeah it's not a while ago um but it's not that game everyone played in covid where you're on an island and you build stuff um yeah i just think people usually are really flippant with stuff like like yeah you know it's a living animal and like you have to take care of it and it's your responsibility right let's say like you need to think about that oh you don't want to let the bumholes get too poopy we're talking about health so they can get worms that way and that's really bad so if you see that you just just pick them up and they'll be and this that's this is why you want to handle them when they're young so that you can

handle them with stuff like this so like i'll just pick them up and use a spray bottle or a little hose with a bit of warm water and and they don't mind that at all and at least they they don't give me any shit um but you want to look up some of the common things you're going to see uh like gape worm um it's called gape worm because they'll gape. You'll see them gaping. They can be egg bound. And then depending on where you are, they can be too hot or too cold. So you do need to make sure they have shade.

I found this thing. Someone was moving out. It's like a mister that they have at restaurants. When you go to a restaurant in LA and it's hot, and they have an annoying wetness. Wait, what? That's a thing? Yes.

Have you ever been to an amusement park in a line? They sometimes have them too, if it's really hot. Or sometimes in the fruit and vegetables when you go to the supermarket. I've seen it there, but that's the only... Huh. They have those in restaurants? Yeah, they have them at restaurants. Not inside.

Outside. Wait, outside. There's misters to make it... If you're in, like, Phoenix or somewhere. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I got one of those. You can find a lot of this shit, by the way.

Like, if you live in a place that is gentrifying, like, unfortunately, it's happened in the part of San Diego I live in. Like, for instance, all the wood for San Diego I live in. For instance, all the wood for my chicken coop, I didn't pay for that shit. There's rich people doing stuff to houses. It doesn't need to be done. Just obtain wood from their building sites. Yeah.

Obtain. It's like those pallets of bricks. If they didn't want you to use them, they wouldn't leave it out there. And why would Elizabeth Warren have sent the pallets of bricks if she didn't want you to use them they wouldn't leave it out there yeah and why would elizabeth warren have sent the pallets of bricks if she didn't want to use them um so uh yeah obviously like health-wise like i say you want to make sure you have that purple spray on hand you want to be giving them uh some electrolytes in their water you want to make sure they have shade if it's hot and that their coop is warm like they don't like it much below freezing no like 32 yeah you i keep

like a heat lamp basically all winter in there with a red bulb so it doesn't like upset their their sleep patterns yeah so people the way battery people do it like battery chickens is they they they do more day night cycles using artificial light to to make the chickens lay more if you see what i mean and the chickens will lay at an accelerated rate. Yeah, it'll keep them laying during the winter at a lower rate. Don't be doing that. That's not particularly good for the birds. I let them rest this winter.

Yeah, let them, you know, they're animals. They don't just exist to provide you food. Okay, a question on this. How cold... Is there a point it gets in the winter where you probably shouldn't have them? You just want to keep the coop warm.

And then... When we were at Tenacious Unicorn Ranch, they have chickens. I don't know how cold it was, but I went to bed every night with a Nalgene full of boiling water. And when I woke up, i was hugging an ice baby

like it was uh yeah the uh the heat so where i was staying didn't work the first time so like it was cold af and the chickens had a nice warm coop with a heat lamp and they were fine yeah you can i mean people keep chickens in every imaginable climate so you as long as you're careful about making sure that you have a warm place for them to sleep, they will be okay. Yeah. And can you let them out in the snow and stuff?

Yeah, they love snow. Yeah, they have fun with that. It snowed yesterday, and my chickens are having a great time outside. Yeah, yeah. They like it, actually. They'll run, like, I remember at home, my chickens love the snow.

And talk to when you're buying the chickens, I remember at home, my chickens love the snow. And talk to when you're buying the chickens, right? Like consider that in your breed choice. Like some of them are going to do bad and cold. Some of them are going to not like the heat. And honestly, like one of the better things you can do in that situation, if you're like, I live in some weird ass part of the world where it's freezing half the time,

just Google like keeping backyard chickens, whatever the name of your area is, and then Reddit. And you will find people talking on Reddit. Yeah, yeah, I've got this. This is the breed that I picked, and this is what I do. People love to talk about their chickens. So, yeah, the backyard chickens Reddit was one of my resources. Yeah, exactly.

It's a good place to look. Yeah, so if you have a coop, you're going to want to clean it, right? You can use that chicken poop as fertilizer. Oh, it's some of the best in the world. Yeah. So then if you're into this sort of, you know, like growing your own food, then this all works well, right? You give the chicken to scraps, chickens make you eggs, they poop.

You put that into your plants, you have nice plants. You want to balance it out. It's a bit acidic, I think, just using the shit. So you want to be combusting with other stuff as well right yeah checking your soil chemistry before you sort of go ham but yeah so you you can do that you do want to make sure yeah i've got a poultry helpline we spoke about that california's is great though like don't hesitate to call the poultry helpline um if you need help like there's there's people who are being paid to help you and like that is normally like i know like most pet owners unless they're very wealthy will have had to make horrible

decisions about their pet's health versus their own income when when they've like you know and it's it's shit uh so that helpline is free and like robert said it's because they're very scared of infectious diseases so take advantage of like your you know taxpayer funded chicken vet and yeah give them a call um i think i don't know if it's in every state but i know it's a lot of them um what yeah go ahead oh um are you going to talk about uh uh giving them like the shake and bake treatment for uh uh what do you call it um If they get mites. Oh, yeah, yeah. Go ahead and talk about it.

So, you know, chickens can get, there's like a skin, it functions similarly to like a skin infection. There's like little mites that will get on them. You'll notice bald patches. It can be, I mean, it's bad for their health, obviously. Like you would not want to be covered in mites. And so there's this kind of mite killer called promethrin. And the way that you, you can apply it in a number of ways,

but you basically need to coat the entire chicken. It's essentially a white powder. So what we did when we had to do it is we just took a giant, a large feed bag and we filled it with promethrin. And we put the chickens in it once at a time and just kind of like give them a little shake. So they got covered. You're're shaking baking all of them and then they're just like wandering around confused and covered in this white powder like what the fuck happened it's just it's very

funny i've done that it's very fun um i mean it's just it's the best way because they get covered very quickly that way like there's you know with mites and dust and stuff, you do want to make sure that where they're living is not too moist or not too dusty because they can get like respiratory conditions from that.

So you don't, yeah, you want to make sure that, you know, they're living in a nice environment. They also, like the biggest health thing

you're going to see is that they will peck at each other, right? Especially when you first get your birds, they're going to establish what's called a pecking order, which people have used, heard and used they're literally an order in which they well

i didn't know the meaning i didn't understand what that meant completely until right now this moment that's my gift to you very helpful today it's a lot of a lot of learning yeah it's what they call a knowledge transfer uh the uh yeah so they'll do that they'll peck right they'll establish you know when you get a new bird you don't really want to introduce one new bird at once right so say this is how you get fucking conned into having bantams because let's say your your garden can support four chickens and then one of your girls dies and you're sad and you want to get more birds so you're like well we can't we can't go to five full-size chickens so we'll get bantams right like two half-size chickens and that that is good for the social dynamic because they won't one won't get picked

on one won't be like the new girl and then they they like pick on her um but then you've got bantams and then you just i don't know i'm not no it's not very pro bantam um they they're just difficult wait so how do they establish the pecking order they peck at each other and pecking each other yeah and then what well basically one of them well it's just like any other like physical confrontation like they they peck at each other and like okay well you're harder than me i like i can't i'm you know i'm not here for that uh so back down sometimes they will really start picking on one and then you do have to separate them for a while um so you just got to watch out for that and you're going to be vintage and when you first get them you're going to be excited and you're going to

want to go outside and like interact with them so And you've got to be vigilant. And when you first get them, you're going to be excited. And you're going to want to go outside and interact with them. So you'll be watching that anyway. So just make sure you have treats and stuff and separate them. And don't be scared. They can't hurt you, the chickens. But yeah, it's normal for them to peck at each other. You've got to keep an eye out for if they do draw blood. Like Robert said, they are fucking dinosaurs.

And they will just hone in on that so that's when you have to separate them or come in with your purple spray um so yeah you just have to make sure that you're aware of that and you said that they pecked at your leg when it was bleeding does that hurt a little bit like it's you wouldn't do it recreationally yeah maybe some people would you know you do you i'm not here to yuck your yum. Yeah. If you are turned on by being pecked by chickens, yeah, that's fine. It's not... They're not like full body attack. I walk in every day to feed my chickens and I don't get pecked or anything.

They're fine. They're not like attack animals. Look, and chickens, by the way, are like every other creature. Some of them are assholes, right? Like it's any kind of animal that you have and any kind of like, just like people,

some of them are dicks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember like on that subject, I was a few years ago, I was writing about rattlesnake behavior for a story. And there's this one fucking rattlesnake, which literally every time I ride past it, it's just like, bam, like it will fucking try. Like I was talking

to the snake behavior expert and he's like, yeah, man, that one's an asshole. Some of them are just jackasses. Don't know what to tell you, dude. You've just come across a bellend. Like it is what it is. So yeah, sometimes you're just going to have a chicken, which is mean. And you and just got to hope that it doesn't, you know, you got to make your choice then, right? If it's really causing chaos in the flock, like what are you going to do with it? Um, yeah, that may be a chicken that you eat. Um, yeah. Which by the way, one of the things you learn keeping chickens is how wildly we have fucked

up the chickens that we use for meat. Cause like a normal chicken does not produce breast meat that is that size like it is the size of like a normal grocery store chicken breast those are from monsters that we made well yeah that's like breast meat was popular so they made that like they inserted like a hormone or whatever to make that part of the chicken grow and yeah i mean i've seen videos of like the chicken toppling over because that's so heavy. It's not supposed to be that way. It's madness. Yeah, it's so sad. And then bones are not fully developed.

Like it's very cruel. Like I am. Yeah, it's fucked up. Yeah. Yeah. I don't eat meat. Like I'm not really like down with the way the American commercial agriculture raises animals at all.

I grew up on a farm. I've raised animals my whole life. No, I'm with you. I agree. I'm not fucking touching cheap meat in the store. I understand other people do. you go to feed your families whatever and obviously one way or the other if you're raising chickens like

and you at some point you know the chicken is going to die if at all possible I think you do kind of have a responsibility to find some use for that meat yeah unless they're sick in which case yeah obviously if they get like yeah I had to kill two last year because they got some sort of avian flu. The state people will come and take them away and do an autopsy

if they do get sick like that. So that's nice to know because then you know, do I have to worry about the rest of my flock? What is this? Is there something in the soil? Is there something I'm feeding them? If you have concerns like that, it's nice to have them do that. Yeah yeah that's a really good note but yeah you um if you are responsible for them like and you have to give them the best life they can and the kindest death and you know yeah you're

responsible for them suffering as little as possible in their little lives we used to buy chickens when i was a kid from a guy who bred chickens for a battery farm and we'd go and get them as chicks and just be like you you you, you are going to run around our farm all day and have a wonderful life and I'm so sorry the rest of you have this fucking horrible existence. Yeah. But it was nice to save some of them.

It's going to be hard to get chickens right now. So my last thing was really like when you're buying chickens, right? Where are you going to get your chickens from? So hopefully, you know, where you live, you have like a farm shop. Steal them. Liberate them from a battery farm.

Shoot your way in. That's it. It doesn't matter. It's worth it. They have a right to freedom. You will probably, well, I actually think people have literally gotten domestic terrorism charges for that. Yes.

Well, I think it was pigs, wasn't it, that they got? Yeah. Yeah. Chickens are not charismatic enough for people to go to prison over. I know. It's unfair. It's unfair. It's racism, really. Yeah. Chickens are not charismatic enough for people to go to prison over. Yeah. I know. It's unfair. It's unfair.

It's racism, really. Yeah. There's one thing we could tell you as a group of individuals legally responsible for what we say. It's arm yourself and liberate poultry. Yeah. Fight your way in. That's pretty ironic, I think. Yeah.

Yeah. But, like, the only, not the only, but the most concrete evidence of like dinosaurs have like now devolved into these chickens. You know what I mean? Like that is so funny to me that out of all the animals, that is the closest thing we have to a dinosaur. That is so. Tiny velociraptor. They are dinosaurs. And again, their favorite food is their own kind.

And also like, like they will like every now and then I will give them some of their eggs just because it makes them so happy to eat well i was gonna ask like what you said that it tasted different when you gave them meat like what is the difference that you caught in the taste when they do eat their own eggs versus like just the feed oh no i mean their their own eggs don't i've never fed them enough for it to be a meaningful component of their diet they will eat scrambled egg um yeah cottage cheese they like to or when they're sick. Can you, like, taste a difference? If you give them herbs. So, like, one thing that people do is give them little bundles of herbs, and you can taste that in the egg.

Yeah. It's just kind of richer, you know, when you, like, you'll notice different, like, if they are calcium deficient, the eggs are really fragile. And if they have a shitload of calcium in their diet, like my eggs are like, you have to like, you have to want to crack those fuckers. If you feed them flax seeds, then the eggs have a higher omega-3 content.

Oh, I didn't know that. It makes sense. It's super interesting, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So you can give them flax seeds and like that kind of thing. You can mess with their diet a bit. And they like that stuff. So yeah, when you can give them flax seeds and like that kind of thing you can mess with their diet a bit and they they like that stuff um so yeah when you're buying them what you want i think as a beginner is like a point of lay bird and you can you'd say point of lay uh and that's what they'll give you you know they're going to try and give you pull it

so they're going to try and say it's nice to raise chicks but and it is it's really nice to raise chicks but some of them will die and that will be upsetting for you. Yeah. And it's hard because it's a lot of work. That's a general note. Any lifetime, if you decide that you want to be a person who has livestock, you have to be okay with them dying. And it being an experience that is more direct to you than like, obviously it's not as emotional as like when a cat or a dog dies, but it will not involve a vet with the kind of frequency that a dying pet does.

You will have to deal with animals die, because animals just die. Sometimes they wind up with the same kind of ailments people have, where an animal's heart will give out or something, and you didn't do anything wrong. It's just an animal was born with a heart defect, right? It's just like a thing that occurs if you have enough animals yeah we used to say if you have livestock you'll have dead stock one day yeah like it's just something you have to face up to but like yeah someone else is already doing that shit and

they're probably doing it with less compassion than you yeah you're buying you know walmart eggs so you like i say you you can't you're not god but but you owe these animals a decent life and as little suffering as you can. So yeah, by the point of lay chickens, make sure that they're sexed. You don't want a rooster. You might not legally be able to have a rooster. And then something like a dog container is fine. I bought them home in a shoebox before. I'll just put them next to me in my truck, and they're pretty chill.

I give them a little bit of water in there, but generally they don't, you know, want to drink. You can kind of swaddle them. I've seen people swaddle them, you know, if they're really panicking or whatever. Swaddling is like when you wrap them, like you would with a baby. Like a burrito.

And people do that, I know, when they have to move them in like a hurricane to try and calm them down, but I've always just put them in a dog container. Oh, are we going to talk about storing storing eggs oh yeah yeah yeah because people don't fucking yeah it's a weird american thing yeah yeah so this doesn't happen in the rest of the world but you guys get your eggs refrigerated uh and that's because they're washed before they come to you yeah you don't need to do this normally. No, you shouldn't wash your eggs,

nor should you refrigerate them. I have a little helter-skelter thing. It just looks like a spiral, right? And you put the egg on the top and it just rolls its little way down until it gets to the bottom. And that way, I always take them from the bottom. And that way, I'm always sort of getting the oldest eggs first,

so I don't end up with like one at the bottom of the basket, right? So you don't wash them? No, just bring them in. No, not until you're ready to eat them. Obviously, wash them before you cook them because some of them will have poop and stuff on them. Right, right.

Right, but before that, just keep them normal. They'll last for months like that. Oh, yeah. I've never had a bad egg. There are a couple of other ways. Obviously, you could pickle them be very careful with that if you are canning them um i would recommend just pickling them and putting them in the fridge um because eggs in particular like hard-boiled eggs in particular are troublesome

to can because there's always if you think about hard-boiled eggs there's always like little bitty cracks in like the uh the the white of the egg and that is where botulism can live so be extremely careful if you are pickling eggs um just i would recommend don't like you know can them specifically just pickle them and put them in the fridge and you know they'll last a pretty good amount of time yeah pickled eggs are delicious yeah it's wonderful is the is the thing about not refrigerating the eggs so you do you actually still have to refrigerate once you get from the store? Yes.

You can in this country, yes. You can roll them in vegetable oil and I think ash, which replicates the way that they have a membrane on them. I hadn't heard about that. But fair, like all intent. If you're buying them from... They have a membrane on them?

Yes. Yeah, when they come out. Like a little hole, basically. Yeah, like it kind of fills the pores on the outside of the egg i think because i understand it um so you if you really wanted to store them you didn't have access to refrigerator you could do the oil and ash thing you should look it up uh the other thing you can do that is because again if you have any quantity of chickens there's a good chance that they will produce, like, I have a problem with this, significantly more eggs than you can consume. An interesting way to, are you going to talk about

water glassing? Oh, no, talk about it, though. Yeah, you can look, like, look it up. I'm not going to give you a guide over this, because preserving stuff is something that you should take care of, but you can Google water glassing. It's basically a way you can keep eggs for like up to a year that way. Yeah. In like crackable, friable condition. But I think we are getting the note that James and I should stop talking about chickens for now. We can continue in another episode.

James and I will talk about chickens privately after this, and you all aren't privy to it. I mean, James said it. People love to talk about their chickens. They do. They do. They do. They do love to talk about chickens, yeah. Maybe we'll start a side podcast for Patreon reasons.

Chicken cast! Chicken cast! Anyway. Poultry pod. Until next time, take a lesson from the chickens and eat your own young. Oh my god. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat

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